Stella O’Malley is a conservative Irish therapist and anti-transgender extremist. O’Malley is a global ringleader in the modern ex-transgender and gender critical movements and a major supporter of anti-transgender efforts worldwide.
O’Malley founded anti-trans hate groupGenspect. O’Malley frequently collaborates with American clinician Sasha Ayad and anti-trans extremist Mia Hughes to uplift other conservative and anti-transgender voices.
Do not under any circumstances go to Stella O’Malley for any counseling, trans or otherwise. If you are a minor forced to see O’Malley, do everything in your power to end the sessions and find supportive local resources instead.
Background
O’Malley was born on November 16, 1973. O’Malley grew up with three siblings in the Dublin area in a household where at least one parent was alcoholic.
O’Malley and spouse Henry Thompson, a construction contractor, live in Birr, County Offaly with their two children Róisín Thompson (born November 9, 2007) and Muiris Thompson (born August 5, 2009). O’Malley’s self-described parenting style is “impatient, moody and cranky” with “a very low threshold for ordinary whining.”
O’Malley was host of the 2018 propaganda piece Trans Kids: It’s Time To Talk. It features conservative and anti-trans activists, including James Caspian, Heather Brunskell-Evans, Venice Allan, Miranda Yardley, and people from the ex-trans movement
O’Malley is connected to a number of anti-trans organizations, most of which are just part of a web farm with reciprocal links to make O’Malley’s allies and their fringe ideologies seem more widespread and influential than they are.
In 2023 O’Malley co-authored the anti-trans book When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Parents with Sasha Ayad and Lisa Marchiano.
In 2024, when Texas politician Shawn Thierry lost the Democratic primary and joined Genspect as director of political strategy in the US. An article noting the announcement said:
Genspect has also been accused by medical experts and organizations of relying on junk science to support their stance. O’Malley, for instance, has falsely claimed that there are links between peer pressure, pornography and gender dysphoria. Genspect has also partnered with groups such as the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom, and argues that no one under the age of 25 should be allowed to transition because their brains “haven’t yet fully matured.”
In 2025, O’Malley criticized how the “the gender-critical woke” have been attacking anti-trans activists who share O’Malley’s conservative politics. According to O’Malley, “the gender-critical woke are liberal and left-wing. It is only on the issue of gender identity that the gender-critical woke break ranks with their fellow progressives.” O’Malley added:
In 2025, O’Malley filed a defamation suit against the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) and therapist Leonie O’Dowd, citing a article in the Winter 2024 issue of The Irish Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy titled “Providing therapeutic space to transgender and non-binary clients.” That article correctly noted that Genspect has taken “an anti-trans stance” in its activism.
Harris, Siobhan (April 25, 2024). Europe and the Puberty Blocker Debate.Medscape https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/europe-and-puberty-blocker-debate-2024a1000831
Pang, K. C., Giordano, S., Sood, N., & Skinner, S. R. (2021). Regret, informed decision making, and respect for autonomy of trans young people. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 5(9), e34–e35. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2352-4642(21)00236-4
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Joey Brite is an American ex-transgender activist who organized an anti-transgender conference in 2020 and is an executive producer of the 2023 anti-trans film No Way Back (originally Affirmation Generation). Director Laura VanZee-Taylor, producer Penka Kouneva, and executive producer Brite are responsible for including convicted sex offender David Arthur Kendall as one of the ex-trans activists featured.
Background
Alicia Nancy Neff was born in February 4, 1955 in Los Angeles to Charles “Bud” Neff and Carolyn Jeannette Neff. Neff’s father was a musician who ran Neff’s Paint and Wallpaper in Anaheim, and Alicia Neff graduated from Anaheim High School in 1972.
As an adult, Neff began using the names Alicia Brite and Joey Brite, usually styled joey brite. Brite and a songwriting partner began performing original “women’s music.” Brite also worked in set design and theatrical props, eventually becoming lighting assistant for an independent film company “that churned out lesbian porn for theatrical release.”
Brite has kept a connection with the paint and wallpaper industry since the late 1980s, operating an interior paint consultancy called The COLOR Effect since 1995.
Brite was a DJ at KPFA in Berkeley from 1983 to 1985. Brite was associated with Mills College from 2001 to 2003, working as a liaison for Fremont High School. In 2004 Brite began producing events and fundraisers and started handling social media for several artists.
Brite continues working in production, incorporating Small Pockets Productions LLC in California in 2020 and Behind the Curtain Productions Inc in New York in 2022.
2020 conference
On August 8, 2020, Brite held the “Can I Get a Witness” conference. It was dedicated to the memory of Magdalen Berns and featured many prominent anti-transgender activists:
Wall Street Journal writer Abigail Shrier and Author of the recently published Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
Therapist Sasha Ayad M. Ed., LPC at Inspired Teen Therapy
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, andThe 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 anti-trans 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.”
References
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/
Dianna Theadora Kenny earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Sydney in 1975, followed by training in music and education. Kenny then attended Macquarie University, earning a master’s degree in 1980 and a doctorate in 1988. While in school, Kenny worked in troubled students. Kenny taught at University of Sydney from 1988 to 2019. In 2019 Kenny founded DK Consulting.
Kenny, D. T. (2019). Gender development and the transgendering of children. In M. Moore & H. Brunskell-Evans (Eds.), Inventing transgender children and young people (pp. 93–107). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Books
Kenny, Dianna (2025) InTRANSigence: Gender Ideology, Social Contagion, and the Making of a Transgender Generation. Independently published, ISBN 979-8262604371
Kenny, Dianna (2024). Gender Ideology, Social Contagion, and the Making of a Transgender Generation. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ISBN 978-1036414788
Razib Khan is a Bangladeshi-American writer and anti-transgender activist. Khan comes to anti-trans “sex science” via “race science” and is best known for laundering extremist views about race into mainstream media.
Khan hopes to usher in the “second age of eugenics” through genetic screening and manipulation to increase “good” traits and eliminate “bad” traits. Many of Khan’s like-minded colleagues consider being trans and gender diverse to be undesirable traits to be eliminated from the gene pool.
Newamul K. “Razib” Khan was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1977. Khan’s family moved to the US in 1982. Khan lived in upstate New York as a child before the family moved to Oregon.
Khan earned two bachelor’s degrees from University of Oregon in 2000 and 2006. While there, Khan wrote a blog called Razib’s Rants, which later became Gene Expression. Following graduate work at UC Davis, Khan was a software engineer before receiving money from Ron Unz to write about hereditarian and eugenic topics.
In 2010, Khan co-founded the group blog Brown Pundits with Zachary L. Zavidé and Omar Ali. Khan has also promoted an “intellectual brown web.”
In 2015, the New York Times announced they had contracted with Khan to write monthly pieces, but they rescinded the offer following protests.
Podcast
Khan has platformed a number of anti-trans guests, including:
Cussins, Jessica (June 26, 2014). Quantified and Analyzed, Before the First Breath. Center for Genetics and Society https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/quantified-and-analyzed-first-breath
Khan, Razib (June 18, 2008). Curing the Gay.Unz Review https://www.unz.com/gnxp/curing-the-gay/
Andrew Sullivan is a conservative gay cultural critic and anti-transgender extremist. The Advocatenoted that Sullivan “represents everything wrong with the gay rights movement.”
Sullivan is an LGB separatist who subscribes to the “gay erasure” conspiracy theory that healthcare for trans and gender diverse youth is a plan to eliminate gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
Sullivan says Catholic upbringing and values inform this conservatism. Sullivan’s gender critical views include:
Criticizing legal protections based on gender identity
Criticizing affirmative care for gender diverse youth
Sullivan believes that “Stonewall was the downfall of the gay movement” and that “the gay movement was hijacked in the seventies” by activists.
Background
In 1986, Sullivan took a role at The New Republic, rising to editor in 1991 before leaving in 1996. Sullivan’s 1989 article “Here Comes the Groom” is frequently cited as an important moment in shifting conservative opinion on marriage equality.
Sullivan wrote for The New York Times Magazine from 1998 until getting fired in 2002. During that time Sullivan started a blog called The Dish that ran until 2015. From 2016 to 2020 Sullivan wrote for New York magazine, then moved to Substack.
Anti-trans activism
Sullivan frequently appears in the media to attack trans people, especially gender diverse children.
Brantley, Will [editor] (2024). Conversations with Sarah Schulman. University Press of Mississippi, ISBN 978-1-4968-4836-9 https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.10782311.10
Sullivan, Andrew (September 20, 2019). When the Ideologues Come for the Kids. Intelligencer https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/andrew-sullivan-when-the-ideologues-come-for-the-kids.html
Sullivan, Andrew (February 1, 2019). The Nature of Sex.Intelligencer https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/andrew-sullivan-the-nature-of-sex.html
Sullivan, Andrew (June 2, 2014). Engaging The T.The Dish https://dish.andrewsullivan.com/threads/engaging-the-t/
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan and Brianna Wu (December 27, 2024). Brianna Wu On Trans Life. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/brianna-wu-on-trans-life
Andrew Sullivan with Mara Kiesling (February 26, 2021). Mara Keisling On The Trans Debate. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/mara-keisling-on-the-trans-debate
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Eric Weinstein is an American mathematician and former hedge fund manager. Weinstein was a managing director of Thiel Capital from 2013 until 2022.
Weinstein coined the term intellectual dark web (IDW), a social movement associated with anti-transgender activism and extremism. Weinstein has expressed fairly nuanced views of trans issues compared to most people considered part of the intellectual dark web.
Background
Eric Ross Weinstein was born on October 26, 1965 and has a younger sibling, Bret Weinstein. They grew up in Southern California.
Eric Weinstein earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Pennsylvania, then attended Harvard, earning a master’s degree, then a doctorate in 1992.
After teaching at MIT and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Weinstein served as a managing director for Peter Thiel at Thiel Capital from 2013 until 2022.
Intellectual dark web
Weinstein coined the term intellectual dark web (IDW) in 2017 as a name for a loose alliance described as a “gateway to the far right.” Many are opponents of transgender rights. Members typically get money and attention by claiming to be “canceled” or silenced by the minorities and progressive movements they criticize (called DARVO in general; see also the Dregerian Narrative in relation to trans issues, named after IDW inaugural member Alice Dreger.
Podcast
Weinstein hosted a podcast called The Portal from 2019 to 2020. Guests included several critics of the transgender rights movement and their supporters, including Douglas Murray, J. D. Vance, Ross Douthat, James O’Keefe, Bret Weinstein, Anna Khachiyan, Tyler Cowen, Sam Harris, Bryan Callen, and Peter Thiel.
42: Cashing Out My Trump & IDW Positions
None 1 December 2020
41: Douglas Murray – Heroism 2020: Defense of Our Own Civilization
Douglas Murray 23 October 2020
40: Introducing The Portal Essay Club – What if everyone is simply insane?
None 12 August 2020
39: Admission To Sugar Baby U.
Kimberly de la Cruz 29 July 2020
38: Mass Media, Markets, and Human Malware: A Portal Q&A
None 10 July 2020
37: Surfing the Wake of The Woke
Andrew Marantz 1 July 2020
36: Dark Matter, Black Matters and All That Jazz
Stephon Alexander 11 June 2020
35: Balaji Srinivasan – The Heretic & The Virus
Balaji Srinivasan 21 May 2020
34: Zev Weinstein – On Parenting, Boys & Generation Z
Zev Weinstein 13 May 2020
33: Josh Wolfe – The Mind Financing The Future
Josh Wolfe 3 May 2020
32: J. D. Vance – American Dreams and Nightmares
J. D. Vance 29 April 2020
31: Ryan Holiday – Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes
Ryan Holiday 23 April 2020
30: Ross Douthat – The Rave Before the Fall
Ross Douthat 16 April 2020
29: Jamie Metzl – The Bio-Hacker will see you now, Ready or Not
Jamie Metzl 12 April 2020
Special A Portal Special Presentation- Geometric Unity: A First Look
None 2 April 2020
28: Eric Lewis – The Singular Genius of Elew
Eric Lewis 28 March 2020
27: Daniel Schmachtenberger – On Avoiding Apocalypses
Daniel Schmachtenberger 27 March 2020
26: James O’Keefe: What is (and isn’t) Journalism in the 21st century
James O’Keefe 19 March 2020
25: The Construct: Jeffrey Epstein
None 7 March 2020
24: Kai Lenny – To Play and Flirt with Giants
Kai Lenny 28 February 2020
23: Agnes Callard – Courage, Meta-cognitive detachment and their limits
Agnes Callard 24 February 2020
22: Ben Greenfield – Wheat From Chaff in Human Fitness
Ben Greenfield 15 February 2020
21: Ashley Mathews (aka Riley Reid) – The mogul and brains behind America’s Sweetheart
Ashley Mathews (aka Riley Reid) 31 January 2020
20: Sir Roger Penrose – Plotting the Twist of Einstein’s Legacy
Sir Roger Penrose 24 January 2020
19: Bret Weinstein – The Prediction and the DISC
Bret Weinstein 18 January 2020
18: Slipping the DISC: State of The Portal and Chapter 2020
None 15 January 2020
17: Anna Khachiyan – Reconstructing The Mystical Feminine From The Ashes Of “The Feminine Mystique”
Anna Khachiyan 20 December 2019
16: Tyler Cowen – The Revolution Will Not Be Marginalized
Tyler Cowen 16 December 2019
15: Garrett Lisi – My Arch-nemesis, Myself
Garrett Lisi 6 December 2019
14: London Tsai – The Reclusive Dean of The New Escherians
London Tsai 30 November 2019
13: Garry Kasparov – Avoiding Zugzwang in AI and Politics
Garry Kasparov 23 November 2019
12: Vitalik Buterin – The Ethereal Prince and His Virtual Machine
Vitalik Buterin 21 November 2019
11: Sam Harris – Fighting with Friends
Sam Harris 15 November 2019
10: Julie Lindahl: Shaking the poisoned fruit of shame out of the family tree
Julie Lindahl 31 October 2019
9: Bryan Callen – Cracking Wise
Bryan Callen 30 October 2019
8: Andrew Yang – The Dangerously Different Candidate the Media Wants You to Ignore
Andrew Yang 2 October 2019
7: Bret Easton Ellis – The Dark Laureate of Generation X
Bret Easton Ellis 29 September 2019
6: Jocko Willink – The Way of the Violent Intellectual
Jocko Willink 7 September 2019
5: Rabbi Wolpe – “So a Rabbi and an atheist walk into a podcast…”
Rabbi David Wolpe 31 August 2019
4: Timur Kuran – The Economics of Revolution and Mass Deception
Jamie Reed is an American anti-transgender extremist who wants to eliminate gender-affirming healthcare for adolescents and young adults. Reed is also part of the LGB separatist movement, founding the anti-trans organization LGB Courage Coalition in 2023.
Jamie Lynn Smith was born in June 1980. After marrying Joshua David Rickly (born 1982), Jamie began using the name Jamie Lynn Smith-Rickly. During this time, Jamie was apparently using the email [email protected].
In 2009, Jamie Smith-Rickly, Zachary Smith, and Byron Case founded the Midwestern Liberty Foundation, but it was dissolved by the state of Missouri the following year for failure to submit required documents.
The couple had two children and later divorced.
Jamie then married librarian Tiger Reed, who at the time identified as a transgender man. They have Jamie’s two children from the first marriage as well as three foster children. In 2024, after announing a “detransition,” Tiger Reed began using the name Roxxanne Reed.
Reed earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri St. Louis and a master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis. Reed began working at Washington in 2016.
Anti-trans activism
From 2018 until late 2022, Reed was a case manager at the Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
Reed became increasingly upset that the clinic was not doing more psychological and psychiatric gatekeeping. As with many providers, Washington relied on patients to find a local therapist who would recommend them for treatment to reduce backlogs and improve patient care.
Reed cited what led to making an anti-trans pivot:
Time to Think by Hannah Barnes (read after Reed left the gender clinic)
Reed was against prescribing hormone options for minors. Like many other people opposed to youth gender affirming care, Reed considers puberty blockers less problematic than hormones, but opposes those as well. Puberty blockers are a rarely-used short-term option prior to prescribing hormones. Some people opposed to gender-affirming care would prefer trans youth to stay on puberty blockers until they are adults, rather than start hormones and go through puberty with their non-transgender peers.
Like many other people opposed to gender-affirming care, Reed cites the conservative “Dutch protocol” that used extensive gatekeeping under a nationalized healthcare system.
2023 affidavit
In an affidavit presented to anti-trans Attorney General Andrew Bailey dated February 7, 2023, Reed stated:
I witnessed staff at the Center provide puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children without complete informed parental consent and without an appropriate or accurate assessment of the needs of the child. I witnessed children experience shocking injuries from the medication the Center prescribed. And I saw the Center make no attempt or effort to track adverse outcomes of patients after they left the Center.
[…]
One patient came to the Center identifying as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non binary.” The child was in very poor mental health and early on reported that they had no idea their gender identity.
[…]
Most children who come into the Center were assigned female at birth. Nearly all of them have serious comorbidities including, autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma histories, OCD, and serious eating disorders.
[…]
last year Dr. [Chris] Lewis and Dr. [Sarah] Garwood told the Missouri legislature, “at no point are surgeries on the table for anyone under 18” and also, “surgeries are not an option for anyone under 18 years of age.” This was a lie. The Center regularly refers minors for gender transition surgery. The Center routinely gives out the names and contact information of surgeons to those under the age of 18. At least one gender transition surgery was performed by Dr. Allison Snyder-Warwick at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in the last few years.
[…]
The Center had two in-house psychologists. They were Dr. Alex Maixner and Dr. Sarah Girresch-Ward as well as several outside therapists.
[…]
Doctors knew that many of our former patients had stopped taking cross-sex hormones and were detransitioning. Doctors did not share this information with parents or children.
[…]
Children come into the clinic using pronouns of inanimate objects like “mushroom,” “rock,” or “helicopter.” Children come into the clinic saying they want hormones because they do not want to be gay. Children come in changing their identities on a day-to-day basis. Children come in under clear pressure by a parent to identify in a way inconsistent with the child’s actual identity.
[…]
I created a “red flag” list of children where other staff and I had concerns. The doctors told me I had to stop raising these concerns. I was not allowed to maintain the red flag list after that. During the time I was creating the red flag list, noting my concern that these children were not good candidates for permanent, irreversible medication treatment, the doctors would simply send these children to our in-house therapists. Those therapists would inevitably provide letters to the doctors, and then the doctors would say there can’t be any concern over these children because another therapist was fine with prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.
[…]
One doctor at the Center, Dr. Chris Lewis, is giving patients a drug called Bicalutamide. I know of at least one patient at the Center who was advised by the renal department to stop taking Bicalutamide because the child was experiencing liver damage. The child’s parent reported this to the Center through the patient’s online self-reporting medical chart (MyChart). The parent said they were not the type to sue, but “this could be a huge PR problem for you.”
[…]
the Center has prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones hundreds of times where they should not have.
Particularly upsetting to Reed are young people whose identities are fluid:
Patient was on hormones and had decompensating mental health, outlandish name changes, self-diagnosis of multiple personalities (DID).
[…]
Patient has desisted in male identity to a vague non binary with their own self-diagnosis of autism. Patient has changed their name numerous times and is clearly struggling with thoughts about desistence,
[..]
Patient changed to non-binary identity, then changed preferred name and stated that their identity was shifting day to day.
Reed gave several other vivid anecdotes, including one about a youth sex offender, and others about youths with history of self-harm, sexual trauma, forced cross-dressing, factitious blindness, and “gender identities that were likely the result of social contagion.”
2023 Free Press piece
Two days after the affidavit was signed, Reed repeated these allegations in the Free Press for anti-trans activist Bari Weiss.
“clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals—and most of these teens haven’t even had sex yet.”
“Some weeks it felt as though almost our entire caseload was nothing but disturbed young people.”
“Another disturbing aspect of the center was its lack of regard for the rights of parents.”
“In 2019, a new group of people appeared on my radar: desisters and detransitioners.”
“I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria.”
Reed and the clinic’s nurse, Karen Hamon, kept a private spreadsheet, which they called the “red flag list.” Following a 2021 review that contained criticisms and a 2022 retreat where Reed was allegedly told “Get on board, or get out,” Reed transferred to a different department.
Jamie Reed on what needs to be done: no gender affirming care for people until we figure out how to tell which mice should transition pic.twitter.com/1Go2vJtNTo
Anti-trans activist Azeen Ghorayshi of the New York Times presented Reed as part of a long-running “cisgender person under siege” series the paper has been running since the early 2000s.
Ghorayshi mentioned the following people:
Jamie Reed, former case manager at a youth gender clinic at Washington University in St. Louis
Bari Weiss, anti-trans activist who first published Reed’s allegations in the Free Press
Andrew Bailey, Missouri’s anti-trans Attorney General
Colleen Schrappen, reporter at St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Annelise Hanshaw, reporter at Missouri Independent
Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor
Reporter Evan Urquhartwrote, “unlike other stories covering these allegations, the Times downplays the falsehoods and seeks to make a case that despite Reed’s lies there’s something to be taken seriously in her attacks on a highly-regarded, University-linked clinic serving transgender youth.”
LGBT Courage Coalition and purge of trans members
Reed founded LGBT Courage Coalition in 2023 as a Substack and later registered it as a nonprofit. About a year later, Reed purged all trans leadership and renamed in LGB Courage Coailition, installing Lauren Leggieri as co-executive director.
Lawsuits
In 2024 a subpoena was issued to Reed in the matter of Noe v. Parson (Missouri case # 23AC-CC04530). In it, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. and ACLU of Missouri Foundation requested communication between Reed and Karen Hamon, as well as any communication with Missouri officials and families at Washington University Pediatric Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
The subpoena also requested “All communications, including any documents exchanged, concerning Gender-Affirming Care involving media or between you and any media outlet or any member of the media,” as well as specifically requesting communications with Jesse Singal. Those requests were later removed.
The subpoena also requested any communication with the following organizations:
Lovelace, Eric (September 30, 2024). St. Louis gender clinic whistleblower testifies in Noe v. Parson.KOMU https://www.komu.com/news/midmissourinews/st-louis-gender-clinic-whistleblower-testifies-in-noe-v-parson/article_2f612e3c-7f53-11ef-ad63-abba11ecb77e.html
Emily Bazelon is an American writer and anti-transgender activist whose work has been cited to support anti-trans legislation in America. Bazelon wrote a 2022 New York Times Magazine feature about trans healthcare for minors that anti-trans legislators use to justify bans and restrictions affecting healthcare and legal rights for people of all ages. This page documents Bazelon’s historic role in the oppression of trans and gender diverse people.
Background
Emily C. Bazelon was born March 4, 1971. Like many cisgender reporters on this subject, much of Bazelon’s life and many opinions were shaped by a medico-juridical worldview and by extraordinary privilege. Bazelon’s grandparent was federal judge David L. Bazelon, a pioneer in the field of mental health law and namesake of the nonprofit Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington DC. Bazelon’ parent Richard L. Bazelon (born 1943) is a lawyer, and parent Eileen A. Ferrin Bazelon (born 1944) is a psychiatrist. Both practice in Pennsylvania. Emily Bazelon has three siblings: Dana, Jill, and Lara.
Bazelon attended the elite Germantown Friends School, then graduated from Yale in 1993. Bazelon earned a law degree from Yale Law School in 2000 and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Bazelon had a Dorot fellowship in 1993 and was named a Soros Justice Media Fellow in 2004. Bazelon clerked for Judge Kermit Lipez in 1997. Bazelon married Paul E. Sabin (born 1970). They have two children, Eli and Simon.
2022 New York Times piece
In June 2022, Bazelon published “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” in the New York Times. It is part of their long-running “cisgender person under siege” stories placing non-trans people at the center of their coverage of trans issues.
Bazelon’s piece is centered on cisgender psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz.
It also launders the extremist views of Genspect into the New York Times. Genspect defined the rise in transgender-identified children as a “gender cult” and mass craze, “suggesting that exposure to transgender kids, education about trans people, and trans ideas on the internet could spread transness to others.” Some parents from Genspect stated transgender people should not be able to transition until the age of 25. The article also referenced a Substack newsletter by an anonymous Genspect parent titled “It’s Strategy People!” about how the organization gets its perspective into the media by purposefully not referring to transgender children as “mentally ill” or “deluded.”
The article was criticized by transgender people, including Dr. Sunny Moraine, who described the article as “sanitizing wildly transphobic talking points,” and Instructor Alejandra Caraballo of Harvard Law School, who described it as having “only just further opened the door for eliminationist policies.”
PinkNews stated the article “uncritically platformed gender-critical group Genspect” and spread “vile rhetoric.”
The Texas Observer accused Bazelon of “elevat[ing] a handful of outliers and their discredited theories about trans people to prominence they do not enjoy among the medical community” for “the sake of ‘balance’ and objectivity” and that “the article echoes right-wing fear-mongering about whether trans kids should be allowed to transition and even suggests their existence could be dangerous to other young people.” The Observer notes, “All of this could have been avoided had Bazelon listened to more experts and included more transgender people. That includes Ky Schevers and Lee Leveille, who run a trans advocacy group called Health Liberation Now! Bazelon communicated extensively with them both while working on the article, conducting interviews that were ultimately discarded.” The Observer added that “the state of Texas is using it as evidence in an ongoing attempt to investigate trans-supportive healthcare as ‘child abuse’.” Schevers said “The NYT just platformed a group made up of transphobic parents & conversion therapists who’ve written about how they have the same end goals as hardline trans eliminationists but moderate their views to try to break into the mainstream.”
2023 attack on union leadership
Bazelon was also a signatory on the 2023 letter drafted by Jeremy W. Peters attacking their own union leadership. The Guild had raised concerns about the Times’ hostile work environment for trans journalists. A Times employee told the San Francisco Chronicle there were still no trans reporters on staff in 2023.
2023 Missouri Attorney General ruling
Below is an example of how Bazelon’s 2022 piece is used to deny healthcare and other rights to trans and gender diverse people living in Missouri.
15 CSR 60-17.010 Experimental Interventions to Treat Gender Dysphoria
(2) It is an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful practice for any person or health organization to provide a covered gender transition intervention to a patient (or refer a patient for such an intervention) if the person or health organization:
(D) Fails to ensure that the patient has received a full psychological or psychiatric assessment, consisting of not fewer than 15 separate, hourly sessions (at least 10 of which must be with the same therapist) over the course of not fewer than 18 months to explore the developmental influences on the patient’s current gender identity and to determine, among other things, whether the person has any mental health comorbidities; 32
32 Compare Bazelon, “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” The New York Times Magazine, June 15, 2022, updated March 17, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html (noting certain researchers admit and assert that only the Amsterdam clinic, “with its comprehensive assessments,” has procured results showing strong psychological benefits for individuals who medically transitioned in adolescence, and observing the Amsterdam clinic currently requires “at least six monthly [mental health] sessions” following “a longer period on a waiting list” prior to beginning treatment) [PDF]
Responses by Bazelon
2022 tweets [preserved record of Bazelon’s deleted tweets]
Bazelon joined psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz to discuss the piece.
Brand, Madeline (June 15, 2022). Why are doctors pulling away from gender-affirming health care? Press Play with Madeline Brand, KCRW https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/senate-nevada-lgbtq-jennifer-grey/trans-gender-health-care
Staff report (March 4, 1966). Eileen Ferrin Engaged To Richard L. Bazelon.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1966/03/05/archives/eileen-ferrin-engaged-to-richard-l-bazelon.html
Bazelon, Emily (15 June 2022). The Battle Over Gender Therapy.The New York Times. https://web.archive.org/web/20220616095935/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Azeen Ghorayshi is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Ghorayshi is a key historical figure in the oppression of trans and gender diverse youth.
Ghorayshi has written about transgender healthcare for youth and other trans topics in several publications. In 2021, Ghorayshi became the point person laundering anti-transgender extremism into the New York Times, similar to Times health reporter Jane Brody, whose consistently anti-trans coverage in the 1970s helped get adult care shut down as “experimental” by the end of that decade.
Ghorayshi believes that affirmative models of care for trans and gender diverse youth are an unfolding medical scandal, echoing Times colleagues and contributors in the late 1970s who helped set the trans rights movement back for 25 years. The real medical scandal is that trans and gender diverse youth have never been able to receive appropriate care, and Ghorayshi’s reporting is a major factor in making this care unavailable to hundreds of thousands of minors.
Each year, thousands of American cisgender youth receive gender-affirming treatments like surgeries for unwanted breast tissue, but Ghorayshi is focused exclusively on banning the same procedures for transgender youth.
Ghorayshi’s anti-trans views are colored by disease models of gender identity, particularly psychopathology models. Ghorayshi is a strong proponent of gatekeeping trans healthcare via psychology and psychiatry, especially for minors. Ghorayshi also disproportionately covers cases of regret and “detransition,”presenting people like Jamie Reed as brave truth-tellers instead of politically motivated anti-trans extremists.
Background
Azeen M. Ghorayshi was born in October 1988 and earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley in 2010. While there, Ghorayshi interned in UC Berkeley’s notoriously conservative and transphobic psychology department and in the neurobiology department. Ghorayshi then earned a master’s degree from Imperial College London.
Ghorayshi began writing as an Editorial Fellow at Mother Jones, then worked at the weekly East Bay Express in the Bay Area. Ghorayshi freelanced from 2013 to 2015, placing stories in New Scientist, The Guardian, Newsweek, Wired UK, and other outlets.
Ghorayshi co-founded Method Quarterly, a publication about science with Christina Agapakis. Other personnel included:
Ellie Harmon (editor in 2014)
Rose Eveleth (editor – presence scrubbed from site)
Ghorayshi joined BuzzFeed in 2015 as a science reporter, rising to science editor prior to departing.
Shortly after expressing this love, Ghorayshi presented Dreger as a “liberal” academic instead of an inaugural member of the intellectual dark web, a gateway to the far right. In a “both sides” piece about trans healthcare for youth, Ghorayshi also presented transphobic psychologist J. Michael Bailey and geneticist Eric Vilain as objective or centrist scientists in the middle of the non-affirming coalition, and the transphobic American College of Pediatricians as “religious conservatives”:
But some doctors — as well as an unexpected mix of liberal academics, scientists, and religious conservatives — argue that we have no way of knowing with certainty which prepubescent kids who behave outside of gender norms will come to identify as trans, and which ones will not. Some worry that this approach could steer kids who are just going through a phase into a transgender “track” long before the kids know whether those feelings will really stick. Others say it reinforces outdated stereotypes — giving worried parents the false assurance that their girly boy is actually just a girl who was born in the wrong body. Conservative critics peg the increase in trans kids today to a dangerous new fad in parenting.
Ghorayshi also uncritically presented Jesse Singal’s false version of why Kenneth Zucker was fired (Zucker’s practices were outlawed in 2015 under Bill 77), and showcases Debra Soh’s claim that the affirmative model of care “reinforces outdated stereotypes.” Ghorayshi then cites a conservative Breitbart piece that quotes Zucker, summarizing their view that affirmative care is a dangerous new fad in parenting.
New York Times transgender articles
In the New York Times, Ghorayshi also published “cisgender person under siege” profiles featuring hospital CEO John Warner, surgeon Sidhbh Gallagher, and anti-trans extremist Jamie Reed.
The Warner piece was about the closure of Genecis Children’s Medical Center in Dallas following abortion clinic protest tactics targeting practitioners and leaders. Ghorayshi had described Genecis in the 2016 BuzzFeed piece.
The Gallagher piece was favorably shared by many fascist, gender critical, and cis journalist accounts, including white nationalist Richard Spencer and Daily Wire writer Christina Buttons, as well as anti-trans activists Katie Herzog, Jesse Singal, Kenneth Zucker, Cathy Brennan, Julia Mason, and Helen Lewis. It was also shared by a number of Ghorayshi’s current and former colleagues, including Virginia Hughes, Cliff Levy, Christina Jewett, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Ken Bensinger, Oliver Whang, Dan Saltzstein, Judy Rudin, Paul McLeod, Kadia Goba, Josh Barro, Ellie Hall, Derek Robertson, Alison Griffiths, Kinnon Ross MacKinnon, Tina S. Fondeles, Benjamin Goggin, Yeganeh Torbati, Steven Meiers, Jessica Garrison, Mark Yarm, Shannon Palus, Megan Twohey, and Michael Marshall.
In 2025, Ghorayshi promoted anti-trans groups Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender and LGB Courage Coalition as being from the left: “In the United States, a coalition of critics of youth gender medicine from both the right and the lefthave argued for banning the treatments.” The first group is a coalition of parents who do not accept their gender diverse children, and the second is an LGB separatist organization led by anti-trans extremist Jamie Reed that purged all of its conservative trans members in 2024.
“Low-quality evidence”
Ghorayshi wrote a piece about the American Academy of Pediatrics that prominently featured their critics, including anti-trans activist Julia Mason of the hate group Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. Ghorayshi also parrots the “low-quality evidence” claim put forth by anti-trans activists, based on a scale devised by Gordon Guyatt. Federal judge Sarah E. Geraghty rejected these claims in a 2023 Georgia case where anti-trans activists Paul Hruz, Michael Laidlaw, and James Cantor testified against Yale University professor of pediatrics Meredithe McNamara:
The undisputed record shows that clinical medical decision-making, including in pediatric or adolescent medicine, often is not guided by evidence that would qualify as “high quality” on the scales used by Defendants’ experts. 30 (Doc. 70-1, McNamara Decl. ¶¶ 23–28; Tr. 74:11–75:1 (McNamara Testimony); Tr. 133:614 (Hruz Testimony).) In fact, the record shows that less than 15 percent of medical treatments are supported by “high-quality evidence,” or in other words that 85 percent of evidence that guides clinical care, across all areas of medicine, would be classified as “low-quality” under the scale used by Defendants’ experts. (Doc. 70-1, McNamara Decl. ¶ 25; Tr. 74:11–75:1.) Defendants do not refute Dr. McNamara’s testimony on this point, and indeed they “concede” that “low-quality” evidence “can be considered.” 31
Geraghty also noted the obvious biases of Hruz, Laidlaw and Cantor:
Defendants’ experts’ insistence on a very high threshold of evidence in the context of claims about hormone therapy’s safety and benefits, and on the other hand their tolerance of a much lower threshold of evidence for claims about its risks, the likelihood of desistance and/or regret, and their notions about the ideological bias of a medical establishment that largely disagrees with them. That is cause for some concern about the weight to be assigned to their views, although the Court does not doubt that those they express are genuinely held.
(“Dr. [Paul] Hruz fended and parried questions and generally testified as a deeply biased advocate, not as an expert sharing relevant evidence-based information and opinions. I do not credit his testimony.”); Eknes-Tucker v. Marshall, 603 F. Supp. 3d 1131, 1142–43 (M.D. Ala. 2022) (explaining that the court gave Dr. James Cantor’s “testimony regarding the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors very little weight”); C. P. by & through Pritchard v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, No. 3:20-CV-06145-RJB, 2022 WL 17092846, at *4 (W.D. Wash. Nov. 21, 2022) (noting that it was a “close question” as to whether Dr. Michael Laidlaw was qualified to testify about the medical necessity of gender-affirming care because he has treated only two patients with gender dysphoria and has done no original research on gender identity).
Ghorayshi also wrote an article centered on Jamie Reed, an activist who supports “a national moratorium on the medicalization of kids.” Reed is represented by anti-trans lawyer Vernadette Broyles, who has stated the transgender rights movement poses an “existential threat to our culture.”
2025 podcast series
Ghorayshi and Austin Mitchell produced a six-part podcast series titled The Protocol, which rehashes Ghorayshi’s opinion that healthcare for trans and gender diverse youth has become too easy to obtain, is based on “uncertainty in the scientific evidence,” and needs to return to the rigid gatekeeping that was practiced decades ago.
Francis, Matthew R. (June 5, 2025). Open Letter to Anti-Trans Science Journalists.Galileo’s Pendulum https://galileospendulum.org/2025/06/05/open-letter-to-anti-trans-science-journalists/
Urquhart, Evan (September 3, 2023). “You Betrayed Us, Azeen”: A story on the allegations of former St. Louis gender clinic staffer Jamie Reed left parents who spoke with NYT reporter Azeen Ghorayshi crushed. Assigned https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/you-betrayed-us-azeen-parents-of-trans-youth-reeling-after-speaking-to-the-nyt
Clark-Callender, Rebecca (August 11, 2023). How the Times Covers Trans Rights. On the Media https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/what-we-missed-how-press-covers-trans-rights-on-the-media
Ghorayshi, Azeen (November 2015). Conversations With Anne Fausto-Sterling.Method Quarterly http://www.methodquarterly.com/2015/11/conversations-with-anne-fausto-sterling/
