The Westminster Declaration is a 2023 open letter signed by many key anti-transgender extremists.
They claim to be a group of “free speech champions” who oppose the “censorship industrial complex.”
Background
According to an October 2023 announcement about the letter by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Andrew Lowenthal, Leighton Woodhouse, amd Alex Gutentag, “In March of this year, two of us, Matt and Michael, testified to Congress about the existence of a Censorship Industrial Complex comprised of government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and Big Tech companies working together to suppress disfavored views and disfavored people.”
According to their website, “This declaration was the result of an initial meeting of free speech champions from around the world who met in Westminster, London, at the end of June 2023.”
Originally billed as a podcast about “dumb internet garbage” or “internet nonsense,” in 2024 it was rebranded as about “internet controversies.”
The show frequently features episodes about trans and gender diverse people the hosts want to “cancel.”
Background
Blocked and Reported was founded in 2020 under the auspices of Permabanned Media LLC.
Their original logo was by a follower.They later got a less amateurish logo by Shannon Loys.
Orbiters and employees
In 2022 they engaged the services of two sociopathic trolls from another “drama” site called rdrama.net, a group banned from reddit for trolling who started a rival drama forum. They create hoaxes and memes to ratchet up online drama, which Blocked and Reported can then cover. Singal and Herzog seem unconcerned about the ethics of this practice.
One troll named Jack Despain Zhou uses the online handles Jackal, TraceWoodgrains, and Tracingwoodgrains. This person’s involvement is explained on their site using a homophobic and antisemitic meme:
Original homophobic and antisemitic cartoon by “A. Wyatt Mann” (left), repurposed and published by Singal and Herzog (right) on Blocked and Reported (2022) [enlarge]
The other troll uses the handle LexerLux and interacts with commenters.
As another example of how these Blocked and Reported employees reflect the low-empathy personalities of Singal and Herzog, within hours of the incident, “LexerLux” was posting hoaxes about the murders of six people at a Christian school in Tennessee.
“LexerLux” hoax posted the day of the 2023 Nashville school shooting
The podcast’s “one of the good ones” branding was perfected by Herzog’s former employer Dan Savage in the 1990s. They like to pretend they are edgy “lefty” iconoclasts who aren’t bothered by slurs and hoaxes, but these kinds of “pickme” people are invariably thin-skinned and histrionic about progressive neologisms as well as how others describe them.
Episodes have included a number of conservative, ex-trans, and anti-trans guests and guest hosts. Others have not publicly discussed their views on trans people.
On reddit, the r/BlockedAndReported subreddit is one of the few remaining anti-trans hate subreddits. They feature a tag specifically for Trans Issues and frequently disparage and mock trans people in the news.
Because so many of the members were involved in other anti-trans subreddits that have already been banned, moderators have had to set strict rules about how transphobic users contribute: “Any trans-related threads that are not DIRECTLY related to a topic discussed on the pod will be removed. However, feel free to post any other trans topics in the Weekly Discussion Thread.” This rule was later amended:
Trans Topics
Threads around trans topics are subject to removal at the arbitrary discretion of the mods. This sub is not meant to be a replacement for r/GenderCritical! Because of the overzealous reddit policies around this subject, discussions around this topic can put the sub at risk (even when there is nothing genuinely objectionable) and so any such threads will be monitored carefully, and possibly removed or locked if the mods deem it necessary.
Moderators include:
“SoftandChewy” (subreddit creator)
“ShaykItOff”
“Blanderama”
Related subreddits
In addition to r/IntellectualDarkWeb, the reddit algorithm for related communities showed that users frequently monitored the three top trans-supportive subreddits:
r/transgender
r/asktransgender
r/trans
The data visualization below shows the ideological overlap with other subreddits:
workmanswhistle (April 30, 2022). BAR getting some heat for LOTT hoax. reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/ufi6hi/bar_getting_some_heat_for_lott_hoax/ [archive]
blahblahblahblah8 (September 13, 2022). Finally, an accurate and fair-minded assessment of the pod and its sociopathic researcher. reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/xdo0vc/finally_an_accurate_and_fairminded_assessment_of/ [archive] [repost]
“Tish Still” and “STILLTish” are pen names of Tish Naughton, a British anti-transgender activist. Naughton is an unaccepting parent of a transgender child.
Background
Patricia “Tish” Naughton identifies as “a proud radical feminist mum” who is “spreading awareness about the impact of gender ideology on women’s rights.”
Naughton identified in UnHerd as “the mother of a son who identifies as part of the transgender community.”
In a 2023 post, Naughton claimed: “My son doesn’t ask for pronouns, he answers to his birth name and has not asked for it to be changed. He hasn’t, unlike some, demanded we take his pictures down. He has not left home.”
support for anti-trans activist Allison Bailey “[in] the name of parents whose Gay Offspring are once again believing they are #BornWrong thanks to all the teaching materials supplied by Stonewall or with their endorsement.” (2021)
a petition titled Beyond WPATH attacking WPATH (2022)
an open letter fo United Nations commissioners supporting anti-trans activist Reem Alsalem’s criticisms of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill (2022)
an open letter to Liz Truss and Boris Johnson claiming a Truss letter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission “undermines” EHRC’s upcoming guidance on single-sex services (2022)
an open letter by Sex Matters supporting anti-transgender activist Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls (2023)
an open letter critical of a Maternity Gender Inclusion Programme for midwives with information on trans people who give birth (2023)
Naughton, Tish et al. (June 2, 2019). Trans ideology is damaging children.The Times https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/trans-ideology-is-damaging-children-k5nlhwmc8?region=global
Media Matters for America (MMFA) is an American progressive media watchdog nonprofit that monitors and reports on media issues. Their coverage of trans topics has been consistently fair and accurate. MMFA has also hired trans contributors, including Ari Drennen and Parker Molloy.
Background
MMFA was founded in 2004 by political strategist David Brock. Early funding came from progressive donors.MMFA publishes daily research analyzing television, radio, print, and online outlets.
The organization gained national attention for aggressive monitoring of cable news personalities and talk radio. MMFA expanded its research staff and built a rapid-response model designed to publish fact-checks within hours of controversial broadcasts.
In 2010, MMFA broadened its focus to include social media misinformation and launched new digital platforms to track viral content and online narratives. In 2011, MMFA helped establish the American Bridge 21st Century political action committee. In 2016, MMFA intensified its monitoring of online disinformation during the U.S. presidential election. By 2020, MMFA created specialized teams focused on social media platforms. In 2022, MMFA expanded research into streaming platforms and podcast networks.
Over time, MMFA evolved from a traditional media watchdog into a digital research group focused on the modern information environment.
The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) campaigns against diversity and inclusion movements, with a focus on gender and race.
Its members and leadership include key figures in the modern global anti-transgender movement.
note: for the media watchdog founded in 1986, see FAIR.
Background
FAIR was founded in 2021 by Bion Bartning, who was upset that teachers had introduced Bartning’s children to concepts associated with postmodernism, critical race theory, and intersectionality.
FAIR later expanded its mission to attack the rights of sex and gender minorities, primarily through its division FAIR in Medicine.
FAIR’s anti-transgender positions
FAIR claims schools are teaching children “to reject biology and to accept and reinforce gender norms and stereotypes.” They claim this is confusing children into thinking they are trans or gender diverse and “can lead some to consider serious and irreversible medical interventions.”
They also support the “parental rights” faction of anti-trans activists, saying “educators should inform families when a child is experiencing confusion or dysphoria around gender at school,” even if the educators know this may have negative consequences for the child.
While they claim to support “all sides of a clinical debate” about gender affirming care, their main goal is to support an activist minority within pediatrics and psychology who want to restrict or ban care for trans people under age 26. They do this through promoting the ex-transgender movement.
In 2023, the Archives of Sexual Behavior (ASB) published the latest in its 50 years of academic attacks on trans and gender diverse youth. The paper promoted “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” a new anti-trans disease developed, workshopped, and promoted by anti-trans activists. The first author is “Suzanna Diaz,” a fake name used by Monica Hegmann of Parents of ROGD Kids, an anti-transgender front group for unsupportive parents of trans and gender-diverse children. The second author is anti-trans psychologist J. Michael Bailey. The paper was retracted by the publisher, and an open letter called for the removal of ASB’s editor, sexologist Kenneth Zucker.
Andrew Doyle is a British writer and anti-transgender activist who created the Titania McGrath character, a satire of social justice warriors.
Background
Doyle was born in Derry, Northern Ireland and grew up Catholic. Doyle cearned a bachelor’s degree at Aberystwyth University, a master’s degree at University of York, and a doctorate from University of Oxford.
Doyle co-wrote satiric news reporter Jonathan Pie and has published two books as Titania McGrath: Woke: A Guide to Social Justice (2019) and My First Little Book of Intersectional Activism (2020).
Doyle joined GB News in 2021 as host of Free Speech Nation.
Anti-trans activism
UnHerd published an overview of Doyle’s anti-transgender views, which center on the “gay erasure” conspiracy theory that claims trans people are a plot to eliminate gay people like Doyle:
certain Left-leaning activists are doing their utmost to advance a social constructionist view of both sex and gender. The result has been a curious theoretical alliance between gender ideologues — for whom outmoded stereotypes are taken to signify an authentic self — and traditionalists who similarly feel that male and female behaviour ought to be strictly defined.
[…]
In her new book Time to Think, Hannah Barnes has revealed that between 80-90% of adolescents who were referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic were same-sex attracted. Other writers, such as Helen Joyce, have already drawn on studies that confirm a strong correlation between gender non-conformity in youth and homosexuality in adult life. Members of the staff at the Tavistock itself joked that soon “there would be no gay people left” and whistle-blowers revealed that homophobia was endemic.
[…]
It is significant that activists who insist that stereotypes of male and female behaviour are suggestive of an innate “gender identity” should also seek to deny the reality of sexual dimorphism. The view that sex is a “spectrum” has even infiltrated major academic literature, including the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
The End of Woke
In 2025, Doyle published The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution. Doyle discusses the anti-trans movement and takes issue with accusations of misogyny:
Linda Blade is a Canadian athlete, coach, and anti-transgender extremist. Blade considers transgender athletes “almost an existential threat to our sport.”
Background
Linda Blade was born on May 26, 1962 in Bolivia. Blade and spouse moved to Nigeria in the 1990s. They returned to Canada after they had a child.
Blade competed in track and field. Blade earned a doctorate from Simon Fraser University in 1994. In 1997, Blade began work as a sports performance coach.
In 2014, Blade was elected as president of the board for Athletics Alberta and was involved in shaping Canadian sport policy. Blade is president of the Edmonton Track Council, and is responsible for overseeing athletics programs across Alberta, including at Kinsmen Field House.
Anti-transgender activism
Blade is a frequent collaborator with Raine McLeod of AB Radical Feminists.
According to a 2021 report by The Canadian Anti-Hate Network, “Blade’s staff bio at the Royal Glenora Club, an Edmonton-based private fitness and social club, describes her ‘struggle to preserve sports for biological females’ as ‘the hill I am prepared to die on.’”
Blade and Barbara Kay wrote the 2021 book Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport.
Blade is involved in anti-trans organization Independent Council on Women’s Sports and maintains anti-trans website N=8. According to Blade, this equation “denotes the number of male born runners it took to change the rules of sport for ALL female athletes in the world across ALL sports.”
Blade was announced as a speaker at a 2023 anti-trans conference by Genspect.
Bill Maher is an American comedian and anti-transgender activist. Maher is a key historical figure in the “reactionary centrist” faction of anti-trans extremists.
Background
William “Bill” Maher was born on January 20, 1956 in New York City. Maher earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1978 and began a comedy career in 1979.
Maher hosted the panel show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher on Comedy Central from 1993 to 1997 and on ABC from 1997 to 2002. In 2003 Maher began hosting the weekly show Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO.
Anti-trans activism
Maher hosts Real Time with Bill Maher, a political talk show on HBO that has platformed many anti-trans figures over the course of the series. Maher has had a far smaller number of trans-supportive guests and only a few trans and gender diverse guests.
Maher also hosts Club Random with Bill Maher, a podcast that has also consistently platformed anti-trans guests.
Molly Jong-Fast (May 26, 2022). Bill Maher Isn’t a Liberal Anymore.The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/05/bill-maher-anti-lgbtq-transgender-comments/676673/
The Critic is a British anti-transgender group blog and a top global English-language platform for anti-transgender extremism.
Background
The Critic was founded in November 2019 financier Jeremy Hosking, previous financial to Standpoint. Standpoint’s editorial board rejected Hosking’s demand to focus on “anti-woke” and “culture war” content. Hosking named as editors Christopher Montgomery and former Standpoint editor Michael Mosbacher.
Contributors
Contributors and guests spreading anti-trans content include:
Smith, Victoria (March 27, 2024). He’s not the messiah, he’s a transwoman.The Critic https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2024/hes-not-the-messiah-hes-a-transwoman/
Helen Lewis is a British author and anti-transgender activist who launders gender critical extremism into mainstream media, particularly at The Atlantic. Lewis is one of the key importers of British anti-trans views into United States media. Lewis is a key media figure from the reactionary center publishing anti-trans writing.
Lewis is a sex segregationist who claims to be writing from a feminist and leftist viewpoint. Lewis demonstrates that anti-trans sentiment extends into every political point of view and movement.
Lewis’ anti-trans views center around:
Challenging legal recognition of trans people in systems developed on the basis of sex, particularly opposing the UK’s Gender Recognition Act
Maintaining systems of sex segregation, particularly in matters of law, public accommodation, prisons, sports, and other remaining sex-segregated institutions
Maintaining the strict gatekeeping of trans healthcare via government control, developed under nationalized heath systems (so-called “gender clinics”) in the 20th century
Maintaining medico-juridical control over trans and gender diverse people though disease models and medical requirements for legal recognition (sterilization requirements, etc.)
Maintaining non-affirming models of care for gender diverse youth, developed last century for “the prevention of transsexualism” and now widely outlawed
Promoting anti-trans government reports created as pretexts to restrict or ban gender-affirming care for minors, including the Cass Review and the 2025 Trump HHS report.
Lewis frequently promotes and collaborates with other anti-trans activists, notably Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog of the podcast Blocked and Reported. Lewis is their most frequent guest.
Background
Helen Alexandra Lewis was born on September 30, 1983, grew up Catholic in Worcester, and attended St Mary’s School there. Lewis then read English at St Peter’s College, Oxford, followed by a journalism degree from City University London. Lewis no longer identifies as Catholic.
After graduating, Lewis worked at the Daily Mail, then joined the New Statesman in 2010. Lewis married designer and creative director Matthew “Matt” Hasteley in 2010 and wrote professionally as Helen Lewis-Hasteley from 2010 until their divorce in 2013. During the marriage, Lewis met and got involved with someone else, eventually leaving the marriage. Like many gender-critical public figures, this starter marriage seems to have had a significant impact on Lewis’ views about sex and gender.
Lewis married Guardian digital editor Jonathan Haynes in 2015. In 2019 Lewis joined the staff of The Atlantic, which has never had an out trans person listed on their masthead in its 160+ years of existence. In 2020 game developer Ubisoft removed Lewis’ voice from in-game audio in Watch Dogs: Legion due to transphobic views.
Anti-trans activism
In 2013, Lewis devoted a week at the New Statesman to trans issues, inviting trans-supportive authors to publish pieces. By late 2015, Lewis began writing increasingly frequent anti-trans pieces there.
2017 Times op-ed
Lewis has been critical of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act, claiming that what used to be called the “real life test” that lasts for two years should be required for anyone to be legally recognized as their gender. In a piece for The Times titled “A man can’t just say he has turned into a woman,” Lewis wrote:
What the government proposes is a radical rewriting of our understanding of identity: now it’s a question of an internal essence — a soul, if you will. Being a woman or a man is now entirely in your head. In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a women’s changing room? That’s why feminists have raised the alarm over the move to self-identification, along with some older trans people who fear that “trendsters” will erode the goodwill they have worked hard to acquire.
Removal from Watch Dogs: Legion
By 2018, Lewis’ anti-trans views were so well-known that Lewis was removed as a featured voice in the game Watch Dogs: Legion. This “cancellation” caused Lewis to start making even more strident and frequent attacks on trans people.
2018 New Statesman op-ed
While writing for The New Statesman, Lewis was accused of laundering transphobic talking points into a major media outlet around the topics of sex segregation and trans healthcare for youth.
Want to talk about how letting people self-define their gender might affect female-only spaces such as prisons and changing rooms? Then you’re a bigot, cloaking your bigotry in the language of “legitimate concerns”. Want to discuss whether we are rushing to medicalise gender non-conforming children because they and their desperate parents have been sold the idea there is a universal “fix” for their profound, genuine unhappiness? These are yet more “legitimate concerns” that can be dismissed, even as medical professionals warn that not every gender non-conforming child will benefit from puberty blockers and (later) medical transition.
We should all be in favour of the right of transgender people to live their lives free of discrimination, harassment and abuse. […] But the right of someone who has been through male puberty, with the consequences for skeleton and muscle development that brings, to compete in women’s sports that depend on raw strength? That’s more difficult. […]
Our ideas about gender are undergoing a profound shift. I hope that they will end up in a place where a boy can wear a princess dress without people assuming he is “really” a girl.
2018 GQ interview of Jordan Peterson
In September 2018, Lewis interviewed fellow anti-trans activist Jordan Peterson for GQ. It quickly turned into a tense but civil debate that went viral. One of the few times they agree in the 90-minute conversation is on what Lewis calls “transgender issues.” At about 1:09.45, Lewis’s views overlap significantly with Peterson’s anti-trans viewpoints. Lewis repeats the unsupported generalization that “transgender activists” believe they have a “female soul.” Lewis also believes “We are very quick to diagnose and treat children in a way that I find – and not waiting for the research – and that I find concerning.”
The Atlantic
In July 2019, Lewis joined anti-trans publication The Atlantic as a staff writer and began writing anti-trans pieces even more frequently.
Steinfeld, J. (2020). Not my turf: Helen Lewis argues that vitriol around the trans debate means only extreme voices are being heard. Index on Censorship, 49(1), 34–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306422020917609
Lewis, Helen (2025). The Genius Myth: A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea. Thesis, ISBN 979-8217178582
Lewis, Helen (2021). Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. Vintage, ISBN 978-1784709730 alternatively titled Difficult Women: An Imperfect History of Feminism
Lewis, Helen [presenter] (2021). The Spark: 11 Ideas to Change the World. BBC Audio, ASIN B091FTHY11
with Emily Oster, Hilary Cottam, Paul Krugman, Roy Baumeister, Margaret Heffernan, Stuart Russell, Peter Macfadyen, Pragya Agarwal, Paul Collier and John Kay, Kiran Gill, Chris Daw
Lewis, Helen (December 8, 2023). The Left Can’t Afford to Go Mad.The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-biden-democratic-left-opposition/676141/
Lewis, Helen (February 27, 2022). The Twitching Generation.The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/social-media-illness-teen-girls/622916/
Lewis, Helen (26 October 2021). In Defense of Saying ‘Pregnant Women.’The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/pregnant-women-people-feminism-language/620468/ [headline stealth edited to Why I’ll Keep Saying ‘Pregnant Women’]
Lewis, Helen (March 16, 2021). The Identity Hoaxers.The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/03/krug-carrillo-dolezal-social-munchausen-syndrome/618289/
Lewis, Helen (July 2020). Why Millennial Harry Potter Fans Reject JK Rowling. [stealth edited to How J. K. Rowling Became Voldemort] The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/07/why-millennial-harry-potter-fans-reject-jk-rowling/613870/
Lewis, Helen (February 27, 2020). Feminism’s Purity Wars.The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/02/feminism-mens-rights-activism-cancel-culture/607057/
