Free Republic

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a convicted murderer’s appeal to receive gender reassignment surgery, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling in favor of the Texas prison officials who refused the inmate the procedure. The court rejected the appeal of a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling by transgender inmate Vanessa Lynn Gibson, formerly known as Scott Gibson, who claimed the prison’s refusal to grant the surgery violates the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. Gibson, 41, who was born male but has lived as a woman since age 15, was convicted and sent...

A pharmaceutical firm that markets drugs used in gender-identity clinics to delay puberty has given £100,000 to the Liberal Democrats. Jo Swinson’s party has already upset feminists, who worry that the “extreme trans-ideological” policies in its manifesto will put vulnerable women at risk. According to the Electoral Commission register, the Lib Dems received the payment on November 22 from Ferring Pharmaceuticals. The firm, owned by the Swedish billionaire Frederik Paulsen, markets the drug triptorelin, which is used to block puberty among adolescents. The Lib Dem manifesto pledges “complete reform of the Gender Recognition Act to remove the requirement for medical...

... For years, the medical and legal establishments have been ignoring evidence and bending their standards to please transgender activists, some of whom are clinicians. There are three clinical approaches to helping children who exhibit symptoms of gender confusion. One involves a range of talk therapies and psychotherapies to address suspected underlying causes. A second, called “watchful waiting,” allows the child’s development to unfold as it will, which may mean that he chooses to transition later or not at all. Then there is a third option — informed by an ideology according to which it is possible for a child...

Shortly before my gender assignment surgery in 2002, my father told me that he was grieving the loss of his first-born son. My first impulse was to comfort him. We talked about his feelings one afternoon and I reassured him that he wasn’t losing me. I thought this was my duty; after all, he had supported my transition, defending me against bigoted relatives (even as he stumbled over my pronouns and told me I needed to be less argumentative if I planned to live as a woman). Still, I counted myself lucky that he and other members of my immediate...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Ill.) snapped at a progressive Muslim who asked her at a conference on Tuesday if she could make a public statement condemning female genital mutilation, calling the question "appalling" and "very frustrating." "Should I make a schedule, like, does this need to be on repeat every 5 minutes? Should I be like, so, today I forgot to condemn Al-Qaeda, so here's the Al-Qaeda one. Today I forgot to condemn FGM so here it goes. Today I forgot to condemn Hamas so here it goes. You know, I mean, it is a very frustrating question that...

On Wednesday, June 19, the Pennsylvania Senate passed House Bill 315, which would classify Female Genital Mutilation as a first-degree felony in the Keystone State. The Pennsylvania House passed the legislation on April 9, and the bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Thomas P. Murt, told CNSNews.com he is “very confident” that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf will sign the legislation into law. ... Rep. Murt wrote, “This is a major victory for the women of Pennsylvania. I want to thank my colleagues in both the House and Senate for taking this strong and unified stand for the right to be safe from...

Dan Zadra once wrote, “worry is a misuse of the imagination.” In January of this year, after coming across a particularly worrying piece in the Atlantic, I misused my imagination. Sorry, Mr. Zadra. Titled “Young Trans Children Know Who They Are,” the piece focused on transgender children — those of whom identify as a different gender from the one they were assigned at birth. Ed Yang, the author of the piece, argues that, from an early age, children already have a strong sense of identity. He contends that some children as young as three already have a strong sense of...

The most noteworthy aspect of Tandy Aye’s discussion is her concession that the doctors who administer 'gender affirming therapy' are sterilizing these children. In the competition for the most hard-left doctor treating children who are confused about their sex (“transgender” kids), Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has maintained a strong lead. Olson-Kennedy promotes medicalizing sex-confused children with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery. How radical is she? Radical enough to airily reject the idea that all such children should at least receive psychological counseling (“I don’t send someone to a therapist when I’m going to start them...

How far has the United States gone down the road of punishing people for uttering politically incorrect thoughts? Very far indeed, as an incident at the University of Louisville shows. Yes, we know that faculty in the “soft” fields of the social sciences endanger their careers if they happen to say something that upsets someone of “progressive” sensibilities, but the Louisville case involves a (formerly) esteemed medical school professor. Evidently, no one is safe from the PC enforcers. Dr. Allan Josephson has been in medical practice since 1976, specializing in childhood psychology. In 2003, has was chosen to be the...

A docker from Humberside has been investigated by police over a limerick he posted on Twitter after an officer claimed it constitutes a ‘hate incident’ against transgender people. Harry Miller, 53, from Lincoln was contacted on Wednesday by a community cohesion officer following a complaint that had been made about the plant and machinery dealer’s social media posts. Citing 30 potentially offensive tweets, the PC singled out a limerick Mr Miller had retweeted which questioned whether transgender women are biological women. It included the lines: "Your breasts are made of silicone, your vagina goes nowhere." Even though no crime was...

... the arguments in favor of transgender pronouns — defined here as the incorrect application of “he” and “she” as well as absurd neologisms like “ze” and “zir” — are, in the end, shortsighted. Though compelling on their own limited terms, they fail to take into account that further capitulation where language is concerned can only give aid and comfort to a movement whose success is inevitably attended by the sexualization of children, the sanctioning of brutality, and the dramatic curtailment of freedom of speech and thought. About the scale of their ambitions, transgender activists have not been shy. “Nuance...

A woman in London was convicted on Friday over the genital cutting of her daughter, becoming the first person to be successfully prosecuted under the country’s law banning the practice. The 37-year old woman was found guilty of committing female genital mutilation in August 2017, when her daughter was 3. The girl’s father, 43, was cleared of charges. Neither parent was identified because of reporting restrictions placed on the case. “Female genital mutilation has an appalling physical and emotional impact on victims that usually lasts their entire life,” said Lynette Woodrow, a deputy chief crown prosecutor, in a statement. “A...

... Like all mammals, humans come in two sexes. (The existence of intersex conditions in no way changes this fact. It is a highly misleading umbrella term for rare developmental disorders of the genitals and gonads, some of which are so minor their “sufferers” do not even know about them, and hardly any of which raise any doubt as to whether an individual is male or female or where they place on any sort of putative “sex spectrum.”) Females produce eggs and bear young; males produce sperm and impregnate the females. Unlike other mammals, however, humans live in complex societies,...

Best Clinic, a small chain of private medical centres in Moscow, said in an advert on its website that it carried out "female circumcision" on girls aged between five and 12, the Russian language online newspaper Meduza said on Tuesday. Meduza published screenshots of the advert, which Best Clinic has since removed from its website...The Prosecutor General's Office was not immediately available to comment. The health ministry declined to comment, saying that female circumcision is not a medical procedure and is not in their competence...The World Health Organization says about 200 million women and girls worldwide have undergone FGM, which...

Last week, a member of my Orthodox Jewish congregation approached me at synagogue to tell me a story. Many of the women in the congregation exercise at a females-only gym for modesty purposes. The gym is successful; its main constituency is religious women who don’t wish to be stared at by men, or to see men in various states of undress. According to the congregation member, this month, a transgender woman — a biological male who suffers from gender dysphoria — came to the gym. This man, who retains his male biological characteristics, then entered the locker room and proceeded...

Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to. That shouldn’t disqualify me from getting it. I like to say that being trans is the second-worst thing that ever happened to me. (The worst was being born...

In an unbelievable travesty of justice, US District Judge Bernard Friedman dismissed a federal case against defendants charged with FGM and released them, saying that the 22 year old statute against Female Genital Mutilation is unconstitutional. Thirty other nations have outlawed the practice, but the judge says it has to be left up to the states. Several Michigan doctors faced federal charges after subjecting about 100 under-aged girls to the barbaric practice of a Muslim sect. Two mothers were also charged under the statute. Judge Friedman released them, saying that Congress overstepped its bounds in creating the law in the...

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the U.S. law banning female genital mutilation was unconstitutional and dismissed charges against several doctors in Michigan who carried out the procedure on underage girls as part Muslim sect’s religious practice.

A federal judge dismissed charges Tuesday against two doctors and six others involved in the genital mutilation of nine girls at a Detroit clinic, and also declared a US law banning the practice unconstitutional. US District Judge Bernard Friedman dismissed mutilation and conspiracy charges against Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, who performed the surgery, and Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, who allowed his clinic in Livonia, Michigan, to be used for the procedure. The same charges were dismissed against Attar's wife, Farida, and Tahera Shafiq, who assisted in the procedure, as well as four women who tricked their daughters into going to the suburban...

The Daily Mail has a shocking story from the UK. A whistleblowing teacher claims that vulnerable autistic children are being persuaded that they are gender dysphoric. From the story: An astonishing 17 pupils at a single British school are in the process of changing gender, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Most of the youngsters undergoing the transformation are autistic, according to a teacher there, who said vulnerable children with mental health problems were being ‘tricked’ into believing they are the wrong sex. The whistleblower says few of the transgender children are suffering from gender dysphoria – the medical term...