By most people’s standards, Sweden is a paradise for liberated women. It has the highest proportion of working women in the world, and women earn about two-thirds of all degrees. Standard parental leave runs at 480 days, and 60 of those days are reserved exclusively for dads, causing some to credit the country with forging the way for a new kind ofnurturing masculinity. In 2010, the World Economic Forum designated Sweden as the most gender-equal country in the world.

But for many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equalbut gender-neutral. The idea is that the government and society should tolerate no distinctions at all between the sexes. This means on the narrow level that society should show sensitivity to people who don’t identify themselves as either male or female, including allowing any type of couple to marry. But that’s the least radical part of the project. What many gender-neutral activists are after is a society that entirely erases traditional gender roles and stereotypes at even the most mundane levels.

Activists are lobbying for parents to be able to choose any name for their children (there are currently just 170 legally recognized unisex names in Sweden). The idea is that names should not be at all tied to gender, so it would be acceptable for parents to, say, name a girl Jack or a boy Lisa. A Swedish children’s clothes company has removed the “boys” and “girls” sections in its stores, and the idea of dressing children in a gender-neutral manner has been widelydiscussed on parenting blogs. This Swedish toy catalog recently decided to switch things around, showing a boy in a Spider-Man costume pushing a pink pram, while a girl in denim rides a yellow tractor.

Parents who adopt normally qualify for a one-time credit of more than $13,000. But TheNew York Times reports that the IRS sometimes refuses applications from same-sex couples when one partner is adopting the other’s biological child. 

The Government Accountability Office criticized the IRS for failing to train its staffers on how to handle the situation. And an IRS spokesman admits to the Times that the bean counters had made a few mistakes, which they’ve fixed when pressed by gay and lesbian parents. 

“Most taxpayers, after pushing back hard, have had the credit allowed,” Patricia Cain, a law professor at Santa Clara University, said in the Times.

Cain first noted that the IRS was denying requests by lesbian couples in a blog post in August. 

“The most common explanation is that the birth mother did not terminate her parental rights as part of the adoption,” Cain explained. “That is true. That is the way second parent adoptions work.”

Cain points out that tax law doesn’t require termination of parental rights to qualify for the credit. It seems the IRS had added rules where none existed.

“Another explanation that has been given is that the adopting mother is the domestic partner of the birth mother,” Cain wrote. “But there is nothing in the Internal Revenue Code that says you cannot claim the credit for the adoption of your domestic partner’s child.”

youjolgbtq:

Why can’t these kids be expelled? They bullyied a kid to death, and they can’t be expelled? I’ve seen people get expelled for MUCH LESS, and they only get suspended! The fact that they’re just now getting around to doing something about it is disgusting! I’m being more anti-public school each time shit like this happens. Public school almost ruined MY life, and it would’ve if I hadn’t dropped out.

Stop calling Jamey GAY! He was bi!

Jamey, I know it’s hard, but PLEASE rest in peace! Rest with all the love in this and that world!

In 1979, a few years before the Swanson family arrived, Sweden became the first country to ban physical punishment of children.

Since then, 30 more countries have passed bans on corporal punishment at home, and even more have banned it in schools, according to the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children. Just last month, Togo confirmed to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child that parts of its children’s code are meant to ban physical punishment.

No countries in North America ban physical punishment by parents, but there’s a perennial debate about the line between discipline and abuse, and who’s allowed to administer it. It flared again last week after millions watched a seven-minute YouTube video from 2004 that showed a Texas judge cursing at his teen daughter and beating her with a belt.

“According to a new survey presented at the annual conference for theNational Association for the Education of Young Children yesterday, two-thirds of kindergarten teachers say the majority of their students start school without knowing basic preschool concepts like the alphabet. At a time when closing the achievement gap is a national imperative for our nation, veteran kindergarten teachers say students are less prepared for school than ever before.

Just 6 percent of kindergarten teachers say that students are very well prepared academically when they enter the classroom. Students come in lacking the ability to hold a pencil or write their name. Fewer than 9 percent of teachers rated incoming student’s oral language skills as very good. Given that the size of a student’s vocabulary is an indication of how well they’ll do academically for the rest of their lives, that doesn’t bode well for ensuring students are on the track toward college or careers.”

gaywrites:

The ACLU went to court yesterday to fight a Missouri school district’s rule blocking all LGBT sites from being accessed at school, even though students do have access to anti-gay sites.

Blocked sites include valuable resources like the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Campus Pride and PFLAG. The ACLU is seeking a preliminary injunction against the Camdenton R-III School District for keeping perfectly appropriate and informative sites from students.

“School districts across the country have purchased filtering software that allows them to block sexually explicit websites without discriminating against LGBT-supportive content,” Joshua Block, staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT Project, said in a statement. “We all agree that it is appropriate to block students from accessing pornography or sexually explicit content. But Camdenton R-III insists on using its ‘do it yourself’ software even though other systems provide viewpoint-neutral filtering and are more effective at blocking actual pornography.” 

Let’s see what happens here. Students need access to this kind of information, and sometimes school is the only place they can look. 

(via projectqueer)

“She [the sister of Jamey Rodemeyer] was having a great time, and all of a sudden a Lady Gaga song came on, and they all started chanting for Jamey, all of his friends,” Jamey’s mother, Tracy, told Curry. “Then the bullies that put him into this situation started chanting, ‘You’re better off dead!’ and ‘We’re glad you’re dead!’ and things like that. My daughter came home all upset. It was supposed to be a time for her to grieve and have fun with her friends, and it turned into bullying even after he’s gone.”

“The pop star sat in a middle table, standing when the President entered. Obama spoke for eight minutes, and did not acknowledge Gaga, but, according to the report, “it seems likely the two crossed paths during greetings inside the house before the dinner.”

Given the outfit she was wearing, avoiding Gaga was probably impossible.”