Paul Embery is a British firefighter and union leader who frequently makes anti-transgender comments. Embery has written for anti-trans group blogs UnHerd, The The Spectator, Spiked, and Compact.
Background
Embery was born and raised in Dagenham. Embery served as a firefighter in London. Embery won a case after being dismissed from his union for supporting Brexit. In 2020, Embery published Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class.
Anti-transgender activism
Embery’s central thesis is that the Labour Party has abandoned workers in favor of “trans rights” and other social issues:
It has over recent years become blindingly apparent that only a handful in the party ever venture to discuss these sorts of macroeconomic questions. Matters of employment, growth and prosperity can jolly well take their place behind the campaign for trans rights and Palestine in the queue of priorities.
As it happens, the publication of the report coincided with the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. You can guess which took precedence on the Twitter feeds of Labour MPs during those 24 hours.
Embery has made a number of anti-trans statements.
In 2017 Embery wrote on Twitter, “There’s something Orwellian about allowing someone to insert a lie on their birth certificate & forcing society to accept the lie as truth.”
Embery added, “Coming next: short people may identify as tall, fat people may identify as thin, and ugly people may pretend to be George Clooney.”
In 2022 Embery quoted a Spikedarticle by Brendan O’Neill titled “Eddie Izzard was born male and he will die male,” then said, “Pretty much sums it up.”
In 2023, Embery denied the UK’s relentless attacks on trans people, writing, “There is no “war” on trans people. There is simply resistance to increasingly strident and unscientific demands.”
Bev Jackson is a Dutch anti-transgender activist. Jackson is a founder of UK anti-trans hate group LGB Alliance. Jackson contributed to anti-transgroupo blogs Spiked and The Critic.
Jackson promotes the conspiracy theory that trans people and gender recognition based on self-identification are erasing or eradicating lesbians.
Background
Beverley Ruth Jackson was born in June 1951. At 11 years old, Jackson reportedly experienced antisemitism at a new school.
Jackson studied math at the London School of Economics. Jackson was a founding member of the UK Gay Liberation Front, the only woman to attend the first GLF meeting in October 1970:
I was a student at LSE. I started there in 1969, I was studying maths, and I walked down the corridor and I saw a poster which said: “First meeting of the UK Gay Liberation Front.” It was the most astonishing thing because I had to translate it in my head as to what it might mean. I had heard that “Gay” was a new word for homosexual, and I knew “Liberation” was about freedom and “Front” sounded a bit militant. It sounded very exciting and I thought “I think I want to be on there that sounds right.” I went to this first meeting and there were 19 men there, and just one woman – me – so I was immediately voted on to the steering committee.
[…] I was among the minority of lesbians who decided to work within gay liberation; most lesbians worked within women’s liberation because of feeling more in common with other women’s issues. The fact of lesbians being doubly oppressed both as women and as homosexuals is just a really important part of understanding what it means to be a lesbian.
Jackson has worked as a translator and writer. In 2015 Jackson was mostly involved with refugee rights, writing A Month with Starfish, a book about volunteering to aid refugees for a month on the island of Lesbos.
Anti-trans activism
In late 2016 Jackson began criticizing transgender youth and was surprised that other disagreed. Jackson’s radicalization happened in 2018 when Angela Wild went to the front of the Pride march with the “Get the L Out” group.
Jackson wrote a letter to Stonewall president Ruth Hunt expressing concerns “about young lesbians having nowhere to meet, not being able to call themselves lesbians any more, about the way in which people were encouraging children to think that they might be born in the wrong body and a whole range of other concerns that really worried me.” The letter was ignored.
Jackson has said of trans women:
Look: you can be a lovely gentle male and you can wear dresses and you can call yourself Lilian and it’s absolutely fine. But you’re still a male and you can imagine you might be all sorts of things, but you’re still a male.
The final straw for Jackson was when Stonewall opposed ex-transgender activist Keira Bell, who sued the Tavistock GIDS Clinic.
After a meeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of Gay Liberation Front was cancelled, Jackson and Kate Harris decided to have a secret meeting to start LGB Alliance. “But everyone kept the secret. Not one of the 70 people we invited gave away the meeting at which we formed LGB Alliance.”
Jackson remains committed to separatism for lesbian and gay people:
Gay men and lesbians need spaces of their own and they have a right to spaces of their own – and that we have to say this now in 2021 is an absolute outrage. We could really lose a lot here if we don’t stand together and fight against this madness.
Bridle, David (February 18, 2021). The first woman in the Gay Liberation Front in 1970 is fighting again for lesbian and gay rights in 2021. Lesbian and Gay News https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/02/the-first-woman-in-the-gay-liberation-front-in-1970-is-fighting-again-for-lesbian-and-gay-rights-in-2021/
Lindsay Shepherd is a Canadian writer and anti-transgender activist. Shepherd is part of the so-called intellectual dark web, described as a gateway to the far right.
Background
Lindsay Shepherd was born on December 7, 1994 and grew up in Burnaby, British Columbia. Shepherd earned a bachelor’s degree form Simon Fraser University, followed by a master’s degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2018.
Anti-transgender activism
Shepherd became a cause célèbre among anti-trans media figures from the “academic freedom” faction after a 2017 classroom controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University. Shepherd showed students two clips of Jordan Peterson criticizing Canada’s Bill C-16, which added gender identity and expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the list of characteristics of identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda in the Canadian Criminal Code.
Shepherd was called into a meeting with administrators after a student complaint, and Shepherd’s supervisor agreed to review Shepherd’s future class materials. Shepherd secretly recorded the meeting and released it to the press, which led to apologies from Shepherd’s supervisor and the college president. The university opened an independent inquiry that found no wrongdoing by Shepherd. The incident led to lawsuits by Shepherd and Peterson, as well as countersuits against Shepherd.
Shepherd appeared in the 2019 film No Safe Spaces to discuss the incident.
The Boston Heraldidentified Shepherd as a member of the intellectual dark web. Praising “intellectually curious podcast hosts like Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan,” the anonymous editorial lists “victims of these progressive mobs”:
28 – Behind the Curtain: Wrapping Up Gender Exploratory Therapy
Jun 18th, 2021
27 – Marcus and Sue Evans both worked as clinicians in the Tavistock Centre in London for many years. Noticing red flags since the early 2000s, Sue was the first whistle-blower in the Tavistock Centre and Marcus resigned as its governor
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American civil rights organization. They have been involved in fighting anti-transgender activism for decades through litigation, legislation, and education.
Background
Lawyers Morris Dees and Joe Levin incorporated SPLC in 1971, and activist Julian Bond was named the first president. They brought many lawsuits that confronted discrimination and hate in the South. Their work made them targets of threats and violence; their headquarters was firebombed in 1983 and destroyed.
In the 1990s, SPLC launched Teaching Tolerance (now Learning for Justice). It provides classroom materials on civil rights history and issues. In 2010 I participated in SPLC’s classroom film Bullied, about gay student Jamie Nabozny’s federal case against the local school district, which failed to protect himNabozny from homophobic harassment and assault.
Their Intelligence Project monitors hate groups and anti-government groups, including anti-LGBTQ hate groups.
In SPLC’s work for LGBTQ rights, they
Challenge gay-to-straight “conversion therapy” as fraudulent;
Obtain equal government benefits for veterans;
Protect LGBTQ children from violence and harassment in school;
Ensure the parental rights of LGBTQ people;
Protect the right to proper medical treatment and safe housing for transgender prisoners;
Force states to recognize the rights of same-sex couples; and
Protect the First Amendment rights of LGBTQ students.
Stedfast Baptist Church (Fort Worth, Texas & Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)
Strong Hold Baptist Church (Norcross, Georgia)
Sure Foundation Baptist Church (Seattle, Vancouver, & Spokane Valley, Washington)
Tom Brown Ministries (El Paso, Texas)
True Light Pentecost Church (Spartanburg, South Carolina)
United Families International (Gilbert, Arizona)
Verity Baptist Church (Sacramento, California)
Warriors for Christ (Mount Juliet, Tennessee)
Westboro Baptist Church (Topeka, Kansas)
World Congress of Families/International Organization for the Family (Rockford, Illinois)
2023 CAPTAIN report
In 2023, SPLC released a report titled Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives (CAPTAIN). It traces the origins of 21st-century anti-transgender extremism.
Pamela Paul is an American writer and anti-transgender activist who laundered anti-trans extremism into the New York Times until 2025. Paul then joined the Wall Street Journal and continued writing anti-trans pieces.
While editor of The New York Times Book Review, Paul hired anti-trans activist Jesse Singal to write a glowing review of anti-trans activist Helen Joyce’s book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, helping spark a newsroom crisis about anti-trans coverage that culminated in 2023. The day after the crisis reached its peak, Paul published a piece defending anti-trans activist J.K. Rowling.
Paul has published many opinion columns for the Times repeating anti-trans talking points and defending other anti-trans activists.
Background
Pamela Lindsey Paul was born on March 2, 1971. Paul graduated from Brown University, then was an editor at American Demographics. Paul’s first marriage to conservative Times columnist Bret Stephens ended in 1998. Paul married hedge fund manager Michael Stern in 2004.
Paul has authored several books.
New York Times
Paul was named children’s book editor of The New York Times Book Review in 2011 and editor in 2013. Paul became an opinion columnist at the Times in 2022. Maris Kreizman wrote: “Looking at the Opinion section and once again marveling over the fact that this terrible, hackneyed, boring writer was once the most important person in all of book publishing.”
Patrick Ness says the original line of a review said “The culture wars have come for your transgender children.” The Times made Ness change it to something “less political.” A Times spokesperson later said Paul was not involved.
Erik Hane wrote: “As Pamela Paul starts churning out low-effort reactionary garbage piece and after piece in her new job in the op-ed section, spare a thought for how this person may have affected the NYT Books section she ran for many years.”
I think that we’re entering a period when the most meaningful political distinction will be fascist and anti-fascist. It’s really important to understand that transphobia is one of the most potent entry points to fascism today – and act accordingly.
The novel The Men by Sandra Newman is one of many sci-fi works in which all men or all women suddenly disappear. The concept can easily steer toward anti-trans sentiments, and some objected to Newman’s book. Paul defended Newman with a lot of anti-trans dogwhistles:
But apparently Newman got too creative — or too real — for some. That a fictional world would assert the salience of biological sex, however fanciful the context, was enough to upset a vocal number of transgender activists online. They would argue that “men” is a cultural category to which anyone can choose to belong, as opposed to “maleness,” which is defined by genetics and biology.
In this case, we can set aside contentious questions around gender identity and transgender politics. Even if you don’t believe the sex binary is as fundamental to human beings as it is to all other mammals, a fiction writer ought to be free to imagine her own universe, whether as utopian ideal, dystopian horror or some complicated vision in between.
In another piece, Paul claims these anti-trans views are a middle ground or a centrist political position. Rather than seeing reproductive rights and bodily autonomy as a shared goal of trans people and pro-choice activists, Paul sees trans people as engaging in “erasure” of women by proposing inclusive and value-neutral language around reproduction. Paul describes “female biological function,” meaning reproductive function and reduces women to their reproductive function and organs in order to exclude trans women.
Women, of course, have been accommodating. They’ve welcomed transgender women into their organizations. They’ve learned that to propose any space just for biological women in situations where the presence of males can be threatening or unfair — rape crisis centers, domestic abuse shelters, competitive sports — is currently viewed by some as exclusionary. If there are other marginalized people to fight for, it’s assumed women will be the ones to serve other people’s agendas rather than promote their own.
Daniel Froomkin notes that Paul builds on the anti-trans work of other Times writers, including Emily Bazelon, Michael Powell, and Anemona Hartocollis.
Both-sidesing would have been a step up for this column, which devoted only 52 words out of 1,300 to the right’s decades-long campaign to strip women of their rights. The rest was about how “the fringe left” is “jumping in with its own perhaps unintentionally but effectively misogynist agenda.”
The central thesis of Paul’s argument was an exaggerated summary of a scaremongering news article from last month by Michael Powell, one of the two star reporters the Times has assigned to the woke-panic/cancel-culture beat –the other being Anemona Hartocollis, who just a few days ago gave us this already infamous piece of soft-focus cancel porn.
Powell, Paul wrote, had concluded that “the word ‘women’ has become verboten.”
This conspiracy has become known as “Pamela Paul’s great replacement theory,” which Melissa Gira Grant described as “lightly laundered anti-trans propaganda, presented as a sensible centrist argument.”
2024 column on the ex-trans movement
Paul continued promoting anti-trans talking points in 2024 with a piece on the ex-trans movement. Activists cited included:
In defending Paul, Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury defended the disproportionate number of anti-trans articles the section publishes by citing three articles that are purportedly not anti-trans:
Given the state legislative fights over trans Americans and their civil liberties and access to medical and psychological care, we have published many columns and guest essays from health professionals and activists on issues affecting trans people, as well as a focus group last year hearing from trans Americans about their lives.
Since the ex-trans movement is a single-digit minority, the next 90+ articles should be on gender diverse youth who have benefited from the care that is the current US medical consensus.
2025 article on the LGB separatist movement
In a Wall Street Journal piece, Paul promoted a number of key figures in the LGB separatist movement. Paul reportedly conducted “more than three dozen in-depth interviews with gay men, lesbian women, bisexuals and transgender people.” Paul mentioned or links to LGB Alliance, Ben Appel, The Homoarchy, John Boyne, Arielle Scarcella, Ronan McCrea, Jose Arango, Ann Menasche, Arianne Geringer, and Nevline Nnaji. Paul also mentions politician Seth Moulton, who was criticized after suggesting Democrats revise their positions on trans issues.
While Lambda Legal and the Trevor Project chose not to participate, Barney Frank and Cathy Renna were presented for “balance.”
Paul also includes conservative trans people Brianna Wu and “Stefan,” author of the blog Gender Crossroads.
Fischer, Molly (January 24, 2023). The rules according to Pamela Paul. The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rules-according-to-pamela-paul
Fedorov, Andrew; Krichevsky, Sophie (August 18, 2022). What Is Pamela Paul Thinking?The Fine Print https://thefineprintnyc.com/article/pamela-paul-biography-career/
Grant, Melissa Gira (July 6, 2022). Pamela Paul’s Great Replacement Theory. The New Republic https://newrepublic.com/article/166991/pamela-paul-new-york-times-trans-great-replacement-theory
Finnegan, Leah (May 23, 2022). Pamela Paul is the new worst columnist at the New York Times. Gawker https://www.gawker.com/media/pamela-paul-is-the-new-worst-columnist-at-the-new-york-times [archive]
PamelaPaulNYT (closed by Paul and later suspended after it was out of Paul’s control)
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Heterodorx is a podcast about gender identity and expression. It is hosted by gender critical artist Nina Paley and conservative trans activist Corinna Cohn. It is unusual among podcasts for inviting on people with wide-ranging political positions and views, with a majority of them from the gender critical movement of anti-transgender activists.
Episodes
2025
Episode 171: Poop and Protocol Jun 19
Episode 170: Collective Punishment Jun 11
Episode 169: TERFs, Trannies, Crohnies, Bronchies, & Geezers May 27
Episode 168: SSRIs, ADHD, and Medical Trends with Julia Mason, MD May 1
Episode 167: American Taxpayer Appreciation Episode Apr 18
Episode 166: Illin’, Chillin’, & Gettin’ That Bill In Apr 11
Episode 165: Did We Win Yet? Mar 26
Episode 164: Nina’s Brain Breaks Itself Mar 12
Episode 163: Cori’s Breasts Break The Internet Mar 12
The Straight-Inclusive Queer Majority with Rio Veradonir Feb 26
Executive Order 14168 Feb 14
The Ideological Capture of Tech with Bryan Lunduke Jan 30
Desecrating the PFLAG Jan 23
Lesbians, Law, and Bicycles with Glenna Goldis Jan 15
2024
The Trouble With Parents with Stephanie Winn Dec 27, 2024
Artificial Intelligence with Chris Waites
Judging US v Skrmetti with Judge TERF Nov 28
Next year in Jerusalem? Nov 21
Post Election Derangement and Schadenfreude Nov 14
EP 02 – Measuring Medical Transition Outcomes with Kenneth Pirie and Scott Newgent Aug 25, 2021
EP 01 – Gender Ideology versus Gender Dysphoria Aug 25, 2021
GLAAD is an American media watchdog organization that monitors and reports on media issues. Their focus is sex and gender minorities, and they have done more than any other organization in history to improve media depictions of our community.
In keeping with their initial mission to fight defamation, they have a convenient way to report defamation.
Background
GLAAD was founded in 1985 as Gay and Lesbian Anti-Defamation League, to protest the New York Post’s sensationalized and homophobic reporting on HIV/AIDS. The name was changed a few years later to Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. In 2013, they moved to using their initials GLAAD exclusively.
Over the years, GLAAD has been instrumental in pressuring media and entertainment companies to improve how they depict LGBTQ people. The GLAAD Media Awards were established in 1989 to honor fair and accurate media depictions of LGBTQ people. Since the 1990s GLAAD has published a Media Reference Guide for journalists and other media creators. In 2013 GLAAD began grading entertainment companies with a Studio Responsibility Index. In 2021 they launched a similar Social Media Safety Index.
In 2015, longtime GLAAD employee Nick Adams was named Director of Transgender Media & Representation.
Accountability Project
Of particular interest for this project is the GLAAD Accountability Project (GAP), created in 2012 and relaunched in 2021 with expanded listings. GAP monitors and documents individual public figures and groups using their platforms to spread misinformation and false rhetoric against LGBTQ people, youth, and allies.
Eric Kaufmann is a Canadian conservative academic and anti-transgender activist based in the United Kingdom. Kaufmann believes being trans is a “social contagion” and has passed its peak.
Kaufmann has prepared reports on sex and gender minorities for anti-trans publications Quillette, UnHerd, and City Journal, as well as for anti-trans extremist Richard Hanania via Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.
Background
Eric Peter Kaufmann was born May 11, 1970. Kaufmann’s parent Steve is a polyglot and diplomat. Kaufmann’s younger sibling Mark Kaufmann is a former hockey player and software developer.
Kaufmann attended Hillside Secondary, then earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Western Ontario in 1991. Kaufmann then attended The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), earning a master’s degree in 1994 and a doctorate in 1999.
Kaufman has studied transitions in politics, religion, and demography in Western cultures, particularly as it pertains to white populations and culture.
After teaching at University of Southampton from 1999 to 2003, Kaufmann served as Professor of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London from 2003 to 2023
Kaufmann left for the same appointment at University of Buckingham:
“After 20 years, I am leaving a full University of London professorship for the University of Buckingham. In January, I launch a new low-cost online course open to the public on Woke: the Origins, Dynamics and Implications of an Elite Ideology.
Why leave? My university’s uncertain financial position played a role, but I was also repelled by cancel culture and attracted by the chance to help build Buckingham as the only ‘free speech university’ in Britain.
Whereas the US has some 150 non-leftist research centres, nothing of this kind exists in Britain. In January I will therefore establish the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at Buckingham to pursue countercultural social science and humanities research.
Progressive conformity and cancel culture are distorting the teaching and research mission of universities. Between the extremely controversial and the progressive-controlled monoculture of academia is a vast and growing zone of unspoken truth.”
Kaufmann believes that being trans is a trend or social contagion that will eventually “peak.”
“Limiting the social spread of transgenderism (linked to worse life outcomes) is compatible with wanting truly transgender people to flourish. Those who insist the two are incompatible are committing an error known as the fallacy of composition.”
