Kathleen Kingsbury is an American editor responsible for the surge in anti-transgender opinion pieces in the New York Times during the 2020s. Kingsbury is also responsible for giving columns and space to staunch anti-trans activists like David French and Pamela Paul.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. In 2023 the San Francisco Chronicle cited a Times employee who said the organization has no trans reporters.
Background
Kathleen “Katie” Kingsbury was born in 1979 and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Kingsbury earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 2001.
Kingsbury was a reporter at Metro Boston for a year, then a research assistant at Tufts University for a year. Kingsbury earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 2004. In 2004 Kingsbury worked at CNN and Time before working as a stringer for a year at BusinessWeek.
From 2009-2010, Kingsbury was a contributing writer at The Daily Beast, then served as a program officer at Open Society Foundations for a year. From 2009 to 2014 Kingsbury wrote for Reuters and Time. Kingsbury joined the editorial team at the Boston Globe, moving into management roles from 2013 to 2017. Kingsbury joined the New York Times editorial page team in 2017 and was promoted to Editorial Page Editor in 2020.
Criticism by journalism watchdog FAIR
Opinion page editor Kathleen Kingsbury (4/26/21) once wrote of the Times Opinion team, âWe have our thumb on our scale in the name of progress, fairness and shared humanity.â In this political moment, when control over trans lives has become an increasingly central political and legal debate, and with no trans writers among their stable of columnists or contributing writers, the Paper of Record is paying a cisgender white woman to regularly voice anti-trans arguments. Their thumb is on the scale, all rightâbut not in the way Kingsbury would like us to believe.
2023 response to over 1,000 trans-supportive colleagues
On February 15, 2023, over 1,000 New York Times contributors signed an open letter objecting to the Times’ increasingly hostile coverage of transgender issues.
On the same day, GLAAD delivered a second letter and organized a protest in front of Times headquarters.
Kingsbury chose to publish a piece by anti-trans activist Pamela Paul defending anti-trans activist J.K. Rowling the very next day.
The next day, Executive Editor Joe Kahn and Kingsbury warned their colleagues they were violating company policy. Their warning conflates the two letters and dismisses the ethical concerns of their colleagues as “advocacy.”
Colleagues,
Yesterday, the New York Times received a letter delivered by GLAAD, an advocacy group, criticizing coverage in The Times of transgender issues.
It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.
Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.
Our coverage of transgender issues, including specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written. The journalists who produced those stories nonetheless have endured months of attacks, harassment and threats. The letter also ignores The Timesâ strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society. A full list of our coverage can be viewed here, and any review shows that the allegations this group is making are demonstrably false.
We realize these are difficult issues that profoundly affect many colleagues personally, including some colleagues who are themselves transgender. We have welcomed and will continue to invite discussion, criticism and robust debate about our coverage. Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our report.
We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.
We live in an era when journalists regularly come under fire for doing solid and essential work. We are committed to protecting and supporting them. Their work distinguishes this institution, and makes us proud.
Joe & Katie
2024 piece justifying another Pamela Paul article
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, Kingsbury’s next 90+ greenlit articles should be on gender diverse youth who have benefited from the care that is the current US medical consensus.
Chiara Caignon-Lewis is an American “ex-transgender” activist and a founder of ex-trans website Pique Resilience Project. Anti-trans activism is a family business: Chiara’s parent Denise Caignon is also heavily involved in anti-transgender extremism as owner of the website 4thWaveNow.
Aliases include:
“Chiara Canaan”
“Rachel Miller”
Caignon-Lewis claims the transgender rights movement is “nothing more than misogyny disguised as progressive feminism.”
Background
Chiara Lucia Marie Caignon-Lewis was born August 21, 1997 in Santa Cruz, California to Denise Caignon and Tim Lewis. Caignon-Lewis stated, “I was dysphoric because my father sexually abused me as a child” and because of “my internalized homophobia.”
Denise and Chiara Caignon-Lewis moved to North Carolina. In 2013, at age 16, Caignon-Lewis became an ordained youth minister, then came out as transgender shortly after turning 17. Caignon-Lewis had already come out as lesbian and was dating as one, but an incident at school resulted in few friends in real life. Caignon-Lewis turned to online communities, claiming that popular trans users on Tumblr and YouTube led to a multi-year obsession with transition:
Had I not been exposed to the cultish mindset of Tumblrâs transactivists at a vulnerable phase of my life, I would not have become absorbed by a desire to permanently change my body.
Caignon-Lewis’ coming out involved texting a link to a gender clinic with no other details. Being forbidden to take medical transition steps caused Caignon-Lewis to have many family fights. At the height of the fighting, Denise Caignon got heavily involved with posting anti-transgender materials online at 4thWaveNow and elsewhere.
In 2015, Caignon-Lewis graduated from Chapel Hill High School and was sent to a Florida horse farm for nine months. Caignon-Lewis says the desire to transition subsided after that without taking any legal or medical steps. Denise and Chiara have since teamed up to be the most high-profile family in the modern ex-trans movement.
Caignon-Lewis sometimes performs music locally and has had a string of service jobs in the Triangle area, including at insightsoftware, bartaco, Orangetheory Fitness, Stoney River Steakhouse, Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille, and Hawthorne & Wood.
Caignon-Lewis has been riding horses since age two, got a Selle Français cross mare named Tupelo Honey in 2011, and has been involved in competitive jumping and dressage with Honey in North Carolina and at FenRidge Farm in Florida. A self-described “huge horse nerd,” Caignon-Lewis was active on several online platforms, posting about horses and dressage in addition to identity issues (most of which was deleted). Since 2016, Caignon-Lewis has operated a part-time business called Novation Sporthorse, offering training, lessons, and marketing of sales horses.
Caignon-Lewis and three other ex-trans activists created the Pique Resilience Project in 2019 and disbanded in 2020, allegedly because two of the members stopped dating each other.
Canaan, Chiara (2018). [response to Economist piece] https://chiaracanaan.tumblr.com/post/177791904093/why-are-so-many-teenage-girls-appearing-in-gender
Buddhist Peace Fellowship (1997). Turning Wheel. “Born on August 21, to TW associate editor Denise Caignon and her husband Tim Lewis: Chiara Lucia (Clear Light!)”
Media appearances
Caignon-Lewis and parent Denise Caignon have both spoken with Benjamin Boyce about their anti-trans activism.
I was interviewed for this magazine recently (Iâm âRachelâ), and have been pleasantly surprised at the positive response so far.
I was dysphoric because my father sexually abused me as a child until I learned to associate womanhood with fear and shame, and I was dysphoric because I am a lesbian, but my internalized homophobia jumped at the option of being a straight man instead.
Had I not been exposed to the cultish mindset of Tumblrâs transactivists at a vulnerable phase of my life, I would not have become absorbed by a desire to permanently change my body.
Kerschner works for anti-trans hate group Genspect.
Background
Helena Elise Kerschner was born July 24, 1998 in northern Kentucky and grew up in the Cincinnati area. Kerschner’s parent Magdalena E Kerschner (born 1960) is a physician who ran a pain clinic. Kerschner’s parent William P. “Will” Kerschner (born 1959) was an executive at a large consumer goods company. Both are retired.
Kerschner had a childhood of immense privilege and was involved in figure skating and other expensive hobbies like horse riding. As a teen, Kerschner was a compulsive Tumblr user:
[…] By the time I was thirteen, I was isolating myself, self-harming, and had developed an eating disorder. In eighth grade, I lost touch with most of my school friends, and was too self-conscious and preoccupied with my eating disorder to put myself out there again. I started skipping school, spending lunch in the bathroom, and in general just keeping my head down, trying to get through the day unnoticed.
[…] When I was fifteen, I was introduced to gender ideology on Tumblr and began to call myself nonbinary. Over the next few years, I would continue to go deeper and deeper down the trans identity rabbit hole, and by the time I was eighteen, I saw myself as a âtrans manâ, otherwise known as âFtMâ. Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood to begin a testosterone regimen. At my first appointment, I was prescribed testosterone, and I would remain on this regimen for a year and a half. It had an extremely negative effect on my mental health, and I finally admitted what a disaster it had been when I was 19, sometime around February or March 2018.
[…] Between sharing photos, drawings, and fanfiction, these girls were posting about their lives and going into deep detail about their struggles. Many were social outcasts like me, also struggling with things like self-harm and eating disorders. Finding a community of such like minded people felt amazing, and I quickly began spending nearly every waking moment on Tumblr or messaging some friend I had met on there. If I had any remaining motivation to integrate myself into real life, I lost that here.
Kershner became sexually attracted to and obsessed with boyish pop culture figures like Elvis and Justin Bieber. Kershner eventually wanted to embody them. This erotic interest in masculinization was not well documented prior to LiveJournal, Tumblr, the “shipping” phenomenon, and anime fandoms frequented by fujoshi {“rotten girl”) obsessives.
Kerschner met Hinty via tumblr, and they eventually lived together. Kerschner started hormones as an adult on August 15, 2016. According to an interview with Daily Wire, Kerschner’s new name was Vincent Lucas “Vin” Jaszczak. Jaszczak was a family name.
While most people who make additional changes in gender identity or expression remain supportive of the process, some choose to get money and attention by joining the ex-trans movement. According to friends, Kerschner was drawn into alt-right ideologies via toxic online communities including now-banned subreddits like r/The_Donald and r/GenderCritical.
I finally bit the bullet and looked into radical feminism. This happened because during a suicidal mental break down, I went to the only community online that I had found supported detransitioned people (the trans community often demonizes and erases us), which was r/GenderCritical on Reddit. I was met with an overflow of love and support, and they showed me that radfems are not the monsters the trans tumblr community makes us out to be. Though their politics were extremely shocking to me, someone who spent the last 5 years intensely believing in genderist ideology, after a while things started making sense and I realized just how horrible trans ideology is, and how it nearly destroyed my life.
With the help of radical feminism, which has taught me an immense level of self respect, I am slowly crawling out of rock bottom.
Kerschner soon became fixated on alt-right figures like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson in ways that mirror previous fascinations with Elvis and Justin Bieber.
Kerschner testified in support of Ohio legislation HB 454, the “Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE)” Act. Kerschner also works extensively behind the scenes with Denise Caignon, owner of anti-trans site 4thWaveNow.
“a few disclaimers just cause ill talk about this stuff and i dont want u to see me talk about it and not know whats going on: 1. i have experience with abuse but dont talk to me about it unless ur also an abuse survivor 2. im pretty mentally ill so sorry if i cry a lot but you can talk to me about it idc jus⊠beware my screaming”
Hinty grew up in Ohio. After moving to a new school at age 15, Hinty met trans and gender diverse peers. Before identifying as trans, Hinty briefly identified as nonbinary at 16, then trans at 17. Hinty did not take medical steps until adulthood, starting testosterone injections in 2016 at age 18. On April 4, 2017, Hinty’s name change petition was granted.
Hinty attended Otterbein University from 2016 to 2017, studying computer science. While there, Hinty was Student Program Coordinator for the Office of Social Justice & Activism.
Hinty moved to Chicago in 2017 and began a long-term relationship with future ex-trans activist Helena Kerschner, holding a number of service jobs following an internship on the docu-series America In Transition.
After 14 months of hormone use, Hinty stopped and briefly identified as nonbinary before identifying as a “bi lady with C-PTSD who finds relief from brain stuff through gaming and medical cannabis!”
Hinty worked at Argo Tea and Starbucks for about one year each. From 2019 to 2022 Hinty worked at cannabis dispensary GreenGate Chicago (now ZenLeaf) before embarking on a freelance graphic design career.
Pique Resilience Project
In 2019 PRP created a number of videos and made several media appearances in its year of operation. The project disbanded in 2020 after Hinty and Kerschner broke up.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Dagny Walton is an American artist and “ex-transgender” activist involved with the Pique Resilience Project. Members of the group have spoken at anti-trans conferences and appeared on fascist/conservative media outlets.
Background
Walton was born in 1996, grew up in Colorado, and graduated from Poudre High School in Fort Collins. Walton read a lot as a child and never identified with feminine characters. From age 15 to 19, Walton identified as non-binary, then as a trans man, then briefly back to nonbinary before identifying as a woman again.
Walton was diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” and had about 25 weekly therapy sessions over the course of 6 months, after which the options of hormones and surgery were available. After a long time of “breaking down” parental resistance, Walton then visited an endocrinologist but never opted for surgery. Walton was on hormones from age 17 (“six months before turning 18”) for just over 2 years before deciding to stop at age 19.
Walton earned an undergraduate degree in classical studies from University of British Columbia in 2018. After moving to Montana, Walton took a job at Sun Mountain Sports and began a graduate arts program at University of Montana in Missoula. Walton got engaged to another graduate of University of British Columbia.
Walton also claims there is a dominant narrative that suggests hormones are the only path to happiness and the only cure for “gender dysphoria.” Despite the best efforts of helping professionals and loved ones, Walton would not listen to those who suggested alternatives to medical options. Walton describes ignoring suggestions from the therapist to explore options like getting into a relationship.
The protocols for trans youth did not fail Walton. Walton gamed the system through deception and even self-deception. As I have said on this site since before Walton was born, there’s never a happy ending to an unhappy journey. With luck, Walton will one day stop blaming others and making it harder to get trans healthcare for young people who need it.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Scott Leibowitz is an American pediatric psychiatrist best known for working with gender diverse youth and with anti-trans journalists.
Like many psychologists and psychiatrists who get paid to do them, Leibowitz promotes “comprehensive psychological assessments,” a form of gatekeeping used for over a century to delay or deny medical transition options for trans and gender diverse people.
Leibowitz is a key source for journalists who feel it has become too easy for adolescents and young adults to get hormones and surgery, covering trans healthcare like an unfolding medical scandal. Leibowitz participated in numerous articles about the ex-transgender movement, most notably pieces by anti-trans activists Jesse Singal in The Atlantic and Emily Bazelon in the New York Times. Those pieces have been cited in proposed legislation banning trans healthcare.
Leibowitz believes that science, medicine, and journalism can somehow be separated from politics. In 2024, despite Leibowitz’s objections, Ohio passed HB 68 banning the care that Leibowitz offers in that state.
Background
Scott Farrell Leibowitz was born on May 20, 1978 in Smithtown, New York. Leibowitz earned a bachelorâs degree from Cornell University and a medical degree from the Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine New York State/American Program. Leibowitz completed residencies at the Zucker Hillside Hospital in Queens and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Long Island Jewish Health System. Leibowitz then did a Fellowship at the children’s gender clinic at Boston Childrenâs Hospital with colleague Laura Edwards-Leeper. In 2013 Leibowitz took a similar position at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Childrenâs Hospital in Chicago. In 2015 Leibowitz was recruited to Nationwide Childrenâs in Columbus, Ohio.
2018 Atlantic article
Leibowitz was quoted throughout a 2018 Atlantic article by Jesse Singal on the ex-transgender movement. Similar to the ex-gay movement, the people who promote the medicalized concepts of “desistance” and “detransition” believe that interest in gender transition is a disease that can resolve on its own or through medical intervention. Proponents of these loaded terms make several assumptions that are not value-neutral and therefore not scientific.
[Laura] Edwards-Leeper is hoping to promote a concept of affirming care that takes into account the developmental nuances that so often come up in her clinical work. In this effort, she is joined by Scott Leibowitz, a psychiatrist who treats children and adolescents. He is the medical director of behavioral health for the THRIVE program at Nationwide Childrenâs Hospital, in Columbus. Leibowitz has a long history of working with and supporting TGNC youthâhe served as an expert witness for the Department of Justice in 2016, when President Barack Obamaâs administration challenged state-level âbathroom billsâ that sought to prevent trans people from using the public bathroom associated with their gender identity. Edwards-Leeper and Leibowitz met at Boston Childrenâs, where Leibowitz did his psychiatry fellowship, and the two have been close friends and collaborators ever since.
While itâs understandable, for historical reasons, why some people associate comprehensive psychological assessments with denial of access to care, that isnât how Leibowitz and Edwards-Leeper view their approach. Yes, they want to discern whether a patient actually has gender dysphoria. But comprehensive assessments and ongoing mental-health work are also means of ensuring that transitioningâwhich can be a physically and emotionally taxing process for adolescents even under the best of circumstancesâgoes smoothly.
[…]
Scottâs assessment process centered mostly on the basic readiness questions Edwards-Leeper and Leibowitz are convinced should be asked of any young person considering hormones.
[…]
But progressive-minded parents can sometimes be a problem for their kids as well. Several of the clinicians I spoke with, including Nate Sharon, Laura Edwards-Leeper, and Scott Leibowitz, recounted new patientsâ arriving at their clinics, their parents having already developed detailed plans for them to transition. âIâve actually had patients with parents pressuring me to recommend their kids start hormones,â Sharon said.
[…]
Leibowitz noted that a relationship with a caring therapist may itself be an important prophylactic against suicidal ideation for TGNC youth: âOften for the first time having a medical or mental-health professional tell them that they are going to take them seriously and really listen to them and hear their story often helps them feel better than theyâve ever felt.â
[…]
âWould you rather have a live daughter or a dead son?â is a common response to such questions. âThis type of narrative takes an already fearful parent and makes them even more afraid, which is hardly the type of mind-set one would want a parent to be in when making a complex lifelong decision for their adolescent,â Leibowitz said.
Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a physician who specializes in pediatric and adolescent medicine at Childrenâs Hospital Los Angeles and who is the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, is one of the most sought-out voices on these issues, and has significant differences with Edwards-Leeper and Leibowitz. In âMental Health Disparities Among Transgender Youth: Rethinking the Role of Professionals,â a 2016 JAMAPediatrics article, she wrote that âestablishing a therapeutic relationship entails honesty and a sense of safety that can be compromised if young people believe that what they need and deserve (potentially blockers, hormones, or surgery) can be denied them according to the information they provide to the therapist.â
[…]
Perhaps a first step is to recognize detransitioners and desisters as being on the same âsideâ as happily transitioned trans people. Members of each of these groups have experienced gender dysphoria at some point, and all have a right to compassionate, comprehensive care, whether or not that includes hormones or surgery. âThe detransitioner is probably just as scarred by the system as the transitioner who didnât have access to transition,â Leibowitz told me. The best way to build a system that fails fewer people is to acknowledge the staggering complexity of gender dysphoriaâand to acknowledge just how early we are in the process of understanding it.
The story is about the editing of the WPATH Standards of Care 8 chapter on youth.
Leibowitz, [Annelou] de Vries and their co-authors held their ground on assessments. The final version of their chapter said that because of the limited long-term research, treatment without a comprehensive diagnostic assessment âhas no empirical support and therefore carries the risk that the decision to start gender-affirming medical interventions may not be in the long-term best interest of the young person at that time.â
[from original version] In his Atlantic story, Singal also justified his skepticism of letting kids transition by relying heavily on two care providers, Scott Leibowitz and Laura Edwards-Leeper, who believe in the desistance myth, and whom Singal has cited in the past. Despite the fact that their views are shared by few other experts, Singal has suggested in the past that their theory is mainstream.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article referenced child and adolescent psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz and his colleague Laura Edwards-Leeper in a context that misrepresented their work. It has been updated to remove reference to them.
Singal, Jesse (July 2018). When a child says she’s trans. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-a-child-says-shes-trans/561749/
Simons LK, Leibowitz SF, Hidalgo MA (2014). Understanding gender variance in children and adolescents. Pediatr Ann. 2014 Jun;43(6):e126-31. https://doi.org/10.3928/00904481-20140522-07
Edwards-Leeper L, Leibowitz SF, Sangganjanavanich VF (2016). Affirmative practice with transgender and gender nonconforming youth: Expanding the model. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 3(2):165-172 https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000167
Calzo JP, Melchiono M, Richmond TK, Leibowitz SF, Argenal RL, Goncalves A, Pitts S, Gooding HC, Burke P (2017). Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Adolescent Health: An Interprofessional Case Discussion. MedEdPORTAL. 2017 Aug 9;13:10615. https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10615
Janssen A, Scott Leibowitz SF, eds. (2018). Affirmative Mental Health Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth: A Clinical Guide. ISBN 9783319783079
The research term for this is desistance. This has become a rather controversial discussion because the studies themselves vary in the populations they included and how they handled the children that were lost to follow up.
Strang JF, Powers MD, Knauss M, Sibarium E, Leibowitz SF, Kenworthy L, Sadikova E, Wyss S, Willing L, Caplan R, Pervez N, Nowak J, Gohari D, Gomez-Lobo V, Call D, Anthony LG (2018). “They Thought It Was an Obsession”: Trajectories and Perspectives of Autistic Transgender and Gender-Diverse Adolescents. J Autism Dev Disord. 2018 Dec;48(12):4039-4055. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3723-6
Strang JF, Janssen A, Tishelman A, Leibowitz SF, Kenworthy L, McGuire JK, Edwards-Leeper L, Mazefsky CA, Rofey D, Bascom J, Caplan R, Gomez-Lobo V, Berg D, Zaks Z, Wallace GL, Wimms H, Pine-Twaddell E, Shumer D, Register-Brown K, Sadikova E, Anthony LG (2018). Revisiting the Link: Evidence of the Rates of Autism in Studies of Gender Diverse Individuals. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2018 Nov;57(11):885-887. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2018.04.023
Leibowitz SF, Lantos JD (2019). Affirming, Balanced, and Comprehensive Care for Transgender Teenagers. Pediatrics. June 2019, 143 (6) e20190995 https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-0995
Exhibit 37: Expert Declaration of Scott F. Leibowitz, MD. United States of America v. State of North Carolina, et al. (2017). No. 1:16-cv-00425 [PDF] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/de_076-37_-_leibowitz_decl_iso_mot_for_pi_us_07-06-2016.pdf
Leibowitz SF, Telingator C (2012). Assessing gender identity concerns in children and adolescents: evaluation, treatments, and outcomes. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2012 Apr;14(2):111-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-012-0259-x
Leibowitz SF, Spack NP (2011). The development of a gender identity psychosocial clinic: treatment issues, logistical considerations, interdisciplinary cooperation, and future initiatives. Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2011 Oct;20(4):701-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2011.07.004
Stoddard J, Leibowitz SF, Ton H, Snowdon S (2011). Improving medical education about gender-variant youth and transgender adolescents. Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2011 Oct;20(4):779-91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2011.07.008
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Jesse Singal is an American podcaster, cultural critic, and anti-transgender activist. Singal launders anti-transgender extremism into mainstream media and is a prominent figure in America’s transphobic moral panic.
See this biography for background. After initially working at progressive publications, Singal found success criticizing progressive public policy, media, and medicine. Singal then began getting even more money and attention by attacking transgender people, especially gender diverse youth.
Singal’s activism against the trans rights movement centers on several anti-transgender tactics:
amplifying outliers and edge cases in controversies to derail broader discussions
undermining critics, especially trans and gender diverse critics
getting support from anti-transgender activists, media figures, professionals, and legislators, among others
Singal seeks to influence healthcare decisions about our minors with the same rhetoric and tactics used by activists who seek to restrict reproductive healthcare options like contraception and abortion. Singal attempts to disrupt conversations between healthcare providers and the families they serve by demanding more gatekeeping.
Singal focuses on childhood “desistance” and adult “detransition,” two disputed conceptualizations of people whose gender identity or expression shifts over time. These cure narratives and regret narratives are collectively known as the ex-trans movement. These narratives are vastly over-represented in media coverage of trans issues, but Singal’s coverage often suggests to credulous audiences that these narratives don’t get represented enough.
Singal frequently gets money and attention by exploiting anxiety about trans and gender diverse minors, which gets framed as “concern.” Singal then gets more money and attention by implying that opponents and critics are incompetent, dishonest, or even dangerous. Biologist Julia Serano has described this as the “Dregerian narrative,” named after Singal’s role model, anti-transgender historian Alice Dreger.
Singal has gained a reputation for “sealioning,” or persistent and aggressive challenges to criticism. Singal typically focuses on a critic’s minor error, omission, or word choice and uses that detail to derail the larger points made about Singal’s work. Singal uncritically promotes any supporters, defending these ideological allies by challenging their critics with the same persistent and aggressive tactics.
Singal’s tactics have been especially harmful to trans journalists, writers, cultural critics, and experts. Through immense privilege and nepotistic connections, Singal has access to opportunities and backchannel conversations where trans people are often excluded. Singal holds forth in these trans-exclusionary spaces as an expert on “tricky science stuff,” while implying that trans people cannot competenetly discuss trans issues. Singal claims to be an edgy iconoclast willing to speak up against “activists,” which Singal uses as a thought-terminating pejorative against any trans critic.
Bad-faith cultural critics often become part of the story they attempt to cover. In The Anti-Trans Hate Machine, journalist Imara Jones outlined Singal’s historically significant role in attacks on hundreds of thousands of trans and gender diverse children. Singal is the inspiration for this site’s decade-long Transphobia Project. That project seeks to show that there are many ethical journalists, public intellectuals, cultural critics, and other creators of knowledge and culture who are capable of addressing controversial gender issues in fair and value-neutral ways.
Singal is a compulsive X/Twitter user who self-published over 125,000 posts, an average of about 35 posts a day for ten years. Singal’s reputation for online histrionics and causing harm to the trans community grew, and Singal soon began exploring other self-publishing options. In November 2017, Singal started a Medium account that mostly addressed topics related to trans people and to Twitter. In January 2019, Singal started a Substack newsletter titled Singal-Minded. In March 2020 Singal began a lucrative “drama” podcast called Blocked and Reported with anti-transgender troll Katie Herzog. These platforms generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year and allow Singal to continue this pattern of behavior without any editorial oversight or accountability.
In 2024, Singal joined Bluesky and quickly became the most blocked user in this history of the platform due to anti-trans trolling. Users made several efforts to get Singal banned from the platform.
Anti-trans activists like Jesse Singal are an enormous resource drain for a persecuted minority like the trans community. Singal is a once-in-a-generation problem for our children. We owe it to them to focus our limited resources on minimizing the profound harm Singal is causing. It is literally Singal’s business to derail the trans rights movement, and business is booming.
This information will be significantly expanded over the next decade. In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Katie Herzog is an American podcaster best known for gender critical views and anti-transgender activism. Herzog co-hosts the anti-trans “drama” podcast Blocked and Reported with Jesse Singal. Herzog’s work includes
Catherine Ronan “Katie” Herzog was born on May 18, 1983 in Asheville, North Carolina. Herzog’s parents are both emeritus professors who taught at Western Carolina University: Harold Albert “Hal” Herzog served as a psychology professor, and Mary Jean Ronan Herzog served as an education professor. Katie Herzog graduated from the University of North Carolina at Asheville with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Herzog has siblings.
Herzog has published writing in numerous outlets, listed below. Herzog identifies as lesbian and lives in Washington state and North Carolina with spouse Janna Krein, a nurse.
Views on transgender people
Herzog worked for Dan Savage as a freelancer for The Stranger, later serving as a staff writer from 2017 to 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Herzog was furloughed and was no longer employed there as of 2020.
In 2017, Herzog wrote “The Detransitioners,” a piece critics considered a biased and flawed article supporting the ex-trans movement. The piece mentioned several people:
Brynn Tannehill, a trans journalist whose criticism of the ex-trans movement appears to have motivated Herzog’s piece
Marlo Mack, How to Be a Girl podcaster and supportive parent of a gender diverse child
John Otto, a happily transitioned trans man
Supporting Herzog’s views were several activists promoting the ex-trans movement:
James Cantor, a fellow gender critical troll in Toronto and promoter of many disease models of gender identity and expression
“Jackie” aka “Jackal,” a Seattle area resident who was 25 in 2017 and moderated detransinfo.tumblr.com
“Jane,” a Southern California resident who was 53 in 2017 and who joined the ex-trans movement after discovering radfem forums online
“Ryan,” who was 43 in 2017 and who underwent medical transition steps but was not socially transitioned at the time
“Cass,” who later came out as ex-trans whistleblower Ky Schevers
Schevers was deeply involved in the “gender critical” movement connected to trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF):
While hanging out among ourselves, I and other younger members of this scene would jokingly refer to ourselves and each other as âTERFsâ, reclaiming what we viewed as a slur. Many of us got a kick out of having a secret life in a subculture outsiders (correctly) viewed as a hate group. We thought such people were ridiculous and misogynistic for seeing us as hateful and we frequently mocked them, acting as if they were ignorant, misled and/or overly sensitive. We would gather at a lesbian-owned coffee shop and complain about how trans activists were a threat to lesbian culture, talk about dangerous and disgusting âautogynephilesâ trying to infiltrate âfemale-onlyâ spaces, and the social forces supposedly pushing lesbians to âdis-identify from femalenessâ and identify as trans.
Schevers 2021
Herzog never updated the original piece or covered the subsequent developments. No one has ever independently confirmed Herzog’s claims about “Jackie,” “Jane,” or “Ryan,” and the only one independently confirmed has come out against Herzog’s article and its thesis. This is probably the prime example that Herzog is not an objective source for information on trans issues.
In response, some critics burned copies of The Stranger and distributed stickers that said “Katie Herzog (writer at the stranger) Is A Transphobe.” Herzog claims to have been ostracized by some friends. The New York TimesandThe New Republicdescribed the reaction to “The Detransitioners” as an example of “cancel culture.”
In 2024, The Stranger allowed Schevers to set the record straight on Herzog’s coverage, but none of Herzog’s other sources have been independently verified.
After leaving The Stranger
Since leaving The Stranger, Herzog has become more outspoken on anti-transgender topics. Herzog has spoken frequently about the alleged cultural shift away from “lesbian” as an identity, promoted the disputed diagnosis “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” and suggested that the increase in trans-identified people is part of a “social contagion.” Herzog has also gotten money and attention for claiming that medical schools are “denying biological sex” by presenting more inclusive and value-neutral scientific terminology. Herzog’s posts on the topic via intellectual dark web promoter Bari Weiss were tagged as unreliable self-published sources by the r/medicine forum on reddit, causing the usual suspects to claim they were being censored.
In 2020, Herzog founded Permabanned Media LLC and began the podcast Blocked and Reported with co-host Jesse Singal, also a prominent figure in anti-transgender extremism. That year, Herzog co-signed “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” for Harper’s. That letter was debated for being signed by a disproportionate number of anti-transgender extremists.
Schevers, Ky (June 24, 2024). The Reality Behind the Story I Told The Stranger.The Stranger https://www.thestranger.com/queer-issue-2024/2024/06/05/79545098/the-reality-behind-the-story-i-told-the-stranger
Chapter One: “And then I met Janna, the woman who would become my wife, and not only did I change my mind about dog fanatics, Iâm ashamed to say I even became one myself.”
Herzog, Katie (September 6, 2018). “They” Is a Fine Pronoun, But It Ain’t Mine. The Stranger https://www.thestranger.com/articles/2018/09/06/31903785/they-is-a-fine-pronoun-but-it-aint-mine
Kaufman, Scott Barry (July 9, 2020). Uncancellable with Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal.The Psychology Podcast. https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/uncancellable-with-katie-herzog-and-jesse-singal/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4yALKu3RrE
Fuller, David and Beiner, Alexander (June 19, 2020). The Death of Journalism?YouTube / Rebel Wisdom / Sensemaking Series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9AVo3jXjN8
Cohen-Wade, Aryeh (July 29, 2018). Jordan Peterson and Detransitioning.YouTube / Culturally Determined / Meaningoflife.tv. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IRAKuB1JI8
This profile originally misstated Herzog’s birthday. In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Paul Thomas is a government employee and co-founder of The Leeds Salon. Thomas has complained in UnHerd about “the collaboration between the unions and management” regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the University and College Union’s “disgraceful lack of support for Kathleen Stock.”
Paul Embery is a British firefighter and union leader who has made several anti-transgender comments.
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.”
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.”
Coming next: short people may identify as tall, fat people may identify as thin, and ugly people may pretend to be George Clooney. pic.twitter.com/Crxau2dZtz
In 2022 Embery quoted a Spiked article titled “Eddie Izzard was born male and he will die male,” then said, “Pretty much sums it up.”
"This is the trans ideology summed up. Everything – the entire physical, social and scientific world – must be sacrificed to the therapeutic needs of men who think theyâre women."
In 2023, Embery denied the UK’s relentless attacks on trans people, writing, “There is no âwarâ on trans people. There is simply resistance to increasingly strident and unscientific demands.”
There is no âwarâ on trans people. There is simply resistance to increasingly strident and unscientific demands. https://t.co/rRJjVVvzzc
