Free Republic

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (TND) — A teenager who plays the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) at a high competitive level was reportedly disqualified from a tournament after he laughed when an official asked for his pronouns. Makani Tran was out $800, a couple of flights and missed school time after he offended a nonbinary Pokémon TCG judge, cutting his tournament run prematurely short "for a bizarre reason," according to Dexerto. The teenager says in a Twitlonger post that he never meant to offend anyone and was close to tears when he was disqualified. The Charlotte-based tournament was livestreaming the TCG matches...

LA Confidential and Memento star Guy Pearce has made a lengthy apology after tweeting about the debate around roles for trans actors. Pearce, whose breakout role was as a drag queen in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, had questioned the debate around trans actors playing both trans and non-trans characters in a now-deleted tweet. Pearce had written: “A question – if the only people allowed to play trans characters r trans folk, then r we also suggesting the only people trans folk can play r trans characters. Surely that will limit ur career as an actor? Isn’t...

A Vermont television station has deleted the online version of a news story that garnered national attention and provoked a barrage of transphobic messages toward a transgender Randolph student and her family. Links to the original story from Sept. 28 on the website for WCAX now turn up an error message and related social media posts have disappeared. The story’s deletion was first reported by Seven Days. WCAX’s story quoted a Randolph Union High School volleyball player who objected to a transgender teammate’s use of a school locker room. The story was then cited in media reports by Fox News,...

A second female Penn swimmer has bravely come forward and described how her fellow teammates were in tears after ‘transgender’ swimmer Lia Thomas crushed them in last weekend’s swim meet. UPenn however is intimidating the female swimmers and telling them not to talk to the media about the Lia Thomas situation. Lia Thomas, a transgender UPenn swimmer who competed for two full seasons as a man before ‘transitioning’ into a female, shattered women’s records in Akron, Ohio last weekend. Thomas also finished one of the races 38 seconds ahead of the woman who finished in second place. Before and after...

Penn administration 'strongly advise' its swimmers to avoid talking to the media about the situation surrounding Thomas.. ... Even after a Wednesday team meeting where a source says Penn administration "strongly advised" its swimmers to avoid talking to the media about the situation surrounding transgender Penn swimmer Lia Thomas, a second female Penn swimmer has stepped forward to speak out ... The second female Penn swimmer to speak out, who was granted anonymity due to what is viewed as threats from the university, activists, and the political climate, wants people to know that Penn swimmers are "angry" over the lack...