Denise Caignon is an American author and anti-transgender extremist.
Caignon founded anti-transgender site 4thWaveNow in 2015 and has appeared in the media under a number of aliases, including:
“Marie Verite”
“Denise Canaan”
“Janette Miller”
Caignon’s site became one of the most prominent transphobic platforms, surviving a purge of similar anti-trans sites that violated hosts’ terms of service. Caignon is a key developer of the controversial “rapid onset gender dysphoria” diagnosis. Caignon’s child Chiara Caignon-Lewis is a prominent member of the “ex-trans” wing of anti-trans activists.
Background
Denise Jeanette Caignon was born in 1955 to a family that moved frequently. After graduating from Louisville Collegiate School in 1973, Caignon soon moved to California and began getting involved in second-wave feminism.
Self-defense and “take back the night” initiatives were an important focus of second-wave feminism starting in the 1970s. The belief was that direct confrontation can exert community control over rapists’ behavior. In 1972, not long before Caignon’s arrival, Santa Cruz Women Against Rape (SCWAR) was founded as an “alternative anti-Rape organization in which women support women.” The non-hierarchical collective had many lesbian members and offered a 24-hour rape hotline and free self-defense workshops. They also maintained a published list profiling alleged male rapists, assaulters, and harassers. They were later sued by someone on the list.
One of the women involved with the SCWAR hotline was queer activist Gail Groves. During six years working on the rape hotline, Groves realized that many stereotypes about sexual assault were inaccurate. Caignon and Groves studied judo together, and they soon founded Santa Cruz Women’s Self-Defense Teaching Cooperative. They also founded Women Who Resist: The Success Story Project to catalog strategies for preventing and surviving a sexual assault. In 1987, they published these first-hand reports as Her Wits About Her: Self-Defense Success Stories by Women. They taught a class that role-played real situations, recommending that students prepare for common issues like attack cues and verbal abuse from attackers.
Caignon has helped produce other publications and served as an editor of the Buddhist publication Turning Wheel for many years, guest editing three issues: intentional communities, engaged lives, and fundamentalism. Caignon ended that work in 1999 to spend more time with spouse Tim Lewis and their child Chiara.
After living in California for 27 years, Caignon moved to North Carolina and studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to be a speech-language pathologist. In keeping with a longstanding interest in intentional communities, Caignon has a residence in a cohousing community in Carrboro. Caignon earned a master’s degree in 2007 and practiced in the area until retiring in 2014. Caignon’s focus was on aphasia related to strokes. Caignon helped develop Life Interest and Value (LIV) Cards, a way for people with speech loss to improve communication.
Chiara Caignon-Lewis
Caignon’s only child Chiara Caignon-Lewis was born in 1997. As an adolescent, Chiara was heavily active on Tumblr, and at one point alleged on the platform to have experienced sexual abuse as a child by Chiara’s seminal parent. These allegations align with the date of Denise Caignon’s sudden move to North Carolina after 27 years in California.
Because Denise Caignon’s entire life, career, and identity were built around preventing sexual assault, these allegations must have been completely devastating. If true, Denise Caignon failed to prevent the sexual assault that was the most deeply personal. Denise Caignon’s guilt and rage needed an outlet, and Chiara soon provided one.
Chiara began identifying as transgender online in 2013, at age 16. Chiara had already come out as queer and had started dating, but an incident at school had left Chiara with few friends in real life. Chiara turned to online communities, claiming that popular trans users on Tumblr and YouTube caused a multi-year obsession with transition.
At age 17, Chiara came out to Denise via a texted link to a gender clinic. Denise refused to let Chiara take medical transition steps, which led to a lot of fighting. At the height of the fighting, Denise got heavily involved with posting anti-transgender materials online and attending trans-exclusionary events. In an interview with Chiara, Denise said:
“I was fortunate to be able to meet two detransitioners I’d discovered online in person when I attended the Michigan Women’s Music Festival in 2015.”
In 2015, Denise sent Chiara to a Florida horse farm for nine months, after which Chiara claims the desire to transition subsided without taking any legal or medical steps. Denise and Chiara then teamed up to be one of the most high-profile famiies in the modern ex-trans movement.
Unlike the second-wave feminism of Caignon’s youth, third-wave feminism is largely trans-inclusive. Caignon’s site name 4thWaveNow is a call to replace that third-wave feminism with a transphobic fourth wave.
Haley KL, Womack JL, Helm-Estabrooks N, Caignon D, McCulloch KL (2010). The Life Interest and Values Cards. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Department of Allied Health Sciences.
McIntyre, Carl (2010) Aphasia. Bonus materials: Interview with Denise Caignon, MS, CCC-SLP, Carl’s Speech Pathologist
Haley K, Helm-Estabrooks N, Caignon D, Womack J, McCulloch K (2009). Self-determination and life activity goals for people with aphasia. Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, New Orleans, LA
Haley KL, Helm-Estabrooks N, Womack J, Caignon D, McCracken E (2007). A pictorial, binary-sorting system allowing “self-determination despite aphasia. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Boston, MA.
Moon, Susan (2004). Not Turning Away: The Practice of Engaged Buddhism. Shambhala Publications ISBN 9781590301036
Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering, John Page (2001). From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture. [Caignon handled production and layout] Zed Books ISBN 978-1856492232
Caignon, Denise, consulting ed. (1999). Turning Wheel: Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Groves, Gail (1995). “And He Turned Around and Ran Away.” in Patricia Searles, Ronald J. Berger (eds) Rape and Society: Readings on the Problem of Sexual Assault. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493201
Levoy, Gregg (November 6, 1990). Teaching women to fight back. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/1990/11/06/teaching-women-to-fight-back/605287cd-e0cf-4672-b3a3-642e3f0074b4/
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Sarah Mittermaier aka “Eliza Mondegreen” and “elizaoltramare” is an American-Canadian anti-transgender activist. Mittermaier is affiliated with numerous anti-trans organizations and figures:
Sarah Beth Mittermaier was born in May 1987 to Paul Mittermaier, an Episcopal minister, and Beth (Wagel) Mittermaier, an artist. Both parents are from Ohio, but Sarah Mittemaier grew up in Wisconsin.
Mittermaier attended University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2009. Mittermaier was a copy editor at the Daily Cardinal and a contributor to the Badger Herald. Mittermaier worked at several organizations, including the Prevention Institute, before returning to school at McGill University in Montreal.
Mittermaier was a member of WPATH while residing in Washington, DC.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2021 Mittermaier and Kitty Robinson founded the “LGB erasure” conspiracy website Unspeakable for “finding a language for female experiences in the LGBTQ+ community.” It allowed people to post anonymous rants, mostly from anti-trans people who identify as lesbian.
Mittermaier earned a master’s degree from McGill University in 2024. Mittermaier’s thesis was on “detransition” in the context of reddit communities, especially r/detrans. Mittermaier’s advisors were Samuel Veissière and Cecile Rousseau. Mittermaier includes a disclosure about being involved with SEGM:
During my time as an M.Sc. student, I worked with the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine to help organize three conferences for researchers and clinicians working in the area of youth gender dysphoria. The first conference took place at Tampere University in Finland in June 2023, drawing researchers and clinicians from 17 countries with the objective of facilitating dialogue across the divide between affirming and exploratory approaches to youth gender distress. The second conference took place in New York City in October 2023. The third—Questioning Gender: Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Youth Gender Dysphoria—will be hosted by the Medical School of Athens in October 2024.
Mittermaier’s profile for the 2024 SEGM conference states:
Researcher and writer exploring the online communities where young people adopt new attitudes and beliefs about gender and set expectations and intentions for transition. Her MSc. thesis, Questions and doubts in online trans communities, will be available this autumn through McGill University. She writes gender:hacked on Substack.
Somji, Alisha’ Mittermaier, Sarah (December 7, 2017). How we all together can build a future free from sexual harassment.San Francisco Chronicle https://web.archive.org/web/20171208115210/https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-we-all-together-can-build-a-future-from-12414346.php
Rousseau C, Johnson-Lafleur J, Ngov C, Miconi D, Mittermaier S, Bonnel A, Savard C, Veissière S. (2023). Social and individual grievances and attraction to extremist ideologies in individuals with autism: Insights from a clinical sample. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders (Vol. 105, p. 102171) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2023.102171
Sims J, Baird R, Aboelata MJ, Mittermaier S (2022). Cultivating a Healthier Policy Landscape: The Building Healthy Communities Initiative. Health Promotion Practice (Vol. 24, Issue 2, pp. 300–309). https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399221114341
Sandra Ramírez (Feb 1, 2024). Eliza Mondegreen, USA/Canada, The secret life of gender clinicians #FQT #WDI. Women’s Declaration International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrbxNvEc-bY
Chloe Pacey and Keshia Tognazzini (Jan 22, 2024). Exploring Affirmative Care: Navigating Online Trans Communities with Eliza Mondegreen. The Road To Wisdom Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APK-0Cw3DV0
Meghan Daum (Oct 24, 2023). Down The Rabbit Hole: Gender and Online Communities with Eliozan Mondegreen and Sarah Haider. A Special Place in Hell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJew30KNxqk
Sarah Phillimore (Feb 14, 2023). Eliza Mondegreen on WPATH conference, research on gender affirming care and more. [Rona Duwe, Eliza Mondegreen, Shannon Thrace] Women’s Declaration International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6NFf8e3Is8
Julia Long (Jul 4, 2022). Language and the Values that Underlie Our Movement [Kara Dansky, Eliza Mondegreen, Jesika Gonzalez, and Amanda Stulman]. Women’s Declaration International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6oKt-wLo5g
Lisa Selin Davis is an American author and “gender critical” activist involved in anti-transgender extremism. Since 2013, Davis has become a key anti-trans voice in American media, part of the movement’s “parental rights” faction. Davis has a gender diverse child and is unaccepting of the child’s interest in gender transition.
Davis’ attacks on the trans rights movement center on several gender critical tactics:
using Davis’ own child to draw sharp distinctions between the “tomboy” identity and other gender diverse youth identities
amplifying outliers and edge cases in controversies to derail broader discussions
Davis claims “there is a dominant narrative about trans kids that the media is promoting.” According to Davis, this alleged narrative is merely “mantras by activists” and based on “feeling over fact.” Davis claims to have concerns about the affirmative model of care and is troubled that fellow anti-trans activists can no longer publish their conservative beliefs without consequence.
Davis claims to be a liberal who is part of the “silenced center.” Davis disavows being part of the gender critical world or the gender affirming world and simply wants to “diversify the media narrative.” So far, Davis’ “viewpoint diversity” efforts have largely been the promotion of extremist clinicians, cultural critics, and activists with similar gender critical beliefs.
Background
Davis was born January 18, 1972. Davis’ parent Peter is a musician who plays in a group called Annie and the Hedonists. Davis’ youth was spent in a Massachusetts suburb with parent Helaine Selin (born 1946), a librarian and author.
Helaine Selin worked at Hampshire College and helped “nepo baby” Davis attend, then graduate in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in film studies. Davis then moved to New York City and lived with sibling Benjamin Lazar Davis, a musician. Davis built props at Nickelodeon for a few years, then earned an MFA in writing from Arizona State University in 2003.
Davis has edited a number of publications and websites, including Upstate House magazine, Senior Planet, KGB Bar, upstater.net, and brownstoner.com. Davis is the author of young adult novels Belly (2005) and Lost Stars (2016). Davis stopped writing in the genre, alleging it was no longer possible to write about characters from other demographic groups. Davis’ non-fiction writing has appeared in several publications, including Grist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, the New York Times, Quillette, and Quartz.
Davis and spouse Alex F. Sherwin live in New York with their two children, Enna and Athena. Davis’ 2020 book Tomboy is dedicated to them.
2013 Parenting article
In 2013, Davis wrote a piece for Parenting just before the magazine closed, titled “My Daughter Wants to be a Boy!” The title was stealth edited in 2017 to “My Daughter Is a Tomboy!” and the article was edited to remove some identifying information. The article was removed from the Parenting.com website in 2018, though the site remains online as part of a 2021 asset transfer from Meredith to Dotdash. The original version describes Davis’ child:
She insisted on being Spiderman for Halloween, and on getting light-up superhero sneakers “like my friend Luca’s” when she needed new shoes. They told us at school that she gravitated toward the boys, and though she is quite small for her age, and not particularly hearty, they told us she could hold her own with the rowdy bunch of them.
And again, I thought, “How great is she?”
Well, okay, 90% of me said that. The other 10% thought, “uh-oh.” As she started to announce in ways both subtle and direct that she’s a boy, and ask me questions like “Why can’t boys have vaginas and girls have penises?” the ratio of heartwarming to heart-sinking has shifted.
Let me say that I don’t hold particularly conventional views about gender or sexuality. There are so many lesbians in my family that I fully expect either or both of my daughters to be gay (though of course I will love and accept them if they turn out to be heterosexual). But there is something about having the only girl who won’t play princess, the only girl in the school who thinks and says she’s a boy, that has shaken me a bit. Dressing like a boy? Cool. Thinking you actually are a boy? Way more complicated. […]
Some of my fears for Enna-as-boy are rooted in reality. It’s a much harder way to move through the world, identifying with the gender you weren’t assigned at birth.
2017 New York Times op-ed
In 2017, Davis wrote an op-ed in the New York Times insisting that their child is not transgender, but instead a “tomboy.” Davis says author Jennifer Finney Boylan gave it the thumbs up, and Davis claims the whole community on Twitter then gave it the thumbs up.
Following its warm reception among conservatives and anti-trans thought leaders, Davis was given a book deal and turned the piece into the 2020 book Tomboy. Despite a book deal and many subsequent writing gigs and media appearances, Davis claims to have been “cancelled” for the op-ed. Davis reportedly met with Chase Strangio and Kate Bornstein about Davis’ “concerns about the dominant narrative” that affirming care benefited gender diverse youth.
Drawing parallels to the response to Jesse Singal’s transphobic 2018 piece in The Atlantic, Davis claims to be part of a group of “left wing” people who meet surreptitiously to plan strategies that undermine affirming care and promote the “Dutch protocol” for gender diverse youth, a gatekeeping model of care sometimes called “watchful waiting.”
2020 book Tomboy
In an expansion of the 2017 op-ed, Davis’ thesis is that masculine girls have recently disappeared from the cultural landscape. This erasure narrative about “tomboys” and lesbians is a major talking point among gender critical and trans-exclusionary separatists.
Cultural criticism
The narrative Davis puts forth is permeated with metaphors of disease and impairment. Davis describes some gender diverse youth as being influenced by peers and having “comorbidities” that should be cured before they are approved for gender affirming health services. Davis has concerns that medical transition is being used “as a panacea for other mental health issues.”
Davis’ binary view about transitioning to “the opposite sex” presents trans rights as a moral dilemma that could harm cisgender people: “Do we want to make decisions that are worse for the majority of people but they benefit a small group?”
Davis has criticized Stanford University School of Medicine psychiatrist Jack Turban for asking the media not to use the term “detransition.” Davis was offended after getting criticized by Turban during an interview request. Davis uses the term “activist” as a thought-terminating pejorative for anyone who does not share similar views, even subject matter experts like Strangio and Turban.
Meanwhile, Davis supports numerous controversial disease models of sex and gender diversity, including Ray Blanchard‘s sex disease “autogynephilia” and Kenneth Zucker‘s diseases like “gender identity disorder” and “gender dysphoria.” Davis has spoken with ex-trans activists like James Shupe and supports conservative trans people such as Aaron Kimberly and Scott Newgent.
2022 Quillette profile of Erica Anderson
Davis complained after The Nation noted that gender critical publication Quillette was deemed transphobic for promoting “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” and other conservative beliefs about gender diverse youth. Davis told fellow anti-trans activist Benjamin Boyce, “I don’t read Quillette, but I know they have a more diverse media narrative around this issue.”
A couple of months later, Davis profiled conservative transgender clinician Erica Anderson in Quillette. Anderson began litigating conservative clinical views about trans and gender diverse youth in the press in 2021. Because USPATH had specifically stated that clinical disputes should be discussed among professionals and not litigated in the lay press, Anderson resigned from USPATH in a move to get more attention for these conservative clinical views from people like Davis.
2022 Newsweek op-ed
In a classic case of false balance and “bothsidesism,” Davis made the case against affirmative care in a Newsweek piece titled “What Both Sides Are Missing About the Science of Gender-Affirming Care.” As usual, one of the best ways to analyze Davis’ bias is via the proportion of text and links. These pieces always start of with a veneer of journalism, then quickly make a case for one position. Unlike the infamous 2018 Atlantic piece by Jesse Singal, at least this one is labeled opinion.
Davis cites 3 neutral sources and 7 sources that reflect expert medical consensus. Davis cites 35 sources that dispute expert medical consensus and support the gender critical view, which could basically be summarized thus: being trans is a rapidly spreading disease that should be monitored and controlled by a state-run healthcare system overseen by conservative clinicians and legislators, where even one bad outcome must be prevented at all costs. Even if the cost is 100 good outcomes. Others with Davis’ cis-centric point of view would add even if the cost is prosecuting the families and doctors who work toward good outcomes.
2022 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed
This piece purports to condemn extremist anti-trans legislators. It also suggests that mainstream medical consensus is the extremism at the other end of the political spectrum. Davis once again praises federal healthcare systems that require children to travel to centralized clinics run by state-funded gatekeepers in hopes of receiving medical care capped by a federal budget. Despite extensive evidence about the drawbacks of such systems for minorities seeking health services, like the US Veteran’s Administration or Canada’s CAMH, Davis is convinced that systems like Sweden’s, or worse, the UK’s will prevent rare cases of regret.
2022 Skeptic special edition
Anti-trans activist Michael Shermer paid other members of the gender critical faction in the skeptic community to present their version of “the debate” about trans people. No trans contributors were invited. Joining Shermer in this attack were Harriet Hall, Carol Tavris, and Davis, whose piece is titled “Trans Matters: An Overview of the Debate, Research, and Policies.” Davis bristles about being lumped in with “conservative, transphobic bigots” and claims support for affirming models of care “is now a test of loyalty” among its supporters.
April 2022 Quillette piece
It was inevitable that Davis would become a regular contributor to Quillette’s steady stream of anti-trans articles. Davis’ efforts continued with a dogwhistle piece about “the encroachment of ideology on medicine by activists” and the “propaganda surrounding medical literature.” While the piece seems to condemn the national deluge of anti-trans legislation criminalizing trans healthcare, Davis’ real point is to claim that the government has gone too far in supporting trans youth. Davis cites several examples gleaned from anti-trans parenting forums.
September 2022 Boston Globe piece
Davis continues to place the same article in any outlet that will take it, in this case repurposing a Substack piece in the Boston Globe, which was then reprinted in the New York Post as “Kid gender guidelines not driven by science.” Davis blames WPATH for bomb threats against trans-affirming children’s hospitals, because they did not publish better Standards of Care. Davis quotes anti-trans allies including Julia Mason of Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine and James Cantor, formerly of CAMH. Davis once again holds up federally controlled conservative gatekeeping as the ideal protocol.
Podcast
Beginning in 2022, Davis began a series of interviews, mostly with conservative and anti-transgender guests.
August 22, 2023: Heterodox Trans People #6: Phil Illy
Davis, Lisa Selin (December 19, 2021). Tomboys, trans boys and ‘West Side Story.’Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-12-19/tomboys-west-side-story-anybodys-gender-nonconforming-trans-people
Shupe, James [edited by Lisa Selin Davis] (September 14, 2021). Auogynephilia: In seach of my cure. Freed from editors and media outlets to report the truth about autogynephilia. Autogynephilia Diaries https://autogynephilia.substack.com/p/autogynephilia-in-search-of-my-cure [archive]
Davis, Lisa Selin (2013). “My Daughter Wants to be a Boy!” [retitled in 2017 as “My Daughter Is a Tomboy!” and removed in 2018] Parenting http://www.parenting.com/article/tomboy [archive]
Books
Davis, Lisa Selin (2024). Housewife: Why Women Still Do It All and What to Do Instead. Legacy Lit, ISBN 978-1538722886
Davis, Lisa Selin (2020). Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different. Legacy Lit, ISBN 978-0316458313
To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbé and Lisa Selin Davis (December 27, 2020). Woman Thought Leader Lisa Selin Davis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtnKjA48Uvc
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Sallie Baxendale is a British psychologist and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Sallie Ann Baxendale earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Surrey in 1990, followed by a master’s degree there in 1992. Baxendale earned a doctorate from UCL in 1997.
Much of Baxendale’s research involves epilepsy and brain development.
Anti-transgender activism
Baxendale began appearing in anti-trans media in 2021, starting with Transgender Trend.
Baxendale supports the ex-transgender movement and is critical of gender affirming healthcare for minors, especially use of puberty blockade. Baxendale was alarmed that some people describe puberty blockade as “fully reversible.”
Since 2023 Baxendale has contributed to anti-trans publication UnHerd,
In 2024 Baxendale published a summary of the 2024 Acta Paediatrica literature review (described below) on anti-trans site Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender (CAN-SG).
2024 puberty blockade literature review
In 2024 conservative Swedish psychiatrist Mikael Landén leaked a pre-publication paper by Baxendale to anti-trans activist Bernard Lane. Baxendale’s academic literature review reflected Landén’s view that puberty blockade should be strictly controlled because of unknown risks, particularly cognitive effects.
On the day of publication, Baxendale published a piece in UnHerd about how this puberty blockade literature review was rejected by three journals as well as accepted by Acta Paediatrica, which previously promoted more gatekeeping of healthcare for gender diverse youth in Sweden’s healthcare system. Baxendale claimed, “it wasn’t the methods they objected to, it was the actual findings.” Of the rejection reasons that Baxendale shared, all were about the obvious bias of the author and the stigmatizing potential from how the material is tendentiously presented.
The obvious and simple answer is to skip puberty blockers and go straight to hormones. Baxendale cites studies about young people who experience central precocious puberty having more robust brain development and cognition, so Baxendale has made a strong case for use of puberty-inducing drugs in all minors who desire improved cognition and IQ.
Baxendale, S. (2024). The impact of suppressing puberty on neuropsychological function: A review. Acta Paediatrica. https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.17150
Gender diverse youth studies cited:
Staphorsius AS, Kreukels BPC, Cohen-Kettenis PT, Veltman DJ, Burke SM, Schagen SEE, Wouters FM, Delemarre-van de Waal HA, Bakker J (2015). Puberty suppression and executive functioning: An fMRI-study in adolescents with gender dysphoria. Psychoneuroendocrinology (Vol. 56, pp. 190–199). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.03.007
Arnoldussen M, Hooijman EC, Kreukels BP, de Vries AL (2022). Association between pre-treatment IQ and educational achievement after gender-affirming treatment including puberty suppression in transgender adolescents. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry (Vol. 27, Issue 4, pp. 1069–1076). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591045221091652
Schneider MA, Spritzer PM, Soll BMB, Fontanari AMV, Carneiro M, Tovar-Moll F, Costa AB, da Silva DC, Schwarz K. Anes M, Tramontina S, Lobato, MIR (2017). Brain Maturation, Cognition and Voice Pattern in a Gender Dysphoria Case under Pubertal Suppression. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Vol. 11). Frontiers Media SA. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00528
Ivan D. Florez-Gomez lists the following affiliations:
Pediatrician, M.Sc. Clinical Epidemiology, Ph.D. in Health Research Methodology
Full (tenured) Professor, Dept. of Pediatrics, University of Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia
Pediatrician (PedsICU), Clinica Las Américas-AUNA, Medellin, Colombia
Adjunct Professor, School of Rehabilitation Science, McMaster University, Canada
Leader of the Appraisal of Guidelines for REsearch & Evaluation (AGREE) Collaboration
Director, Cochrane Colombia
Editor-In-Chief: Clinical & Pub Health Guidelines (Guidelines International Network-GIN)
Editorial Board: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology; Journal of the American Heart Association, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis Methods, & Pediatric Discovery)
Membership: SPOR-EA, GIN, Cochrane & the GRADE working group
“Jack Molay” is the pen name of a transfeminine activist living in Norway. “Molay” coined the term “crossdreaming” as a value-neutral descriptor of erotic interest in making a gender transition.
Background
The name “Jack D. Molay” is a play on Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the Knights Templar. “Molay” is reportedly married to another queer activist, known as “Sally Molay” online. “Molay” has not come out publicly as trans under their legal name. In an autobiography supplied to this site “Molay” stated:
“They have not transitioned, but argue that this is not to be understood as an example of what other trans people ought to do. They support trans people’s right to get the necessary support for transitioning. One might argue, though, that the fact that Molay has not transitioned may partly explain why the crossdreamer community is particularly popular among trans and queer people who are in the process of exploring their gender identity.”
Crossdreaming and news aggregation
“Molay” established the blog now known as Crossdreamers in 2008, after experiencing “an existential crisis caused by gender dysphoria” and wanting to establish “an arena for discussing cross-gender erotic fantasies in an open and positive way, getting around the stigma associated with such fantasies.”
The term crossdreaming was originally coined as an alternative to the stigmatizing term “autogynephilia.” Even though the term crossdreaming has been presented as a neutral, and purely descriptive term (not referring to a particular explanation for such fantasies) “Molay” has personally dismissed the “autogynephilia” theory as a stigmatizing, sexist, pseudoscience. Instead they view crossdreaming fantasies as a natural expression of gender variance, dismissing strict binaries of sexuality and gender.
“Molay” has researched crossdreaming in different groups of queer, nonbinary and transgender people, documenting, for instance, crossdreaming among people assigned female at birth (as reflected in the slash and yaoi subcultures). “Molay” has also looked into crossdreaming in historical sources, discussing, for instance, crossdreaming in the Kama Sutra and in Medieval poetry. “Molay” hopes to undermine the idea that such fantasies are only found among “straight men.”
Molay co-founded the Crossdream Life internet forum in 2011, a place where gender variant people may discuss any form of queer, trans and nonbinary fantasies, gender expressions or identities.
Molay also runs Trans Express, a Tumblr blog covering transgender and nonbinary news and issues, which seems to be particularly popular among younger trans and queer people. As of 2019 this blog has more than 13,000 followers.
Robert “Bob” Withers earned a master’s degree from University of Sussex.
Withers helped establish the Rock Clinic in Kemp Town in 1990.
Anti-trans activism
In 2015, Withers published an article titled “The seventh penis,” which was later withdrawn over patient consent issues:
The above article published online on 19 May 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), and in print and online in issue 60:3 (cover date June 2015) has been withdrawn by agreement between the author, the journal’s Editors-in-Chief, Marcus West and Nora Swan-Foster, and John Wiley & Sons Limited. The withdrawal has been agreed because consent to publish was not obtained. The author and the journal apologize for this oversight.
References
Flourish, Clare (July 26, 2020). Robert Withers. https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2020/07/26/robert-withers-transgender-professional-standards/
Withers R (2020). Transgender medicalization and the attempt to evade psychological distress. J Anal Psychol. 2020 Nov;65(5):865-889. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5922.12641
Withers R (2015). The seventh penis: towards effective psychoanalytic work with pre-surgical transsexuals. J Anal Psychol. 2015 Jun;60(3):390-412. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5922.12157.
Withdrawal statement: R. Withers, ‘The seventh penis: towards effective psychoanalytic work with pre-surgical transsexuals’, Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2015, 60, 3, 390-412, (https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5922.12157).
Anastassis Spiliadis is a Greek anti-transgender psychologist who supports the “ex-transgender” movement and promotes a form of delayed transition for gender diverse youth called “gender exploratory therapy.” Spiliadis was a member of the anti-trans organization Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Working Group.
Anastassis Spiliadis’ name is sometimes styled Anastasios Spiliadis and is Αναστάσης Σπηλιάδης in Greek.
Background
Spiliadis was born in July 1987. After earning a bachelor’s degree from National University of Athens (NKUA/Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών), Spiliadis earned master’s degrees from Kings College London, Westminster University, and Imperial College London.
Spiliadis has held a number of roles within the UK’s National Health Service. Spiliadis has worked at the Maudsley Centre for Child & Adolescent Eating Disorders (MCCAED).
Spiliadis also worked for four years at the infamous Tavistock Centre Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).
Anti-trans activism
Spiliadis supports the disputed diagnosis “rapid onset gender dysphoria” and urged for more research in the anti-trans publication Archives of Sexual Behavior. That journal’s stated goal since its founding has been “the prevention of transsexualism.”
Spiliadis is a member of the Institute of Mental Health for Children and Adults in Athens, Greece. Spiliadis is based in London and in Athens.
References
United Nations Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity – IESOGI. Report on Conversion Therapy. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/SexualOrientation/ConversionTherapyReport.pdf
Hutchinson A, Migden M, Spiliadis A (2020). In Support of Research Into Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria. Archives of Sexual Behavior 2020 Jan;49(1):79-80. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01517-9
