Jacob Siegel is an American writer and critic of gender affirming healthcare.
Background
Jacob Rosenberg “Jake” Siegel was born November 13, 1980 to sociologist Jan Rosenberg Siegel and academic Frederick Fein “Fred” Siegel, (1945â2023), a progressive turned senior fellow at conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute.
Siegel served in the US Army, then commanded the New York Army National Guard Alpha Company, 1st Battalion 69th Infantry.
Siegel worked at The Daily Beast, where sibling Harry served as a senior editor. Siegel is an author and co-editor with Roy Scranton of Fire and Forget: Short Stories From the Long War, by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Siegel has written for The New York Times, Tablet, Politico, the New York Daily News, The Baffler, Vice, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
Siegel is senior editor of News and The Scroll, Tabletâs daily afternoon news digest.
References
Siegel, Jacob (May 6, 2022). Did hipsters start the gender wars? UnHerd https://unherd.com/2022/05/how-hipsters-started-the-gender-wars/
Siegel, Jacob (June 15, 2022). The Evil of Banality. The Scroll https://thedailyscroll.substack.com/p/the-evil-of-banality
Moulton, David (March 9, 2023). The Great Transitioning. Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/great-transitioning [Moulton thanked Siegel for his help with this]
Siegel, Harry; Siegel, Jacob (May 13, 2023). Pop: The private life of the public intellectual: Memories of Fred Siegelâs loving legacy from his sons Harry and Jacob. New York Daily News https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-fred-siegel-harry-jacob-sons-20230513-x75suvkdbjasvd2zhlnlufl5su-story.html
Roberts, Sam (May 11, 2023). Fred Siegel, Urban Historian and a Former Liberal, Is Dead at 78. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/nyregion/fred-siegel-dead.html
Resources
X/Twitter (x.com)
Patreon (patreon.com)
Daily Beast (thedailybeast.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Gareth Roberts is a gay British writer and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Gareth John Pritchard Roberts was born June 5, 1968. Roberts attended King Alfred’s College (now the University of Winchester) and Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University).
Roberts published the 1997 gay erotic novel The Velvet Web under the pseudonym Christopher Summerisle. Roberts wrote for British soap operas Brookside, Coronation Street, and Emmerdale. Roberts also wrote several books and episodes within the Doctor Who franchise and a number of sitcoms.
Anti-transgender activism
On September 3, 2017, Roberts posted to Twitter, “I â€ïž how trannies choose names like Munroe, Paris and Chelsea. It’s never Julie or Bev is it?” Later Roberts added, “It’s almost like a clueless gayboy’s idea of a glamorous lady. But of course it’s definitely not that.”
In 2019 Roberts was dropped from a Doctor Who project due to the 2017 comments and released a statement. Roberts described the 2017 tweets as “cheerful vulgarity” and laid out various “opinions on transgenderism”:
I donât believe in gender identity. It is impossible for a person to change their biological sex. I donât believe anybody is born in the wrong body.
I think itâs wrong to â write a falsehood into law; compel people by law to speak words they do not believe; rewrite the law to remove womenâs biological sex-based rights and protections; reinforce gender stereotypes; medicalise children who donât conform to gender stereotypes. Thatâs it.
Roberts then began litigating these anti-transgender views on UnHerd and other anti-trans platforms.
References
Gunz, Rafaella (September 17, 2017). Doctor Who writer Tweeted a transphobic comment and the internet is not having it. Gay Star News https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/doctor-writer-tweeted-transphobic-comment-internet-not/
Jusino, Teresa (September 5, 2017). Doctor Who Writer Gareth Roberts Talks Vile, Ignorant Trash About Trans Women. The Mary Sue https://www.themarysue.com/doctor-who-writer-gareth-roberts-talks-vile-ignorant-trash-about-trans-women/
Farrow, Max (September 4, 2017). ‘Doctor Who’ Writer Gareth Roberts Tweets Controversial Comments Online. geeks.media https://geeks.media/doctor-who-writer-gareth-roberts-tweets-controversial-comments-online
Flood, Alison (June 5, 2019). Doctor Who anthology drops writer over transgender remarks. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/05/doctor-who-anthology-writer-transgender-tweets-gareth-roberts
Selected writing by Roberts
Roberts, Gareth (May 19, 2022). After 12 long hours, I have been freed from Twitter prison. UnHerd https://unherd.com/thepost/after-12-long-hours-i-have-been-freed-from-twitter-jail/
Roberts, Gareth (October 27, 2021). Is the BBC finally standing up to gender ideologues? UnHerd https://unherd.com/thepost/is-the-bbc-finally-standing-up-to-gender-ideologues/
Roberts, Gareth (October 15, 2021). Stephen Nolanâs Stonewall documentary is unmissable. UnHerd https://unherd.com/thepost/stephen-nolans-stonewall-documentary-is-unmissable/
Roberts, Gareth (September 10, 2021). Judith Butlerâs toxic nonsense. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/09/judith-butlers-toxic-nonsense/
Roberts, Gareth (August 13, 2021). The BBC erases homosexuality with the stroke of a pen. UnHerd https://unherd.com/thepost/the-bbc-erases-homosexuality-at-the-stroke-of-a-pen/
Roberts, Gareth (June 17, 2021). So youâve been cancelled? Hereâs what to expect. UnHerd https://unherd.com/thepost/so-youve-been-cancelled-heres-what-to-expect/
Roberts, Gareth (June 14, 2019). How I was cancelled by Doctor Who. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2019/06/how-dr-who-fans-became-its-overlords/
Roberts, Gareth (June 4, 2019). Statement on BBC Books and Transgenderism. Medium [archive] https://web.archive.org/web/20190604101854/https://medium.com/@zmangareth/statement-on-bbc-books-and-transgenderism-dd7ad0c9231a
Resources
X/Twitter (x.com)
Spectator (spectator.co.uk)
Medium (medium.com)
Ellen Pasternack is a British biologist, sex segregationist, science communicator, and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Ellen Pasternack attended University of Oxford, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2016, a master’s degree in 2017, and a doctorate in 2023. Pasternack’s birthing parent’s background is German and Ashkenazi.
Pasternack has written for The Critic, UnHerd, New Statesman, The Specator, The Telegraph, CapX, and Works in Progress.
Anti-transgender activism
Pasternack’s activism around trans people emerged in 2018, when Pasternack was upset that the Oxford University Student Union uninvited Jenni Murray in the wake of Murray’s 2017 anti-trans column, “Be trans, be proud â but donât call yourself a âreal woman.â
In 2022 Fiona MacKenzie, Louise Perry, Olivia Robey, and Pasternack joined forces for The OH Research Ltd d/b/a The Other Half, a UK nonprofit researching “practical, workable policy in the interests of women.”
References
Pasternack, Ellen (May 5, 2022). You canât be born in the wrong body. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2022/05/you-cant-be-born-in-the-wrong-body/
Pasternack, Ellen (May 3, 2023). Hereâs why human sex is binary. UnHerd https://unherd.com/thepost/heres-why-human-sex-is-binary/
Pasternack, Ellen (June 14, 2022). Being âintersexâ isnât that common. https://unherd.com/thepost/is-the-trans-lobby-manipulating-science/
Wheater, Emily; Pasternack, Ellen (November 2020). Transitioning to a medical scandal. The Critic https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2020/transitioning-to-a-medical-scandal/
Pasternack, Ellen (22 September, 2021). âNo debateâ no longer an option. The Critic https://thecritic.co.uk/no-debate-no-longer-an-option/
Pasternack, Ellen (November 2020). Written evidence submitted by Ms Ellen Pasternack (GRA1406) https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/17525/pdf/
Pasternack, Ellen (February 28, 2023). The uncomfortable truths of Hag feminism. The New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2023/02/uncomfortable-truths-hag-feminism
Resources
Weebly (weebly.com)
Substack (substack.com)
The Other Half (theotherhalf.uk)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Medium (medium.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Douglas Murray is a conservative British author and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Douglas Kear Murray was born July 16, 1979 in London. Murray graduated from Oxford. In 2006 Murray wrote a book defending neoconservatism. Murray was director of Centre for Social Cohesion, but conflicts about their anti-immigration and anti-Islamist stances forced the organization to merge into the Henry Jackson Society after Murray left.
Murray has written for most major anti-trans publications, including The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, UnHerd, and the New York Post. In February 2022, Murray became a Fox News contributor. Murray is a fellow at the National Review Institute.
Anti-transgender activism
Murray identifies as gay and aligns with the faction of anti-trans queer conservatives.
Murray has said that it is a lie that a man can become a woman. In September 2020, during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Murray compared accepting trans people to “late-empire sign of things falling apart”. Murray believes there is no such thing as non-binary gender.
Murray’s 2019 book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity has a section called Trans. Murray believes that identity politics are a threat to Western civilization.
References
Murray, Douglas (November 22, 2019). Has trans activism gone too far? UnHerd https://unherd.com/2019/11/has-trans-activism-gone-too-far/
Murray, Douglas (November 22, 2019). Can we ever be woke enough for the trans extremists? New York Post https://nypost.com/2022/07/14/can-we-ever-be-woke-enough-for-the-trans-extremists/
Murray, Douglas (May 26, 2021). How Stonewall sacrificed gay rights. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-stonewall-sacrificed-gay-rights/
Murray, Douglas (October 22, 2021). How Stonewall was exposed. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/10/how-stonewall-was-exposed/
Murray, Douglas (June 16, 2022 ). Trans surgery for children is not a ârightâ to be fought for. New York Post https://nypost.com/2022/06/16/trans-surgery-for-children-is-not-a-right-to-be-fought-for/
Murray, Douglas (May 7, 2021). Publishing is now a Left-wing bubble. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/05/publishing-is-now-a-leftist-bubble/
Dori, Roni (July 29, 2021). Douglas Murray: ‘What I Mind Is the Lie That a Man Can Become a Woman’. Haaretz https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-07-29/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/what-i-mind-is-the-lie-that-a-man-can-become-a-woman/0000017f-e3f4-d568-ad7f-f3ff39520000
January, Brianna (September 18, 2020). Joe Rogan and guest discuss whether trans people are a sign of “the end of America”. Media Matters for America https://www.mediamatters.org/joe-rogan-experience/joe-rogan-and-guest-discuss-whether-trans-people-are-sign-end-america
Reynolds, Daniel (September 17, 2019). Right-Wing U.K. Writer Epically Schooled for Misgendering Sam Smith. The Advocate https://www.advocate.com/people/2019/9/17/right-wing-uk-writer-epically-schooled-misgendering-sam-smith
Media
Michael Shermer -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWjugMlQ_54
Lawrence Krauss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKNzcX-6vYs
Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster of Triggernometry -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1FxfJr6Bik
Jesse Watters – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6megJ0FbpU
Rita Panahi – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-kXxCotNXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRePOQqWKmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYR4QvOuAP8
John Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntX0xWvjGrI
Peter Tatchell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtoHDp3LpzQ
Brian Rose / London Real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0tMT76EgNk
Rod Liddle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3nLx_sAgE0
Alex J. O’Connor Cosmic Skeptic -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCtBUvFL-QQ
Resources
Douglas Murray (douglasmurray.net)
Gatestone Institute (gatestoneinstitute.org)
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
Instagram (instagram.com)
The Spectator (spectator.co.uk)
The Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk)
UnHerd (unherd.com)
Suzanne Moore is a British writer, sex segregationist, and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Suzanne Lynn Moore was born on July 17, 1958 in Ipswich, Suffolk. Moore graduated Northgate Grammar School for Girls. Moore attended Middlesex University London (the Middlesex Poly) starting in 1982. Moore left the PhD program for work as a cultural critic at Marxism Today and the New Statesman. Moore has written for The Independent, The Mail on Sunday, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. Moore won the 2019 Orwell Prize. Two anthologies of Moore’s work have been published: Looking for Trouble (1991) and Head over Heels (1996).
Moore has three children.
Anti-trans activism
Moore had become notorious for provocative gender critical anti-transgender statements on social media.
In 2013, a piece Moore had written for the 2012 anthology Red was reposted in New Statesman. It included this passage:
The clichĂ© is that female anger is always turned inwards rather than outwards into despair. We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape â that of a Brazilian transsexual.Â
After many objected to this, passage, Moore doubled down with a response:
Gender, we thought, was just a performance, a social construct, though no one ever explained why we are compelled to repeat the same performance over and over. I had a baby, which was somehow more than “performative”. Others I knew had sex changes. Or transitioning, as it is now called. Mostly this seemed to be an obsession with secondary sexual characteristics: peeing sitting down if they had been a man, wearing horrible lumberjack shirts and refusing to wash up if they had been a woman. The radical fluidity of gender vaporised. Some trans people appeared to reinforce every gender stereotype going.
Julie Burchill wrote a defense of Moore titled “Transsexuals should cut it out” that called trans women “bed-wetters in bad wigs” and “dicks in chicks’ clothing.” That piece was withdrawn by the editor, who apologized.
Moore continued to make anti-trans comments on social media, occasionally leaving various platforms before returning.
In 2020, after historian Selina Todd spoke at a Womanâs Place UK event, Todd was disinvited from a National Womenâs Liberation Conference celebration at Exeter College. In response, Moore published a Guardian column outlining her sex segregationist views:
The radical insight of feminism is that gender is a social construct â that girls and women are not fated to be feminine, that boys and men donât have to be masculine. But we have gone through the looking-glass and are being told that sex is a construct. […]
The materiality of having a female body may mean rape or it may mean childbirth â but we still seek liberation from gender. In some transgender ideology, we are told the opposite: gender is material and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a category that is a social construction. Thus, sex-based rights, protected in law, can be done away with. […]
Male violence is an issue for women, which is why we want single-sex spaces. Vulnerable women in refuges and prisons must be allowed to live in safe environments â the common enemy here is the patriarchy, remember? How did we arrive at a situation where there are shocking and rising numbers of teenage girls presenting at specialist clinics with gender dysphoria, while some who have transitioned are now regretful and infertile?
More than 200 politicians, journalists, and activists signed a letter denouncing the piece:
âWe reject the argument put forward in a column by by Suzanne Moore in which she implies that advocating for trans rights poses a threat to cisgender women. The British Social Attitudes Survey (2017) found that a majority of the British public were supportive of transgender people, with women more likely to be in favour of trans rights than men. Mooreâs column does not represent the views of the public, nor is it representative of the views of most women.â
After leaving the Guardian later that year, Moore revealed in UnHerd that Guardian editors had removed other anti-trans statements from pieces prior to publication.
Looking back, I see that by the late Eighties and early Nineties, I had already picked up on something that perturbed me. A denial of female biology, of our ability to name and define our experience. Some of this came from certain strands of postmodern theory where objective reality gives way only to multiple subjectivities. A kind of gender tourism became possible. Everyone could be everything. A new kind of feminism came into being, one in which flesh and blood women and our desires became somehow a bit dull. Feminism without women. Grow a child inside you and push it out of your body and tell me this is a construct. (NB: no one has to have children.) […]
No, what I most didnât and donât like is the erasing of female bodies and female voices and female experience and our ability to name it.
What I care about fundamentally is the right of women to meet in single sex spaces and assert themselves as a class, a sex class â one that is oppressed by a patriarchal system. By men, even sometimes the good ones. As for the bad ones, they are the ones who rape and kill trans folk, too.
Feminism has to be able to talk about bodies. Many of the advances women have made in my lifetime â reproductive rights, more choice over how we give birth, discussions of menstruation and menopause â depend on biology, the biology we were now told was irrelevant.
References
Moore, Suzanne (January 8, 2013). Seeing red: the power of female anger. New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/01/seeing-red-power-female-anger [archive]
Sweeney, Mark (January 14, 2013). The Observer withdraws Julie Burchill column as editor publishes apology. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jan/14/observer-withdraws-julie-burchill-column
Moore, Suzanne (January 9, 2013). I don’t care if you were born a woman or became one. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/09/dont-care-if-born-woman
Moore, Suzanne (March 2, 2020). Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/women-must-have-the-right-to-organise-we-will-not-be-silenced
Editors (March 4, 2020). Letters: Differing perspectives on transgender rights. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/04/differing-perspectives-on-transgender-rights
Kim, Michelle Hyun (March 6, 2020). 200+ feminists sign letter denouncing anti-trans Guardian essay. them https://www.them.us/story/suzanne-moore-guardian-anti-trans
Driscoll, Margarette (November 25, 2020). Suzanne Moore: ‘I was betrayed and bullied for saying that women should not be silenced’. The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/suzanne-moore-betrayed-bullied-saying-women-should-not-silenced/
Moore, Suzanne (November 25, 2020). Why I had to leave The Guardian. UnHerd. https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian/
Massie, Alex (16 November 2020). Suzanne Moore’s departure is a sad day for the Guardian. The Spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/suzanne-moore-s-departure-is-a-sad-day-for-the-guardian
Rolland, Gonzague (February 12, 2021). Suzanne Moore, the disliked ex-witch of the âGuardian.â CTRLZ https://ctrlzmag.com/suzanne-moore-the-disliked-ex-witch-of-the-guardian/
Resources
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Orwell Foundation (orwellfoundation.com)
IMDb (imdb.com)
Will Lloyd is a British journalist who writes for several anti-transgender publications. Lloyd is commissioning editor and writer at New Statesman.
Background
Lloyd earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Bristol in 2015 and an advanced degree from University of Oxford in 2020. Lloyd wrote for The Tab and freelanced before joining UnHerd in 2021. Lloyd joined New Statesman in 2023.
Writing on trans issues
In writing about Jan Morris, Lloyd says:
Asked about the pushback against the trans movement in 2017, an increasingly ancient Morris said our âmoment is messy, but I think more and more people will move to my conditionâ. She believed it was possible that âeveryone has the potential to have both genders in themâ.
Jan Morris was an early adopter of an ideology that has swept across the Western world in the past 30 years. Conundrum has never been out of print. Morrisâs belief â born from the collapse of empire, engineered to replace her imperial faith â that gender is ineffable and innate, are becoming commonplace in institutional settings. When Morris died, one of the leading tributes came from the chief executive of the Tavistock Clinicâs Gender Identity Development Service.
Is this simply fashion? Is this ideology âcronyisticâ as Helen Joyce, and other gender-critical writers have suggested? Some feminists argue that gender-identity ideology will be abandoned âwhen it is no longer in the ascendentâ, the politicians and tech billionaires will junk the pronouns in their emails, biology will reassert itself, and women will no longer have penises.
References
Lloyd, Will (October 19, 2022). Jan Morris: prophet of our gender troubles. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2022/10/the-prophet-of-our-gender-troubles/
Lloyd, Will (February 15, 2023). Hannah Barnes: Inside the collapse of the Tavistock gender clinic. New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2023/02/hannah-barnes-inside-collapse-tavistock-gender-clinic-lgbtq-transgender-nhs
Resources
X/Twitter (x.com)
Substack (substack.com)
UnHerd (unherd.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Malcom Kyeyune is a conservative Swedish writer and anti-transgender activist. Kyeyune has described transgender rights as “gender Lysenkoism.”
Background
Malcom Kyeyune was born on December 19, 1987. Kyeyune is part of the steering council for the conservative think tank Oikos. Kyeyune identifies as a Marxist, but socialist/Marxist colleagues suspended Kyeyune from Sweden’s Young Left party as a result of conflicts within the Left Party.
References
Kyeyune, Malcom (June 24, 2022). The Rise of Gender Lysenkoism. Compact https://compactmag.com/article/the-rise-of-gender-lysenkoism
Resources
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
X/Twitter (x.com)
UnHerd (unherd.com)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)
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.
References
Kearns, Madeleine (October 19, 2017). At university, itâs risky to âcome out’ as Christian. Catholic Herald https://catholicherald.co.uk/at-university-its-risky-to-come-out-as-christian/
Kearns, Madeleine (January 6, 2020). Has trans orthodoxy conquered the world? UnHerd https://unherd.com/2020/01/how-the-trans-orthodoxy-conquered-the-world/
Resources
Madeleine Kearns (madeleinekearns.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
National Review (nationalreview.com)
Independent Women’s Forum (iwf.org)
YouTube (youtube.com)
Instagram (instagram.com)
Spectator World (thespectator.com)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)
Soundcloud (soundcloud.com)
The Compassion Coalition is an anti-transgender group blog. It was actiev from March 2020 to March 2021.
Key people
Resources
Blogspot (blogspot.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
Advocates Protecting Children is an American anti-transgender organization.
Background
The nonprofit was incorporated in 2022 under EIN 87-3081103.
Key people
Resources
Trans Data Library (transdatalibrary.org)
Advocates Protecting Children (advocatesprotectingchildren.org)
Instagram (instagram.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
- advocates-protecting-children-942297224 [deleted]
YouTube (youtube.com)
Guidestar (guidestar.org)