Ellen Pasternack is a British biologist, sex segregationist, science communicator, and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Ellen Pasternack attended University of Oxford, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2016, a master’s degree in 2017, and a doctorate in 2023. Pasternack’s birthing parent’s background is German and Ashkenazi.
Pasternack has written for The Critic, UnHerd, New Statesman, The Specator, The Telegraph, CapX, and Works in Progress.
Anti-transgender activism
Pasternack’s activism around trans people emerged in 2018, when Pasternack was upset that the Oxford University Student Union uninvited Jenni Murray in the wake of Murray’s 2017 anti-trans column, “Be trans, be proud — but don’t call yourself a “real woman.”
In 2022 Fiona MacKenzie, Louise Perry, Olivia Robey, and Pasternack joined forces for The OH Research Ltd d/b/a The Other Half, a UK nonprofit researching “practical, workable policy in the interests of women.”
References
Pasternack, Ellen (May 5, 2022). You can’t be born in the wrong body. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2022/05/you-cant-be-born-in-the-wrong-body/
Pasternack, Ellen (May 3, 2023). Here’s why human sex is binary. UnHerd https://unherd.com/thepost/heres-why-human-sex-is-binary/
Pasternack, Ellen (June 14, 2022). Being ‘intersex’ isn’t that common. https://unherd.com/thepost/is-the-trans-lobby-manipulating-science/
Wheater, Emily; Pasternack, Ellen (November 2020). Transitioning to a medical scandal. The Critic https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2020/transitioning-to-a-medical-scandal/
Pasternack, Ellen (22 September, 2021). “No debate” no longer an option. The Critic https://thecritic.co.uk/no-debate-no-longer-an-option/
Pasternack, Ellen (November 2020). Written evidence submitted by Ms Ellen Pasternack (GRA1406) https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/17525/pdf/
Pasternack, Ellen (February 28, 2023). The uncomfortable truths of Hag feminism. The New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2023/02/uncomfortable-truths-hag-feminism
Resources
Weebly (weebly.com)
Substack (substack.com)
The Other Half (theotherhalf.uk)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Medium (medium.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Douglas Murray is a conservative British author and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Douglas Kear Murray was born July 16, 1979 in London. Murray graduated from Oxford. In 2006 Murray wrote a book defending neoconservatism. Murray was director of Centre for Social Cohesion, but conflicts about their anti-immigration and anti-Islamist stances forced the organization to merge into the Henry Jackson Society after Murray left.
Murray has written for most major anti-trans publications, including The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, UnHerd, and the New York Post. In February 2022, Murray became a Fox News contributor. Murray is a fellow at the National Review Institute.
Anti-transgender activism
Murray identifies as gay and aligns with the faction of anti-trans queer conservatives.
Murray has said that it is a lie that a man can become a woman. In September 2020, during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Murray compared accepting trans people to “late-empire sign of things falling apart”. Murray believes there is no such thing as non-binary gender.
Murray’s 2019 book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity has a section called Trans. Murray believes that identity politics are a threat to Western civilization.
References
Murray, Douglas (November 22, 2019). Has trans activism gone too far? UnHerd https://unherd.com/2019/11/has-trans-activism-gone-too-far/
Murray, Douglas (November 22, 2019). Can we ever be woke enough for the trans extremists? New York Post https://nypost.com/2022/07/14/can-we-ever-be-woke-enough-for-the-trans-extremists/
Murray, Douglas (May 26, 2021). How Stonewall sacrificed gay rights. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-stonewall-sacrificed-gay-rights/
Murray, Douglas (October 22, 2021). How Stonewall was exposed. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/10/how-stonewall-was-exposed/
Murray, Douglas (June 16, 2022 ). Trans surgery for children is not a ‘right’ to be fought for. New York Post https://nypost.com/2022/06/16/trans-surgery-for-children-is-not-a-right-to-be-fought-for/
Murray, Douglas (May 7, 2021). Publishing is now a Left-wing bubble. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/05/publishing-is-now-a-leftist-bubble/
Dori, Roni (July 29, 2021). Douglas Murray: ‘What I Mind Is the Lie That a Man Can Become a Woman’. Haaretz https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-07-29/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/what-i-mind-is-the-lie-that-a-man-can-become-a-woman/0000017f-e3f4-d568-ad7f-f3ff39520000
January, Brianna (September 18, 2020). Joe Rogan and guest discuss whether trans people are a sign of “the end of America”. Media Matters for America https://www.mediamatters.org/joe-rogan-experience/joe-rogan-and-guest-discuss-whether-trans-people-are-sign-end-america
Reynolds, Daniel (September 17, 2019). Right-Wing U.K. Writer Epically Schooled for Misgendering Sam Smith. The Advocate https://www.advocate.com/people/2019/9/17/right-wing-uk-writer-epically-schooled-misgendering-sam-smith
Media
Michael Shermer -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWjugMlQ_54
Lawrence Krauss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKNzcX-6vYs
Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster of Triggernometry -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1FxfJr6Bik
Jesse Watters – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6megJ0FbpU
Rita Panahi – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-kXxCotNXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRePOQqWKmk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYR4QvOuAP8
John Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntX0xWvjGrI
Peter Tatchell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtoHDp3LpzQ
Brian Rose / London Real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0tMT76EgNk
Rod Liddle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3nLx_sAgE0
Alex J. O’Connor Cosmic Skeptic -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCtBUvFL-QQ
Resources
Douglas Murray (douglasmurray.net)
Gatestone Institute (gatestoneinstitute.org)
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
Instagram (instagram.com)
The Spectator (spectator.co.uk)
The Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk)
UnHerd (unherd.com)
Suzanne Moore is a British writer, sex segregationist, and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Suzanne Lynn Moore was born on July 17, 1958 in Ipswich, Suffolk. Moore graduated Northgate Grammar School for Girls. Moore attended Middlesex University London (the Middlesex Poly) starting in 1982. Moore left the PhD program for work as a cultural critic at Marxism Today and the New Statesman. Moore has written for The Independent, The Mail on Sunday, The Guardian, and The Telegraph. Moore won the 2019 Orwell Prize. Two anthologies of Moore’s work have been published: Looking for Trouble (1991) and Head over Heels (1996).
Moore has three children.
Anti-trans activism
Moore had become notorious for provocative gender critical anti-transgender statements on social media.
In 2013, a piece Moore had written for the 2012 anthology Red was reposted in New Statesman. It included this passage:
The cliché is that female anger is always turned inwards rather than outwards into despair. We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.
After many objected to this, passage, Moore doubled down with a response:
Gender, we thought, was just a performance, a social construct, though no one ever explained why we are compelled to repeat the same performance over and over. I had a baby, which was somehow more than “performative”. Others I knew had sex changes. Or transitioning, as it is now called. Mostly this seemed to be an obsession with secondary sexual characteristics: peeing sitting down if they had been a man, wearing horrible lumberjack shirts and refusing to wash up if they had been a woman. The radical fluidity of gender vaporised. Some trans people appeared to reinforce every gender stereotype going.
Julie Burchill wrote a defense of Moore titled “Transsexuals should cut it out” that called trans women “bed-wetters in bad wigs” and “dicks in chicks’ clothing.” That piece was withdrawn by the editor, who apologized.
Moore continued to make anti-trans comments on social media, occasionally leaving various platforms before returning.
In 2020, after historian Selina Todd spoke at a Woman’s Place UK event, Todd was disinvited from a National Women’s Liberation Conference celebration at Exeter College. In response, Moore published a Guardian column outlining her sex segregationist views:
The radical insight of feminism is that gender is a social construct – that girls and women are not fated to be feminine, that boys and men don’t have to be masculine. But we have gone through the looking-glass and are being told that sex is a construct. […]
The materiality of having a female body may mean rape or it may mean childbirth – but we still seek liberation from gender. In some transgender ideology, we are told the opposite: gender is material and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a category that is a social construction. Thus, sex-based rights, protected in law, can be done away with. […]
Male violence is an issue for women, which is why we want single-sex spaces. Vulnerable women in refuges and prisons must be allowed to live in safe environments – the common enemy here is the patriarchy, remember? How did we arrive at a situation where there are shocking and rising numbers of teenage girls presenting at specialist clinics with gender dysphoria, while some who have transitioned are now regretful and infertile?
More than 200 politicians, journalists, and activists signed a letter denouncing the piece:
“We reject the argument put forward in a column by by Suzanne Moore in which she implies that advocating for trans rights poses a threat to cisgender women. The British Social Attitudes Survey (2017) found that a majority of the British public were supportive of transgender people, with women more likely to be in favour of trans rights than men. Moore’s column does not represent the views of the public, nor is it representative of the views of most women.”
After leaving the Guardian later that year, Moore revealed in UnHerd that Guardian editors had removed other anti-trans statements from pieces prior to publication.
Looking back, I see that by the late Eighties and early Nineties, I had already picked up on something that perturbed me. A denial of female biology, of our ability to name and define our experience. Some of this came from certain strands of postmodern theory where objective reality gives way only to multiple subjectivities. A kind of gender tourism became possible. Everyone could be everything. A new kind of feminism came into being, one in which flesh and blood women and our desires became somehow a bit dull. Feminism without women. Grow a child inside you and push it out of your body and tell me this is a construct. (NB: no one has to have children.) […]
No, what I most didn’t and don’t like is the erasing of female bodies and female voices and female experience and our ability to name it.
What I care about fundamentally is the right of women to meet in single sex spaces and assert themselves as a class, a sex class — one that is oppressed by a patriarchal system. By men, even sometimes the good ones. As for the bad ones, they are the ones who rape and kill trans folk, too.
Feminism has to be able to talk about bodies. Many of the advances women have made in my lifetime — reproductive rights, more choice over how we give birth, discussions of menstruation and menopause — depend on biology, the biology we were now told was irrelevant.
References
Moore, Suzanne (January 8, 2013). Seeing red: the power of female anger. New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/01/seeing-red-power-female-anger [archive]
Sweeney, Mark (January 14, 2013). The Observer withdraws Julie Burchill column as editor publishes apology. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jan/14/observer-withdraws-julie-burchill-column
Moore, Suzanne (January 9, 2013). I don’t care if you were born a woman or became one. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/09/dont-care-if-born-woman
Moore, Suzanne (March 2, 2020). Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/women-must-have-the-right-to-organise-we-will-not-be-silenced
Editors (March 4, 2020). Letters: Differing perspectives on transgender rights. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/04/differing-perspectives-on-transgender-rights
Kim, Michelle Hyun (March 6, 2020). 200+ feminists sign letter denouncing anti-trans Guardian essay. them https://www.them.us/story/suzanne-moore-guardian-anti-trans
Driscoll, Margarette (November 25, 2020). Suzanne Moore: ‘I was betrayed and bullied for saying that women should not be silenced’. The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/suzanne-moore-betrayed-bullied-saying-women-should-not-silenced/
Moore, Suzanne (November 25, 2020). Why I had to leave The Guardian. UnHerd. https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian/
Massie, Alex (16 November 2020). Suzanne Moore’s departure is a sad day for the Guardian. The Spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/suzanne-moore-s-departure-is-a-sad-day-for-the-guardian
Rolland, Gonzague (February 12, 2021). Suzanne Moore, the disliked ex-witch of the “Guardian.” CTRLZ https://ctrlzmag.com/suzanne-moore-the-disliked-ex-witch-of-the-guardian/
Resources
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Orwell Foundation (orwellfoundation.com)
IMDb (imdb.com)
Will Lloyd is a British journalist who writes for several anti-transgender publications. Lloyd is commissioning editor and writer at New Statesman.
Background
Lloyd earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Bristol in 2015 and an advanced degree from University of Oxford in 2020. Lloyd wrote for The Tab and freelanced before joining UnHerd in 2021. Lloyd joined New Statesman in 2023.
Writing on trans issues
In writing about Jan Morris, Lloyd says:
Asked about the pushback against the trans movement in 2017, an increasingly ancient Morris said our “moment is messy, but I think more and more people will move to my condition”. She believed it was possible that “everyone has the potential to have both genders in them”.
Jan Morris was an early adopter of an ideology that has swept across the Western world in the past 30 years. Conundrum has never been out of print. Morris’s belief — born from the collapse of empire, engineered to replace her imperial faith — that gender is ineffable and innate, are becoming commonplace in institutional settings. When Morris died, one of the leading tributes came from the chief executive of the Tavistock Clinic’s Gender Identity Development Service.
Is this simply fashion? Is this ideology “cronyistic” as Helen Joyce, and other gender-critical writers have suggested? Some feminists argue that gender-identity ideology will be abandoned “when it is no longer in the ascendent”, the politicians and tech billionaires will junk the pronouns in their emails, biology will reassert itself, and women will no longer have penises.
References
Lloyd, Will (October 19, 2022). Jan Morris: prophet of our gender troubles. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2022/10/the-prophet-of-our-gender-troubles/
Lloyd, Will (February 15, 2023). Hannah Barnes: Inside the collapse of the Tavistock gender clinic. New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2023/02/hannah-barnes-inside-collapse-tavistock-gender-clinic-lgbtq-transgender-nhs
Resources
X/Twitter (x.com)
Substack (substack.com)
UnHerd (unherd.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Malcom Kyeyune is a conservative Swedish writer and anti-transgender activist. Kyeyune has described transgender rights as “gender Lysenkoism.”
Background
Malcom Kyeyune was born on December 19, 1987. Kyeyune is part of the steering council for the conservative think tank Oikos. Kyeyune identifies as a Marxist, but socialist/Marxist colleagues suspended Kyeyune from Sweden’s Young Left party as a result of conflicts within the Left Party.
References
Kyeyune, Malcom (June 24, 2022). The Rise of Gender Lysenkoism. Compact https://compactmag.com/article/the-rise-of-gender-lysenkoism
Resources
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
X/Twitter (x.com)
UnHerd (unherd.com)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)
The Compassion Coalition is an anti-transgender group blog. It was actiev from March 2020 to March 2021.
Key people
Resources
Blogspot (blogspot.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
Advocates Protecting Children is an American anti-transgender organization.
Background
The nonprofit was incorporated in 2022 under EIN 87-3081103.
Key people
Resources
Trans Data Library (transdatalibrary.org)
Advocates Protecting Children (advocatesprotectingchildren.org)
Instagram (instagram.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
- advocates-protecting-children-942297224 [deleted]
YouTube (youtube.com)
Guidestar (guidestar.org)
John Bickley is a conservative American writer and anti-transgender activist. Bickley is editor of The Daily Wire and co-host of Morning Wire with Georgia Mae Howe.
Background
John Taylor Bickley was born on December 24, 1976 and grew up in Tallahassee, Florida. Bickley graduated from Leon High School.
Bickley earned a master’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and a doctorate from Florida State University. Bickley spent several years teaching college before moving into producing conservative propaganda. Bickley is personally, spiritually, and professionally responsible for The Daily Wire’s sustained attacks on America’s 300,000 trans and gender diverse children and adolescents.
Bickley’s spouse is Danielle “Dani” Su Armstrong Bickley (born 1980). They married in 2011. They have two children.
References
Staff report (Jul 19, 2021). The Daily Wire Enters The Daily Morning News Podcast Race. Inside Radio https://www.insideradio.com/podcastnewsdaily/the-daily-wire-enters-the-daily-morning-news-podcast-race/article_09e46eda-e8b6-11eb-a33b-e35aec9f2203.html
Leonardi, Anthony (July 07, 2020). Ben Shapiro steps down as editor-in-chief in shake-up at Daily Wire. Washington Examiner https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ben-shapiro-steps-down-as-editor-in-chief-in-shakeup-at-daily-wire
Resources
Daily Wire (dailywire.com)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)
IMDb (imdb.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
Instagram (instagram.com)
Jeremy Boreing is a conservative American media executive and anti-transgender activist. He is a founder of conservative news and opinion website The Daily Wire.
Background
Jeremy Danial Boreing was born on February 5, 1979 in Slaton, Texas. After working in local theater, he moved to Los Angeles and produced several film and television projects.
In 2013, Boreing and Ben Shapiro founded conservative media watchdog Truth Revolt. In 2015 Boreing and Shapiro founded The Daily Wire.
Boreing has been involved in conservative networking in the entertainment industry. Boreing has advised PragerU on production, including using animation to avoid use issues around images and video.
After Hershey’s Chocolate included Canadian trans activist Fae Johnstone in a campaign celebrating five women for International Women’s Day, Boreing launched Jeremy’s Chocolate, with wrappers that said HeHim and SheHer.
References
Pritchett, Elizabeth (March 4, 2023). Daily Wire’s Jeremy Boreing offers alternative to Hershey’s after controversial International Women’s Day ad. Fox News https://www.foxnews.com/media/daily-wires-jeremy-boreing-alternative-hersheys-controversial-international-womens-day-ad
Resources
Jeremy Boreing (jeremyboreing.com)
I Hate Hersheys (ihatehersheys.com)
IMDb (imdb.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Daily Wire (dailywire.com)
- Jeremy Boreing [archive]
- https://www.dailywire.com/authors/jeremy-boreing
Michael Knowles is an American writer and anti-transgender extremist.
Background
Michael John Knowles was born March 18, 1990 in Bedford Hills, New York. He grew up in a Catholic family. As a teen he trained at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. After he earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, he acted in Los Angeles.
In 2016, Knowles was invited to join The Daily Wire.
He married Alissa Mahler in 2018 and has two children.
Anti-transgender activism
Knowles opposes marriage equality.
In 2019, Knowles gave a speech at the University of Missouri–Kansas City titled “Men Are Not Women,” which led to protests.
In February 2023, Knowles called for the elimination of the concept of being transgender, arguing that those who identify as transgender are “laboring a delusion, and we need to correct that delusion”. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March, he further stated that “there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism”, and that “for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”
References
Kilander, Gustaf (March 4, 2023). CPAC speaker sparks alarm with call for trans people to be ‘eradicated’. The Independent. [archive] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/cpac-transgenderism-daily-wire-michael-knowles-b2294252.html
Hawkinson, Katie (March 4, 2023). Michael Knowles Says Transgenderism Must Be ‘Eradicated’ at CPAC. The Daily Beast. [archive] https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-knowles-calls-for-eradication-of-transgender-people-at-conservative-political-action-conference
McClure, Kelly (March 4, 2023). CPAC speaker says, “Transgenderism must be eradicated,” while claiming it doesn’t exist. Salon. [archive] https://www.salon.com/2023/03/04/cpac-speaker-says-transgenderism-must-be-eradicated-while-claiming-it-doesnt-exist/
Zoledziowski, Anya (March 6, 2023). CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism,’ Crowd Goes Wild. Vice. [archive] https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjgnq/cpac-transgenderism-speaker-called-for-eradication
Rodriguez, Matthew (March 6, 2023). CPAC Speaker Michael Knowles Says “Transgenderism Must Be Eradicated”. them [archive] https://www.them.us/story/michael-knowles-transgenderism-cpac
Resources
Michael Knowles (michaeljknowles.com)
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
IMDb (imdb.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Instagram (instagram.com)
YouTube (youtube.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)
Daily Wire (dailywire.com)