Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer who writes on international politics, religion, culture, and humanism.
2020 UnHerd article
Using a question India Willoughby posed on Big Brother about dating transgender people, Leonard wrote for anti-transgender publication UnHerd about the so-called “cotton ceiling” debate about cisgender women who won’t date trans women.
Unfortunately, two years on, the ethics of refusing transsexual people as dating partners remains a fraught subject: questions such as âIs it transphobic for lesbians not to date trans women?â are being discussed online. Again, they tend to arouse strong reactions. Some lesbians, for instance, have expressed concerns that raising the question of whether they âshouldâ be attracted to trans women is a surreptitious attempt to pressure, manipulate and guilt trip them into shifting their sexual boundaries into unwanted sex in the name of being more âopenâ.
Of course, there are lesbians who are reluctant to date trans women because they believe they are not actually women (or at least not women in the same way biologically born women are)â. But itâs worth remembering that lesbians have endured a long history of attempts to control their sexuality, whether through hideous practices such as religious indoctrination, conversion therapy or âcorrectiveâ rape to âmake them straightâ. And why focus the attack on lesbians, when many straight men would also reject trans women as a potential mate?
This obviously provokes a wider question: when does a preference become a convenient cover for bigotry and prejudice? On some level, as this tweet declares, âdating is discriminationâ. But the question provoked by that Big Brother episode was: when is discrimination acceptable, and when is it unacceptable?
References
Leonard, Ralph (October 7, 2020). Is dating discrimination? UnHerd https://unherd.com/2020/10/the-dangerous-politics-of-desire/
Blaire White is a conservative transgender activist and YouTuber. White hosts a “drama” channel focusing on the easiest targets, usually whatever trans person has done the most controversial thing that week. White also hosts a similar podcast called The Blaire White Project. White makes frequent appearances with other conservative trans people and anti-trans activists. White has been affiliated with extremist group Gays Against Groomers and is a favored source for conservative media outlets and anti-trans journalists.
Gloria Steinem is an American author and activist. Steinem is a key historic figure in second-wave feminism.
After publishing anti-transgender writings in the 1970s, Steinem revised some of those views and now supports trans-inclusive feminism.
Background
Gloria Marie Steinem was born March 25, 1934 in Toledo to Leo Steinem, a Jewish traveling antiques dealer, and Ruth Nuneviller Steinem, a Presbyterian homemaker. Steinem’s parents split in 1944.
Ruth Steinem grew increasingly unstable, leading Steinem to move in with older sibling Susanne Steinem Patch in Washington DC. After graduating from high school there, Steinem earned a bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1956.
In 1957, Steinem had an abortion in London while traveling to India. After two years in India, Steinem returned to the United States and began researching and writing, publishing work in Help! Show, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and New York.
In 1972, Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine. In July 1974, the magazine published an excerpt from trans travel writer Jan Morris, which led to backlash.
Throughout the 1970s, Steinem played a central role in the women’s rights movement and became a favored author and source on the subject.
Anti-trans views and reconsideration
In February 1977, amid increasing anti-trans sentiment surrounding transgender athletes in general and Renee Richards in particular, Steinem published an anti-trans article titled “If the Shoe Doesnât Fit, Change the Foot.” Steinem claimed “transsexuals are paying an extreme tribute to the power of sex roles. In order to set their real human personalities free, they surgically mutilate their own bodies…” Steinem also embraced the conspiracy theory of “the transsexual empire” promoted by Janice Raymond.
In 2013, Steinem addressed “words circulated out of time and context” from those previous writings:
So now I want to be unequivocal in my words: I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make. And what I wrote decades ago does not reflect what we know today as we move away from only the binary boxes of “masculine” or “feminine” and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.
In 2021, Steinem signed an open letter supporting trans women and girls, saying, “I am proud to sign this letter because we all must fight against the unnecessary barriers placed on trans women and girls by lawmakers and those who co-opt the feminist label in the name of division and hatred.”
References
Morris, Jan (July 1974) Conundrum [excerpt]. Ms. pp. 57ff.
Steinem, Gloria (February 1977). If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit, Change the Foot. Ms. p. 76ff.
Steinem, Gloria (1983). Transsexualism. in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. pp. 224â226. Henry Holt & Co, ISBN 978-0030632365
Steinem, Gloria (October 2, 2013). Op-ed: On Working Together Over Time.The Advocate https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/10/02/op-ed-working-together-over-time
Melanie Anne Phillips is an American artist, author, musician, filmmaker, software developer, and activist. Phillips is one of the most important historical figures in online transgender resources.
Background
Melanie Anne Phillips was born on February 20, 1953 and grew up in Burbank, California. After attending film school at University of Southern California, Phillips worked in film and television, including directing a horror feature in 1985. Phillips married, and they had two children.
Phillips, Chris Huntley, and Stephen Greenfield began a narrative software project called Write Brothers, which evolved into Dramatica interactive story engine. In 1997, Phillips founded Storymind to develop additional narrative development products.
Transgender activism
In 1989, Phillips began a gender transition and kept a detailed journal of the process. Over time, Phillips published the journal online, gathered an extensive collection of transition resources, and produced instructional videos that were available on physical media.
Phillips was an important community leader at America Online (AOL) and helped build out the transgender resources available there. Phillips moved these resources to a standalone site called Heart Corps in 1997.
Phillips has lived in several communities on the West Coast and continues to create music, photography, writing, and art. Outside of this public online persona, Phillips is a very private person in real life.
References
For a full bibliography of all 86 books published to date, see the Amazon author page for Melanie Anne Phillips: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Melanie-Anne-Phillips/author/B0744CGDLV
Phillips, Melanie Anne; Huntley Chris (2004). Dramatica: A New Theory of Story. ISBN 9780918973047
Phillips, Melanie Anne (2013). Be a Story Weaver – NOT a Story Mechanic! ISBN 9781489503541
Phillips, Melanie Anne (2014). Images and Visions: The Photography of Melanie Anne Phillips. ISBN 9781495283321
Phillips, Melanie Anne (2017). Raised by Wolves: Volume One in the Transcendental Trilogies Nine-Volume Set. ISBN 9781521859551
Esocoff, Sarah (). “Melanie Speaks.” Sounds Gay https://pod.link/1686975383/episode/27d697cd2d82b16116eb641e4da9f681
Terrell was born in ~1984 and grew up in a conservative Evangelical Christian environment.
Terrell self-identifies as having a controversial disease called “autoandrophilia”: “I found gay men most attractive, and fantasized about being one.” Terrell transitioned in ~2011 and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Activism
In 2021 Terrell was reportedly radicalized by J.K. Rowling.
Terrell co-founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance website in 2020.
Paglia has made a number of statements critical of the transgender rights movement. Paglia has said, “No one deserves special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity.”
Paglia has also called trans healthcare for youth “child abuse.”
Background
Camille Anna Paglia waas born on April 2, 1947 in Endicott, New York. As a child, Paglia occasionally used the names Anastasia, Stacy, and Stanley.
Paglia earned a bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University in 1968, followed by a master’s degree and a doctorate from Yale in 1972. Paglia was menotred by Harold Bloom and inspired by Susan Sontag’s role as a celebrity public intellectual.
Paglia is best known the the 1990 book Sexual Personae (based on Paglia’s dissertation and originally titled The Androgynous Dream). Paglia is also known for criticism of feminist movements, thus winning praise from Christina Hoff Sommers, Germaine Greer, and other anti-trans activists.
Paglia and artist Alison Maddex were in a relationship, and Paglia adopted Maddex’s child before the two split up.
Dan Carlin is an American podcaster and author considered by some to be part of the intellectual dark web.
Carlin has been conspicuously silent on the historic civil rights struggle of trans and gender diverse people.
Background
Daniel “Dan” Carlin was born November 14, 1965 to parents involved in film and TV production. Carlin earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Colorado, Boulder in 1989. Carlin worked as a journalist in Los Angeles.
Carlin began podcasting in 2005, eventually hosting three shows: Hardcore History, Hardcore History: Addendum, and Common Sense.
Intellectual dark web
Analysis of the DanCarlin subreddit suggests that the connection to the intellectual dark web is weak.
Carlin has been a frequent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience. Nicholas Quah stated in Vulture that both “possess politics that can be fairly hard to describe, but typically run counter to the dominant strings of liberal politics.”Â
In addition to connections to Joe Rogan, Carlin has collaborated with Bill Maher, Sam Harris, and Tim Ferriss
Mountjoy, Anthony (Jun 6, 2018). Crawling The Intellectual Dark Web.Verboten Publishing https://medium.com/verboten-publishing/deep-data-of-the-intellectual-dark-web-5c323ee782b4
Tim Ferriss is an American podcaster and lifestyle influencer. Although Ferriss is sometimes considered part of the intellectual dark web for having a few guests who are part of that movement, Ferriss has not engaged in anti-transgender activism.
Andrea Long Chu is an American writer and critic whose work frequently focuses on sex and gender.
Chu won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2023.
Background
Chu was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1992 and grew up in a Christian household in Asheville, North Carolina. Chu earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 2014 and a master’s degree from New York University in 2016.
Chu has written numerous book reviews and interviewed many notable public figures.
Writing on sex and gender
Much of Chu’s work is deliberately provocative. In 2018, Chu presented two works on sissy subculture and wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times titled “My New Vagina Wonât Make Me Happy.”
The thesis for Chu’s 2019 book Females is that “everyone is female and everyone hates it.”
Whoâs Afraid of Gender? review (2024)
In 2024, Chu reviewed Whoâs Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler in New York Magazine. Chu gives an excellent overview of the influence of Butler’s work on transgender rights. The piece is also notable for tracing the recent history of the anti-transgender movement. It lays part of the blame on those who embrace disease models of our community: “We must be able to defend this desire clearly, directly, and â crucially â without depending on the idea of gender.”
Chu notes the same tipping point in anti-trans activism that many trans people immediately noted:
In 2018, The Atlantic published a long cover story by the reporter Jesse Singal called âWhen Children Say Theyâre Trans,â focusing on the clinical disagreements over how to treat gender-questioning youth. The story provided a template for the coverage that would follow it. First, it took what was threatening to become a social issue, hence a question of rights, and turned it back into a medical issue, hence a question of evidence; it then quietly suggested that since the evidence was debatable, so were the rights.
Chu identifies three groups that compose the anti-trans bloc in America today:
the religious right
gender critical feminists (TERFs)
trans-agnostic reactionary liberals (TARLs)
Chu notes that the key outlet for the third group is the New York Times:
The Times is not alone; it is one of many respectable publications, including The Atlantic and TheEconomist, engaged in sanitizing the ideas promoted by TARLs in the more reactionary corners of the media landscape. Here one finds journalists like Singal, Matthew Yglesias, Matt Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan, Helen Lewis, Meghan Daum, and, of course, former Times staffer Bari Weiss. Many of these writers live in self-imposed exile on Substack, the newsletter platform, where they present themselves as brave survivors of cancellation by the woke elites. But they are not a marginal force.
We will never be able to defend the rights of transgender kids until we understand them purely on their own terms: as full members of society who would like to change their sex. It does not matter where this desire comes from. When the TARL insinuates again and again that the sudden increase of trans-identified youth is âunexplained,â he is trying to bait us into thinking trans rights lie just on the other side of a good explanation.
I am speaking here of a universal birthright: the freedom of sex. This freedom consists of two principal rights: the right to change oneâs biological sex without appealing to gender and the right to assume a gender that is not determined by oneâs sexual biology. One might exercise both of these rights toward a common goal â transition, for instance â but neither can be collapsed into the other.
Coleman, Madeleine Leung (March 15, 2024). Gender Identity Is Not Enough, [interview about Chu’s piece] The Critics / New York https://nymag.com/newsletter/2024/03/the-critics-march-15-2024.html
Chu AL (2019). The Impossibility of Feminism. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 30, no. 1 (Spring 2019). https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-7481232
Chu AL (November 24, 2018). My New Vagina Wonât Make Me Happy.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/opinion/sunday/vaginoplasty-transgender-medicine.html
Chu AL (November 5, 2018). No One Wants It.Affidavit https://www.affidavit.art/articles/no-one-wants-it
Chu AL (2018). On Liking Women.n+1 30 (Winter 2018): 47â62. https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-30/essays/on-liking-women/
Chu AL (2018). Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans? Queer Disruptions 2 Columbia University, New York, NY March 1â2, 2018.
Chu AL (2018). Pornographic Spectatorship, or, Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans? 2018 annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association UCLA, Los Angeles, CA March 29âApril 1, 2018.
Chu AL (2017). The Wrong Wrong Body: Notes on Trans Phenomenology. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 4, no. 1 (February 2017): 141â52. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3711613
O’Brien, Michelle Esther (November 2, 2018). Interview with Andrea Long Chu. New York Public Library Community Oral History Project. http://oralhistory.nypl.org/interviews/andrea-long-chu-lpf5er
Debbie Hayton is a conservative transgender British educator and critic of mainstream transgender activism. Hayton gets money and attention by siding with those opposed to rights for sex and gender minorities.
Hayton’s work frequently appears in anti-transgender publications, most notably UnHerd and The Spectator. Hayton’s views have also appeared in Daily Express, Global Research, The Critic Magazine, Fox News, TalkTV, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and The Guardian.
Background
Deborah “Debbie” Hayton was born April 23, 1968. Hayton grew up in Consett in North East England. After graduating Blackfyne Comprehensive School in 1986, Hayton entered Newcastle University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1989 and a doctorate in 1992. Hayton worked in research until 1995, then began a career as a physics teacher. Hayton taught at Handsworth Grammar School in Birmingham from 1996 to 2002, then at King Henry VIII School in Coventry from 2002 to 2022. Beginning in 2016 Hayton began offering classroom timetable support and began freelance writing.
Hayton is based in Bristol, is married to Stephanie, and has three children. Hayton transitioned in 2012.
Activism and trolling
Hayton’s writing is a mix of first-person stories and gender critical views on several trans topics:
Hayton authored a letter supporting transphobic author Kathleen Stock. The letter was signed by like-minded gender critical trans people: Tina Daniels, Lily Geidelberg, Sophie Gibbons, Kristina Harrison, Seven Hex, Jennifer Kenyon, Claudia McLean, Sarah McDonnell, Fionne Orlander, Nyah Putzo, Toni Roche-Simmons, Katie Sangwell, Gillian Simpson, Sian Taylder, and Miranda Yardley.
Hayton appeared in the 2018 anti-trans propaganda piece Trans Kids: It’s Time to Talk hosted by Stella O’Malley.
Hayton enjoys trolling and mocking the trans community members who hold differing views. Hayton is known for wearing a T-shirt that says “Trans women are men. Get over it.”
Hayton, Debbie (May 9, 2022). My autogynephilia story. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2022/05/the-truth-about-autogynephilia/
Stanford, Peter (October 16, 2021). The trans women who support women’s rights.The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/16/meet-trans-women-agree-publicly-question-gender-self-identification/