Matt Christiansen is an American media personality and anti-transgender activist. Christiansen is associated with the intellectual dark web, described as a gateway to the far right.
Background
Matthew “Matt” Christiansen was born on October 18, 1987 and resides in Bozeman, Montana.
Christiansen frequently discusses political issues on YouTube.
References
Olson, Warren (June 18, 2021). The Orwellian Function of Transgender Ideology.Matt Christiansen Media https://www.mattchristiansenmedia.com/outback-observer/2021/6/17/the-orwellian-function-of-transgender-ideology
Media
Matt Christiansen (December 10, 2015). Transgender, Transage, and Transreason | Meet Me on Mars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBGZq7XCBOE
Sam Harris is an American writer, podcaster, and anti-transgender activist. Harris is a key figure in the intellectual dark web (IDW), described as a gateway to the far right. In 2020, Harris disavowed the IDW, and in 2021 Harris symbolically returned the “imaginary membership card to this imaginary organization.”
Background
Samuel Benjamin Harris was born on April 9, 1967 in Los Angeles, California to parents who were both in entertainment. Harris left Stanford after an experience with MDMA and spent about a decade learning spiritual practices in India and Nepal. Harris returned and completed a bachelor’s degree in 2000. Harris earned a doctorate from UCLA in 2009.
Harris published the book The End of Faith in 2004. harris has gone on to be a critic of religion, especially Islam. Harris has debated many people on religion, including Rick Warren, Deepak Chopra, Jean Houston, William Lane Craig, and Reza Aslan. Harris has also appeared in debated on religion with anti-trans extremists Andrew Sullivan, Jordan Peterson, and Michael Shermer.
Harris and spouse Annaka Gorton have two children.
Podcast
Harris began the podcast Waking Up in 2013, later renamed Making Sense.
Peter M. Clarke was born in August 1985 in Port Angeles, Washington. Clarke earned a bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University in 2007 and a law degree from University of the Pacific in 2010.
Clarke wrote for Reputation.com, LegalMatch, FindLaw, Indiegogo, and Judicial Council of California. Clarke wrote the books Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Clarke has also written for Areo Magazine, The Humanist, The American Spectator, Quillette, and Free Inquiry Magazine. Clarke founded Jokes Literary Review.
Clarke is based in Sacramento, California.
Anti-trans activism
Clarke wrote a sympathetic profile of anti-trans extremist Michael Shellenberger, part of a sustained effort by a faction of anti-trans activists critical of progressivism.
Clarke wrote a sympathetic profile of anti-trans extremist Jesse Singal after a panel featuring Destiny, Vaush, and Emma Vigeland discussed Singal’s extensive anti-transgender activism:
To be clear, if Singal did have horribly offensive views about trans people or gender dysphoria, then, of course, the Seder-Vigeland position would be correct—or, at least, defensible. Some people are, unfortunately, transphobic in the genuine sense of the term. But Singal is not. It is certainly possible to disagree with Singal’s position. But it is not possible to find an ounce of bigotry in his writing. He is, in this respect, a “good liberal.”
If someone is biologically male, they can’t change to biologically female. The medical interventions are crude, often harmful, and not incredibly successful right now. The culture war on this topic, in my view, would be more civil if identity was less important to people.
The show featured a number of other anti-transgender activists and people associated with the so-called intellectual dark web, a loose alliance described as a “gateway to the far right.”
The series includes anti-trans extremists sharing their views on specific trans issues, as well as Peter Boghossian asking random people on the street leading questions about trans issues.
The project had a preview at the November 2023 Genspect anti-trans conference.
Joseph Henry Press (1992–2008) was a trade publishing arm for the National Academies Press. In 2003 the six people below were responsible for fact-checking, publishing, promoting, and defending J. Michael Bailey’s 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen, one of the most transphobic books ever written.
Reviews excerpted for publicity (click authors for more details)
Praise
After I started systematically tracking down the reviews listed in the original Praise (PDF) document, the marketing team started adding others to the book’s webpage as they became available. Most of the praise was written by Bailey’s colleagues. Some wrote more than one review. I tracked down all the authors where possible, listed here as:
This sheds some light on the academic culture that encouraged the JHP to publish Bailey’s book. Her thesis is basically that as the academic community adopts business values, it starts to judge scholarship by how well it sells rather than how well it answers questions. I think the following quote pretty much exactly describes how TMWWBQ got published:
“It used to be an important role of the academic presses to publish significant books too specialized to be economic. Increasingly, however, as subsidies from their universities have shrunk, university presses seek to publish books they believe will make money. This too is discouraging, to put it mildly, to the investment of effort in difficult problems. Better, from the point of view of making oneself heard, to write the kind of book that might interest a trade publisher, or at least the kind of book that will get reviewed in the non-academic press. And this too, inevitably, favors the simple, startling idea, even, or perhaps especially, the startlingly false or impressively obscure idea. . . .”
Publisher description
2002 pre-publication version
A frank and fascinating look at what science has to tell us about sex and gender identity written by a leading authority on this very complicated subject. Equally important, the book explores some deeply personal and often strikingly poignant stories of femininity, masculinity, and gender confusion.
2003 to present version
Gay. Straight. Or lying. It’s as simple and straightforward as black or white, right? Or is there a gray area, where the definitions of sex and gender become blurred or entirely refocused with the deft and practiced use of a surgeon’s knife? For some, the concept of gender – the very idea we have of ourselves as either male or female beings – is neither simple nor straightforward.
Written by cutting-edge researcher and sex expert J. Michael Bailey, The Man Who Would Be Queen is a frankly controversial, intensely poignant, and boldly forthright book about sex and gender. Based on his original research, Bailey’s book is grounded firmly in science. But as he demonstrates, science doesn’t always deliver predictable or even comfortable answers. Indeed, much of what he has to say will be sure to generate as many questions as it does answers.
Are gay men genuinely more feminine than other men? And do they really prefer to be hairdressers rather than lumberjacks? Are all male transsexuals women trapped in men’s bodies – or are some of them men who are just plain turned on by the idea of becoming a woman? And how much of a role do biology and genetics play in sexual orientation?
But while Bailey’s science is provocative, it is the portraits of the boys and men who struggle with these questions – and often with anger, fear, and hurt feelings – that will move you. You will meet Danny, an eight-year old boy whose favorite game is playing house and who yearns to dress up as a princess for Halloween. And Martin, an expert makeup artist who was plagued by inner turmoil as a youth but is now openly homosexual and has had many men as sex partners. And Kim, a strikingly sexy transsexual who still has a penis and works as a dancer and a call girl for men who like she-males while she awaits sex reassignment surgery.
These and other stories make it clear that there are men – and men who become women – who want only to understand themselves and the society that makes them feel like outsiders. That there are parents, friends, and families that seek answers to confusing and complicated questions. And that there are researchers who hope one day to grasp the very nature of human sexuality. As the striking cover image – a distinctly muscular and obviously male pair of legs posed in a pair of low-heeled pumps – makes clear, the concept of gender, the very idea we have of ourselves as either male or female beings, is neither simple nor straightforward for some.
Michelle DiMeo works with Pam Harcourt, who is also on the committee.
Michelle DiMeo and Pam Harcourt
Women and Children First 5233 N. Clark St. Chicago, IL 60640 773.769.9299 Fax: 773.769.6729 [email protected] http://www.womenandchildrenfirst.com
On 24 February 2004, the selection committee including Sara Look voted to retain the nomination of this book over the objections of transexual people and other concerned parties around the world.
In March 2004, the committee reconsidered and withdrew this nomination.
I will publish any comments or responses from Sara Look regarding this matter as I receive them.
Chandler Ellis Burr (born 1963) is an American journalist and perfume curator. Burr is known for his hereditarian views on sexual orientation and sex differences, and he claims that his critics “hate science.”
Burr was born in Chicago and graduated from Christian Science school Principia College. He then worked in the Southeast Asia bureau of The Christian Science Monitor. Burr later wrote for The Atlantic and US News & World Report. He identifies as gay and atheist and has written extensively about the perfume industry.
Views on sexual orientation
Following a 1993 Atlantic cover story on “homosexuality and biology,” Burr expanded that work into the 1996 book A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation. That book also briefly covers the search of causes of gender identity and expression.
Views on bisexuality
As with many other HBI members, Burr has defended controversial psychologist J. Michael Bailey, in particular Bailey’s claims that men are “straight, gay, or lying,” a pernicious belief among some biased gay men and sexologists that male bisexuality doesn’t exist.
Burr wrote the following after New York Times journalist Benedict Carey presented an uncritical look at Bailey’s claims the bisexual men are “lying.”
The passage in bold perfectly summarizes why people like Burr can’t see their bias. Burr believes that because both “the right” and “the left” take issue with his spurious views, that Burr must be correct. This is a classic “argument to moderation” fallacy.
July 12, 2005
To the Editor:
Some gay and bisexual advocates are condemning “Straight, Gay or Lying?” regarding a study suggesting that bisexuality may not exist among human males – something those of us familiar with the scientific literature have known since, basically, forever.
Compare this hysterical – and anti-science – reaction to the conservative Christians’ anti-science reaction to studies showing that homosexuality is an inborn orientation like left-handedness. They’re identical.
The right hates science because the data contradict (in the case of homosexuality) Leviticus; the left because the data contradict the liberal lie that we’re environment-created, not hard-wired in any way.
These particular scientific facts are making these advocates scream like members of the extreme right, though it’s they who always tells the right to let go of concepts that are contradicted by science.
Chandler Burr New York The writer is the author of “A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation.”
