The Wall Street Journal is an American media organization that piublishes consistently anti-trans contect, espcially on the Opinion page.
Their journalism is considered center to center-right, and the editorial page is considered right-wing/conservative. The opinion section frequently promotes and platforms major anti-trans voices, including Gerald Posner, J. Michael Bailey, Abigail Shrier, Leor Sapir, and Colin Wright.
Contributors
In 2023, the WSJ significantly increased its anti-transgender coverage.
Leor Sapir and Colin Wright wrote a piece attacking academic publisher Springer after it retracted an unethical paper by J. Michael Bailey in 2023. The previous year, Wright had invoked the “tomboy erasure” conspiracy theory that claims gender diverse cisgender children are being forced to transition as a form of anti-LGB conversion therapy.
Abigail Shrier was allowed to complain about “The Transgender War on Women.”
Joe Barrett covered state recognition of trans identity documents. Jathon Sapsford and Stephanie Armour quoted anti-trans activist Leor Sapir, and Republican politicians Dan Crenshaw and Chris Christie, with rebuttal by Democrat Frank Pallone Jr. Stephanie Armour also covered Medicaid coverage of trans health services.
Laura Kusisto and Louise Radnofsky covered sex-segregated competitive sports. Ben Chapman and Laine Higgins also covered this.
Mariah Timms covered anti-trans developments in Missouri under AG Andrew Bailey.
Lindsay Wise, Simon J. Levien, and Isaac Yu covered Republican attempts to control the reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy of others.
Elizabeth Findell, Adolfo Flores and Peter Champelli covered the Texas ban on trans healthcare.
Mariah Timms and Laura Kusisto covered Tennessee’s ban on trans healthcare for minors.
Talal Ansari covered Zooey Zephyr’s removal from the Montana House floor.
The editorial board opined about “Transgender Patients vs. Religious Doctors: The Franciscan Alliance might be the new Little Sisters of the Poor.”
2023 Endocrine Society attacks
After Roy Eappen and Ian Kingsbury of anti-trans group Do No Harm attacked the Endocrine Society, President Stephen R. Hammes responded with an outline of the medical consensus behind the Endocrine Society’s guidelines.
Hammes was then attacked by a group of anti-trans clinicians in a subsequent letter. The signatories are:
Clin. Prof. William Malone, M.D. Idaho College of Osteopathic MedicineDirector, Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine
Prof. Patrick K. Hunter, M.D. Florida State UniversityPediatrician and bioethicist
Hammes was also criticized by a group of parents that included Kathleen Dooley.
Anti-trans misinformation following Charlie Kirk shooting
In September 2025, during the search for the person who shot anti-trans activist Charlie Kirk, the Wall Street Journal published a live update under the headline “Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved with Transgender, Antifascist Ideology, Sources Say.” The source was a leaked internal ATF bulletin first posted by anti-trans activist Steven Crowder. Crowder pinned the post on X, and it garnered over 29 million views.
After massive pushback about their irresponsible headline and reporting, WSJ edited the headline to read “Early Bulletin Said Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology; Some Sources Urge Caution.”
The term “transgender ideology” is an anti-trans conspiracy theory frequently invoked by right-wing activists. After it was confirmed that the engravings were references to memes used in toxic online communities like the Groyper Army fan base of anti-trans extremist Nick Fuentes, the WSJ added an editor’s note that did not retract the headline or their reporting about “transgender ideology,” writing:
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article detailed how an internal law enforcement bulletin said that ammunition recovered following the Charlie Kirk shooting was engraved with expressions of âtransgender and anti-fascist ideology.” Justice Department officials later urged caution about the bulletin by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, saying it may not accurately reflect the messages on the ammunition, and the article was updated Thursday to reflect that. This editor’s note was appended on Friday, Sept. 12, after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said the engravings included one that said âHey fascist!â along with other messages and symbols. He gave no indication that the ammunition included any transgender references.
Other media outlets, including the Daily Beast, the New York Post, The Telegraph, and the Jerusalem Post uncritically repeated WSJ’s claims. None of those articles were immediately updated or retracted in light of accurate information.
Editorial Board (June 18, 2025). Good Supreme Court Sense on Trans Hormones.Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/opinion/supreme-court-skrmetti-tennessee-transgender-hormone-treatments-e84d97f0
Steinmann, Jessica Hart; OâNeill, Leigh Ann (June 5, 2025). Opinon: Transgenderism Wonât Let Girls Say No.Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/opinion/transgenderism-wont-let-girls-say-no-oregon-track-competition-bc03e205
Editorial Board (December 13, 2024). The Trans Double-Mastectomy Lawsuit.Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/opinion/clementine-breen-lawsuit-transgender-medicine-center-for-transyouth-health-us-v-skrmetti-e22382f3
Editorial Board (December 3, 2024). Transgender Minors at the Supreme Court.Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/opinion/u-s-v-skrmetti-tennessee-law-transgender-minors-hormones-treatment-9be82071
Editorial Board (October 13, 2024). Transgender Sports Is a 2024 Sleeper Issue.Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/opinion/transgender-sports-is-a-2024-sleeper-issue-ads-ohio-wisconsin-montana-2a8d044b
Conservative signatories (July 14, 2023). Youth Gender Transition Is Pushed Without Evidence.Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/trans-gender-affirming-care-transition-hormone-surgery-evidence-c1961e27
Emily Yoffe is an American author and anti-transgender activist. Yoffe’s anti-trans coverage in The Free Press was rewarded by the Trump administration, which gave Yoffe the exclusive on their January 2025 executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
Background
Emily Joy Yoffe was born October 15, 1955. Yoffe graduated from Wellesley College in 1977.
In 1994 Yoffe married reporter John Douglas Mintz (born 1952). Their child Eliora Rose Mintz (born 1995) is a lawyer.
Yoffe wrote the “Dear Prudence” advice column for Slate from 2006 to 2015.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2020, Yoffe signed the “Harper’s Letter,” which featured many other anti-trans activists in Yoffe’s circle.
Yoffe contributed to the anti-trans publication The Free Press in 2022 and joined the staff later that year.
Jamie Reed allegations
In 2023, Jamie Reed came forward to complain about treatment protocols at employer Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Childrenâs Hospital. Republican Ernie Trakas joined Vernadette Broyles in representing Reed. Both are involved in the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, which claims “gender ideology” is a threat to children.
Yoffe interviewed Reed with Broyles and Bari Weiss.
“Caroline” allegations
Also in 2023, Yoffe followed up with a self-report from “Caroline,” an unsupportive parent of “Casey,” who attended the St. Louis Clinic. “Casey”disputed Yoffe’s reporting, feeling it was necessary to do so under the actual name Alex:
My name is Alex. Emily Yoffe and Bari Weiss worked in cooperation with my mom to write an article about our experience with Washington University. The article is filled with falsehoods and misconceptions. Now, my family is being threatened with legal action from big-time lawyers and we need help paying for legal defense. More at https://twitter.com/sleepyoktobur/status/1643347040250781706?s=46
The leading transgender health organization promotes life-altering interventions on minors — some that leave young people sterile. @LisaSelinDavis has the story. https://t.co/1iQc8RG6eQ
In May 2024, Texas surgeon Eithan Haim was charged with illegally obtaining the private medical records of pediatric patients receiving gender transition care at Texas Childrenâs Hospital and sharing them with anti-trans activist Christopher Rufo. Yoffe presented Haim as a heroic truth-teller in several Free Press articles. In 2025, the Trump administration dropped the charges against Haim.
The Femsplainers with Danielle Crittenden and Emily Yoffe (Augist 1, 2020). “Use Your Words! Wait, No Cancel That…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IrbKc5UDwU
Denise Caignon is an American author and anti-transgender extremist.
Caignon founded anti-transgender site 4thWaveNow in 2015 and has appeared in the media under a number of aliases, including:
“Marie Verite”
“Denise Canaan”
“Janette Miller”
Caignon’s site became one of the most prominent transphobic platforms, surviving a purge of similar anti-trans sites that violated hosts’ terms of service. Caignon is a key developer of the controversial “rapid onset gender dysphoria” diagnosis. Caignon’s child Chiara Caignon-Lewis is a prominent member of the “ex-trans” wing of anti-trans activists.
Background
Denise Jeanette Caignon was born in 1955 to a family that moved frequently. After graduating from Louisville Collegiate School in 1973, Caignon soon moved to California and began getting involved in second-wave feminism.
Self-defense and “take back the night” initiatives were an important focus of second-wave feminism starting in the 1970s. The belief was that direct confrontation can exert community control over rapists’ behavior. In 1972, not long before Caignon’s arrival, Santa Cruz Women Against Rape (SCWAR) was founded as an âalternative anti-Rape organization in which women support women.â The non-hierarchical collective had many lesbian members and offered a 24-hour rape hotline and free self-defense workshops. They also maintained a published list profiling alleged male rapists, assaulters, and harassers. They were later sued by someone on the list.
One of the women involved with the SCWAR hotline was queer activist Gail Groves. During six years working on the rape hotline, Groves realized that many stereotypes about sexual assault were inaccurate. Caignon and Groves studied judo together, and they soon founded Santa Cruz Women’s Self-Defense Teaching Cooperative. They also founded Women Who Resist: The Success Story Project to catalog strategies for preventing and surviving a sexual assault. In 1987, they published these first-hand reports as Her Wits About Her: Self-Defense Success Stories by Women. They taught a class that role-played real situations, recommending that students prepare for common issues like attack cues and verbal abuse from attackers.
Caignon has helped produce other publications and served as an editor of the Buddhist publication Turning Wheel for many years, guest editing three issues: intentional communities, engaged lives, and fundamentalism. Caignon ended that work in 1999 to spend more time with spouse Tim Lewis and their child Chiara.
After living in California for 27 years, Caignon moved to North Carolina and studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to be a speech-language pathologist. In keeping with a longstanding interest in intentional communities, Caignon has a residence in a cohousing community in Carrboro. Caignon earned a master’s degree in 2007 and practiced in the area until retiring in 2014. Caignon’s focus was on aphasia related to strokes. Caignon helped develop Life Interest and Value (LIV) Cards, a way for people with speech loss to improve communication.
Chiara Caignon-Lewis
Caignon’s only child Chiara Caignon-Lewis was born in 1997. As an adolescent, Chiara was heavily active on Tumblr, and at one point alleged on the platform to have experienced sexual abuse as a child by Chiara’s seminal parent. These allegations align with the date of Denise Caignon’s sudden move to North Carolina after 27 years in California.
Because Denise Caignon’s entire life, career, and identity were built around preventing sexual assault, these allegations must have been completely devastating. If true, Denise Caignon failed to prevent the sexual assault that was the most deeply personal. Denise Caignon’s guilt and rage needed an outlet, and Chiara soon provided one.
Chiara began identifying as transgender online in 2013, at age 16. Chiara had already come out as queer and had started dating, but an incident at school had left Chiara with few friends in real life. Chiara turned to online communities, claiming that popular trans users on Tumblr and YouTube caused a multi-year obsession with transition.
At age 17, Chiara came out to Denise via a texted link to a gender clinic. Denise refused to let Chiara take medical transition steps, which led to a lot of fighting. At the height of the fighting, Denise got heavily involved with posting anti-transgender materials online and attending trans-exclusionary events. In an interview with Chiara, Denise said:
“I was fortunate to be able to meet two detransitioners Iâd discovered online in person when I attended the Michigan Womenâs Music Festival in 2015.”
In 2015, Denise sent Chiara to a Florida horse farm for nine months, after which Chiara claims the desire to transition subsided without taking any legal or medical steps. Denise and Chiara then teamed up to be one of the most high-profile famiies in the modern ex-trans movement.
Unlike the second-wave feminism of Caignon’s youth, third-wave feminism is largely trans-inclusive. Caignon’s site name 4thWaveNow is a call to replace that third-wave feminism with a transphobic fourth wave.
Haley KL, Womack JL, Helm-Estabrooks N, Caignon D, McCulloch KL (2010). The Life Interest and Values Cards. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Department of Allied Health Sciences.
McIntyre, Carl (2010) Aphasia. Bonus materials: Interview with Denise Caignon, MS, CCC-SLP, Carl’s Speech Pathologist
Haley K, Helm-Estabrooks N, Caignon D, Womack J, McCulloch K (2009). Self-determination and life activity goals for people with aphasia. Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, New Orleans, LA
Haley KL, Helm-Estabrooks N, Womack J, Caignon D, McCracken E (2007). A pictorial, binary-sorting system allowing âself-determination despite aphasia. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Boston, MA.
Moon, Susan (2004). Not Turning Away: The Practice of Engaged Buddhism. Shambhala Publications ISBN 9781590301036
Helena Norberg-Hodge, âPeter Goering, âJohn Page (2001). From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture. [Caignon handled production and layout] Zed Books ISBN 978-1856492232
Caignon, Denise, consulting ed. (1999). Turning Wheel: Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Groves, Gail (1995). “And He Turned Around and Ran Away.” in Patricia Searles, Ronald J. Berger (eds) Rape and Society: Readings on the Problem of Sexual Assault. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493201
Levoy, Gregg (November 6, 1990). Teaching women to fight back. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/1990/11/06/teaching-women-to-fight-back/605287cd-e0cf-4672-b3a3-642e3f0074b4/
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Jacobin is an American socialist media organization that has published consistently trans-supportive content and included trans journalists.
Background
Jacobin was founded by Bhaskar Sunkara. In September 2010 the Jacobin online magazine started, then expanded to a print version later in 2010. In 2017, Jacobin launched the peer-reviewed journal Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and Jacobin Radio.
Sarah Mittermaier aka “Eliza Mondegreen” and “elizaoltramare” is an American-Canadian anti-transgender activist. Mittermaier is affiliated with numerous anti-trans organizations and figures:
Sarah Beth Mittermaier was born in May 1987 to Paul Mittermaier, an Episcopal minister, and Beth (Wagel) Mittermaier, an artist. Both parents are from Ohio, but Sarah Mittemaier grew up in Wisconsin.
Mittermaier attended University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2009. Mittermaier was a copy editor at the Daily Cardinal and a contributor to the Badger Herald. Mittermaier worked at several organizations, including the Prevention Institute, before returning to school at McGill University in Montreal.
Mittermaier was a member of WPATH while residing in Washington, DC.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2021 Mittermaier and Kitty Robinson founded the “LGB erasure” conspiracy website Unspeakable for “finding a language for female experiences in the LGBTQ+ community.” It allowed people to post anonymous rants, mostly from anti-trans people who identify as lesbian.
Mittermaier earned a master’s degree from McGill University in 2024. Mittermaier’s thesis was on “detransition” in the context of reddit communities, especially r/detrans. Mittermaier’s advisors were Samuel VeissiĂšre and Cecile Rousseau. Mittermaier includes a disclosure about being involved with SEGM:
During my time as an M.Sc. student, I worked with the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine to help organize three conferences for researchers and clinicians working in the area of youth gender dysphoria. The first conference took place at Tampere University in Finland in June 2023, drawing researchers and clinicians from 17 countries with the objective of facilitating dialogue across the divide between affirming and exploratory approaches to youth gender distress. The second conference took place in New York City in October 2023. The thirdâQuestioning Gender: Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Youth Gender Dysphoriaâwill be hosted by the Medical School of Athens in October 2024.
Mittermaier’s profile for the 2024 SEGM conference states:
Researcher and writer exploring the online communities where young people adopt new attitudes and beliefs about gender and set expectations and intentions for transition. Her MSc. thesis, Questions and doubts in online trans communities, will be available this autumn through McGill University. She writes gender:hacked on Substack.
Somji, Alisha’ Mittermaier, Sarah (December 7, 2017). How we all together can build a future free from sexual harassment.San Francisco Chronicle https://web.archive.org/web/20171208115210/https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-we-all-together-can-build-a-future-from-12414346.php
Rousseau C, Johnson-Lafleur J, Ngov C, Miconi D, Mittermaier S, Bonnel A, Savard C, VeissiĂšre S. (2023). Social and individual grievances and attraction to extremist ideologies in individuals with autism: Insights from a clinical sample. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders (Vol. 105, p. 102171) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2023.102171
Sims J, Baird R, Aboelata MJ, Mittermaier S (2022). Cultivating a Healthier Policy Landscape: The Building Healthy Communities Initiative. Health Promotion Practice (Vol. 24, Issue 2, pp. 300â309). https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399221114341
Sandra RamĂrez (Feb 1, 2024). Eliza Mondegreen, USA/Canada, The secret life of gender clinicians #FQT #WDI. Women’s Declaration International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrbxNvEc-bY
Chloe Pacey and Keshia Tognazzini (Jan 22, 2024). Exploring Affirmative Care: Navigating Online Trans Communities with Eliza Mondegreen. The Road To Wisdom Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APK-0Cw3DV0
Meghan Daum (Oct 24, 2023). Down The Rabbit Hole: Gender and Online Communities with Eliozan Mondegreen and Sarah Haider. A Special Place in Hell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJew30KNxqk
Sarah Phillimore (Feb 14, 2023). Eliza Mondegreen on WPATH conference, research on gender affirming care and more. [Rona Duwe, Eliza Mondegreen, Shannon Thrace] Women’s Declaration International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6NFf8e3Is8
Julia Long (Jul 4, 2022). Language and the Values that Underlie Our Movement [Kara Dansky, Eliza Mondegreen, Jesika Gonzalez, and Amanda Stulman]. Women’s Declaration International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6oKt-wLo5g
Lisa Selin Davis is an American author and “gender critical” activist involved in anti-transgender extremism. Since 2013, Davis has become a key anti-trans voice in American media, part of the movement’s “parental rights” faction. Davis has a gender diverse child and is unaccepting of the child’s interest in gender transition.
Davis’ attacks on the trans rights movement center on several gender critical tactics:
using Davis’ own child to draw sharp distinctions between the “tomboy” identity and other gender diverse youth identities
amplifying outliers and edge cases in controversies to derail broader discussions
Davis claims “there is a dominant narrative about trans kids that the media is promoting.” According to Davis, this alleged narrative is merely “mantras by activists” and based on “feeling over fact.” Davis claims to have concerns about the affirmative model of care and is troubled that fellow anti-trans activists can no longer publish their conservative beliefs without consequence.
Davis claims to be a liberal who is part of the “silenced center.” Davis disavows being part of the gender critical world or the gender affirming world and simply wants to “diversify the media narrative.” So far, Davis’ “viewpoint diversity” efforts have largely been the promotion of extremist clinicians, cultural critics, and activists with similar gender critical beliefs.
Background
Davis was born January 18, 1972. Davis’ parent Peter is a musician who plays in a group called Annie and the Hedonists. Davis’ youth was spent in a Massachusetts suburb with parent Helaine Selin (born 1946), a librarian and author.
Helaine Selin worked at Hampshire College and helped “nepo baby” Davis attend, then graduate in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in film studies. Davis then moved to New York City and lived with sibling Benjamin Lazar Davis, a musician. Davis built props at Nickelodeon for a few years, then earned an MFA in writing from Arizona State University in 2003.
Davis has edited a number of publications and websites, including Upstate House magazine, Senior Planet, KGB Bar, upstater.net, and brownstoner.com. Davis is the author of young adult novels Belly (2005) and Lost Stars (2016). Davis stopped writing in the genre, alleging it was no longer possible to write about characters from other demographic groups. Davis’ non-fiction writing has appeared in several publications, including Grist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, the New York Times, Quillette, and Quartz.
Davis and spouse Alex F. Sherwin live in New York with their two children, Enna and Athena. Davis’ 2020 book Tomboy is dedicated to them.
2013 Parenting article
In 2013, Davis wrote a piece for Parenting just before the magazine closed, titled âMy Daughter Wants to be a Boy!â The title was stealth edited in 2017 to âMy Daughter Is a Tomboy!â and the article was edited to remove some identifying information. The article was removed from the Parenting.com website in 2018, though the site remains online as part of a 2021 asset transfer from Meredith to Dotdash. The original version describes Davis’ child:
She insisted on being Spiderman for Halloween, and on getting light-up superhero sneakers âlike my friend Lucaâsâ when she needed new shoes. They told us at school that she gravitated toward the boys, and though she is quite small for her age, and not particularly hearty, they told us she could hold her own with the rowdy bunch of them.
And again, I thought, âHow great is she?â
Well, okay, 90% of me said that. The other 10% thought, âuh-oh.â As she started to announce in ways both subtle and direct that sheâs a boy, and ask me questions like âWhy canât boys have vaginas and girls have penises?â the ratio of heartwarming to heart-sinking has shifted.
Let me say that I donât hold particularly conventional views about gender or sexuality. There are so many lesbians in my family that I fully expect either or both of my daughters to be gay (though of course I will love and accept them if they turn out to be heterosexual). But there is something about having the only girl who wonât play princess, the only girl in the school who thinks and says sheâs a boy, that has shaken me a bit. Dressing like a boy? Cool. Thinking you actually are a boy? Way more complicated. […]
Some of my fears for Enna-as-boy are rooted in reality. Itâs a much harder way to move through the world, identifying with the gender you werenât assigned at birth.
2017 New York Times op-ed
In 2017, Davis wrote an op-ed in the New York Times insisting that their child is not transgender, but instead a “tomboy.” Davis says author Jennifer Finney Boylan gave it the thumbs up, and Davis claims the whole community on Twitter then gave it the thumbs up.
Following its warm reception among conservatives and anti-trans thought leaders, Davis was given a book deal and turned the piece into the 2020 book Tomboy. Despite a book deal and many subsequent writing gigs and media appearances, Davis claims to have been “cancelled” for the op-ed. Davis reportedly met with Chase Strangio and Kate Bornstein about Davis’ “concerns about the dominant narrative” that affirming care benefited gender diverse youth.
Drawing parallels to the response to Jesse Singal’s transphobic 2018 piece in The Atlantic, Davis claims to be part of a group of “left wing” people who meet surreptitiously to plan strategies that undermine affirming care and promote the “Dutch protocol” for gender diverse youth, a gatekeeping model of care sometimes called “watchful waiting.”
2020 book Tomboy
In an expansion of the 2017 op-ed, Davis’ thesis is that masculine girls have recently disappeared from the cultural landscape. This erasure narrative about “tomboys” and lesbians is a major talking point among gender critical and trans-exclusionary separatists.
Cultural criticism
The narrative Davis puts forth is permeated with metaphors of disease and impairment. Davis describes some gender diverse youth as being influenced by peers and having “comorbidities” that should be cured before they are approved for gender affirming health services. Davis has concerns that medical transition is being used “as a panacea for other mental health issues.”
Davis’ binary view about transitioning to “the opposite sex” presents trans rights as a moral dilemma that could harm cisgender people: “Do we want to make decisions that are worse for the majority of people but they benefit a small group?”
Davis has criticized Stanford University School of Medicine psychiatrist Jack Turban for asking the media not to use the term “detransition.” Davis was offended after getting criticized by Turban during an interview request. Davis uses the term “activist” as a thought-terminating pejorative for anyone who does not share similar views, even subject matter experts like Strangio and Turban.
Meanwhile, Davis supports numerous controversial disease models of sex and gender diversity, including Ray Blanchard‘s sex disease “autogynephilia” and Kenneth Zucker‘s diseases like “gender identity disorder” and “gender dysphoria.” Davis has spoken with ex-trans activists like James Shupe and supports conservative trans people such as Aaron Kimberly and Scott Newgent.
2022 Quillette profile of Erica Anderson
Davis complained after The Nation noted that gender critical publication Quillette was deemed transphobic for promoting “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” and other conservative beliefs about gender diverse youth. Davis told fellow anti-trans activist Benjamin Boyce, “I don’t read Quillette, but I know they have a more diverse media narrative around this issue.”
A couple of months later, Davis profiled conservative transgender clinician Erica Anderson in Quillette. Anderson began litigating conservative clinical views about trans and gender diverse youth in the press in 2021. Because USPATH had specifically stated that clinical disputes should be discussed among professionals and not litigated in the lay press, Anderson resigned from USPATH in a move to get more attention for these conservative clinical views from people like Davis.
2022 Newsweek op-ed
In a classic case of false balance and “bothsidesism,” Davis made the case against affirmative care in a Newsweek piece titled “What Both Sides Are Missing About the Science of Gender-Affirming Care.” As usual, one of the best ways to analyze Davis’ bias is via the proportion of text and links. These pieces always start of with a veneer of journalism, then quickly make a case for one position. Unlike the infamous 2018 Atlantic piece by Jesse Singal, at least this one is labeled opinion.
Davis cites 3 neutral sources and 7 sources that reflect expert medical consensus. Davis cites 35 sources that dispute expert medical consensus and support the gender critical view, which could basically be summarized thus: being trans is a rapidly spreading disease that should be monitored and controlled by a state-run healthcare system overseen by conservative clinicians and legislators, where even one bad outcome must be prevented at all costs. Even if the cost is 100 good outcomes. Others with Davis’ cis-centric point of view would add even if the cost is prosecuting the families and doctors who work toward good outcomes.
2022 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed
This piece purports to condemn extremist anti-trans legislators. It also suggests that mainstream medical consensus is the extremism at the other end of the political spectrum. Davis once again praises federal healthcare systems that require children to travel to centralized clinics run by state-funded gatekeepers in hopes of receiving medical care capped by a federal budget. Despite extensive evidence about the drawbacks of such systems for minorities seeking health services, like the US Veteran’s Administration or Canada’s CAMH, Davis is convinced that systems like Sweden’s, or worse, the UK’s will prevent rare cases of regret.
2022 Skeptic special edition
Anti-trans activist Michael Shermer paid other members of the gender critical faction in the skeptic community to present their version of “the debate” about trans people. No trans contributors were invited. Joining Shermer in this attack were Harriet Hall, Carol Tavris, and Davis, whose piece is titled “Trans Matters: An Overview of the Debate, Research, and Policies.” Davis bristles about being lumped in with “conservative, transphobic bigots” and claims support for affirming models of care “is now a test of loyalty” among its supporters.
April 2022 Quillette piece
It was inevitable that Davis would become a regular contributor to Quillette’s steady stream of anti-trans articles. Davis’ efforts continued with a dogwhistle piece about “the encroachment of ideology on medicine by activists” and the “propaganda surrounding medical literature.” While the piece seems to condemn the national deluge of anti-trans legislation criminalizing trans healthcare, Davis’ real point is to claim that the government has gone too far in supporting trans youth. Davis cites several examples gleaned from anti-trans parenting forums.
September 2022 Boston Globe piece
Davis continues to place the same article in any outlet that will take it, in this case repurposing a Substack piece in the Boston Globe, which was then reprinted in the New York Post as “Kid gender guidelines not driven by science.” Davis blames WPATH for bomb threats against trans-affirming children’s hospitals, because they did not publish better Standards of Care. Davis quotes anti-trans allies including Julia Mason of Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine and James Cantor, formerly of CAMH. Davis once again holds up federally controlled conservative gatekeeping as the ideal protocol.
Podcast
Beginning in 2022, Davis began a series of interviews, mostly with conservative and anti-transgender guests.
August 22, 2023: Heterodox Trans People #6: Phil Illy
Davis, Lisa Selin (December 19, 2021). Tomboys, trans boys and âWest Side Story.âLos Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-12-19/tomboys-west-side-story-anybodys-gender-nonconforming-trans-people
Shupe, James [edited by Lisa Selin Davis] (September 14, 2021). Auogynephilia: In seach of my cure. Freed from editors and media outlets to report the truth about autogynephilia. Autogynephilia Diaries https://autogynephilia.substack.com/p/autogynephilia-in-search-of-my-cure [archive]
Davis, Lisa Selin (2013). “My Daughter Wants to be a Boy!” [retitled in 2017 as âMy Daughter Is a Tomboy!â and removed in 2018] Parenting http://www.parenting.com/article/tomboy [archive]
Books
Davis, Lisa Selin (2024). Housewife: Why Women Still Do It All and What to Do Instead. Legacy Lit, ISBN 978-1538722886
Davis, Lisa Selin (2020). Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different. Legacy Lit, ISBN 978-0316458313
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Hannah Barnes is a British author and anti-transgender activist. Barnes is a key historical figure in the oppression of trans and gender diverse youth.
Barnes earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Oxford in 2005 and a degree from City University of London in 2006.
After roles at DeHavilland and GCap Media, Barnes joined the BBC in 2014. Barnes is a significant contributor to anti-trans publication The New Statesman.
Anti-trans activism
Barnes is a key figure in FUD propaganda around healthcare for gender diverse youth, with a special focus on medications for unwanted puberty.
Time to Think
Barnes authored the 2023 book Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children. The Tavistock was typical of bureaucratic centralized federally funded clinics that have emerged under nationalized healthcare systems. These clinics often deliver substandard care due to unacceptable wait times. Countries like Canada and the UK have closed these kinds of clinics in favor of decentralized options.
The acknowledgements list many key figures in global anti-trans activism:
This book would never have been written without the endless support of my husband, Pat, who has kept our family on track while allowing me to research, conduct interviews, write and rewrite. Enormous thanks are also due to my parents and step-parents for their love, and for their help with looking after their amazing grandchildren. To all those who shared their experience of GIDS as service users or as their family members, thank you for telling your stories. Ellie, Jack, Phoebe, Hannah, âJacobâ, âMichelleâ, âDianaâ, âHarrietâ â thank you for trusting with me with such personal accounts, and, in some cases, highly sensitive information.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all of the GIDS clinicians who have given me their time, shared their thoughts â whatever they may be â and who met or spoke with me, even if they did not feel comfortable being interviewed. To Anna Hutchinson, who patiently shared her experiences over many hours, to Matt Bristow, Will Crouch, Kirsty Entwistle, Sue Evans, Az Hakeem, Melissa Midgen, Natasha Prescott, Anastassis Spiliadis, and to the many, many others who have spoken on condition of anonymity â thank you. For some, I am aware it has been a difïŹcult experience, and I do not take lightly how daunting it might have been to share your views â for a variety of reasons. There are also further, unnamed clinicians who have spoken out over several years, and who have tried to bring about change away from the public eye. Thanks too to all who have spoken with me who work or worked in the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, or were charged with its governance: Sonia Appleby, Juliet Singer, David Bell, Marcus Evans, Stanley Ruszczynski, David Taylor, Marilyn Miller and those who do not wish to be named. Paul Moran, Donal OâShea, Russell Viner, David Freedman and Stephanie Davies-Arai also deserve my thanks, as do Lucy Bannerman, Susan Matthews and Richard Stephens.
Barnes, Hannah (25 September 2024). The intolerant age.New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2024/09/intolerant-age-free-speech-britain-institutions
Barnes, Hannah (25 June 2024). Labourâs women problem.New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2024/06/labour-starmer-women-problem-jk-rowling-gender
On June 15, 2022, the New York Times Magazine published a piece by Emily Bazelon about healthcare for transgender and gender diverse youth. It was assigned by editor Jake Silverstein and centered on the 2022 Version 8 of the WPATH Standards of Care, a ritual document developed in the 1950s and codified in 1979 to protect healthcare providers from litigation and legislation via medical gatekeeping.
About a month after the 2022 trans piece ran, Bazelon deleted all Twitter posts. Below are the relevant deleted tweets. Each bullet is a separate tweet, in order posted by Bazelon.
@emilybazelon June 15, 2022:
For @NYTMag, I wrote about transgender healthcare for teenagers and the debate among medical professionals who treat them. [link to NYT article]
Hereâs a gift article from NYT, meaning anyone can read it through this link (I hope!). [link to NYT article]
The focus of the story is a chapter on adolescents in a set of guidelines known as the Standards of Care, to be released by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (@wpath) this summer. Itâs WPATHâs first update of the Standards in a decade.
WPATHâs Standards of Care are meant to set a gold standard for the field of transgender health. A draft was released in December. The adolescent chapter is one of 18 chaptersâand the one that generated the most discussion and debate.
WPATH gave me exclusive access to the final version of the Standards of Care & lifted confidentiality agreements so I could talk about the process of creating it with some authors, who are clinicians & researchers (trans, non-binary, cis) with long track records in the field.
I also talked to many young people and parents for this story. Their voices stayed with me. Thank you all for talking to me. I learned a ton from you. Iâve tried to represent many points of view in my piece.
As is often the case in medicine, the crux of the story is about how to apply existing research for the growing numbers of patients â in this case, teenagers â lining up for care.
The intrusion of politics into science makes it more difficult to set standards and to provide care. It is really hard to work on *improving* the quality of care when politicians are trying to ban it.
But thatâs whatâs happening as some states pass or consider bills to outlaw gender-affirming medical treatments for minors.
As with other fraught issues like abortion, America is becoming a split screen. In some states, gender-related care for young people is already rare yet faces legal threats.
At clinics that are mostly in progressive metropolitan areas, meanwhile, itâs not clear how common comprehensive assessments are. This is the type of evaluation, before medical intervention, that the new Standards of Care recommends.
Some families are bewildered by a landscape in which there are no labels for distinguishing one type of therapeutic care from another.
This is all unfolding as the number of teenagers who identify as trans in the U.S. is significantly rising, as my colleague @azeen reported last week. (Azeen is the fabulous NYT reporter on this science beat and if youâre interested in this issue, you should follow her!)
There are a lot of links in the piece to scientific research. Here also are a few historical sources that I want to highlight, starting with this article on the origins of WPATH by @beansvelocci [link to Standards of Care: Uncertainty and Risk in Harry Benjaminâs Transsexual Classifications]
The book Transgender History by @susanstryker [link]
The book Histories of the Transgender Child by @gp_jls [link]
This 2018 essay by @andrealongchu [link to On Liking Women]
Comments are open on my piece and I’ll try to respond to some later today, at the NYT link above.
Follow-up
I think an important point has gotten lost in the Twitter din over my @NYTmag piece on gender therapy for teenagers. (For the record, the response has been far different in NYT comments and very positive feedback from readers, including trans people & practitioners in the field.)
I have zero appetite for Twitter combat. Itâs been horrifying to me to be called a murderer and compared to Nazis for writing about a debate that is happening, with consequential effects, *within* the field of gender-affirming providers.
Iâm responding in this thread to criticism, not really expecting to persuade anyone to change perspectives, but to make some basic points about journalism that apply in this case and others, I think.
1) Criticism: The timing of the story was wrong because of the right-wing assault on trans rights. –My editors and I talked a lot about the political backdrop, which is threaded through my story and has deepened divisions in this field.
We decided the conflict makes WPATHâs Standards of Care, issued for the 1st time in a decade, more important. The Standards are the story’s focus *and the source* of the points that have caused controversy here, about how teens should be evaluated & the role of social influence.
The Standards at issue in my piece have the consensus support of the working group that wrote them and of WPATH’s leadership. Those groups include trans and non-binary practitioners.
2) Criticism: The framing of the story was wrong because it didnât center the trans community. –No group of millions of people has a single community. Itâs true that this story didnât center trans activists or trans kids. (Though I did quote them at length.)
Those are also good stories, which the NYT has told and will tell. But this one is primarily told through the eyes of clinicians in & around WPATH. Itâs about a scientific debate. Trans providers express every point of view the story contains about gender-affirming care.
3) Criticism: The story doesnât include trans kids who are doing well. –False. Two kids in the story, nicknamed Tori & Charlie, are medically transitioning & thriving. Two adults (Yael & F.G.) speak to how critical transitioning in adolescence has been for their well-being.
4) Criticism: The story “platformed” the wrong people. –The story, in a total of 11,400 words, includes 363 words from the perspective of parents who are skeptical of medical interventions for minors. Some are affiliated with the group Genspect.
I made it clear what Genspect stands for by including comments of members & a post on strategy from an affiliated Substack. Skeptical parents are politically active, testifying in statehouses in favor of banning medical interventions for minors. Leaving them out of the story … would deny that reality, which would be a disservice to readers who want to understand the full landscape.
5) Criticism: Thereâs no evidence that substantial numbers of kids are transitioning without the kind of diagnostic assessments or process WPATH recommends. –No one is tracking this. Anecdotally, many cliniciansânot one or two & very much including trans cliniciansâtold me … they are aware of this happening. I heard firsthand accountsâfrom teenagers as well as parentsâof clinics offering medication during a first brief session. I did NOT hear of this in states that are proposing bans, where care seemed to be more conservative.
Parents can say no to medication. But doing so when a provider is offering it can cause serious conflict within families. Iâm surprised to see journalists who have not covered this topic dismissing the assessment issue out of hand when it is a focus of WPATH’s Standards of Care.
6) Criticism: Patient Zero is an offensive term –I referred to F.G., the first Dutch patient to take puberty suppressants as a teenager, as Patient Zero because the Dutch used that term for him & he used it in our interview.
Readers have pointed out the term is associated w/ communicable disease. Because of how the Dutch use it, I didnât think of that association. Neither did anyone who read the piece before it published, including our outside trans readers.
In the context of my story, Patient Zero means the first adolescent to receive gender-affirming medical treatment.
tl;dr: Much of the criticism of my piece reflects a profound disagreement over the role of journalism on a controversial topic involving a vulnerable group.
To me, being a journalist means following the facts where they lead. It isn’t advocacy. I didnât know where this story would go when I started reporting eight months ago.
References
Bazelon, Emily (June 15, 2022). The Battle Over Gender Therapy.The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html
note: In 2025 this site phased out AI illustrations in response to artist feedback. The original illustration is here.
soul of a [woman] in the body of a [man] (or vice versa)
Unfortunately, many cisgender people and some trans people take these metaphors literally. Critics will retort “no one is born in the wrong body.”
Most trans people reject all forms of the “wrong body” idea. That’s why this convenient and lazy description is mainly used by cisgender people, gender-diverse children, and low-information trans adults.
As I wrote in the academic journal Gender Medicine in 2006:
Gender identity and expression take on different meanings within different systems of thought. Because medical technologies are available to assist in the somatic expression of these identities, several medicalized disease models of the phenomena have developed.Â
The traditional focus on the so-called “triadic therapy” of hormones, genital surgery, and living “in role” has diminished in my lifetime. Trans and gender diverse people have many more choices for how to express themselves. Unfortunately, some people believe that medical transition will make them a new person or solve problems it can’t. As my therapist once said, “There’s never a happy ending to an unhappy journey.”
Bettcher TM (2014). Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance. Signs Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter 2014), pp. 383-406 https://doi.org/10.1086/673088
Data & Society is an independent nonprofit research organization which aims to “advance public understanding of the social and cultural implications of data-centric technologies and automation.”
2018 YouTube report
In 2018, Rebecca Lewis released a report on a network of YouTube accounts that uplifted people and channels associated with the alt-right or “reactionary right” movement. The report was focused on white nationalism and far-right extremism, but the same “mainstream” conservative accounts have frequently been involved in laundering anti-transgender extremism into mainstream media.
