Caroline Farrow is a British writer and anti-transgender extremist.
Background
Farrow attended Brentwood School, Essex and New Hall School in Chelmsford, Essex.
Farrow worked as an accountant before working as an airline flight crew member. In 2010 Farrow began a pro-Catholic blog. Farrow has served as campaign director for the far-right lobby group CitizenGo.
Farrow is married to a priest named Robin and has five children. They live in Ash, Surrey.
Anti-transgender activism
Farrow posted on anti-trans site Kiwi Farms as Caroline Farrow, without a pseudonym, which was very unusual. After Farrow made a number of transphobic comments during a debate with Susie Green on Good Morning Britain, an investigation was opened. Farrow complained about being investigated on a 2019 Quillette podcast hosted by Toby Young.
In 2022 Farrow was arrested at home after many years of harassing, doxxing, and misgendering Stephanie Hayden. Surrey Police said:
“On Monday, 3 October, officers attended an address in the Guildford area as part of an investigation into allegations of malicious communications (sending of indecent, grossly offensive messages, threats, or information) and harassment. A 48-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of both offences. A number of electronic devices were seized as potential evidence from this address under section 19 of PACE. Where an offence is alleged to have been committed on an electronic device, for example, it may hold a key piece of evidence and may routinely be seized during an investigation. The woman was taken to Guildford police station where she was interviewed. She has now been released under investigation and inquiries remain ongoing.”
In October 2023, Farrow announced that CPS were not proceeding with prosecution because “the evidential test has not been met.”
Dennis Prager is a conservative writer and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Dennis Mark Prager was born on August 2, 1948 in Brooklyn to Max and Hilda (Friedfeld) Prager. Prager has a sibling Kenneth.
Prager attended Yeshiva of Flatbush and earned a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College in 1970. Prager then took graduate courses but did not complete further degrees.
Prager was recruited by a British Jewish group to interview Jewish people in the Soviet Union, then toured speaking about the findings. From 1976 to 1983 Prager ran the Brandeis-Bardin Institute.
In 1982 Prager began a religious talk show and began writing more about antisemitism. Prager became known for criticism of narcissism and secularism. Prager has been married three times.
In the 1990s Prager began working to forge alliances between conservative Jews and Conservative Christians. Since 1999 Prager has hosted the nationally syndicated radio talk show The Dennis Prager Show.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2009, Prager and producer Allen Estrin started PragerU, which creates five-minute videos promoting conservative views.
Ben Shapiro is a conservative American writer and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Benjamin Aaron “Ben” Shapiro was born January 15, 1984 in Los Angeles, California. Shapiro’s parent Cynthia Block Shapiro (born 1956) has worked as an executive coach, and parent David Jay Shapiro (born 1956) has been a writer and musician. David Shapiro has also written under the pseudonym “William Bigelow” and possibly “Hank Berrien,” often puff pieces praising child Ben.
Ben Shapiro studied classical violin as a child. Shapiro has a sibling named Leah and another sibling Abigail, a singer known as Classically Abby.
Shapiro used the online handle frumfiddle in college at UCLA, while earning a bachelor’s degree awarded in 2004. Shapiro was hired by Creators Syndicate at 17 to become America’s youngest nationally syndicated columnist, publishing the first of many subsequent books that year.
Shapiro earned a law degree from Harvard in 2007. Shapiro worked at Goodwin Procter LLP before setting up Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting in Los Angeles.
Ben Shapiro married Israeli physician Mor Toledano Shapiro (born 1988) in 2008. They have four children.
In 2012, Shapiro became editor of Breitbart News, resigning in 2016. In 2012, Shapiro also began work as a radio host.
In 2013, Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing co-founded conservative media watchdog TruthRevolt, which continued until 2018. In 2015, they founded Daily Wire and the podcast The Ben Shapiro Show. In 2020, Shapiro became editor emeritus of Daily Wire.
Shapiro frequently appears in the media and on campuses, usually making provocative statements in hopes of getting a response.
Anti-LGBTQ activism
Shapiro considers sex and gender minorities mentally ill and sinful. Shapiro does not think they should be able to marry or adopt.
Shapiro has said trans people should not be allowed to own guns, and Shapiro believes transgender youth are caused by “social contagion” or “crap parenting.”
In 2020, YouTube took down two anti-trans videos featuring Candace Owens for violating their policy on hate speech, wherein being transgender was likened to schizophrenia and disease.
Anti-trans content
DETRANS: The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care (October 25, 2023)
Nina Power is a British philosopher and anti-transgender activist from the movement’s gender critical faction. Power is a sex segregationist who promotes the unfounded conspiracy theory that transgender people are “erasing” lesbians and tomboys.
Background
Power was born around 1980 and attended University of Warwick, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Power then earned a doctorate from Middlesex University.
Power’s book The One-Dimensional Woman (2009) examines pornography, consumer capitalism, and the ideology of “women’s work.” In the 2021 book What Do Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Discontents, Powers proposes the term heterosociality “to appeal for a new appreciation of sexual difference based not on conflict, antipathy and commodification, but on friendship, trust and mutual respect between the sexes.”
Power hosts the podcast The Lack with political theorist Benjamin Studebaker and filmmaker Helen Rollins.
Walsh goes further than his dumb-beardy act, pinning various medical and psychological practitioners on why they think it’s a good idea to give children an osteoporosis-causing drug also used in chemical castration. Their answers are terrifying: Children will know when they’re ready; children know best; the drugs are reversible (they are not). Nobody, in fact, knows the long-term effect of giving young people (or adults) cross-sex hormones. What we do know isn’t good; they don’t reduce negative thoughts in the gender-dysphoric children who take them, for example.
On the erasure of “tomboys,” Power says:
Today, the boyish girl is in danger of being told she was “born in the wrong body,” and whisked off to a gender clinic to begin the journey from puberty blockers to breast removal to reproductive surgery and, ultimately, infertility. Setting children on this path—one that many regret—is an obvious, grotesque harm.
Power has been critical of Nicola Sturgeon, Dylan Mulvaney, and that shining example of the failures of federally centralized “gender clinics,” the Tavistock.
References
Power, Nina (June 14, 2022). Trans Barbarism.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/trans-barbarism
Power, Nina (January 24, 2023). The Trans War on Tomboys.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/the-trans-war-on-tomboys [references photo from ~1991n when she was 10 or 11]
Power, Nina (February 16, 2023). Nicola Sturgeon’s Trans Folly.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/nicola-sturgeon-s-trans-folly
Power, Nina (March, 2023). Welcome to TERF Island.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/welcome-to-terf-island
Michael Shermer is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Shermer has devoted considerable space for anti-trans views in the publication Skeptic and on the podcast The Michael Shermer Show.
Background
Michael Brant Shermer was born September 8, 1954 in Los Angeles, California.
Shermer earned a bachelor’s degree form Pepperdine in 1976 and a master’s degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton in 1978. Shermer got involved in competitive cycling during this time.
Shermer earned a doctorate from Claremont Graduate University in 1991. Shermer helped found the Skeptics Society in 1991. Shermer has taught at Glendale Community College, Occidental College, and Chapman University.
For 18 years Shermer was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. Shermer has been dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct since 2013. Shermer has produced and appeared in a number of television shows about science and pseudoscience.
Shermer, Michael (November 14, 2024). Postmortem 2024. Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/postmortem-2024
Shermer, Michael (March 14, 2024). Death by Theory.Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/death-by-theory
Shermer, Michael (June 11, 2024). What’s It Like to Be Trans? [letter from a conservative transmedicalist] Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/whats-it-like-to-be-trans
Shermer, Michael (July 8, 2022). What is a Woman, Anyway?Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman-anyway
Shermer, Michael (December 9, 2021). Trans Athletes and Conflicting Rights.Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/trans-athletes-and-conflicting-rights
Loury, Glenn (April 25, 2023). Does “T” Belong with “LGB”?-https://glennloury.substack.com/p/does-t-belong-with-lgb
Jennifer Finney Boylan is an American author, professor, and activist. Boylan has written several memoirs and novels and has frequently appeared in the media to discuss trans issues.
Notable work involving gender and media includes:
The memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003)
Giving the thumbs up to an anti-trans article by Lisa Selin Davis (2017)
Signing the Harper’s letter with J.K. Rowling and dozens of other anti-trans activists, later withdrawn (2020)
Background
Boylan was born June 22, 1958.
Boylan graduated from Wesleyan University in 1980, then completed graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. Boylan was a professor at Colby College from 1988 to 2014, then took an appointment at Barnard. Several of Boylan’s early books were published prior to beginning transition in 2000. Boylan wrote an opinion column for the New York Times from 2007 to 2022 among other writing.
In 1988 Boylan married Deirdre Finney Boylan (born 1960). They have two children, Sean (born 1996), and Zaira (born 1994) who is also trans.
Boylan served on the board of GLAAD and has held other roles at organizations benefiting sex and gender minorities. Boylan has appeared on Oprah and the Caitlyn Jenner reality show I Am Cait.
Anti-drag factionalism
Boylan was a key figure with Christina Kahrl in the 2014 transbian attacks led by Parker Molloy that were critical of drag artists and the offensive language some of them use. This strain of respectability politics reached a boiling point when the three of them combined their ongoing anti-drag and anti-slur crusades to extract an apology from RuPaul and RuPaul’s Drag Race for a transphobic segment that was ultimately pulled. They bragged about taking over GLAAD, an organization built by the entire community that had previously helped settle intra-community disputes out of the public eye. In a mutually beneficial piece of logrolling, Boylan told Molloy:
“This is, to coin a phrase, not your father’s GLAAD, and this is not the work that was being done a decade ago. One reason why I think we’ve been able to make a little progress is that GLAAD is now largely run by trans people. We occupy positions from staff to volunteers to the board of directors, including its national co-chair, which is me. These are our lives we are talking about; the people demeaned by incidents like this one are the men and women who work here. And other cis staff members have been working for trans rights for years and years now. I am proud of the board and staff for their passion.”
Even after being presented with extensive evidence of Parker Molloy’s abuse and slurs toward other trans people, Boylan remained one of Molloy’s staunchest supporters. In exchange, Molloy would write publicity pieces for Boylan and launder them through Advocate.com until being suspended and ultimately resigning.
2020 Harper’s Letter
Boylan was a signatory on the 2020 “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” in Harper’s Magazine. That open letter was criticized for the high percentage of “gender critical” people in the media, most notably anti-trans extremist J.K. Rowling. Boylan had been in awe of Rowling to the point that in 2010 Boylan created a children’s fantasy series called Falcon Quinn that shared remarkable similarities with Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise.
Boylan asked to be taken off the Harper’s Letter, claiming ignorance of the other signatories, while trans economist Deirdre McCloskey remained a signatory.
Books
Remind Me to Murder You Later (1988)
The Planets (1991)
The Constellations: A Novel (1994)
Getting In (1998)
She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003)
I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir (2008)
Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror (2010)
Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor (2011)
Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders (2013)
Foreword fo Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community (2014)
James, Andrea (July 24, 2014). The GLAAD Board’s “Tranny” Trouble: How Its Trans Takeover Is Reshaping LGBT Politics. Queerty https://www.queerty.com/the-glaad-boards-tranny-trouble-how-its-trans-takeover-is-reshaping-lgbt-politics-20140724 [archive]
Molloy, Parker Marie (March 29, 2014). Logo, RuPaul’s Drag Race Respond to Antitrans Slurs. Advocate.com https://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/03/29/logo-rupauls-drag-race-respond-antitrans-slurs
J.K. Rowling is a British author and the most prominent anti-transgender activist in the world. Rowling has used wealth and influence to cause tremendous harm to the trans rights movement worldwide, and particularly in the United Kingdom.
opposing legal recognition on the basis of gender identity and expression
opposing value-neutral and inclusive scientific language about human anatomy and body functions
supporting the “LGB erasure” conspiracy theory, particularly the conspiracy that gender-affirming care is “conversion therapy” on lesbian, gay, and bisexual minors
opposing those who note Rowling is transphobic or a TERF, often threatening legal action against those who do
opposing what Rowling calls the “new trans activism”
Background
Joanne “Jo” Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England. Rowling’s parents both served in the British Navy before marrying. Rowling has a younger sibling Dianne. Rowling earned a bachelor’s degree from Exeter in 1987.
Rowling came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series in 1990. After holding several unfulfilling jobs, Rowling moved to Portugal to teach English. There, Rowling met journalist Jorge Arantes, and they married in 1992. They had a child Jessica in 1993, but Rowling left because the relationship was abusive. They divorced in 1995. Rowling earned a teaching certificate in 1996 and began teaching.
The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997. Since publication of the final book in 2007, the series has amassed a huge fandom for the franchise, including movie series, plays, video games, amusement park tie-ins, and extensive merchandizing. Rowling is one of the most successful authors in the history of publishing.
In 2001 Rowling married physician Neil Murray and purchased Killiechassie House, a Scottish estate. They have two children: David (born 2003) and Mackenzie (born 2005).
Rowling subsequently wrote additional children’s books and adult novels, including some under the pen name Robert Galbraith.
Anti-transgender activism
After a series of increasingly anti-transgender statements starting in 2019 with a tweet in support of anti-trans activist Maya Forstater. In 2022 Rowling came out against the proposed Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. As Rowling’s anti-trans views became more strident, Rowling began openly supporting anti-transgender extremists in the UK and beyond.
Rowling also created Beira’s Place, a privately funded trans-exclusionary help center for cisgender women who have experienced sexual assault or domestic violence. Rowling was enraged that other local resources offered help to trans people who had been sexually assaulted. Rowling was also enraged that the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre’s CEO Mridul Wadhwa is transgender. In a 2021 interview, Wadhwa said “this is about who has power and who doesn’t,” adding:
Sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well. And so, you know, it is not discerning crime. But these spaces are also for you. But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices, because how can you heal from trauma and build a new relationship with your trauma, because you can’t forget, and you can’t go back to life before traumatic incident or traumatic incidents. And some of us never, ever had a life before traumatic incidents. But if you have to reframe your trauma, I think it is important as part of that reframing, having a more positive relationship with it, where it becomes a story that empowers you and allows you to go and do other more beautiful things with your life, you also have to rethink your relationship with prejudice. Otherwise, you can’t really, in my view, recover from trauma and I think that’s a very important message that I am often discussing with my colleagues that in various places.
2024 comments on Nazi persecution of trans people (2024)
On March 13, 2024, X user jaytuberr posted in a thread on trans healthcare, “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?” Rowling then responded, “How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?” Many people interpreted Rowling’s post as denial of the 1933 Nazi looting and burning of Magnus Hirschfeld’s clinical books and research on trans people and sexual minorities. Rowling stated in part: “I’m familiar with such activists’ assertions that transgender people have been uniquely persecuted and oppressed throughout history, but claims that trans people were ‘the first targets’ of the Nazis – a claim I refuted on X, and which led to these accusations – and that I ‘uphold [Nazi] ideology around gender’ is a new low.”
Critics
Rowling’s critics include numerous LGBT rights organizations, authors, actors who have appeared in filmed versions of Rowling’s books, and the vast majority of the trans community.
Thorpe, Vanessa (14 June 2020). JK Rowling: from magic to the heart of a Twitter storm. The Observer. Archived from the original on 4 July 2020. Retrieved 6 July 2020. Arrayed on Rowling’s side are some of the veteran voices of feminism, including the radical Julie Bindel, who spoke out in support this weekend: “Her political position is nothing to do with transgender issues. She has always been a feminist and she has inspired generations of young women and men to look into issues of sex-based discrimination,” she told the Observer.
JK Rowling backs protest over Scottish gender bill. BBC News. 6 October 2022. Retrieved 28 December 2022. Author JK Rowling has supported a protest rally by wearing a T-shirt calling Scotland’s first minister a “destroyer of women’s rights”.
Schwirblat, Tatiana; Freberg, Karen; Freberg, Laura (2022). Chapter 21: Cancel culture: a career vulture amongst influencers on social media. In Lipschultz, Jeremy Harris; Freberg, Karen; Luttrell, Regina (eds.). The Emerald Handbook of Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Media. Emerald Publishing Limited. doi:10.1108/978-1-80071-597-420221021
Trisha Posner is an American writer and anti-transgender activist who also publishes under the name Patricia Posner.
Anti-transgender activism is a family business; spouse Gerald Posner is also involved in the anti-transgender movement.
Background
Patricia Denise Levene was born in London on March 10, 1951 and grew up in Islington, doing some dance training at the Aida Foster Theatre School before dropping out of Arts and Media School Islington.
After coming to New York City in 1978 and working as an artist, hotel manager, and employee at the Swedish recording label SWS, Trisha Poser married Gerald Posner after they met on a blind date. They soon began collaborating on books. Posner’s website states:
I conduct every interview with him, sift through thousands of pages of original documents in government and private archives, and work on early drafts of manuscripts.
In a profile for Florida International University’s Artspeak, Posner reiterated this work as a researcher to the authors: “On those projects, she conducted every interview with him, sifted through thousands of pages of original documents in government and private archives, and worked on the early drafts of manuscripts.”
In the late 1990s Posner started a monthly column about developments in women’s health.
This is Not Your Mother’s Menopause: One Qoman’s Natural Journey through Change (2000)
No Hormones, No Fear: A Natural Journey Through Menopause (2007)
The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story (2017)
In 2010, Gerald Posner was revealed to be a serial plagiarist, which was attributed to “a flawed research methodology.”
The Posners own Area 51 Consulting LLC. They are also officers of the non-profit Antisemitism Watch, Inc., a Florida Domestic Non-Profit Corporation filed on November 22, 2022. Miami DJ Oren Nizri is also an officer.
Anti-transgender activism
Posner was offended during cancer treatment when when a healthcare provider described the condition as chest cancer. Even though Posner is well-versed in the historic dangers of attacking a persecuted minority, Posner jumped into anti-transgender activism with zeal, offering up a version of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that cisngender women are being “erased” by transgender people.
Posner claimed that friends were also afraid of expressing outrage about inclusive medical terms that encompass all people with the same disease:
you’re called a Republican for whatever reason that is, or [you’re called] transphobic. Then, of course, you had JK Rowling, who really stood up to everybody, and they canceled her. But then for me, there wasn’t much to cancel. So then I looked at the UK Health Project, and they had a woman with a man sitting next to her – pregnant man – it just seemed all a bit bonkers to me.
Posner, Patricia (May 9, 2022). When did “woman” become a dirty word?Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/woman-become-dirty-word-transgender-gender-fluid-nonbinary-lgbtqia-sogie-supreme-court-leak-dobbs-roe-wade-birthing-person-medicine-11652124897