Arora earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Irvine in 2010, followed by a master’s degrees from New York University in 2014 and Columbia University in 2016.
Arora worked as an editor at India.com, Brown Girl Magazine, and Floor Covering Weekly before taking a role as frontpage editor at Yahoo in 2017, then HuffPost in 2018.
New York Times
From 2018 to 2022 Arora worked at the New York Times. Arora was interviewed by Carolyn Ryan and got a contractor role reviewing headlines for the website. In 2019 Arora raised concerns about bias in pieces about chest binding that cited anti-trans site 4thWaveNow and had biased headlines.
Arora was offered a full-time role in London on the global news desk, returning to New York in 2020 and soon being named a senior staff editor. After the Times published a troubling op-ed by Tom Cotton urging a crackdown on George Floyd protestors, Dean Baquet agreed to a meeting with staffers. That led to formalizing of employee affinity groups, including Times Out, where Arora became a leader. These groups soon felt like extensions of management, though, and they were unable to implement things like bringing Trans Journalists Association in for a presentation. After some Times Out members protested an editorial board piece critical of New York Pride for requesting police not to wear uniforms, Carolyn Ryan sided with management. Tensions reached a head when anti-trans activist Pamela Paul of the New York Times book section hired anti-trans activist Jesse Singal to review anti-trans activist Helen Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality. Arora decided to send an email to Baquet:
I’m reaching out today as a trans non-binary NYT employee who has been deeply hurt by this week, by the actions of my own employer. I want to preface this by saying never before have I walked into a workplace on day one and felt like I belonged. For me, that’s been the magic of this place. Of this institution, of the journalism we do and the values we uphold.
Reviewing this book was absolutely the right call. Picking a cisgender, transphobic person who has a history of denying gender identity is real and who has hurt and defamed transgender journalists was not the right call. As much as transgender issues have come to the forefront in the last few years as people, we’ve always been here. I’m heartened by the progress the Times has made this past year and the renewed efforts towards DEI goals that are backed by action.
It becomes hard to be so invested in our journalism and our coverage when internally our members share the feeling that the Times is not only not as inclusive as it could be, but is actively doing harm to trans, to trans and queer folks inside the building. I don’t know how to defend this place that I love, the people and reporters and editors I love working with when my existence as a trans person feels like it’s up for debate. I’m writing to you because I respect you a lot. I want to make a difference here. I want to know that the Times hears me and sees me as a queer and trans person of color, and is taking my lived experience seriously. There’s a lot more work to be done, but healing the pain that has been caused would require starting with an acknowledgement of our wrongs with a true desire to understand where we’ve made mistakes. Thank you for taking the time to hear me out, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Baquet replied:
I do want the Times to be an inclusive place. It is important to me personally and professionally, but I have to tell you, I disagree with you in this instance. I know Pamela worked hard to find someone to review the book. There was not a long line of people who were willing to do so, to be honest. And for all the criticism of the choice in the building and on social media, I have not seen much criticism of the actual review. There is another very large principle at play here. The editor of the book review has to have tremendous freedom to make choices. Each of us has political views, personal views, and friends who write books. I think she worked tremendously hard to manage all of those issues. Harper I do hope this disagreement doesn’t make you less proud of the place, the place hasn’t changed.
Arora was assigned an audience development role in California. During an interview for a possible role under deputy managing editor Sam Dolnick, publisher A.G. Sulzberger’s cousin, Dolnick said Baquet shared Arora’s email about Singal with the entire masthead.
Arora felt that was the cue to leave, and in 2022, Arora took an editor role at Apple News.
The editorial board (May 18, 2021). A Misstep by the Organizers of Pride.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/opinion/nyc-pride-police-parade.html
Lisa Selin Davis is an American author and “gender critical” activist involved in anti-transgender extremism. Since 2013, Davis has become a key anti-trans voice in American media, part of the movement’s “parental rights” faction. Davis has a gender diverse child and is unaccepting of the child’s interest in gender transition.
Davis’ attacks on the trans rights movement center on several gender critical tactics:
using Davis’ own child to draw sharp distinctions between the “tomboy” identity and other gender diverse youth identities
amplifying outliers and edge cases in controversies to derail broader discussions
Davis claims “there is a dominant narrative about trans kids that the media is promoting.” According to Davis, this alleged narrative is merely “mantras by activists” and based on “feeling over fact.” Davis claims to have concerns about the affirmative model of care and is troubled that fellow anti-trans activists can no longer publish their conservative beliefs without consequence.
Davis claims to be a liberal who is part of the “silenced center.” Davis disavows being part of the gender critical world or the gender affirming world and simply wants to “diversify the media narrative.” So far, Davis’ “viewpoint diversity” efforts have largely been the promotion of extremist clinicians, cultural critics, and activists with similar gender critical beliefs.
Background
Davis was born January 18, 1972. Davis’ parent Peter is a musician who plays in a group called Annie and the Hedonists. Davis’ youth was spent in a Massachusetts suburb with parent Helaine Selin (born 1946), a librarian and author.
Helaine Selin worked at Hampshire College and helped “nepo baby” Davis attend, then graduate in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in film studies. Davis then moved to New York City and lived with sibling Benjamin Lazar Davis, a musician. Davis built props at Nickelodeon for a few years, then earned an MFA in writing from Arizona State University in 2003.
Davis has edited a number of publications and websites, including Upstate House magazine, Senior Planet, KGB Bar, upstater.net, and brownstoner.com. Davis is the author of young adult novels Belly (2005) and Lost Stars (2016). Davis stopped writing in the genre, alleging it was no longer possible to write about characters from other demographic groups. Davis’ non-fiction writing has appeared in several publications, including Grist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, the New York Times, Quillette, and Quartz.
Davis and spouse Alex F. Sherwin live in New York with their two children, Enna and Athena. Davis’ 2020 book Tomboy is dedicated to them.
2013 Parenting article
In 2013, Davis wrote a piece for Parenting just before the magazine closed, titled “My Daughter Wants to be a Boy!” The title was stealth edited in 2017 to “My Daughter Is a Tomboy!” and the article was edited to remove some identifying information. The article was removed from the Parenting.com website in 2018, though the site remains online as part of a 2021 asset transfer from Meredith to Dotdash. The original version describes Davis’ child:
She insisted on being Spiderman for Halloween, and on getting light-up superhero sneakers “like my friend Luca’s” when she needed new shoes. They told us at school that she gravitated toward the boys, and though she is quite small for her age, and not particularly hearty, they told us she could hold her own with the rowdy bunch of them.
And again, I thought, “How great is she?”
Well, okay, 90% of me said that. The other 10% thought, “uh-oh.” As she started to announce in ways both subtle and direct that she’s a boy, and ask me questions like “Why can’t boys have vaginas and girls have penises?” the ratio of heartwarming to heart-sinking has shifted.
Let me say that I don’t hold particularly conventional views about gender or sexuality. There are so many lesbians in my family that I fully expect either or both of my daughters to be gay (though of course I will love and accept them if they turn out to be heterosexual). But there is something about having the only girl who won’t play princess, the only girl in the school who thinks and says she’s a boy, that has shaken me a bit. Dressing like a boy? Cool. Thinking you actually are a boy? Way more complicated. […]
Some of my fears for Enna-as-boy are rooted in reality. It’s a much harder way to move through the world, identifying with the gender you weren’t assigned at birth.
2017 New York Times op-ed
In 2017, Davis wrote an op-ed in the New York Times insisting that their child is not transgender, but instead a “tomboy.” Davis says author Jennifer Finney Boylan gave it the thumbs up, and Davis claims the whole community on Twitter then gave it the thumbs up.
Following its warm reception among conservatives and anti-trans thought leaders, Davis was given a book deal and turned the piece into the 2020 book Tomboy. Despite a book deal and many subsequent writing gigs and media appearances, Davis claims to have been “cancelled” for the op-ed. Davis reportedly met with Chase Strangio and Kate Bornstein about Davis’ “concerns about the dominant narrative” that affirming care benefited gender diverse youth.
Drawing parallels to the response to Jesse Singal’s transphobic 2018 piece in The Atlantic, Davis claims to be part of a group of “left wing” people who meet surreptitiously to plan strategies that undermine affirming care and promote the “Dutch protocol” for gender diverse youth, a gatekeeping model of care sometimes called “watchful waiting.”
2020 book Tomboy
In an expansion of the 2017 op-ed, Davis’ thesis is that masculine girls have recently disappeared from the cultural landscape. This erasure narrative about “tomboys” and lesbians is a major talking point among gender critical and trans-exclusionary separatists.
Cultural criticism
The narrative Davis puts forth is permeated with metaphors of disease and impairment. Davis describes some gender diverse youth as being influenced by peers and having “comorbidities” that should be cured before they are approved for gender affirming health services. Davis has concerns that medical transition is being used “as a panacea for other mental health issues.”
Davis’ binary view about transitioning to “the opposite sex” presents trans rights as a moral dilemma that could harm cisgender people: “Do we want to make decisions that are worse for the majority of people but they benefit a small group?”
Davis has criticized Stanford University School of Medicine psychiatrist Jack Turban for asking the media not to use the term “detransition.” Davis was offended after getting criticized by Turban during an interview request. Davis uses the term “activist” as a thought-terminating pejorative for anyone who does not share similar views, even subject matter experts like Strangio and Turban.
Meanwhile, Davis supports numerous controversial disease models of sex and gender diversity, including Ray Blanchard‘s sex disease “autogynephilia” and Kenneth Zucker‘s diseases like “gender identity disorder” and “gender dysphoria.” Davis has spoken with ex-trans activists like James Shupe and supports conservative trans people such as Aaron Kimberly and Scott Newgent.
2022 Quillette profile of Erica Anderson
Davis complained after The Nation noted that gender critical publication Quillette was deemed transphobic for promoting “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” and other conservative beliefs about gender diverse youth. Davis told fellow anti-trans activist Benjamin Boyce, “I don’t read Quillette, but I know they have a more diverse media narrative around this issue.”
A couple of months later, Davis profiled conservative transgender clinician Erica Anderson in Quillette. Anderson began litigating conservative clinical views about trans and gender diverse youth in the press in 2021. Because USPATH had specifically stated that clinical disputes should be discussed among professionals and not litigated in the lay press, Anderson resigned from USPATH in a move to get more attention for these conservative clinical views from people like Davis.
2022 Newsweek op-ed
In a classic case of false balance and “bothsidesism,” Davis made the case against affirmative care in a Newsweek piece titled “What Both Sides Are Missing About the Science of Gender-Affirming Care.” As usual, one of the best ways to analyze Davis’ bias is via the proportion of text and links. These pieces always start of with a veneer of journalism, then quickly make a case for one position. Unlike the infamous 2018 Atlantic piece by Jesse Singal, at least this one is labeled opinion.
Davis cites 3 neutral sources and 7 sources that reflect expert medical consensus. Davis cites 35 sources that dispute expert medical consensus and support the gender critical view, which could basically be summarized thus: being trans is a rapidly spreading disease that should be monitored and controlled by a state-run healthcare system overseen by conservative clinicians and legislators, where even one bad outcome must be prevented at all costs. Even if the cost is 100 good outcomes. Others with Davis’ cis-centric point of view would add even if the cost is prosecuting the families and doctors who work toward good outcomes.
2022 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed
This piece purports to condemn extremist anti-trans legislators. It also suggests that mainstream medical consensus is the extremism at the other end of the political spectrum. Davis once again praises federal healthcare systems that require children to travel to centralized clinics run by state-funded gatekeepers in hopes of receiving medical care capped by a federal budget. Despite extensive evidence about the drawbacks of such systems for minorities seeking health services, like the US Veteran’s Administration or Canada’s CAMH, Davis is convinced that systems like Sweden’s, or worse, the UK’s will prevent rare cases of regret.
2022 Skeptic special edition
Anti-trans activist Michael Shermer paid other members of the gender critical faction in the skeptic community to present their version of “the debate” about trans people. No trans contributors were invited. Joining Shermer in this attack were Harriet Hall, Carol Tavris, and Davis, whose piece is titled “Trans Matters: An Overview of the Debate, Research, and Policies.” Davis bristles about being lumped in with “conservative, transphobic bigots” and claims support for affirming models of care “is now a test of loyalty” among its supporters.
April 2022 Quillette piece
It was inevitable that Davis would become a regular contributor to Quillette’s steady stream of anti-trans articles. Davis’ efforts continued with a dogwhistle piece about “the encroachment of ideology on medicine by activists” and the “propaganda surrounding medical literature.” While the piece seems to condemn the national deluge of anti-trans legislation criminalizing trans healthcare, Davis’ real point is to claim that the government has gone too far in supporting trans youth. Davis cites several examples gleaned from anti-trans parenting forums.
September 2022 Boston Globe piece
Davis continues to place the same article in any outlet that will take it, in this case repurposing a Substack piece in the Boston Globe, which was then reprinted in the New York Post as “Kid gender guidelines not driven by science.” Davis blames WPATH for bomb threats against trans-affirming children’s hospitals, because they did not publish better Standards of Care. Davis quotes anti-trans allies including Julia Mason of Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine and James Cantor, formerly of CAMH. Davis once again holds up federally controlled conservative gatekeeping as the ideal protocol.
Podcast
Beginning in 2022, Davis began a series of interviews, mostly with conservative and anti-transgender guests.
August 22, 2023: Heterodox Trans People #6: Phil Illy
Davis, Lisa Selin (2013). “My Daughter Wants to be a Boy!” [retitled in 2017 as “My Daughter Is a Tomboy!” and removed in 2018] Parenting http://www.parenting.com/article/tomboy [archive]
Davis, Lisa Selin (April 18, 2017). My Daughter Is Not Transgender. She’s a Tomboy. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/my-daughter-is-not-transgender-shes-a-tomboy.html
Davis, Lisa Selin (December 19, 2021). Tomboys, trans boys and ‘West Side Story.’Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-12-19/tomboys-west-side-story-anybodys-gender-nonconforming-trans-people
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Karen Davis is an American musician and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Davis earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University. In college, Davis became aware of radical feminism an got involved in feminist activism.
From 1992 to 1997 Davis worked as a kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn. Davis has been a working musician and music teacher since 1997. In 2005, Davis teamed up with singer/guitarist Joe Pla to perform classic rock and blues locally.
Davis was raised Catholic and has a sibling who identifies as gay.
Anti-trans activism
Davis is reportedly “fascinated and appalled by the Gender Wars.” Davis was radicalized on reddit via suspended gender critical subreddits.
In 2020 Davis started a YouTube series called “You’re Kiddin’, Right?” The account was later suspended for hate speech.
John Derbyshire is a British-American author, eugenicist, and anti-transgender activist. Derbyshire is a member of the Human Biodiversity Institute, a conservative-run eugenics think tank closely associated with promoting harmful views about trans people, particularly the group’s promotion of the transphobic 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen by HBI member J. Michael Bailey.
Background
John Derbyshire was born on June 3, 1945. Derbyshire attended the Northampton School for Boys and earned a degree from University College London. Derbyshire was a computer programmer for stock market speculators before becoming a full-time writer. Derbyshire’s work has appeared in National Review, The New Criterion, The American Conservative , Unz Review, Taki’s Magazine, VDARE, and The Washington Times.
“Lost in the Male”: review by John Derbyshire [excerpt]
Part Three is the book’s most difficult section, because it deals with the rarest and most puzzling aspect of male effeminacy: According to Bailey, less than one man in 12,000 is transsexual, a condition defined simply by “the desire to become a member of the opposite sex,” whether or not that desire has led to actual surgery. The striking finding here is that there are two quite distinct types of men who wish they were women, distinguished by the choice of erotic object. On the one hand there are “homosexual transsexuals,” who desire masculine men—heterosexual men, for preference—and who dress and behave like women to attract them. And then there is the “autogynephilic transsexual,” a man whose erotic attention is fixed on the idea of himself as a woman.
The strangeness of this latter type is captured nicely in the title of Bailey’s chapter on them: “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies.” An autogynephile is essentially a heterosexual man whose object of desire is an imaginary feminine creature which happens to be himself… or herself, depending on how you look at it. Such a person was usually not effeminate as a child, has likely been married, and does not show typically homosexual preferences in career or entertainment choices. The historian and travel writer Jan (formerly James) Morris, to judge from her autobiographical book Conundrum, belongs to this category. The consummation of sexual desire presents obvious difficulties for the autogynephile. Indeed, it is occasionally fatal: Around 100 American men die every year from “autoerotic asphyxia,” which seems to arise from a conjunction of masochism and autogynephilia—the two conditions are related in some way not well understood.
All of these types—girlish boys, male homosexuals, transsexuals of both types—are of course human beings, who, like the rest of us, must play the best game they can with the cards Nature has dealt them. No decent person would wish to inflict on them any more unhappiness than their mismatched bodies and psyches have already burdened them with. At the same time, there is circumstantial evidence that complete acceptance and equality for all sexual orientations may have antisocial consequences, so that the obloquy aimed at sexual variance by every society prior to our own may have had some stronger foundation than mere blind prejudice. Male homosexuality, in particular, seems to possess some quality of being intrinsically subversive when let loose in long-established institutions, especially male dominated ones. The courts of at least two English kings offer support to this thesis, as does the postwar British Secret Service, and more recently the Roman Catholic priesthood. I should like to see some adventurous sociologist research these outward aspects with as much diligence and humanity as Michael Bailey has applied to his study of the inward ones.
Derbyshire’s positive review (as with Dan Seligman in Forbes) shows why this book will be embraced by conservatives as part of the new “calculated compassion” movement in the face of significant and unstoppable LGBT political advances in the last 30 years. Seems they hope to slow things down at least.
As expected, uber-conservative Derbyshire loves Bailey. In discussing the first two sections, he brings up Bailey’s cloacal extrophy story, his woefully uninformed “homosexual voice” thinking and clueless conjectures on why certain jobs in the gender ghettoes go to gay men.
Then he gets to the part on trans people, which Derbyshire sums up perfectly and exposes the book for what it is. Bailey has been claiming he never called us men, but that’s not how anyone else sees it, whether they’re Derbyshire, yours truly, or other psychologists. Derbyshire also picks up on how Bailey claims there’s a connection between transsexual women and 25 men a year who die from self-strangulation while masturbatingin panties.
The 1 in 12,000 number cited is way off, as Bailey is about to find out. I would estimate several thousand assimilated trans women in the Chicago area alone, and probably five times that many who would fit in Bailey’s definition of anyone seriously thinking about transition. Bailey should be very pleased to see that conservatives like Tammy Bruce and John Derbyshire are taking up Anne Lawrence’s “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies”cliche, which dovetails perfectly with the Man Who Would Be Queen title.
Subsequent commentary (2003)
Derbyshire sees gay people as “intrinsically subversive” when allowed in positions of power (see the Califia-Rice quotation on my “illegal immigrants” page for how those of us who pass get painted as moles and traitors).
Derbyshire’s review came about the same way as Bailey’s Amazon shill reviews, it turns out. A little logrolling. Both were published by National Academies Press: Derbyshire’s Prime Obsession:and Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen both came out in 2003.
The Derb is well-known for anti-gay commentary, and he’s taking us to task for being those “‘transgender’ extremists,” miserable ingrates who just aren’t satisfied with the crumbs from the table.
The homosexual-rights activists are in a period of overshoot. They have banished the old regime of illegality, persecution and blackmail, and a good thing too. Now, however, they are trying to effect radical changes in society, changes which huge numbers of people will not stomach. As I have said before: “Homosexuals would, I believe, be wise to lower the volume, cherish their private lives, withdraw the more contentious litigation, and stop ‘pushing the envelope.’ Envelopes can break.”
There’s also this gem (interesting in light of my business partner Calpernia’s boyfriend Barry, who was gay-bashed on base for months before he was literally beaten to death with a baseball bat):
The extremist-homosexualist lobbies are extremely skilled at this. Just look at the word “gay-bashing.” It ought to mean whacking someone over the head with a baseball bat. What it actually means–is taken to mean by ordinary Americans–is the utterance of anything opposed to the extremist-homosexualist cause. (It was used against me just five minutes ago in an e-mail, because I wondered aloud about diseases specific to male homosexuals.)
And last, before we get to the review, an anecdote about his wacky adventures with Bailey (emphasis mine):
June 12, 2003 blog post
The Man Who Would Be Late
Yes, it’s true: NRODT [archive link] really did assign me to review Michael Bailey’s book about effeminate men. I urge you to do one, or better yet both, of the following: (a) get a subscription to NRODT so you can read my review, or (b) buy Michael’s book. As well as the obvious reasons to buy it (it’s a good book, full of fascinating observations and, so far as I could discern, agenda-free), there is also the fact that Michael, the nicest guy you could ever wish to meet, and a very conscientious researcher, is being vilified by militant trans-gender extremists. Here is an anecdote about the book. It happens that Michael and I share the same publisher. We had adjoining tables at Book Expo America in Los Angeles the other day. The drill is, you get half an hour at a table in a huge hall, where people line up in front of the tables to get a free book (this is a trade show) signed by the author. It’s all timed very precisely by the organizers, as they have a LOT of authors to get through. Well, I was waiting in the green room with my publisher’s publicity lady, to do my signing at 12:30. Michael was scheduled to sign at the same time, but he was late. It got to be 12:15, 12:20, and the publicity lady was getting worried. Derb: “I sure hope he gets here on time. A long line of angry transsexuals doesn’t bear thinking about…” Fortunately Michael showed up with a minute to spare.
More fun with The Derb
From his blog work on the National Review’s The Corner. Links in text added by me.
Derbyshire, John (November 16, 2003). Culture wars: Report from Derb bunker. National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_11_16_corner-archive.asp [archive]
November 16, 2003
CULTURE WARS: REPORT FROM DERB BUNKER [John Derbyshire]
Following the “Derbophobe” link at the end of today’s column, a number of readers have e-mailed in to ask what on earth I have done to tick off this Lynn Conway person so very comprehensively.
It’s a long story but here is the gist of it.
There is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, Michael Bailey. Michael’s research specialty is the psychology of “gender identity.” He studies–in a formal, peer-reviewed academic sense–things like homosexuality, transsexualism, and so on. Earlier this year he published a book about his research, titled The Man Who Would Be Queen. I am slightly acquainted with Michael and his work–we are both members of a certain invitation-only e-list dealing with matters of human variation from biological, psychological and sociological perspectives. I therefore volunteered to review his book for National Review. My review duly appeared in the June 30 issue of NRODT this year. Here it is.
Now, the last part of Michael’s book deals with male transsexuals–men who wish to become women. In it, he subscribes to the theory (which did not originate with him) that there are two quite distinct types of male transsexual. The first type is pretty straightforward, just a particularly effeminate kind of homosexual, who wants to be a woman in order to attract male sex partners–heterosexual ones for preference. The second type, however, is much stranger. This is the “autogynephile”–a masculine, basically heterosexual man, whose erotic attention is fixated on the image of himself as a woman. In the studies Michael (and others) have done, this type appears quite distinct from the other. Autogynephiles, for example, are likely to have been married to normal women and to have fathered children by them. They differ from the other type–the “homosexual transsexual”–in all sorts of other ways, too, that show up clearly in life histories and psychological tests.
Now, this is all psychological theory. It may be wrong–though on the evidence Michael presents, in his book and elsewhere, it seems to this non-specialist that he has a pretty good case. This theory, however, is pure poison to those autogynephiles who, like Lynn Conway, have hadsex-reassignment surgery. They take very strong exception to the implication that they are fundamentally males–and heterosexual males at that! WE ARE WOMEN! They scream. FULLY FEMININE WOMEN! To say that they take strong exception to Michael’s work is, in fact, to understate the situation. They are spitting furious with Bailey, and have launched a huge campaign against him and anyone associated with him.
The scale of their campaign is tremendous. Anyone who ever shook hands with Michael Bailey is being tracked down and “exposed” via materials like those I linked to. This campaign is very well financed and has pulled in some big guns–the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, is carrying out a “hate crimes” investigation. Our publisher has been lobbied ferociously to withdraw Michael’s book (Michael’s publicist, who is also mine, has been a target of their campaign) and Northwestern has also been threatened with various kinds of action if they do not shut Michael’s mouth.
What’s this got to do with me? Well, I gave Michael’s book a friendly review, see, so I must be part of the Axis of Evil. In fact, these lunatics have erected a huge conspiracy theory about myself and Michael, based on the fact that, wait for it, we have the same publisher!!! It follows, you see, that Michael and I meet secretly in a basement somewhere every Friday to plot further insults and outrages against these autogynephiles. I’m not kidding. This stuff is bizarre.
In fact, other than belonging to the same e-list, Michael and I are not acquainted. I have met him just once: his book came out at the same time as mine, and our publisher sent us both to BookExpo in Los Angeles this summer, along with all their other authors whose books had just appeared. Michael does not, in fact, altogether approve of me. He is–as his book clearly shows–sympathetic to people with “gender identity” problems, and regards me as a primitive homophobe. (Imagine! Me!!)
A great many other facts on Lynn Conway’s website are wrong, too. I have never, for example, written a book about yachting, and I have never heard of half the people she names as being part of the great Bailey-Derbyshire conspiracy to present autogynephiles as essentially male.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Lynn Conway is nuts. She and her pals have money, though, and energy, and a big cheering section in the “gay rights” crowd, so I shall probably end up in jail for some kind of “hate crime” before they are through with me.
OK, it’s all a bit of a storm in a teacup. It does illustrate, though, the savagery of the “gender issues” and “gay rights” campaigners. These people are pure totalitarians, intent on shutting up and destroying anyone who goes against their party line–even someone as generally sympathetic as Bailey. They are absolutely unscrupulous, very well funded, and have powerful friends in Congress and the judiciary–it is they who are driving this new “hate crimes” legislation.
As an opinion journalist, I am fair game, and I can take care of myself. Michael, though, is a scientist, a “retired and uncourtly scholar,” quite unused to this kind of vituperation and misrepresentation. His work ought to be validated, or disproved, via the usual processes of discussion and peer review.
Lynn Conway and her gang couldn’t care less about any of that. Like the rest of the “gay rights” and “gender issues” crowd, they want to shut down all discussion and debate. Fundamentally they are extreme narcissists, who react with blind unreasoning fury when their precious self-esteem is pricked. They don’t want peer review; they don’t want science; they don’t want discussion; they want blood. This is real culture war here, and if we lose it, we shall lose our freedoms.
November 17, 2003
TRANSSEXUALS VS. BAILEY-DERB AXIS OF EVIL [John Derbyshire]
Many readers have expressed great interest in the flap ove Michael Bailey’s book, which I sketched out in a long Corner post yesterday. Michael Bailey himself has set up a site to give his account of the affair. You can, by the way, read Michael’s book free on the web–there is a link somewhere in that site.
TRANSSEXUALS VS. DERB [John Derbyshire]
A reader (one of several expressing the same sentiment): “Why do you play along with this person’s [i.e. Lynn Conway’s, the male-to-female transsexual who put up that ‘Derbophobe’ web site] pathology by calling him a “she”? As a woman, I can tell you one thing for sure: He is not a woman, just a poor, deluded amputee.”
In my opinion, this is not an easy call. You can make a polemical point–and, if the offending theory is true, be technically correct–by referring to Lynn Conway as “he.” I think my own preference for “she” just derives from a strong, old-fashioned attachment to good manners.
Now, you could argue that, given the vituperation heaped on my head by Lynn Conway, she has forfeited any right to good manners on my part. I just don’t agree. If she considers herself a woman, and has gone to all the pain and expense of having an operation to make her feel more like a woman, I think common courtesy dictates that we call her what she wishes to be called, however deluded we may think she is. To start referring to her as “he” just seems a bit spiteful and nyah-nyah-ish, even if technically correct. Perhaps I’m not making a good case here; perhaps I’m not sure about this; but that is kind of the point. When in doubt, stick with good manners.
This is related, in some way I can’t be bothered to figure out, to the question of whether to pronounce your enemy’s name properly. I used to work with a woman who was perfectly detestable–everyone detested her, she was a sneak and a suck-up, incompetent and lazy, but highly skilled at ingratiating herself with management. Her name was “Diane,” which in England is pronounced “die-AN.” Well, she had this big thing about how she wanted everyone to say “DEE-an.” Naturally we all referred to her as “die-AN.” Now, twenty years on, with the sage maturity of my years, I think I would have said “DEE-an,” while working very hard indeed to get her fired.
[By the way, “Derbyshire” is pronounced “DAH-bi-shuh.” That’s “DAH-bi-shuh”–everybody got that?] Posted at 02:31 PM
Eugenics
Derbyshire has been reading the work of his eugenicist friends like J. Michael Bailey:
Now, the trend in current research on homosexuality, if I have understood it correctly, suggests that the homosexual orientation is indeed mostly congenital — the result of events in the mother’s womb, or in early infancy, with perhaps some slight genetic predisposition. The thing is, in short, mainly biochemical — part of a person’s physical make-up.
Supposing this is true, let us conduct a wee thought experiment — admittedly a fanciful one. A young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, or carrying a small infant, shows up at her doctor’s office. “Doctor,” she asks, “is there some kind of test you can do to tell me if my child is likely to become a homosexual adult?” The doctor says yes, there is. “And,” the woman continues, “suppose the test is positive — would that be something we can fix? I mean, is there some sort of medical, or genetic, or biochemical intervention we can do at this stage, to prevent that happening?” The doctor says yes, there is. “How much does the test cost? And supposing it’s positive, how much does the fix cost?” The doctor says $50, and $500. The woman takes out her checkbook.
Of course this is not happening anywhere in the U.S.A. right now. If my understanding of the state of current research is correct, however, it might very well be happening on a daily basis ten years from now.
Byers, Dylan (April 7, 2012). National Review fires John Derbyshire.Politico https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/04/national-review-fires-john-derbyshire-119887
Derbyshire, John (April 05, 2012). The Talk: Nonblack Version http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire/ [archive]
Derbyshire, John (November 16, 2003). Culture wars: Report from Derb bunker. National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_11_16_corner-archive.asp [archive]
Derbyshire, John (June 12, 2003). The Man Who Would Be Late. National Review http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_06_08_corner-archive.asp [archive]
Derbyshire, John June 30, 2003. Lost in the Male. National Review, pp. 51-52. https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/lost-in-the-male/
Conway, Lynn (2003). Who is John Derbyshire? by Lynn Conway http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Derbyshire/Who-is-JD.html
Conway, Lynn (2003). Full text and commentary by Lynn Conway http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Derbyshire/DerbyshireReview.html
Vaush is the stage name of Ian Kochinski, and American media personality supportive of trans and gender diverse people.
Background
Kochinski was born on February 14, 1994 in Los Angeles and grew up in Beverly Hills. Kochinski earned a bachelor’s degree from Humboldt State University in 2018.
Kochinski became known for debating conservative people and conspiracy theorists, including Stefan Molyneux, Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), Tomas Bogardus, and Debra Soh.
Lesbian and Gay News was an anti-transgender publocation in operation from February 2021 to March 2023.
Background
Merrywell London Ltd. and BM Payments Services Limited
Many readers will know that LGN came into being as a result of its editor, David Bridle, who is also the owner of Boyz magazine, tweeting a request that asked people to give LGB Alliance a fair hearing before coming to a judgement about them.
“The censorious groupthink of a LGBTQIA+ mindset has closed down wider discussion and investigation. It has closed down much responsible lesbian and gay current affairs and commentary. But now we hope Lesbian and Gay News will help resurrect that journalism.”
“The constituency of GC LGB activists is still small, and there was no way we were going to be able to flourish unless LGB Alliance kept us in the loop, continued to actively promote us, and regularly provided us with information and material to publish relating to their activities and planned activities. As time progressed, it became clear that we were overwhelmingly being kept at arm’s length – notwithstanding some tokenistic gestures that fell far short of what we needed.”
People
The following people had bylines or were cited or reprinted in LGN:
“Mia Hughes” (November 21, 2021). A guide to peaking the woke. https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/11/a-guide-to-peaking-the-woke-by-an-lgn-reader-most-people-have-no-idea-of-the-harm-that-lies-beneath-the-rainbow-flags-and-the-seemingly-innocuous-mantras/
(March 27, 2022). Announcement from the LGN Management Team: Lesbian and Gay News is closing https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2022/03/announcement-from-the-lgn-management-team-lesbian-and-gay-news-is-closing/
Resources
Lesbian and Gay News (lesbianandgaynews.com) [archive]
Chaya Raichik is an American conservative activist who created the Libs of TikTok social media accounts. Raichik frequently targets transgender and gender diverse people and their supporters. The project’s avatar is the transgender symbol styled in TikTok logo colors.
Raichik reposts social media posts made by others, often with commentary, which typically inspires followers to abuse and harass those Raichik has featured.
Since Raichik began targeting upcoming drag and pride events, anti-transgender protesters have been showing up at these events, requiring the presence of police and additional security.
Since Raichik began targeting Jewish and Christian youth camps with inclusive policies for all children, staff had to take steps to ensure security.
Since Raichik began targeting medical professionals who support transgender and gender diverse youth, death threats and bomb threats have been called in to children’s hospitals and clinics that help trans youth. Some hospitals have switched to telemedicine appointments to protect children and their families.
Libs of TikTok is sometimes styled Libs of Tik Tok and abbreviated LoTT or LTT. It has become a primary pipeline for anti-liberal and anti-progressive content, similar to other anti-transgender “drama” platforms like Blocked and Reported and The Matt Walsh Show. Content that generates enough outrage then gets featured on mainstream conservative outlets hosted by people like Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson.
Several people are named Chaya Raichik, including an author and a homemaker. In Chabad-Lubavitch communities, Raichik is a common surname and Chaya is a common given name. Please do not contact anyone with this name directly.
Background
Chaya Mushka Raichik (Hebrew: חיה מושקא רייצ’יק) was born in ~1989.
Parent Rabbi Yaakov Raichik, aka Yankee Raichik, is a Los Angeles-based chaplain in the California Department of Corrections.
Chaya Raichik worked in New York as a licensed real estate investor at Evergreen Realty / ERNY LLC in Brooklyn (listed as Chaya Raichek). Raichik created what became the Libs of TikTok Twitter account in November 2020.
Soon after, Raichik claimed to have participated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Photographic evidence appears to place Raichik trespassing on restricted Capitol ground, standing on the plaza steps among others prosecuted for insurrection.
Raichik’s New York real estate license expired in February 2021. Raichik reportedly moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles since becoming an anti-transgender activist.
Twitter timeline
Raichik was not a heavy social media poster before Twitter. Raichik’s account was inspired by and supported by other conservative accounts, some of which have since been suspended:
Liberal_Ls [suspended]
johnny_commie [suspended]
_callmeriss [suspended]
consoftiktok [suspended]
BidenLs
basedtiktok
Accounts Raichik has mentioned are almost all conservative media figures and include:
Year in review: Libs of Tik Tok top 3 highlights of 2021: 1. Contributed to the removal of FIVE bad teachers from schools ?? 2. Four shoutouts (plus a dm) from Joe Rogan ? 3. Got fact checked by Snopes on a sarcastic tweet ?
In 2022, software developer Travis Brown revealed that the Twitter account used for Libs of TikTok had used the screen names @shaya69830552, then @shaya_ray. Raichik used @chayaraichik until late February 2021, and that name appears on the libsoftiktok.us domain registration.
According to the Washington Post, Raichik claimed to have attended the January 6 protests:
In January 2021, Raichik started talking about traveling to D.C. to support Trumpon Jan. 6 at the Stop the Steal rally. When violence broke out at the Capitol that day, she tweeted a play-by-play account claiming to be on the ground. “They were rubber bullets from law enforcement. 1 hit right next to me,” she said. She posted videos from the crowd and spoke of tear gas being deployed nearby. After saying she left the riot, she used Twitter to downplay the event, claiming that it was peaceful compared to a “BLM protest.”
Began posting “a lot about the LGBTQIABCD… community” specifically targeting trans and nonbinary people
Raichik credits Joe Rogan with helping the account grow after he began promoting the channel in June 2021
Began targeting teachers supportive of LGBTQ rights
Began calling people supportive of LGBTQ youth “groomers”
Began attacking drag events, especially those with young people present or participating
Began attacking specific medical professionals, their employers, and their facilities.
In April 2022, Raichik said, “Whenever we have a big victory through my account, like a crazy groomer teacher being fired, it really fires me up a lot.”
The next day, The Washington Post profiled the site and confirmed Raichik’s name. Raichik announced a monetizing plan via Substack:
Substack has become the platform of choice for “hate actors,” said Center for Countering Digital Hate CEO Ahmed, because the company and its leaders fail to enforce the rules and guidelines that it sets to keep the platform safe.
That week, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon announced that he had personally made a deal with Raichik “that will turn her heroic, high-risk work into a career.”
Bans and suspensions
TikTok account
permanently banned in March 2022
Twitter account
temporarily suspended on April 13, 2022 for promoting “violence, threats or harassment against others based on their sexual orientation or other factors such as race or gender,” reinstated
temporarily suspended on August 27, 2022, for “hateful conduct,” reinstated
Instagram account
automatically suspended on May 27 for multiple copyright complaints, reinstated
Facebook account
suspended on August 17 for one day “in error,” reinstated
Attacks on Jewish children’s camps
In 2022, Raichik began a “social media offensive” against Camp Ramah for their gender-inclusive policy. Camp Ramah is a network of summer overnight camps and day camps affiliated with Conservative Judaism. Camp leadership responded, “We are in contact with our security partners out of an abundance of caution.”
Attacks on Christian children’s camps
In 2022, Raichik posted an attack on Camp Akita, a nondenominational Christian camp in Ohio, for its gender-inclusive policies. The camp is affiliated with First Community Church, part of The United Church of Christ and The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Staffers have not responded publicly to the attack.
Attacks on drag and pride events
Raichik frequently posts about scheduled events featuring drag performers at libraries and other public locations, as well as drag performances at restaurants and entertainment venues. In several instances, the events were then protested, disrupted, or cancelled outright due to potential violence.
Attacks on children’s hospitals
Raichik began targeting Boston Children’s Hospital, an early innovator in trans health services for young people. Threats quickly followed:
According to VICE and other mainstream media outlets, doctors and other hospital staff are now receiving death threats. The Hospital confirmed that they are receiving a “large volume of hostile internet activity, phone calls and harassing emails including threats of violence toward our clinicians and staff.”
Raichik, Matt Walsh, Chris Rufo, and other anti-trans activists immediately began dismissing the threats to this and other targeted hospitals as fake news.
On September 15, the FBI announced the first arrest in connection to the threats. Catherine Leavy, a 37-year-old from Westfield, Massachusetts admitted that calling Boston Children’s Hospital on August 30, 2022, and made the threat, “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital. You better evacuate everybody. You sickos.” Leavey made over 200 contributions to conservative causes since 2016, including former President Trump’s Campaign, MAGA PACs and other Republican campaigns.
FBI Boston Special-Agent-in-Charge Joseph Bonavolonta said:
In recent months, Boston Children’s Hospital has been the subject of sustained harassment related to the airing of grievances pertaining to services they provide to gender-diverse and transgender individuals and their families. This has caused a huge amount of angst, alarm and unnecessary expenditure of limited law enforcement resources. Specifically, the hospital has received dozens of hoax threats, including harassing phone calls and emails, individual death threats and threats of mass-casualty attacks. This behavior is nothing short of reprehensible, and it needs to stop now. The real victims in this case are the hospital’s patients. Children with rare diseases, complex conditions and those seeking emergency care who had to divert to other hospitals because of these hoax threats. Threatening the life of anyone who seeks any type of health service is a heinous act and will not be tolerated.
Following the success of these attacks, Raichik began targeting other children’s hospitals and providers.
In 2022, Raichik appeared on Tucker Carlson Today and revealed that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis offered Raichik the guest house at the Governor’s mansion in response to Raichik’s self-outing in public public posts. New Twitter owner Elon Musk began reinstating anti-trans accounts and liking Raichik’s transphobic posts, adding to the surge in transphobic content on Twitter.
In 2024, Taylor Lorenz reported that Raichik was using “anti-woke” job board RedBalloon to hire an investigative journalist.
References
Lorenz, Taylor (November 1, 2024). LibsofTikTok is hiring an investigative journalist to launder her hate campaigns.User Mag https://www.usermag.co/p/libsoftiktok-is-hiring-an-investigative?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3238&post_id=150807866&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1mn67&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Staff report (December 12, 2022). The artificial growth of hate speech. Chuds of TikTok https://chudsoftiktok.substack.com/p/the-artificial-growth-of-hate-speech
“Libs of TikTok is a popular anti-LGBTQ+ twitter account operated by former real estate agent Chaya Raichik. The account, which has over 1.3 million followers as of August 2022, attempts to generate outrage and stoke anti-LGBTQ+ hostility by reposting selected out-of-context social media content created by LGBTQ+ people and liberals. The individuals, events and organizations targeted by the account are frequent targets of harassment, threats and violence.”
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Jennifer Krohn is an American artist, sex segregationist, and anti-transgender activist. Krohn is the unaccepting parent of a gender diverse child. Krohn is a co-founder of Partners for Ethical Care (PEC), an American anti-transgender front group. Krohn and spouse Cyrus Krohn are part of the “parental rights” faction of anti-transgender activists.
Krohn is also an opponent of allowing trans athletes in sex-segregated competitive sport.
Background
Jennifer Lynn Comer Krohn was born in February 1969. Krohn earned a bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University. Krohn was a graphic designer at Michael Courtney Design and Ilium Associates before leaving to raise a family. Krohn is married to tech entrepreneur and political operative Cyrus Krohn (born 1970), and they have three children.
After volunteering to teach art at their children’s child’s school, Krohn began teaching art classes in Issaquah, Washington at Jennifer’s Artistical Garage.
Anti-transgender activism
Krohn became upset when their fifth-grade child began using a different name and they/them pronouns at school before Krohn knew about it.
After the school alerted Krohn that the child had mentioned self-harm in a conversation, the school counselor
“kind of sold to me the idea of using this ‘special therapist’ that was contracted with the school. Because she was under 13, I had to come in and talk to this therapist and give her written permission. At 13, I might not have even known she was seeing this therapist. At 13 in our state, children can get their own mental health without a parent’s consent or knowledge.”
Krohn’s child had ten weekly sessions. In early 2020 the therapist called and “used male pronouns for my daughter” and let Krohn know that they were going to have a family therapy session in three days. “We decided not to have the meeting with the therapist.”
Krohn’s child was also friends with many LGBTQ+ classmates, which Krohn believes “was the source of a lot of her issues.” After Krohn’s child reportedly threatened suicide again, Krohn took all of the child’s devices away.
The final straw was a school camp where Krohn’s child was given the option of staying in the boys’ cabin. Krohn claims this forced the child to say yes. Krohn kept the child from the camp and took the child out of school soon after.
Now without devices, friends, and classmates, Krohn claims the child “desisted.”
Krohn co-founded Partners for Ethical Care to assist other unsupportive parents. “It’s like we have gone to war together. That’s what it feels like. This is like a war on our families.”
