Jeannette Cooper is an American anti-transgender activist. After losing parental custody, Cooper co-founded anti-trans front group Partners for Ethical Care. Cooper is known as Jeannette Srivastava outside of anti-trans activism.
Background
Jeannette Michelle Cooper was born on November 6, 1977 and grew up in southeastern Ohio. Cooper earned a bachelor’s degree in 2000 from Kalamazoo College and a master’s degree from Michigan State University in 2005. Cooper then taught English and did technical writing. Cooper married Prashant Srivastava (born 1978), and they had one child together.
Cooper founded an organization called Immigrants to Women Empowered Chicago in 2008 and ran it until 2014. Since 2013 Cooper has been involved in homeschooling. In 2015 Cooper enrolled in a doctorate program at DePaul University.
Cooper and Srivastava divorced in 2015. In 2019, when their 12-year-old child began going by Ash and using xe/xyr pronouns, Cooper’s ex-spouse filed for full custody, stating that Ash was âno longer mentally or emotionally safeâ around Cooper.
Despite group family therapy sessions, Cooper still opposed any medical transition steps for Ash, stating:
âBut the thing that I clearly am not complying with is this concept that good parenting means that you affirm a childâs claim that there is something wrong with their body. Iâm not willing to do that. I donât think thatâs good parenting.â
Cooper runs a private anti-trans Facebook group called Parents of Transgender/Non-binary Kids, Teens, and Young Adults.
Cooper has provided testimony in several states supporting anti-trans legislation, including Florida, Ohio, and Kentucky.
Cooper, Jeannette (March 14, 2023). 03 14 2023 Jeannette Cooper Testimony for KY HB470. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/CommitteeDocuments/362/22848/03%2014%202023%20Jeannette%20Cooper%20Testimony%20for%20KY%20HB470.pdf
Suzy Weiss is an American cultural critic and anti-transgender activist. Weiss’ work focuses on maintaining sex segregation and attacking healthcare for gender diverse youth.
Background
Suzanne Lee “Suzy” Weiss was born July 6, 1995. Parents Lou and Amy Weiss run Weisslines, a flooring retailer. Weiss’ sibling is intellectual dark web promoter Bari Weiss. Weiss grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 2013.
In 2013, Weiss wrote a piece for Bari’s former employer The Wall Street Journal about being rejected from colleges for being a straight white person with normal abilities and habits. The piece received widespread negative attention, and Weiss later claimed it was “satire.”
Weiss then earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Michigan in 2018.
While in high school, Weiss served as a US Senate page, followed by college internships at STATE Bags, Zola.com, Funny or Die, The Heymann Brothers, and Ogilvy & Mather.
Weiss was a reporter for the New York Post from 2018 to 2023, then joined Bari Weiss’ publication in 2021.
Weiss, Suzy Lee (March 29, 2013). To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me.Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324000704578390340064578654
Gachman, Dina (April 3, 2013). Suzy Lee Weiss and the Age of Entitlement.Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/dinagachman/2013/04/03/suzy-lee-weiss-and-the-age-of-entitlement/?sh=4e1c0b2e2bbc
Bari Weiss (March 6, 2022). Watching Lia Thomas Win.Honestly with Bari Weiss https://podcasts.apple.com/hu/podcast/watching-lia-thomas-win/id1570872415?i=1000553066075
Heather B. Armstrong was an American “mommy blogger” nicknamed “dooce.” After one of Armstrong’s children began identifying as nonbinary, Armstrong made a number of anti-transgender statements.
Background
Heather Brooke Hamilton was born July 19, 1975, grew up in a Mormon household in Memphis, Tennessee, and was sexually assaulted shortly before earning a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in 1997.
After marrying web designer Jon Armstrong and and starting to blog in 2001, Heather Armstrong was terminated in 2002 after colleagues learned they were discussed on the blog. The couple had two children: Leta Elise (born 2004), and Marlo Iris (born 2009). In 2009 Armstrong published a memoir, appeared on Oprah, and was named one of “30 most influential women in media” by Forbes.
In 2012, the couple divorced. As social media began to replace blogging, Armstrong’s readership began to dwindle, leading to struggles with depression. Armstrong began a relationship with Utah internet executive Pete Ashdown. In 2019 Armstrong published The Valedictorian of Being Dead. Armstrong underwent medically induced comas to treat depression. In 2021 Armstrong went sober.
Anti-transgender views
Writers and readers of the “mommy blogging” genre have been particularly susceptible to anti-transgender radicalization. In 2022, Armstrong posted a long piece full of anti-trans views after Armstrong’s younger child began identifying as nonbinary.
Titled “America is wrong,” it revealed Armstrong was deeply involved in the “parental rights” faction of anti-transgender activists. Armstrong created a standalone page called “Trans Central Station” and solicited “desistance” and “detransition” narratives from “ex-transgender” activists:
Desisters and Detransitioners, America needs your stories.
You can trust that I will not censor you or expose you in any way. You are safe here.
You can make up a name and leave any field blank. We all just need to hear from you.
What do you wish you had known before you began to question your biological gender?
The pages were soon removed and Armstrong replaced them with a poem prefaced with this:
Your children are asking you through their behavior, âWhy are you agreeing with me when I am telling you that I hate myself?â Remember that and consider it every day for the rest of your lives.
[emphasis in original]
The revelations had a significant impact on Armstrong’s reputation. Armstrong died by suicide on May 9, 2023.
References
Armstrong, Heather (2009). It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita. ISBN 978-1416936015
Armstrong, Heather (August 10, 2022). America is wrong. Dooce https://dooce.com/2022/08/10/america-is-wrong/ [archive]
Armstrong, Heather (August 10, 2022). Trans central station. Dooce https://dooce.com/trans-central-station/ [archive]
“Posie Parker” is a stage name of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, a British anti-transgender extremist. Keen-Minshull is one of the most strident campaigners against trans rights in history. Keen-Minshull’s events often turn into tense standoffs due to gender-critical and fascist supporters.
Background
Kellie-Jay Nyishie Keen was born June 13, 1974 and grew up in Somerset with an older sibling. Keen earned a bachelor’s degree in theology from University of Leeds. Keen worked for Posie Parker photography, Cornhill Publishing (joining as a consultant in 1999), and GDS International.
Keen-Minshull married Ryan Miles Minshulll aka “Max Ford” (born 1974) in 2008. Minshulll runs DigiLive Events. They have four children: Roman, Artemus, Mabel, and Carter. They were all delivered as c-sections. The youngest was born in ~2008, three days after their marriage.
Anti-trans activism
Keen-Minshull is listed as a leader of three entities:
Woman By Definition Ltd (incorporated 2020, dissolved 2021)
Keen-Minshull is also a special advisor to anti-trans organization Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF).
Out-of-home ad campaigns
In 2018 Keen-Minshull paid for a billboard in Liverpool that said “woman, wÊmÉn, noun, adult human female,” a slogan used by anti-transgender activists. It was taken down following complaints. Keen-Minshull then had the same message placed in Leeds, which was also taken down.
In 2020 Keen-Minshull paid for a poster that said “I â„ JK Rowling” to run in an Edinburgh railway station before it was taken down. This inspired Chris Elston and Amy Hamm to do the same thing in Vancouver. It also inspired Speak Up For Women in New Zealand to place billboards in 2021 that said “adult human female.”
Social media
Keen-Minshull has been temporarily and permanently restricted on various social media platforms.
In 2018 gender critical organization Woman’s Place UK said they would no longer be working with Keen-Minshull. Others have expressed similar concerns due to Keen-Minshull’s association with right-wing and fascist activists.
In 2019 Keen-Minshull and Julia Long recorded themselves verbally abusing trans HRC press secretary Sarah McBride at the US Capitol. HRC then criticized religious conservative group The Heritage Foundation for their role in bringing the two to their event. Keen-Minshull has also published attacks on Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre director Mridul Wadhwa, who is trans.
Keen-Minshull and allies have held anti-trans rallies in Manchester, Bristol, Brighton, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Glasgow. Following a 2020 WoLF conference in New York, Keen-Minshull went to Atlanta for the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming Championship to protest trans swimmer Lia Thomas. Keen-Minshull then scheduled appearances in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (cancelled), Tacoma, Austin, Chicago, New York, and Belfast. Following a Melbourne event that was attended by Nazis, Keen-Minshull’s Wellington event shut down early and required a police escort due to the thousands of counter-protestors, one of whom doused Keen-Minshull with tomato soup.
After returning to the UK, Keen-Minshull announced the creation of the Party of Women in order to run for office.
Media
Keen-Minshull is a favored source among right-wing and anti-transgender activists:
Keen-Minshull has said about cisgender women who support trans rights:
Each and every one of you women who stand in my wayâeach and every one of youâlet me just tell you, you will be annihilated. Because I genuinely donât lose.
Greer was born 29 January 1939 in Melbourne. Greer’s parent lived under an assumed identity as an adult. Greer’s family was Catholic, but Germaine Greer longed to assume a Jewish identity as an adolescent. Greer learned Yiddish, joined a Jewish theatre group, dated Jewish people, and reportedly “felt Jewish.”
After graduating from convent school, Greer earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Melbourne, a master’s degree from University of Sydney and a doctorate in English from Newnham College, Cambridge.
Greer was sexually assaulted in college, which strongly influenced Greer’s thinking and writing on sex and gender.
In 1968, Greer began teaching at University of Warwick. Greer was officially married to Paul du Feu from 1968 to 1973, but Greer cheated on du Feu seven times in the first month, and they separated. Greer wrote for Oz and co-founded Suck, a “new pornogrqaphy” venture based around sexual liberation that sometimes depicted graphic nonconsensual sex. Suck published a nude photo of Greer, prompting Greer to resign.
In 1970 Greer published The Female Eunuch, an important second-wave feminist text. Greer said, “I don’t like women. I probably share in all the effortless and unconscious contempt that men pour on women.” Greer had notable debates with Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, and others throughout a steady string of television appearances.
Greer founded the Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature as part of her work to reclaim women’s cultural contributions. Through the 1990s Greer continued to write about women’s issues.
Anti-transgender activism
Greer has made many inflammatory comments about trans people. One chapter of Greer’s 1999 book The Whole Woman is titled “Pantomime Dames.” In keeping with the views presented in The Female Eunuch, Greer wrote:
Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women, men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex.
She added: âWhen a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho), it is as if he murders her and gets away with it.â
Greer protested the appointment of trans physicist Rachael Padman to a women’s college and Glamour magazine’s 2015 Woman of the Year honor given to Caitlyn Jenner.
References
Greer, Germaine (1999). The Whole Woman. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd. p. 64. ISBN 978-0385720038
De Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko (24 October 2015). Cardiff University Rejects Bid to Bar Germaine Greer. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/world/europe/cardiff-university-rejects-bid-to-bar-germaine-greer.html
Campbell, Beatrix; et al. (14 February 2015). We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals. The Observer. Archived from the original on 13 October 2018. Retrieved 12 October 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181013014630/https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship
Kara Dansky is an American lawyer, sex segregationist, and anti-transgender activist. She is president of WDI USA, the American chapter of Women’s Declaration International.
Background
Kara Patrice Dansky was born March 17, 1972.
Dansky earned a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1994 and a juris doctor degree from University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Founder and Managing Director of One Thousand Arms.
Special Advisor to the Director of the New York City Mayorâs Office of Criminal Justice
Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Securityâs Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Executive Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.
Public defender and federal law clerk at the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico
Staff attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Senior Counsel with the ACLU Center for Justice
Dansky is a member of the bar for the District of Columbia and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
2021 book
In November 2021, she published The Abolition of Sex: How the âTransgenderâ Agenda Harms Women and Girls.
Maya Forstater is a British anti-transgender activist and sex segregationist. Forstater brought the case Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe that established that gender critical views are protected as a belief under the UK’s Equality Act 2010.
Background
Maya Forstater was born on July 3, 1973 in London. Forstater’s parent is film producer Mark Forstater. Forstater earned a degree from Newcastle University. Forstater has published work for the United Nations on corporate social responsibility and economic development.
Anti-transgender activism
Forstater made a number of anti-transgender statements on social media that resulted in a UN contract not being renewed in 2019. Forstater filed a lawsuit claiming these gender critical views are protected under the Equality Act 2010. Forstater lost her initial case, which was then appealed to a tribunal. Forstater won the appeal in 2021, and the tribunal found in 2022 Forstater had suffered direct discrimination for holding anti-transgender views.
In 2020, Forstater co-founded anti-trans group Sex Matters and serves as Executive Director.
References
Cases
Forstater v CGD Europe & Ors [2021] UKEAT 0105_20_1006 IRLR 706, [2022] ICR 1 https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2021/0105_20_1006.html
Suissa, Judith; Sullivan, Alice (2021). The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education. 55 (1): 55â82. https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1467-9752.12549
Lierre Keith is an American environmentalist and author. Keith is a founder of environmental organization Deep Green Resistance, a radical feminist group that has been criticized for anti-transgender views.
Background
Keith was born in 1964 and went to high school in Brookline, Massachusetts. In the 1980s Keith was involved in a number of feminist projects, including Vanessa and Iris: A Journal for Young Feminists, the journal Rain and Thunder, the groups Women Against Violence Against Women, Minor Disturbance, Feminists Against Pornography.
Keith’s environmental activism includes the 2009 book The Vegetarian Myth and the 2011 book Deep Green Resistance, co-authored with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay. McBay left in 2012, citing increasing anti-trans views of the other co-founders.
Anti-trans activism
Keith helped found the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF). WoLF was founded in 2013, incorporated in 2016, and earned non-profit status in 2018. They have held meetings called WoLF Fest since 2016 that largely consist of anti-transgender networking and presentations.
In a sympathetic 2014 piece by Michelle Goldberg titled “What Is a Woman?” Keith explained:
Trans women say that they are women because they feel femaleâthat, as some put it, they have womenâs brains in menâs bodies. Radical feminists reject the notion of a âfemale brain.â They believe that if women think and act differently from men itâs because society forces them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lierre Keith, a speaker at Radfems Respond, femininity is âritualized submission.â
[…]
Three years ago, she co-founded the ecofeminist group Deep Green Resistance, which has some two hundred members and links the oppression of women to the pillaging of the planet.D.G.R. is defiantly militant, refusing to condemn the use of violence in the service of goals it considers just. In radical circles, though, what makes the group truly controversial is its stance on gender. As members see it, a person born with male privilege can no more shed it through surgery than a white person can claim an African-American identity simply by darkening his or her skin. Before D.G.R. held its first conference, in 2011, in Wisconsin, the group informed a person in the process of a male-to-female transition that she couldnât stay in the womenâs quarters. âWe said, Thatâs fine if you want to come, but, no, youâre not going to have access to the womenâs sleeping spaces and the womenâs bathrooms,â Keith told me.
References
McBay, Aric (May 14, 2013). DGR and Transphobia. http://www.aricmcbay.org/2013/05/14/dgr-and-transphobia/
Derrick Jensen is an American environmentalist and author. Jensen is a founder of environmental organization Deep Green Resistance, a radical feminist group that has been criticized for anti-transgender views.
Background
Jensen was born on December 19, 1960. Jensen earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado School of Mines in 1983 and a master’s degree from Eastern Washington University in 1991.
In 2011, Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Aric McBay founded Deep Green Resistance. McBay left due to the organization’s positions on transgender people.
Anti-transgender views
Jensen’s concerns center around postmodernism and queer theory. Jensen believes these theories are attempts to justify nonconsensual sex with minors. Jensen also claims any dissent from acceptable views will lead to cancelation:
This is the cult-like behavior of the postmodern left: if you disagree with any of the Holy Commandments of postmodernism/queer theory/transgender ideology, you must be silenced on not only that but on every other subject. Welcome to the death of discourse, brought to you by the postmodern left.
Jensen has laid out these anti-trans views in a number of essays and posts:
The Emperor’s New Penis
Liberals and the New McCarthyism
Letter to a Publisher: On the Destruction of Discourse and the Cult of the Postmodern Left
Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio
Jensen is host of a show that has included many environmentalists, some trans-inclusive feminists, and anti-transgender activists:
Houlberg, Laura (2017). “The End of Gender or Deep Green Transmisogyny?”. Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-88657-2.
Pellow, David Naguib (2019). Eco-Defence, Radical Environmentalism and Environmental Justice. Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics. Routledge. p. 112. ISBN 9781315619880.
Stephanie Davies-Arai is a British anti-transgender activist. Davies-Arai is director of Transgender Trend, a clinical advisor to anti-trans hate group Genspect, and has been involved in numerous anti-trans campaigns in the UK and beyond.
Background
According to Lily Maynard:
Stephanie & her twin sister Helen were born in Chester in the late 50s, hot on the heels of their older sister Gill. Their father was a bank manager and their mother a housewife and librarian, who managed and reorganised information systems for the Leicester police after their move to a small market town when the twins were seven.
Davies-Arai wrote: “I am a heterosexual woman who lived most of my childhood wanting to be a boy; for a few years my sister and I would answer to nothing except our ârealâ names: Bill and Mike. I entered puberty kicking and screaming.” The twins dressed as schoolboys and engaged in “tomboy” activities until age 12. At puberty Davies-Arai reportedly became bulimic.
Davies-Arai trained as a sculptor after attending Wyggeston Grammar School for Girls in Leicester. Davies-Arai earned a bachelor’s degree from Gwent College of Higher Education in 1979, took courses at St. Martins College, and earned a master’s degree from Bidai University of Art & Design in 1990. While there, Davies-Arai gave birth to the first of four children. Davies-Arai’s sculptures began to be primarily about pregnancy and motherhood.
Davies-Arai and spouse moved back to England. Davies-Arai’s oldest child had behavioral problems. In 2000, Davies-Arai was a founder of Lewes New School, a small private school in East Sussex where that child might get specialized attention. Davies-Arai became a certified educational trainer in 2003.
Materials on how to deal with troubled children led to Davies-Arai’s “parental rights” activism:
âIt was too child-centred. It kind of treated children as victims in a way, as if they always had a problem. It didnât seem to give permission for parental authority.â
In 2008 Davies-Arai and spouse divorced. Davies-Arai began the training course Communicating with Kids, which was later developed into a 2014 book.
Anti-trans activism
As the four children reached adulthood, Davies-Arai was writing a weekly parenting blog.
Davies-Arai founded Transgender Trend in 2015 after being outraged by an article titled “Parenting a Transgender Child” by Sarah Virginia White. Davies said:
Youâre validating a childâs false belief. You wouldnât get that in any other area, in any parenting book. Itâs not healthy when listening to your child becomes so key that it becomes âyou must agree with your childâ. If you believe that your child knows best, youâre then supposed to follow the child. The child becomes the adult and the adult becomes the child.â
After getting more and more into the transphobic “parental rights” movement, Davies-Arai produced an anti-trans schools guide “Supporting gender diverse and trans-identified students in schools” in 2018.
After Liz Truss announced plans to change the UK’s Gender Recognition Act in 2020, an open letter signed by about 8,000 cisgender women said “we are incredibly concerned that the language you have used is very similar to the anti-trans rhetoric used by transphobic hate groups and organisations such as Womanâs Place UK, Transgender Trend and the LGB Alliance.”
In 2022, Davies-Arai was awarded the British Empire Medal by Queen Elizabeth II.
Davis, Lisa Selin (June 13, 2022). From Tomboy to Transgender Trend. https://lisaselindavis.substack.com/p/from-tomboy-to-transgender-trend
White, Sarah Virginia (February 20, 2015). Parenting a Transgender Child. HuffPost https://www.huffpost.com/entry/parenting-a-transgender-child_b_6709858
Davies-Arai, Stephanie (2015). Is My Child Transgender? https://stephaniedaviesarai.com/is-my-child-transgender/