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
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Tucker Carlson is an American conservative media personality and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Tucker McNear Carlson was born May 16, 1969 in San Francisco to Lisa McNeal and Dick Carlson (born 1941), a broadcaster and lobbyist. Carlos has a younger sibling Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson. Carlson’s parents divorced in 1976, with Lisa moving to France. Dick Carlson then married Swanson Enterprises heir Patricia Caroline Swanson in 1979.
Carlson attended boarding school in Rhode Island and began dating future spouse Susan Andrews there. The yearbook says Carlson led the “Dan White Society.” White assassinated gay politican Harvey Milk.
Carlson worked for The Heritage Foundation at Policy Review, then wrote opinion pieces at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazett. Carlson joineed The Weekly Standard in 1995. A 1999 profile of George W. Bush for Talk magazine led to controversy as well as work at New York, Reader’s Digest, Esquire, Slate, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Daily Beast, and The Wall Street Journal.
In 2000 CNN hired Carlson to host The Spin Room and later Crossfire. In 2004, Jon Stewart harshly criticized Carlson and Paul Begala, which attributed to the show’s cancellation. Carlson adjusted to a different on-air tone after the incident.
In 2004, PBS aired Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered for about a year. In 2005 MSNBC aired Tucker until 2008.
From 2010 to 2020 Carlson was editor of The Daily Caller. In June 2020, Carlson sold his one-third stake in The Daily Caller following questions about the organization selling their mailing list the the Donald Trump campaign.
From 2009 to 2023 Carlson hosted an appeared on Fox News shows, including Red Eye, Hannity, Fox & Friends Weekend, and Tucker Carlson Tonight. In 2021 Fox entered into a multi-year contract to air and podcast and shows Tucker Carlson Originals and Tucker Carlson Today. Carlson was dismissed in 2023.
In 2023 Carlson relaunched on Twitter/X as host of Tucker on X.
Carlson has authored three books:
Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News (2003)
Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution (2018)
The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism (2021)
Anti-transgender activism
Carlson hosted the 2022 two-part special “Transgressive: The Cult of Confusion,” showcasing the ex-transgender movement.
Susan Evans is a British psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Evans was a key critic of trans healthcare for gender diverse youth at the Tavistock. The clinic was later closed.
Evans and spouse Marcus Evans co-authored the 2021 book Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults.
Evans worked for 12 years at the Tavistock in the Adult Department, Youth Gender Identity Service and for the Portman Clinic in Probation officer supervision and as Programme Organiser and senior clinical lecturer. Evans was also a Senior Fellow of the University of East London.
Evans has been a member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation, London Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Service, and the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC).
2021 book
The following people are mentioned in the acknowledgements:
We are grateful to the following people who have generously given their time and expertise to the development of this book: Annie Pesskin, Ian Williamson, Richard Stephens, Margot Waddell, Frances Grier, and Ema Syrulnik, as well as all our colleagues at the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. We are grateful to Kate Pearce at Phoenix for offering to publish this book.
2022 Tavistock closure
Evans was involved in the attacks on gender affirming care for gender diverse you at the Tavistock clinic, a federally funded gatekeeping facility with unethically long wait times due to underfunding.
Evans’ version of things was reported via anti-trans activist Bari Weiss:
I was a nurse working on a team that recklessly prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids. I blew the whistle in 2005. Now the government is finally listening.
References
Evans, Sue (August 4, 2022). How Tavistock Came Tumbling Down.The Free Press https://www.thefp.com/p/how-tavistock-came-tumbling-down
Stephanie Winn is a conservative American therapist and anti-transgender activist associated with the ex-transgender movement. Winn collaborated with sex offender David Arthur Kendall on promoting the 2023 anti-trans propaganda project No Way Back. Winn is an associate producer on the project.
This close association with someone convicted of sex crimes against minors makes Winn a poor therapeutic choice for parents with minor children.
If you are trans or gender diverse, do not go to Winn under any circumstances at any age. If you are a minor forced to see Winn, try to end the sessions and find supportive local resources. Your parent or guardian will want to know about Winn’s poor judgment and unsavory associations.
Stephanie Winn and convicted sex offender David Arthur Kendall discussing their anti-trans propaganda project, later renamed No Way Back
Background
Winn earned a diploma in Ayurveda from the Ayurveda Institute of America in 2005. In 2007 Winn earned a teaching certification from Yoga Works and took courses at Santa Monica College. Winn earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Santa Cruz in 2009 and a master’s degree from California Institute of Integral Studies in 2013. While studying, Winn worked as a tutor and an administrative assistant.
Winn was a counselor for Albany Unified School District in 2012 to 2013, then did intakes at Casa de la Vida in Oakland from 2013 to 2014. In 2015 and 2016 Winn was a therapist at Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, Inc. (NARA). In 2016 Winn joined Western Psychological & Counseling Services as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT). Since 2020, Winn has been a LMFT at Real Talk Therapy PDX in Portland, Oregon.
Winn also hosts the podcast You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist.
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/
Miriam Ben-Shalom is an American educator and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Ben-Shalom was born May 3, 1948 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, one of six children in a Roman Catholic family. Ben-Shalom’s mother died when Miriam was six. After graduating high school in 1967, Ben-Shalom married and had a child. At 19, Ben-Shalom converted to Judaism, moved to Israel, joined the military, changed names, and remarried. In 1971, Ben-Shalom divorced and returned to the US, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of WisconsinâMilwaukee.
In 1974, Ben-Shalom enlisted in the United States Army Reserve. After coming out as lesbian in the media, Ben-Shalom was honorably discharged in 1976. Ben-Shalom sued, and after a lengthy court battle, lost in 1990. Ben-Shalom then co-founded the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Veterans of America (GLBVA), now American Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER). Ben-Shalom continued protesting until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was repealed.
Ben-Shalom taught English at Milwaukee Area Technical College. Ben-Shalom has been in a relationship with Karen Weiss (born September 1947).
Anti-transgender activism
In 2017, Ben-Shalom testified at the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs against trans rights and co-founded the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition with right-wing activist Kaeley Triller Haver. Ben-Shalom has worked with the Heritage Foundation to oppose trans rights.
Matt Walsh is an American conservative commentator and anti-transgender extremist.
Background
Walsh was born June 18, 1986 and grew up in a conservative Catholic household near Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from high school, Walsh began working in radio in Delaware and later Kentucky. After Walsh’s show was cancelled in 2013, Walsh put more energy into a conservative blog started in 2012. In 2014 Walsh began contributing to The Blaze in 2014, then The Daily Wire in October 2017.
In April 2018, Walsh began hosting a weekday show on YouTube called The Matt Walsh Show. In April 2023 YouTube demonetized Walsh’s channel for repeated attacks on trans people, particularly Dylan Mulvaney.
Anti-trans activism
Walsh has accused “the media, Hollywood, and the school system” of recruiting children into the LGBT community.
Walsh is one of several media figures who gets money and attention by attacking trans and gender diverse children. In 2022, Walsh published an anti-trans children’s book titled Johnny the Walrus and released the anti-trans propaganda piece What Is a Woman? Walsh also helped organize a “rally to end child mutilation” protest in Nashville, part of Walsh’s campaigns against hospitals and clinics that provide trans health services.
Books
The Unholy Trinity: Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage, and Gender (2017)
Church of Cowards: A Wake-Up Call to Complacent Christians (2020)
Johnny the Walrus (2022)
What Is a Woman?: One Man’s Journey to Answer the Question of a Generation (2022)
Madeleine Kearns is a conservative Scottish-American writer and anti-transgender acitivist.
Background
Madeleine Janet “Maddy” Kearns was born on June 11, 1995. Kearns’ parent Mary Elizabeth Kearns (born 1961) is a solicitor who was involved in the Scottish Council of Human Bioethics. Kearns’ parent Hugh C. Kearns was born in 1967.
Kearns grew up in Linlithgow, near Glasgow. Kearns is a singer/songwriter who writes and performs music. Kearns has a sibling named Patrick. Kearns’ sibling Lily is also a musician who married Daniel Santorum, a child of US Senator Rick Santorum, in 2020.
Kearns earned a bachelorâs degree from the University of St Andrews in 2015, a postgraduate diploma from the University of Glasgow in 2016, and a masterâs degree from New York University in 2018.
In 2023 Kearns married Nicholas Joseph “Nick” Tomaino (born March 9, 1998) in a Catholic ceremony. Tomaino is a former National Review colleague and an assistant editorial features editor for the Wall Street Journal opinion page.
Kearns was a staff writer at National Review and a visiting fellow at the Independent Womenâs Forum. Kearns has appeared on Issues, Inc. and on the Megyn Kelly podcast.
Lynn Meagher is an American anti-transgender extremist and unsupportive parent to two adult transgender children, both of whom are estranged from Meagher.
Meagher also uses the alias “Lynn Chadwick.” As Chadwick, Meagher is associated with anti-trans hate group Genspect and the affiliated Themis Resource Fund.
Background
Lynn Frances Meagher was born on January 26, 1962. Meagher worked in nursing in Washington State from 1985 to 2021.
According to a social media account, in 2022 Chadwick was in a relationship with biology professor Arla Hile (born 1962).
Anti-transgender activism
Meagher has appeared on religious and conservative programs. Meagher reportedly lost both children to the “transgender cult.”
Meagher’s children disagree:
âShe didnât lose me to a cult,â her eldest daughter said, clarifying that she is estranged from her mum because Meagher is âracistâ, âabusiveâ, âtransphobicâ, âgreedyâ, âcruelâ and âreligiously intolerantâ.
âShe lost me because sheâs a piece of s**t,â she added. âItâs true, we wonât speak to her, although her TERF-ness was only the tip of the iceberg. She was extremely emotionally and physically abusive growing up.â
Meagher frequently appears at anti-trans events and was part of the group blog Compassion Coalition. On that blog, Meagher’s self-written bio states:
Lynn works as an advocate for parents of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) kids and as a spokesperson for the Kelsey Coalition. She feels honored to work with many gifted and talented women through the Hands Across the Aisle coalition.
Lynn has recently become involved in activism against Drag Queen Story Hours at public libraries and helped to start Ask Moms on Facebook to inform and equip ordinary people everywhere to stand against the sexualization of children. She worked as a nurse in Neonatal Intensive Care for 28 years.
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/
