A.G. Sulzberger is an American journalist responsible for the surge of anti-transgender coverage in the New York Times from 2018 onward.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Background
Sulzberger’s family has controlled the New York Times since 1896.
Arthur Gregg Sulzberger was born August 5, 1980 in Washington, DC. After attending private school in New York, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Brown University in 2003. He worked at the Providence Journal from 2004 to 2006, The Oregonian from 2006 to 2009, and The New York Times starting in 2009. He was soon named an associate editor and began publishing internal reports on long-term business strategy. In 2016 he was named deputy publisher. He beat out his cousins Sam Dolnick and David Perpich to succeed his father as publisher in 2018, then was named chair of The New York Times Company in 2021.
Sulzberger’s anti-transgender policy and strategy
In 2023, hundreds of Times staffers signed a letter expressing concern about anti-trans coverage under Sulzberger’s leadership.
GLAAD also presented a letter with notable signatories that had three requests:
STOP: Stop printing biased anti-trans stories.
LISTEN: So many trans people are wary of the Times, and do not trust the Times. Hold a meeting with transgender community members and leaders, and listen throughout that meeting.
HIRE: Genuinely invest in hiring trans writers and editors, full time on your staff.
Nozlee Samadzadeh, a computer programmer with the Times, posted a screenshot of an email she wrote to Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger that said she has lost trust in management over its defense that those who criticized the Timesâ trans coverage engaged in âadvocacy.â
âTo dismiss yesterdayâs letter from Times contributors… is disrespectful to the very journalists whose work weâve chosen to publish,â she wrote. âAnd on the very next day to publish Pamela Paulâs piece on JK Rowling, someone whose platform is big enough not to need our âdefenseâ and who has caused very real harm to the trans community, is difficult not to interpret as a provocation.â
More recently, weâve heard similar arguments about journalism putting lives at risk emerging from our coverage of the debates inside the medical community over care for transgender children. Critics have accused our work of ââboth sidesâ fearmongering and bad-faith âjust asking questionsâ coverageâ and have suggested that even acknowledging a broader range of views on this topic has legitimizedâwittingly or notâa repressive legal effort to undermine the rights and the safety of a group that faces significant prejudice. âThe pretense of objectivityâthe newsroom ideal that all âsidesâ of an issue should be heardâoften harms marginalized people more than it helps them,â wrote one critic of our coverage. âIf you say âI want to live,â and I say âNo,â what happens next isnât a debate; itâs murder.â
The Times has covered the surge of discrimination, threats, and violence faced by trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people, including the rapidly growing number of legislative efforts attacking their rights. Weâve also covered the many ways in which people challenging gender norms are gaining recognition and breaking barriers in the United States and around the world. Yet our critics overlook these articlesâand there are hundreds of themâto instead focus on a small number of pieces that explore particularly sensitive questions that society is actively working through, but which some would prefer for the Times to treat as settled.
Sulzberger, A. G. (October 7, 2015). Our Path Forward (PDF). The New York Times Company. https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/m/Our-Path-Forward.pdf
Sulzberger, A. G. (January 1, 2018). A Note from Our New Publisher. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/01/opinion/Arthur-Gregg-Sulzberger-The-New-York-Times.html
Meredith Kopit Levien is an American media executive who was CEO of The New York Times Company during its sharp increase in anti-transgender coverage. Under Kopit Levien’s watch, the New York Times parent company continued its trans-exclusionary hiring practices for journalists and maintained its hostile workplace environment for trans-supportive employees.
No transgender journalist or executive has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. In 2023 the San Francisco Chronicle cited a Times employee who said the organization has no trans reporters.
Background
Meredith Andrea Kopit was born February 28, 1971 to Carole Toby Kopit (born 1941) and Marvin Kopit (1940â2012). Levien grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Kopit Levien earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Virginia in 1993.
Kopit Levien worked in a series of digital advertising roles at i33/AppNet, Atlantic Media, and Forbes Media, where Levien diluted the brand with “Brandvoice” that allowed brands to self-promote as Forbes contributors. The controversial practice was very lucrative, and Kopit Levien became chief revenue officer in 2012.
In 2013 Kopit Levien joined the New York Times Company as head of advertising. Kopit Levien implemented “paid posts” there as well, which earned a promotion to chief revenue officer in 2015. Kopit Levien revamped the ad department and ran a brand campaign. In 2017 Kopit Levien was named COO. In 2020 Kopit Levien became CEO and joined the Board.
Kopit Levien is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and serves on the board of directors of Instacart.
Kopit Levien was married to sports executive Jason Miles Levien (born May 17, 1971). They have one child named Justice, born in 2010.
Veazey, Kyle (February 16, 2013). Jason Levien followed roundabout path to Grizzlies’ front office. The Commercial Appeal [archive] https://www.commercialappeal.com/sports/grizzlies/jason-levien-followed-roundabout-path-to-grizzlies-front-office-ep-362544418-329050301.html
-https://archive.ph/TZc26
Pompeo, Joe (September 29, 2014). Going native at the Times. Capital New York. [archive] http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/09/8553419/going-native-emtimesem
Brown, Abram (March 11, 2023). The News Business Is in Crisisâbut Not The New York Times Co. The Information https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-news-business-is-in-crisis-but-not-the-new-york-times-co
Joseph Kahn is an American journalist responsible for the surge of anti-transgender coverage in the New York Times from 2022 onward.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. In 2023 the San Francisco Chronicle cited a Times employee who said the organization has no trans reporters.
Note: for the trans-supportive filmmaker, see Joseph Kahn.
Background
Joseph F. “Joe” Kahn (born August 19, 1964) is one of three children born to executive Leo Kahn and Dorothy Davidson Kahn. Leo Kahn made a fortune in wholesale and retail food sales, first as founder of Purity Supreme and later as a co-founder of office supply retailer Staples. Dorothy Kahn died in 1975; Leo Kahn then married Emily Perkins Gantt Kahn in 1976.
Kahn was a legacy admission at Harvard University, earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 1987 and a master’s degree in East Asian studies in 1990.
In 1989, the Chinese government ordered Kahn to leave the country for working as a reporter while using a tourist visa. Kahn worked at The Dallas Morning News, then the Wall Street Journal before joining the Times in 1998. Kahn was Beijing bureau chief at the Times from July 2003 until December 2007, during which time Kahn and colleague Jim Yardley won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Kahn then served as Deputy Foreign Editor before serving as Managing Editor from 2016 until 2022. That year Kahn was named Executive Editor.
2023 response to over 1,000 trans-supportive colleagues
On February 15, 2023, over 1,000 New York Times contributors signed an open letter objecting to the Times’ increasingly hostile coverage of transgender issues.
On the same day, GLAAD delivered a second letter and organized a protest in front of Times headquarters.
The next day, Kahn and Opinion Editor Katie Kingsbury warned their colleagues they were violating company policy. Their warning conflates the two letters and dismisses the ethical concerns of their colleagues as “advocacy.”
Colleagues,
Yesterday, the New York Times received a letter delivered by GLAAD, an advocacy group, criticizing coverage in The Times of transgender issues.
It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.
Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.
Our coverage of transgender issues, including specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written. The journalists who produced those stories nonetheless have endured months of attacks, harassment and threats. The letter also ignores The Timesâ strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society. A full list of our coverage can be viewed here, and any review shows that the allegations this group is making are demonstrably false.
We realize these are difficult issues that profoundly affect many colleagues personally, including some colleagues who are themselves transgender. We have welcomed and will continue to invite discussion, criticism and robust debate about our coverage. Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our report.
We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.
We live in an era when journalists regularly come under fire for doing solid and essential work. We are committed to protecting and supporting them. Their work distinguishes this institution, and makes us proud.
Joe & Katie
During an all-hands meeting, Kahn asked Carolyn Ryan to speak to the newsroom. Via Vanity Fair:
“I want to talk to you briefly about journalistic independence,â Carolyn Ryan said during an all-hands meeting for the New York Times newsroom earlier this month. The Times managing editor, sporting a pinstripe pantsuit, spoke from a stage where she was seated between fellow managing editor Marc Lacey and executive editor Joe Kahn. âWe donât do our work in an effort to please organizations, governments, presidents, activist groups, ideological groups,â she said in a recording of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair, noting this has been âa bedrock principle of ours for generationsâ that âmany of us feel in our bonesâ but âcan really get obscured in the modern media landscape, which these days has populated with so many more partisan players.â
Ryan praised the paperâs coverage of the Supreme Courtâs Dobbs decision; Astead Herndonâs podcast The Run-Up;Michael Powellâsreport on whether the ACLU was losing its way; and Megan Twoheyâs âthoughtful, careful, well-reported story looking at medical treatment for teens who are transitioning and the lack of scientific research around some of the puberty blockers.â She assured the newsroom that theyâll be hearing more about journalistic independence throughout the year. âAnd sometimes that will be an annoying note on deadlines saying, you know, we canât use that language because it reallyâŠreflects an activist-group way of looking at an issue and we donât want to do that,â she said, noting being as âpanoramic as possibleâ is not only âgood journalismâ but âkey to how we think about attracting new, more readers and satisfying a need thatâs really out there.â
Emily Bazelon is an American writer and anti-transgender activist whose work has been cited to support anti-trans legislation in America. Bazelon wrote a 2022 New York Times Magazine feature about trans healthcare for minors that anti-trans legislators use to justify bans and restrictions affecting healthcare and legal rights for people of all ages. This page documents Bazelon’s historic role in the oppression of trans and gender diverse people.
Background
Emily C. Bazelon was born March 4, 1971. Like many cisgender reporters on this subject, much of Bazelon’s life and many opinions were shaped by a medico-juridical worldview and by extraordinary privilege. Bazelon’s grandparent was federal judge David L. Bazelon, a pioneer in the field of mental health law and namesake of the nonprofit Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington DC. Bazelon’ parent Richard L. Bazelon (born 1943) is a lawyer, and parent Eileen A. Ferrin Bazelon (born 1944) is a psychiatrist. Both practice in Pennsylvania. Emily Bazelon has three siblings: Dana, Jill, and Lara.
Bazelon attended the elite Germantown Friends School, then graduated from Yale in 1993. Bazelon earned a law degree from Yale Law School in 2000 and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Bazelon had a Dorot fellowship in 1993 and was named a Soros Justice Media Fellow in 2004. Bazelon clerked for Judge Kermit Lipez in 1997. Bazelon married Paul E. Sabin (born 1970). They have two children, Eli and Simon.
2022 New York Times piece
In June 2022, Bazelon published “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” in the New York Times. It is part of their long-running “cisgender person under siege” stories placing non-trans people at the center of their coverage of trans issues.
Bazelon’s piece is centered on cisgender psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz.
It also launders the extremist views of Genspect into the New York Times. Genspect defined the rise in transgender-identified children as a “gender cult” and mass craze, “suggesting that exposure to transgender kids, education about trans people, and trans ideas on the internet could spread transness to others.” Some parents from Genspect stated transgender people should not be able to transition until the age of 25. The article also referenced a Substack newsletter by an anonymous Genspect parent titled “It’s Strategy People!” about how the organization gets its perspective into the media by purposefully not referring to transgender children as “mentally ill” or “deluded.”
The article was criticized by transgender people, including Dr. Sunny Moraine, who described the article as “sanitizing wildly transphobic talking points,” and Instructor Alejandra Caraballo of Harvard Law School, who described it as having “only just further opened the door for eliminationist policies.”
PinkNews stated the article “uncritically platformed gender-critical group Genspect” and spread “vile rhetoric.”
The Texas Observer accused Bazelon of “elevat[ing] a handful of outliers and their discredited theories about trans people to prominence they do not enjoy among the medical community” for “the sake of ‘balance’ and objectivity” and that “the article echoes right-wing fear-mongering about whether trans kids should be allowed to transition and even suggests their existence could be dangerous to other young people.” The Observer notes, “All of this could have been avoided had Bazelon listened to more experts and included more transgender people. That includes Ky Schevers and Lee Leveille, who run a trans advocacy group called Health Liberation Now! Bazelon communicated extensively with them both while working on the article, conducting interviews that were ultimately discarded.” The Observer added that “the state of Texas is using it as evidence in an ongoing attempt to investigate trans-supportive healthcare as ‘child abuse’.” Schevers said “The NYT just platformed a group made up of transphobic parents & conversion therapists who’ve written about how they have the same end goals as hardline trans eliminationists but moderate their views to try to break into the mainstream.”
2023 attack on union leadership
Bazelon was also a signatory on the 2023 letter drafted by Jeremy W. Peters attacking their own union leadership. The Guild had raised concerns about the Times’ hostile work environment for trans journalists. A Times employee told the San Francisco Chronicle there were still no trans reporters on staff in 2023.
2023 Missouri Attorney General ruling
Below is an example of how Bazelon’s 2022 piece is used to deny healthcare and other rights to trans and gender diverse people living in Missouri.
15 CSR 60-17.010 Experimental Interventions to Treat Gender Dysphoria
(2) It is an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful practice for any person or health organization to provide a covered gender transition intervention to a patient (or refer a patient for such an intervention) if the person or health organization:
(D) Fails to ensure that the patient has received a full psychological or psychiatric assessment, consisting of not fewer than 15 separate, hourly sessions (at least 10 of which must be with the same therapist) over the course of not fewer than 18 months to explore the developmental influences on the patientâs current gender identity and to determine, among other things, whether the person has any mental health comorbidities; 32
32 Compare Bazelon, âThe Battle Over Gender Therapy,â The New York Times Magazine, June 15, 2022, updated March 17, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html (noting certain researchers admit and assert that only the Amsterdam clinic, âwith its comprehensive assessments,â has procured results showing strong psychological benefits for individuals who medically transitioned in adolescence, and observing the Amsterdam clinic currently requires âat least six monthly [mental health] sessionsâ following âa longer period on a waiting listâ prior to beginning treatment) [PDF]
Responses by Bazelon
2022 tweets [preserved record of Bazelon’s deleted tweets]
Bazelon joined psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz to discuss the piece.
Brand, Madeline (June 15, 2022). Why are doctors pulling away from gender-affirming health care? Press Play with Madeline Brand, KCRW https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/senate-nevada-lgbtq-jennifer-grey/trans-gender-health-care
Staff report (March 4, 1966). Eileen Ferrin Engaged To Richard L. Bazelon.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1966/03/05/archives/eileen-ferrin-engaged-to-richard-l-bazelon.html
Bazelon, Emily (15 June 2022). The Battle Over Gender Therapy.The New York Times. https://web.archive.org/web/20220616095935/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html
Bari M. Weiss was born March 25, 1984 to Lou and Amy Weiss, owners of Weisslines, a flooring retailer. Weiss grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and graduated from Columbia University in 2007.
Weiss served as a senior editor at Tablet, then worked at the Wall Street Journal from 2013 to 2017. From 2017 until resigning in 2020, Weiss was a staff writer and editor for the opinion section of the New York Times.
Weiss was married to Jason Kass from 2013 to 2016 and married Nellie Bowles in 2021.
Weiss is the founder and editor of The Free Press (formerly Common Sense) and the host of the podcast Honestly. Weiss has been active in pro-Israel causes, lived in Israel for a time, and authored the 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
Jamie Reed’s account of clinical practices at Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis, later a scandal regarding Reed’s handling of children’s medical records
Emily Yoffe’s profile of an unsupportive parent of a gender diverse child, later disputed by the child
Weiss cites the platformâs treatment of Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account that remains active despite its connection to multiple acts of terror and intimidation from far-right extremists, including multiple bomb threats against a childrenâs hospital. This portrayal of Libs of TikTok as representative of accounts posting conservative views is alarming. […]
Weiss may be best known for a column introducing âthe intellectual dark web,â a group of anti-progressive types fixated on the concept of cancel culture and the idea that liberals routinely censor conservative ideas. With the Twitter Files, she describes herself leading a team that has been given âbroad and expanding accessâ to Twitterâs internal documents and communications. This group includes opinion writer Abigail Shrier, who is best known for writing Irreversible Damage, a book opposing transition for female-assigned people on the grounds that an unproven social contagion is the root cause of transmasculine identities.
Contrary to the extremist rhetoric, gender-affirming care is supported by all mainstream medical organizations as potentially lifesaving for young people with gender dysphoria. It is also perfectly possible to speak with children about the existence of transgender people and about families headed by same-sex parents in an age-appropriate, nonsexual way.
Thereâs no question that Ben Shapiro loves to provoke college students. He once brought a diaper to a campus speech to offer to âself-indulgent pathetic children who canât handle anyone with an opposing point of view.â In another, while entertaining a question from a young woman who called for greater sensitivity toward transgender people, he shot back: âIf I call you a moose are you suddenly a moose?â
Yet this sharp-tongued Never Trumper was also, according to the Anti-Defamation League, by far the most bullied Jewish journalist of 2016
Weiss, Bari (August 1, 2017). When Progressives Embrace Hate.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/opinion/womens-march-progressives-hate.html
We just saw what happens to legitimate political parties when they fall prey to movements that are, at base, anti-American. That is true of the populist, racist alt-right that helped deliver Mr. Trump the White House and are now hollowing out the Republican Party. And it can be true of the progressive âresistanceâ â regardless of how chic, Instagrammable and celebrity-laden the movement may seem.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Benedict Carey is an American author and writer who played a key role in laundering anti-LGBTQ propaganda into the New York Times. Carey’s uncritical puff pieces about the work of J. Michael Bailey, Richard Green, Robert Spitzer, and Alice Dreger caused years of delays in debunking that work.
In 2022 I began a campaign to extract an apology from the New York Times and get corrections, updates, or retractions on Carey’s pieces. Because Carey claims part of his job is “exposing BSâ and as a professional courtesy, I am giving Carey the first opportunity to revisit these stories. Stay tuned for updates.
Background
Benedict James “Ben” Carey was born March 3, 1960 in San Francisco and grew up mostly in Evanston, Illinois. Carey earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the University of Colorado in 1983. Carey then earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University in 1985. Carey wrote for trade magazine American Shipper before becoming a staff writer for consumer health and medical magazine Hippocrates (published 1987â2001, renamed Health).
Starting in 1997, Carey began freelancing. In 1998 Carey married writer and publishing executive Victoria Margaret von Biel (born March 2, 1960), who also earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern. Their two children were born soon after. Carey covered health and wellness for the Los Angeles Times from 2000 to 2004. In 2004 Carey moved to the New York Times with returning science journalist Richard “Rick” Flaste. Carey covered science there until 2021.
The Times was notorious for diligently reporting unethical and irresponsible research about sex and gender minorities, almost all of which emanated from the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Their coverage of Robert Spitzer’s poorly supported claims that gay people can change their sexualities was particularly egregious.
Carey and colleague Nicholas Wade were also heavily involved in using the Times science section to promote questionable science that supported their hereditarian viewpoints about scientific controversies, like race and intelligence or sexuality. Carey is a strong believer in disease models of human traits and behaviors, especially mental illness.
2005 anti-bisexual piece
Carey’s piece “Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited” presented J. Michael Bailey’s claims that “true bisexuality” does not exist in males. GLAAD and FAIR condemned the piece. In 2011, a different Times reporter followed up with Bailey’s new claim of suddenly discovering male bisexuality after getting payments from the American Institute of Bisexuality.
2007 anti-transgender piece
Carey delivered a major media coup to Kenneth Zucker and allies who support conversion therapy on gender diverse youth. Carey was given an advance copy of Alice Dreger’s cover-up of J. Michael Bailey’s Danny Ryan “trans cure” fabrication. Carey reported that Dreger’s research into Bailey “concluded that he is essentially blameless.” Carey uncritically repeated Dreger’s strawman claims that trans people believe they are “victims of a biological mistake â in essence, women trapped in menâs bodies.” Carey also glossed over Bailey’s sexual misconduct reported by the woman known as âJuanitaâ in the book: “she stood by the accusation but did not want to talk about it.”
The site also included a link to the Web page of another critic of Dr. Baileyâs book, Andrea James, a Los Angeles-based transgender advocate and consultant. Ms. James downloaded images from Dr. Baileyâs Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided. (Dr. Bailey is a divorced father of two.) Ms. James said in an e-mail message that Dr. Baileyâs work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect.
Carey did not note that I was quoting and paraphrasing Bailey’s book, and that I had apologized in 2003 (Bailey’s son, who was an adult in 2003, did not accept the apology and Bailey’s daughter did not respond). Carey reiterated Dreger’s conclusion: “the accusations against the psychologist were essentially groundless.”
I had insisted to Carey’s editors that I be interviewed, so Carey asked me just one question. When my answer was “too long,” Carey said there was only room for 13 words.
Subsequent developments
In addition to a host of other ethics issues, Bailey hosted a live “fucksaw” class demonstration for students that led to Bailey’s signature human sexuality class being permanently canceled by Northwestern. The “fucksaw” incident was not covered by Carey.
Dr. Green, who was also a forceful advocate for gay and transgender rights in a series of landmark discrimination trials,
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association sided with Dr. Green and other influential figures, including Dr. Judd Marmor and Dr. Robert Spitzer, and decided to drop homosexuality from its diagnostic manual.
In his early work, Dr. Green found that many effeminate boys grow up to be gay. He reviewed that and other research in his 1987 book, âThe âSissy Boy Syndromeâ and the Development of Homosexuality.â
âIf you canât make a male attracted to other males by cutting off his penis, how strong could any psychosocial effect be?â said J. Michael Bailey, an expert on sexual orientation at Northwestern University.
Dr. Bailey believes that the systems for sexual orientation and arousal make men go out and find people to have sex with, whereas women are more focused on accepting or rejecting those who seek sex with them.
But Dr. Bailey believes the effect, if real, would be more clear-cut. âMale homosexuality is evolutionarily maladaptive,â he said, noting that the phrase means only that genes favoring homosexuality cannot be favored by evolution if fewer such genes reach the next generation.
Carey sourcing Bailey on gay parenting
Carey, Benedict (January 29, 2005). Experts Dispute Bush on Gay-Adoption Issue. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/experts-dispute-bush-on-gayadoption-issue.html
“You can’t force families to participate, and there aren’t that many of them out there to start with,” said Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University who has studied gay men raising boys.
“There is also a strong volunteer bias: the families who want to participate might be much more open about sexual orientation” and eager to report positive outcomes, Dr. Bailey said.
Creager, Cindi (July 7, 2005). New York Times Promotes Bisexual Stereotypes in “Straight, Gay or Lying?” GLAAD https://www.glaad.org/action/write_now_detail.php?id=3827 [archive]
Letters: Debating a hypothesis https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9401E1DD163DF93BA1575BC0A9619C8B63.html
G. Eugene Pichler (2016) The Transsexual Delusion: “On August 21, 2007 Benedict Carey of the New York Times published a damning article into the behavior of Conway et al.”
Alice Dreger (2015) Galileo’s Middle Finger: “Finally, Carey’s piece was published in the New York Times, and he amazed me by his ability to sum up the salient points in a couple thousand words. More important, Carey’s report turned around the public story of what had really happened. Mike was elated. Mike’s family was elated. Ray Blanchard was elated. Scientists all over the world were elated.”
John Casey (2007) letter to NYT editors: “Benedict Carey casts this story as a matter of politically correct thugs trying to undermine Dr. J. Michael Bailey’s legitimate scientific research. But even Dr. Bailey’s defenders admit the research in question turned out to rest on shoddy anecdotal evidence. In light of that fact, the story can’t possibly concern ”the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom,” as someone quoted in the article claims. The question was whether his book had any legitimate scientific basis. And it didn’t. But perhaps that doesn’t make for a very interesting story.”
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
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.
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.
Caignon’s child 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:
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 says the desire to transition subsided without taking any legal or medical steps. Denise and Chiara have since teamed up to be the most high-profile family 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.
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/
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
Caignon, Denise, consulting ed. (1999). Turning Wheel: Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship
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
Moon, Susan (2004). Not Turning Away: The Practice of Engaged Buddhism. Shambhala Publications ISBN 9781590301036
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.
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, 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.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Helen Lewis is a British author and anti-transgender activist who launders gender critical extremism into mainstream media. Lewis is a sex segregationist who claims to be writing from a feminist/leftist viewpoint. Lewis demonstrates that anti-trans sentiment extends into every political point of view and movement.
Lewis’ anti-trans views center around:
Challenging legal recognition of trans people in systems developed on the basis of sex, particularly opposing the UK’s Gender Recognition Act
Maintaining systems of sex segregation, particularly in matters of law, public accommodation, prisons, sports, and other sex-segregated institutions
Maintaining the strict gatekeeping of trans healthcare via government control, developed under nationalized heath systems (so-called “gender clinics”) in the 20th century
Maintaining medico-juridical control over trans and gender diverse people though disease models and medical requirements for legal recognition (sterilization requirements, etc.)
Maintaining non-affirming models of care for gender diverse youth, developed last century for “the prevention of transsexualism” and now widely outlawed
Background
Lewis was born in 1983, grew up Catholic in Worcester, and attended St Mary’s School there. Lewis then read English at St Peter’s College, Oxford, followed by a journalism degree from City University London. Lewis no longer identifies as Catholic.
After graduating, Lewis worked at the Daily Mail, then joined the New Statesman in 2010. Lewis married designer and creative director Matthew “Matt” Hasteley in 2010 and wrote professionally as Helen Lewis-Hasteley from 2010 until their divorce in 2013. During the marriage, Lewis met and got involved with someone else, eventually leaving the marriage. Like many gender-critical public figures, this starter marriage seems to have had a significant impact on Lewis’ views about sex and gender.
Lewis married Guardian digital editor Jonathan Haynes in 2015. In 2019 Lewis joined the staff of The Atlantic, which has never had an out trans person listed on their masthead in its 160+ years of existence. In 2020 game developer Ubisoft removed Lewis’ voice from in-game audio in Watch Dogs: Legion due to transphobic views.
2017 Times op-ed
Lewis has been critical of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act, claiming that what used to be called the “real life test” that lasts for two years should be required for anyone to be legally recognized as their gender. In a piece titled “A man canât just say he has turned into a woman,” Lewis wrote:
What the government proposes is a radical rewriting of our understanding of identity: now itâs a question of an internal essence â a soul, if you will. Being a woman or a man is now entirely in your head. In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a womenâs changing room? Thatâs why feminists have raised the alarm over the move to self-identification, along with some older trans people who fear that âtrendstersâ will erode the goodwill they have worked hard to acquire.
2018 New Statesman op-ed
Lewis was accused of laundering transphobic talking points into a major media outlet around the topics of sex segregation and trans healthcare for youth.
Want to talk about how letting people self-define their gender might affect female-only spaces such as prisons and changing rooms? Then youâre a bigot, cloaking your bigotry in the language of âlegitimate concernsâ. Want to discuss whether we are rushing to medicalise gender non-conforming children because they and their desperate parents have been sold the idea there is a universal âfixâ for their profound, genuine unhappiness? These are yet more âlegitimate concernsâ that can be dismissed, even as medical professionals warn that not every gender non-conforming child will benefit from puberty blockers and (later) medical transition.
We should all be in favour of the right of transgender people to live their lives free of discrimination, harassment and abuse. […] But the right of someone who has been through male puberty, with the consequences for skeleton and muscle development that brings, to compete in womenâs sports that depend on raw strength? Thatâs more difficult. […]
Our ideas about gender are undergoing a profound shift. I hope that they will end up in a place where a boy can wear a princess dress without people assuming he is âreallyâ a girl.Â
2018 GQ interview of Jordan Peterson
In September 2018, Lewis interviewed fellow anti-trans activist Jordan Peterson for GQ. It quickly turned into a tense but civil debate that went viral. One of the few times they agree in the 90-minute conversation is on what Lewis calls “transgender issues.” At about 1:09.45, Lewis’s views overlap significantly with Peterson’s anti-trans viewpoints. Lewis repeats the unsupported generalization that “transgender activists” believe they have a “female soul.” Lewis also believes “We are very quick to diagnose and treat children in a way that I find â and not waiting for the research â and that I find concerning.”
Lewis, Helen (July 2020). Why Millennial Harry Potter Fans Reject JK Rowling. [stealth edited to How J. K. Rowling Became Voldemort] The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/07/why-millennial-harry-potter-fans-reject-jk-rowling/613870/
Lewis, Helen (April 2021). What Happened to Jordan Peterson?The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/what-happened-to-jordan-peterson/618082/
Lewis, Helen (26 October 2021). In Defense of Saying âPregnant Women.âThe Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/pregnant-women-people-feminism-language/620468/ [headline stealth edited to Why Iâll Keep Saying âPregnant Womenâ]
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Benjamin Boyce is an American YouTuber who promotes alt-right and intellectual dark web viewpoints, with a special focus on gender critical anti-transgender movements. Boyce is a key promoter of the ex-transgender movement.
Note: For the British musical artist born in 1968, see benjamin-boyce.com
Background
Benjamin Arthur Boyce was born on July 7, 1976 in Ukiah, California to Dan and Teresa Boyce. Boyce grew up in a religious household. Boyce’s family moved frequently around California, living in Milpitas, San Jose, Loomis, and Rocklin. Boyce’s parents met in Bible college and reportedly came under the influence of a charismatic minister named Gordon, who had been paralyzed after being shot. The families under Gordon’s control were split up. Teresa was given to another family, and Dan inherited two “spiritual children” from the minors who were part of other families. At 14 Boyce reportedly became “intensely sexual.”
Boyce’s family eventually left the group, and they were shunned. Dan went to a seminary school in Chicago while Benjamin remained behind in Rockland to complete high school, staying with a family that was part of their church.
Boyce attended Covenant Bible College in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, a vocational Bible college which has since closed. Boyce then moved to Chicago in 1995. Boyce’s parents then took over a church in Fresno, California, and Boyce remained in Chicago until age 24. Boyce moved many times looking for a church, eventually moving to Portland. Boyce has been involved in Subud, “a direct spiritual experience of the soul being reawakened by the power of God.”
Boyce got a job at a preschool and would write at night. Boyce is also an aspiring children’s entertainer who has recorded and performed under the names Benjamin, Benzo, Benjamin Arthur, and Benjamin Ampersand.
In 2010 Boyce released the album Scariously, which includes songs like “(I Have Had An) Accident,” about a young child accidentally defecating and then removing soiled clothes.
In 2011, Boyce released the album Wildling under the name Benjamin Arthur. In 2012, Boyce released the EP Combustible Sundress, and in 2013 released the EP confessions of a headless man under the name Eo Ipso. In 2013, Boyce self-published the book Iconogasms under the banner of Critically Othersuch Press.
Boyce attended Evergreen State College from 2013 to 2017 and witnessed a major conflict involving the school’s progressive faction that led to the resignations of professors Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, members of the so-called intellectual dark web. Boyce began commenting about conservative politics following those experiences.
Boyce was an elementary school bus driver for the Griffin School District in Washington State from 2017 to 2020. During that time Boyce founded Othersuch Constructs LLC, which lasted from 2017 to 2018.
Anti-trans activism
In 2018, Boyce started a YouTube channel and podcast called Calmversations, alternately titled The Boyce of Reason. Despite the show’s relaxed tone, Boyce’s guests are often strident critics of progressive aspects of the trans rights movement.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Pamela Paul is an American writer and anti-transgender activist who laundered anti-trans extremism into the New York Times until 2025.
While editor of The New York Times Book Review, Paul hired anti-trans activist Jesse Singal to write a glowing review of anti-trans activist Helen Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, helping spark a newsroom crisis about anti-trans coverage that culminated in 2023. The day after the crisis reached its peak, Paul published a piece defending anti-trans activist J.K. Rowling.
Paul has published many opinion columns for the Times repeating anti-trans talking points and defending other anti-trans activists.
Background
Pamela Lindsey Paul was born on March 2, 1971. Paul graduated from Brown University, then was an editor at American Demographics. Paul’s first marriage to conservative Times columnist Bret Stephens ended in 1998. Paul married hedge fund manager Michael Stern in 2004.
Paul has authored several books.
New York Times
Paul was named children’s book editor of The New York Times Book Review in 2011 and editor in 2013. Paul became an opinion columnist at the Times in 2022.
Patrick Ness says the original line said âThe culture wars have come for your transgender children.â The Times made Ness change it to something “less political.” A Times spokesperson later said Paul was not involved.
I think that weâre entering a period when the most meaningful political distinction will be fascist and anti-fascist. Itâs really important to understand that transphobia is one of the most potent entry points to fascism today – and act accordingly.
The novel The Men by Sandra Newman is one of many sci-fi works in which all men or all women suddenly disappear. The concept can easily steer toward anti-trans sentiments, and some objected to Newman’s book. Paul defended Newman with a lot of anti-trans dogwhistles:
But apparently Newman got too creative â or too real â for some. That a fictional world would assert the salience of biological sex, however fanciful the context, was enough to upset a vocal number of transgender activists online. They would argue that âmenâ is a cultural category to which anyone can choose to belong, as opposed to âmaleness,â which is defined by genetics and biology.
In this case, we can set aside contentious questions around gender identity and transgender politics. Even if you donât believe the sex binary is as fundamental to human beings as it is to all other mammals, a fiction writer ought to be free to imagine her own universe, whether as utopian ideal, dystopian horror or some complicated vision in between.
In another piece, Paul claims these anti-trans views are a middle ground or a centrist political position. Rather than seeing reproductive rights and bodily autonomy as a shared goal of trans people and pro-choice activists, Paul sees trans people as engaging in “erasure” of women by proposing inclusive and value-neutral language around reproduction. Paul describes “female biological function,” meaning reproductive function and reduces women to their reproductive function and organs in order to exclude trans women.
Women, of course, have been accommodating. Theyâve welcomed transgender women into their organizations. Theyâve learned that to propose any space just for biological women in situations where the presence of males can be threatening or unfair â rape crisis centers, domestic abuse shelters, competitive sports â is currently viewed by some as exclusionary. If there are other marginalized people to fight for, itâs assumed women will be the ones to serve other peopleâs agendas rather than promote their own.
Daniel Froomkin notes that Paul builds on the anti-trans work of other Times writers, including Emily Bazelon, Michael Powell, and Anemona Hartocollis.
Both-sidesing would have been a step up for this column, which devoted only 52 words out of 1,300 to the rightâs decades-long campaign to strip women of their rights. The rest was about how âthe fringe leftâ is âjumping in with its own perhaps unintentionally but effectively misogynist agenda.â
The central thesis of Paulâs argument was an exaggerated summary of a scaremongering news article from last month by Michael Powell, one of the two star reporters the Times has assigned to the woke-panic/cancel-culture beat âthe other being Anemona Hartocollis, who just a few days ago gave us this already infamous piece of soft-focus cancel porn.
Powell, Paul wrote, had concluded that âthe word âwomenâ has become verboten.â
This conspiracy has become known as “Pamela Paul’s great replacement theory,” which Melissa Gira Grant described as “lightly laundered anti-trans propaganda, presented as a sensible centrist argument.”
2024 column on the ex-trans movement
Paul continued promoting anti-trans talking points in 2024 with a piece on the ex-trans movement. Activists cited included:
In defending Paul, Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury defended the disproportionate number of anti-trans articles the section publishes by citing three articles that are purportedly not anti-trans:
Given the state legislative fights over trans Americans and their civil liberties and access to medical and psychological care, we have published many columns and guest essays from health professionals and activists on issues affecting trans people, as well as a focus group last year hearing from trans Americans about their lives.
Since the ex-trans movement is a single-digit minority, the next 90+ articles should be on gender diverse youth who have benefited from the care that is the current US medical consensus.
Fischer, Molly (January 24, 2023). The rules according to Pamela Paul. The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rules-according-to-pamela-paul
Fedorov, Andrew; Krichevsky, Sophie (August 18, 2022). What Is Pamela Paul Thinking?The Fine Print https://thefineprintnyc.com/article/pamela-paul-biography-career/
Grant, Melissa Gira (July 6, 2022). Pamela Paulâs Great Replacement Theory. The New Republic https://newrepublic.com/article/166991/pamela-paul-new-york-times-trans-great-replacement-theory
Finnegan, Leah (May 23, 2022). Pamela Paul is the new worst columnist at the New York Times. Gawker https://www.gawker.com/media/pamela-paul-is-the-new-worst-columnist-at-the-new-york-times [archive]
