Julie Jaman is an American anti-transgender activist. Jaman became a celebrity among other anti-trans activists after being banned from a local swimming pool for asking a trans employee to leave the sex-segregated changing area.
Background
Julie Jaman was born in March 1942 and is a resident of Port Townsend, Washington. Mountain View Pool is a City of Port Townsend facility operated in partnership with the Olympic Peninsula YMCA.
According to reports, Jaman verbally abused 18-year old pool employee Clementine Adams, whose job was to help supervise a group of young swimmers:
Three weeks ago, that employee was doing her job of supervising a group of kids when a patron named Julie Jaman began to hurl increasingly aggressive transphobic remarks at her. Other employees told Jaman to leave, but she later returned to picket the facility. Conservative media picked up the story, people started threatening YMCA employees, and now the entire facility has had to temporarily close due to those threatening messages.
Showering after my swim at Mt. View Pool, I heard a manâs voice. Peeking out I saw a man in a womanâs bathing suit watching little girls pull down their swimsuits In order to use the bathroom. âGet out of here,â I said.
This is the incident that caused a Y staff person to condemn me as discriminatory and banned me forever from using the pool â the pool with binary changing areas that my family has supported and used for 35 years. I sense I have arrived at the center of this topsy turvy world.
Jaman quickly became part of the anti-trans outrage cycle, appearing in anti-trans publications Quillette, Feminist Current, New York Post, Daily Mail, Fox News, Rebel News, and Washington Times. The pool and YMCA soon received harassment and threats, and a right-wing militia staged a protest.
Adams, who is a college student majoring in elementary education, was supported by the facility and the city. A GoFundMe to help Adams with transition costs raised over $20,000.
Megan Phelps-Roper is an American author and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Phelps-Roper was born January 31, 1986 to Shirley Phelps-Roper and Brent Roper and grew up in Westboro Baptist Church, an anti-LGBT hate group based in Topeka, Kansas. Starting at five years old, Phelps-Roper participated in many of the organization’s picketing events, attacking Jewish people, military servicemembers, and the LGBTQ community.
In 2011, Phelps-Roper appeared in Louis Theroux’s documentary America’s Most Hated Family in Crisis. Phelps-Roper left Westboro Baptist Church in 2012.
Phelps-Roper married lawyer Chad G. Fjelland (born 1972) and has two children.
In October 2019, Phelps-Roper released a memoir called Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope.
Anti-trans activism
Phelps-Roper was recruited by anti-trans activist Bari Weiss to host a podcast series that defended transphobic author J.K. Rowling. The series used nostalgia for Rowling’s stories to paint Rowling sympathetically, as a misunderstood person simply advocating for women.
Dean Baquet is an American journalist who helped shape the New York Times newsroom’s anti-transgender crusade in the 21st century.
Background
Dean Paul Baquet was born on September 21, 1956 to a prominent Catholic family in New Orleans. Baquet attended Columbia University before dropping out to pursue journalism. Baquet worked at the New Orleans States-Item and The Times-Picayune before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1984, followed by the New York Times in 1990 and the Los Angeles Times in 2000. After being fired by Los Angeles Times in 2006, Baquet returned to the New York Times. Baquet became executive editor there in 2014. Baquet moved back to Los Angeles during the pandemic. After running the New York Times from LA for a time, Baquet was replaced by Joe Kahn in 2022. The Times then tapped Baquet to run a fellowship program for local investigative journalism.
Baquet’s spouse Dylan F. Landis was born December 3, 1956 and graduated from Barnard in 1978 before pursuing a writing career. Landis and Baquet married in 1986. Their child Ari Theogene Landis Baquet was born in 1989.
Anti-transgender activism
Under Baquet’s watch, The Times‘ persistently anti-trans coverage continued to escalate, particularly in the Science, Books, Politics, and Opinion sections. During that time, the paper also ended the vital Public Editor role. Without that oversight or accountability, the transphobic coverage got even worse.
Baquet’s coverage crisis reached its tipping point in 2021, when Baquet let anti-trans activist Pamela Paul hire anti-trans activist Jesse Singal to review anti-trans activist Helen Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.
Employee affinity group Times Out reached out to NYT leaders. Via Imara Jones at Translash:
So, almost out of desperation, Times Out leaders decided that their best bet was to go to the very top of the news food chain: Managing Editor Dean Baquet. […] But their official request to talk to Dean was rebuffed.
Times Out leader Priya Arora emailed Baquet directly, and Baquet defended Pamela Paul.
Singal, Jesse (September 7, 2021). Trans Rights and Gender Identity. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/books/review/trans-helen-joyce.html
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/
Erik Wemple is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. As media critic for the Washington Post, Wemple defended the New York Times during its anti-trans coverage crisis of the 2020s.
Background
Erik Boris Wemple was born August 18, 1964 in Niskayuna, New York and grew up in the Schenectady area. Wemple’s parent Marilyn Helen Greve Wemple (1930â2000) had three children: Mark, Kirk, and Erik (the youngest). Parent Clark Cullings Wemple (1927â1993) was a prominent local Republican politician and lawyer.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College in 1986, Wemple earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University in 1989. After covering and consulting on US export control policy, Wemple began covering local Washington, DC news, including freelancing at Washington City Paper starting in 1994. Wemple served one term on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission in 1995, representing Dupont Circle.
From 1999 to 2000, Wemple was “Loose Lips” gossip columnist at Washington City Paper. Wemple left to work at inside.com for two years before returning to Washington City Paper as editor in 2002.
In 2006 Wemple worked for a few days as editor in chief of The Village Voice before backing out and returning to Washington City Paper until 2010. After working at TBD.com in 2010, Wemple joined the Washington Post in 2011.
Wemple’s spouse, Stephanie Mencimer (born September 1969), is also a writer. They live in Maryland and have two children, Sam (born ~2004) and Lucy (born ~2006).
New York Times anti-trans coverage crisis
Although Wemple claims the New York Times coverage of trans issues is unbiased, in 2022 Wemple at least acknowledged the controversy. Wemple confirmed that a Times employee had reportedly been accosted for their anti-trans coverage, as first reported by Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. A Times spokesperson told Wemple: “Our employee was recognized in public. The person said something about ‘attempts to eliminate trans people’ and then spat on the employee.” The specific employee was not mentioned, and New York Times has too many anti-trans employees to make a guess.
In 2023, Jesse Singal, the anti-trans activist hired by Times anti-trans activist Pamela Paul to review a book by anti-trans activist Helen Joyce, naturally praised Wemple.
6/ The thoughtful responses carefully evaluating Eric Wemple's arguments and where they fall short began trickling in shortly after the piece went up:https://t.co/Rr8ND6Efk9
Staff report (June 15, 2006). Breaking: New âVoiceâ EIC Erik Wemple Quits Before He Starts. Gawker https://www.gawker.com/news/village-voice/breaking-new-voice-eic-erik-wemple-quits-before-he-starts-181133.php [archive]
Wemple, Erik (August 9, 2010). Letter from the editor: TBD is a little less TBD.TBD https://web.archive.org/web/20100815213043/http://www.tbd.com/articles/2010/08/letter-from-the-editor-tbd-is-a-little-less-tbd-790.html
Calderone, Michael (February 23, 2010). Wemple to edit Allbritton local site.Politico https://www.politico.com/story/2010/02/wemple-to-edit-allbritton-local-site-033365
Staff rpeort (February 23, 2010). Washington City Paper editor Erik Wemple is leaving the paper. AAN News https://aan.org/aan/washington-city-paper-editor-erik-wemple-is-leaving-the-paper/ [archive]
Katie J.M. Baker is an American writer who was one of the New York Times employees at the center of the publication’s anti-trans coverage crisis of the 2020s.
Background
Baker was born on September 15, 1987 and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Baker earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley in 2009. Baker freelanced for the San Francisco Chronicle and Jezebel before joining Newsweek in 2013. Baker was an investigative reporter at Buzzfeed from 2014 to 2022 and joined the Times as a correspondent in 2022, brought over on the recommendation of Virginia Hughes.
Baker has consulted on media productions about the news. Much of Baker’s writing covers sexual harassment and assault in schools and workplaces, as well as online sex and gender politics.
Transgender coverage
Baker became interested in trans issues after moving from New York to London and witnessing the transphobic moral panic among radicalized “parental rights” extremists, particularly on Mumsnet:
If Mumsnetâs womenâs rights forum is popular because it responds to the experience of being stuck at home without support or community, itâs done so in a way that leaves Mumsnetters in a political cul-de-sac. The community isolates its members in a bubble of transphobic thought that leaves them free to develop their bigotries without needing to encounter the human beings affected by them. It also inculcates members with a tragically narrow idea of feminism, one that rejects other people fighting for gender liberation. And finally, it puts followers at odds with the broader left, which has been fighting for a world without gender oppression, as well as for benefits Mumsnetters say they care about, such as free child care and well-funded health care.
Baker helped import this moral panic to the US by covering the American parental rights movement for the Times. Where the Mumsnet piece was attacked by gender critical people, anti-trans activists like Jesse Singal had nothing but good things to say about Baker’s Times piece and its framing. Via the open letter by Times contributors:
In a similar case, Katie Bakerâs recent feature âWhen Students Change Gender Identity and Parents Donât Knowâ misframed the battle over childrenâs right to safely transition. The piece fails to make clear that court cases brought by parents who want schools to out their trans children are part of a legal strategy pursued by anti-trans hate groups. These groups have identified trans people as an âexistential threat to societyâ and seek to replace the American public education system with Christian homeschooling, key context Baker did not provide to Times readers.
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/
Gutierrez, Claire; Yang, Jia Lynn (September 9, 2022). Katie Baker joins The Times.New York Times Company https://www.nytco.com/press/katie-baker-joins-the-times/
Jake Silverstein is an American author and anti-transgender activist. Silverstein was responsible for a 2023 anti-trans feature about gender diverse youth by Emily Bazelon in The New York Times Magazine.
Background
Jacob “Jake” Silverstein was born on October 14, 1975 and grew up in Oakland, California. Silverstein earned a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University, a master’s degree from Hollins University, and a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006.
After working in local news, Silverstein was editor of Texas Monthly from 2008 to 2014, then was named editor of The New York Times Magazine.
Silverstein and spouse Mary Jillian LaMotte Silverstein (born 1970) have two children.
Anti-trans activism
This new section is under construction.
In the fall of 2021, Silverstein conceived of and assigned a story to Emily Bazelon, telling On the Media (OTM):
We understood that an interesting moment in the field of transgender care was coming up, and that was the release of this new Standards of Care which had last been published I believe it was 2012. So almost a decade ago. That was one of the original motivations for the story, to try to understand what process was going into that and get ahead of the publication of those new Standards of Care. As Emily began looking into it, we had access to this working group that was working on the chapter about adolescence. And we began to understand that there were some not only debates and discussions happening within that group, but also there was a really intense complexity to them doing their work, in the context of a proliferation of really draconian legislation restricting trans rights in various states around the country.
Silverstein OTM 2023
Their key access point was psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz, who along with Laura Edwards-Leeper is also a key source for Jesse Singal and other anti-trans activists framing trans people as having a medical and/or psychiatric problem (“gender dysphoria,” etc.). Leibowitz leads off the article in Bazelon’s “cisgender person under siege” framing long favored by the Times when covering gender diverse people. Leibowitz and Edwards-Leeper served on the WPATH chapter on “Assessment, Support and Therapeutic Approaches for Adolescents with Gender Variance/Dysphoria.” Also serving were Annelou de Vries, Jon Arcelus, Gayathri Chelvakumar, Stephanie Roberts, and John Strang.
OTM pressed Silverstein about context.
Thatâs right, I think youâre quoting from Emilyâs story there. The politicization in certain state legislatures around the country around this issue has created a political debate around something that has ended up distorting a lot of the reception of articles like Emily’s.
Silverstein PTM 2023
The phrase patient zero was one of the examples of bias cited in the open letters to Times management.
This term was introduced to Emily during her interview with the patient in question, a Dutch trans man who we refer to in the story as F.G. Emily tracked him down and interviewed him at length. And he said to her, “I was patient zero.” The term also appears in a book that is cited in Emilyâs story about the history of the Amsterdam clinic that uses the term patient zero to describe the same person. And in both cases the meaning was clear to Emily in these interviews and in reading this book. It described the first-ever recipient of this treatment. Thatâs what it meant, and I think it was pretty clear thatâs what it meant from the context. Like I said, itâs not used in quotation marks. He is quoted, saying other things, and heâs quoted saying this treatment saved his life. And Emily didnât realize that it was going to have another connotation for other people.
Silverstein OTM 2023
The phrase patient zero was removed from Bazelon’s article and replaced with the phrase first patient. The Times made the change after On the Media made an inquiry and before Silverstein came on their show.
Weâve been talking about making that particular change. Changing something to a story that we published for reasons other than a factual correction is never something that we take lightly. Itâs not something we do very often. As you can imagine itâs something that requires a lot of conversations and deliberations internally. So it took a little bit of time for that to work its way through the process. But we felt it was the right thing to do. I wish we had immediately understood how some readers might take that term.
Silverstein OTM 2023
Times coverage was quickly cited in anti-trans legislation, which Silverstein feels is beyond the Times’ control.
I donât believe that thereâs anything in this story or any other news coverage that supports banning gender therapy. I believe, and I canât say for sure, because I obviously had nothing to do with this amicus brief, that these pieces were cited to show that there is a debate among providers about how to best perform gender care for minors. And that is what these stories document with their reporting. Once we hit publish, we donât control how readers of any kind are going to use our stories. And I donât know that we should.
Weâve heard this criticism about not identifying Genspect. Some of the people who criticized Emily’s story wanted us to refer to Genspect as a hate group. We canât say that without evidence, right? We can characterize groups up to a point, unless weâre going to dedicate reporting time to investigating a particular group, we canât characterize it a certain way without evidence.
Silverstein OTM 2023
Masha Gessen thought Bazelon’s piece was excellent, Andrew Sullivan
Itâs certainly not the position of the journalist in question here, of Emily. Part of what Emily is doing in the story is she’s trying to gather in a sense of what that conversation is and what that commentary is, and the context in which these folks are doing their work. That process of doing that, of gathering in this commentary doesnât mean that Emily endorses every single thing that sheâs citing. Sheâs trying to give readers a sense of the atmosphere in which these gender affirming clinicians are doing their work.
Sure, I mean the question of how to identify people quoted in stories comes up a lot, and sometimes the decision is based on the footprint that they occupy in a story: how much the story is about them, how significant their part of the story is, and in this case, in a very long story in which the subject was a very small part, it seemed to us that we were giving the reader the information that was most relevant.
Silverstein OTM 2023
When pressed about including an adult ex-trans activist associated with groups seeking to restrict trans healthcare. tagential to the purview of the piece, and “we didn’t get a lot of context about where she was coming from.”
Mm-hm. Yeah, I understand that.
Silverstein OTM 2023
Is there anything you wish you did differently in your coverage or your editing process?
As you can see from the fact that we changed the term “patient zero,” I certainly wish we had changed that before we hit publish on the story. But other than that, I would say no. Iâm really proud of this piece. Emilyâs piece is a finalist for the National Magazine Award in the category of public interest this year. A jury of her peers said itâs one of the six most important pieces of public interest journalism published in any magazine last year. And I think thatâs correct. This kind of reporting is very difficult to do. It takes a kind of focus, it takes a kind of fortitude, and it also takes the commitment to the principles of journalism that not everybody has. And Emily does.
Silverstein OTM 2023
On June 18, 2022, Silverstein tweeted “This weekendâs @NYTmag cover is a deeply-reported story by @emilybazelon on debates among providers within the field of transgender health care over how to treat teenagers. Emily spent 8 months on this piece, and interviewed and quoted many transgender providers who have a variety of perspectives, as well as cisgender providers who have spent their careers in gender-affirming care. Reporting on subjects that are highly politicized is challenging. Thatâs why Emilyâs methodical, principled, & deeply journalistic approach was important. I hope youâll read her story.”
ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio noted that Silverstein’s work was immediately used to attack Texas families with gender diverse children:
This is from an expert report filed by Texas in defense of its policy of directing the “child welfare” agency to investigate medical treatment for gender dysphoria as child abuse. It is hard to watch this all unfold with such devastating harms.
Lee Leveille and Ky Schevers of Health Liberation Now! also described their involvement and reaction:
Media portrayals on de/retransition, particularly in the framing of regret or mental health assessment, have aggravated the very political battle that Bazelon references in the article. In doing so, the New York Times feeds into the ongoing disinformation campaign we caution about in When Ex-Trans Worlds Collide.
(June 22, 2022). Response to NYT Article âThe Battle Over Gender Therapy.â Health Liberation Now! https://healthliberationnow.com/2022/06/22/health-liberation-nows-response-to-nyt-article-the-battle-over-gender-therapy/
Michal Meyer is an Israel-born writer and anti-transgender activist. Meyer is known for a credulous 2015 profile of anti-trans activist Alice Dreger, later deleted.
Background
Michal Meyer was born in February 1969. Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree from Victoria University of Wellington in 1994. Meyer was a weather forecaster in New Zealand and Fiji, then edited the Jerusalem Post Magazine from 2001 to 2003. During graduate school, Meyer edited the History of Science Society newsletter from 2003 to 2009. Meyer earned a doctorate from University of Florida in 2009.
Meyer was editor of Distillations magazine from 2009 to 2022.
Promotion of Alice Dreger (2015)
While editor of Distillations, Meyer published a glowing review of Galileo’s Middle Finger by anti-trans activist Alice Dreger. Meyer represents Dreger’s core audience: mediocre academics of a certain age who see themselves in Dreger’s fabrications. Meyer wants to believe Dreger is a fearless teller of “the truth,” because it panders to all of Meyer’s biases and fantasies.
Meyer described the book as “a love letter to evidence-based research done well.” Meyer parrots Dreger’s attacks on pediatrician Maria New and dutifully summarizes Dreger’s support of unethical behavior scientists J. Michael Bailey and Napoleon Chagnon.
After Meyer left Science History Institute in 2022, the article was quietly removed.
References
Meyer, Michal (December 20, 2015). Identity Politics. Distillations https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/identity-politics [archive]
Danielle Rhoades Ha is an American communications executive who handled public relations at New York Times during their 2020s anti-transgender coverage crisis. Rhoades Ha is responsible for “advancing and protecting our public reputation” at the Times.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. Due to the hostile work environment, no transgender reporters work there as of 2023 according to a San Francisco Chronicle report.
Background
Danielle Rhoades Ha was born on March 27, 1977 to Michael and Lillian Rhoades.
Rhoades Ha earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Texas at Austin in 1999, then joined PR firm Goodman Media International. From 2000 to 2007 Rhoades Ha handled media relations for Dow Jones & Company before joining the Times in 2010. Rhoades Ha was named SVP, Communications in 2022. Rhoades Ha reports to David Rubin.
Rhoades Ha is married to Vimy Xuan Rhoades Ha (born 1975), a consultant and poker player.
2023 correspondence
On September 3, 2023, I received an email from Times employee Megan Twohey copied to Rhoades Ha. Twohey requested biographical information be removed. My response can be viewed on Twohey’s profile.
April Kitzul is a Canadian anti-transgender activist.
Background
April Kitzul was an Institutional Parole Officer and Correctional Program Officer in sex-segregated facilities at Correctional Service Canada until 2022. Previously, Kitzul was a provincial child protection social worker, serving as a case manager at Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families
Anti-transgender activism
Kitzul waas radicalized in following passage of An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. It was introduced in Canada as Bill C-16 in 2016.
In 2021, Kitzul created the website Trans-Truth.
Kitzul is a member of Canadian Womenâs Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar) and is involved in the Women’s Human Rights Campaign (BC-Yukon Coordinator).
Rod Fleming is a Scottish author and activist who promotes anti-transgender, anti-feminist, and anti-gay views. Fleming personifies nearly every negative stereotype of a transphobic trans-attracted person.
Fleming is one of the most obsessive “autogynephilia” activists in the world, promoting the disease as an exercise in identity politics.
Background
Roderick Anthony “Rod” Fleming was born on March 11, 1956, in Dundee, Scotland.
Fleming earned a bachelor’s degree from Edinburgh College of Art in 1983, then produced images and video for Scotland on Sunday. In 2011, Fleming earned a master’s degree from Dundee University.
Fleming was married and has four adult children. Fleming moved to Asia and was romantically involved with a trans partner named Sam Villasencio. Fleming announced that Villasencio died on October 2, 2023.
âAutogynephiliaâ activism
Some trans-attracted people who engage in “autogynephilia” activism wish to distance their own attractions from trans women they consider âautogynephiles.â In some cases, it is because they see âAGPâ trans women as a threat to their âheterosexualâ identity. They often brag about how âheterosexualâ they are and how the “homosexual transsexualâ people they desire are extremely feminine and only interested in masculine âheterosexualâ partners like them.
Trans-attracted people who use the terms “homosexual transsexualâ or “HSTS” are among the most obsessed with “autogynephilia” and creator Ray Blanchardâs taxonomy of “HSTS” and “AGP,” because itâs so important to their own sexual identities.
Fleming offers counseling for “autogynephiles” and for “trans widows,” slang for spouses whose partner came out as trans.