Wemple’s opinion piece is a case study in how anti-trans journalists misunderstand and misrepresent trans and gender diverse minorities in their coverage, and how attitudes like Wemple’s keep trans journalists out of mainstream legacy media.
Background
Erik Wemple joined the Washington Post in 2011 and was a media critic there in 2023. See the main Erik Wemple page for additional biographical background.
Unlike the Times, the Post has generally limited anti-trans pieces like Wemple’s to the Opinion section. As an example, in 2022 the Post published an opinion piece by conservative therapists Laura Edwards-Leeper and Erica Anderson promoting their beliefs that “gender dysphoria” is a legitimate disease and that therapists like them should get paid to control who gets access to trans health services, not physicians.
Despite a few small issues like deadnaming, Post reporter Sara Solovitch covered this controversy fairly well in 2018. Solovitch centered the piece on a trans teen and spoke with Diane Ehrensaft, Joshua Safer, and Stephen Rosenthal, who represent the medical consensus, with Anderson as the conservative holdout.
2023 Post editorial
This section is being written.
The piece leads off with two tweets Wemple considers alarmist for their phrasing:
“jeopardizing trans folksâ lives” [quoting Minton 2023]
“genocide” [quoting Bond 2023]
In a great example of cis journalist groupthink, A.G. Sulzberger used the same journalistic and rhetorical tactic to lead off in the CJR:
Jones, Imara (July 17, 2023). S02E05: Capturing The New York Times. The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality https://translash.org/transcript-capturing-the-new-york-times/
Doyle, Jude Allison S. (February 27, 2023). What went wrong at the New York Times? Xtra https://xtramagazine.com/power/what-went-wrong-at-the-new-york-times-246409
Sulzberger, A.G. (April 4, 2022). 2022 State of The Times Remarks.New York Times Company https://www.nytco.com/press/2022-state-of-the-times-remarks/
Razib Khan is a Bangladeshi-American writer and anti-transgender activist. Khan comes to anti-trans “sex science” via “race science” and is best known for laundering extremist views about race into mainstream media.
Khan hopes to usher in the “second age of eugenics” through genetic screening and manipulation to increase “good” traits and eliminate “bad” traits. Many of Khan’s like-minded colleagues consider being trans and gender diverse to be undesirable traits to be eliminated from the gene pool.
Newamul K. “Razib” Khan was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1977. Khan’s family moved to the US in 1982. Khan lived in upstate New York as a child before the family moved to Oregon.
Khan earned two bachelor’s degrees from University of Oregon in 2000 and 2006. While there, Khan wrote a blog called Razib’s Rants, which later became Gene Expression. Following graduate work at UC Davis, Khan was a software engineer before receiving money from Ron Unz to write about hereditarian and eugenic topics.
Cussins, Jessica (June 26, 2014). Quantified and Analyzed, Before the First Breath. Center for Genetics and Society https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/quantified-and-analyzed-first-breath
Khan, Razib (June 18, 2008). Curing the Gay.Unz Review https://www.unz.com/gnxp/curing-the-gay/
Helen Pluckrose is a British writer and anti-transgender activist. Pluckrose was editor of anti-trans group blog Areomagazine from 2018 to 2021.
Pluckrose is critical of postmodernism and cultural constructivism. While claiming to take a centrist position that is generally trans-supportive, Pluckrose has espoused many anti-transgender views.
Background
Pluckrose was born in August 1974. Pluckrose earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of East London and a master’s degree from Queen Mary University of London.
Pluckrose was a social care worker from age 17 to 34.
In 2017 Pluckrose, Peter Boghossian, and James A. Lindsay carried out the “grievance studies” affair, where they submitted 20 hoax papers to academic journals in hopes of getting them published. One recommended that people challenge their transphobia by inserting sex toys into their anuses.
Pluckrose was editor of anti-trans group blog Areomagazine from 2018 to 2021, founding Areo Magazine Ltd in 2019. Pluckrose and Lindsay published the book Cynical Theories in 2020. Pluckrose founded Counterweight Support Limited in 2021.
Pluckrose and spouse David have one child.
Anti-transgender activism
Pluckrose asserts that “extreme trans activists” want to compel people to accept the following:
people must believe that trans people “straightforwardly are the gender they experience themselves to be”
people must use language that reflects a trans person’s gender
people must be trans-inclusive when choosing sexual partners
Pluckrose’s most significant anti-trans position is that “transitioning children is difficult to justify ethically.”
Pluckrose’s reasoning is a form of cisgender supremacy that prioritizes the well-being of cisgender children over the well-being of transgender children. According to Pluckrose, giving parental consent to medical transition for a trans youth “cannot justify permanently damaging the bodies” of young people who might not benefit in the long term from medical transition. In Pluckrose’s argument this “collateral damage” is worse than collateral damage to trans young people denied medical transition.
Pluckrose’s position is predicated on the potent “regret” narrative and its medicalized manifestations: “desistance” in minors and “detransition” in adults. Regret narratives are vastly overrepresented in mainstream media because it taps into parental anxiety and justifies suspicion about all trans people. Those who believe being trans is a medical problem like “social contagion” often believe there is a cure. Those who believe being trans is an ideology or cult often cling to the powerful fantasy of trans apostasy.
Ideologues who wish to involve themselves in the bodily autonomy of others often amplify regret narratives. For instance, though abortion regret is rare, abortion opponents amplify regret narratives to make abortion less accessible for those who might benefit, including minors.
During Pluckrose’s tenure at Areo, there were several articles critical of trans people (written by people like anti-trans activist Louise Perry), and no articles written by trans people.
In a 2020 Quillette interview, Pluckrose complained about trans activism:
People are being no-platformed, fired, and cancelled for disagreeing with these ideas. Here in the UK, the police have investigated somebody posting a limerick on Twitter that did not adhere to trans activismâs concept of gender identity and a journalist publishing an interview with a historian who said slavery was not genocide. Gender critical feminists are routinely threatened and intimidated for making arguments that self-ID is a threat to womenâs sex-based rights.
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:
âOn 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.â
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.Â
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 heteroÂsociality “to appeal for a new appreciation of sexual difference based not on conflict, antipÂathy 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 itâs a good idea to give children an osteoporosis-causing drug also used in chemical castration. Their answers are terrifying: Children will know when theyâre 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 isnât good; they donât 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 âborn in the wrong body,â 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 pathâone that many regretâis 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 Sturgeonâs 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