This clearinghouse explores varying viewpoints about The Man Who Would Be Queen and the ideology that informs the work of J. Michael Bailey, Ray Blanchard, and Anne Lawrence.
This clearinghouse was created in April 2003 to document materials in this controversy as they became available. Though much of it remains in an unsynthesized format, pages about key people and concepts have been updated in some cases. Due to renewed interest in the topic following attacks on Bailey’s critics by his coworker Alice Dreger, links and descriptions are being updated throughout.
For a chronological overview of this matter, please see the timeline of events compiled by Professor Lynn Conway.
The earlier version of this page is available on Internet Archive at this URL:
Bailey’s book is based on an obscure and outdated model of gender variance created by Ray Blanchard of Toronto’s notorious Clarke Institute. Bailey’s and Blanchard’s models contradict cutting-edge research by renowned experts on causes and motivations of those who express gender variance.
Initial positive spin created by Joseph Henry Press publicist Robin Pinnel and a handful of Bailey supporters (primarily sexologist Anne Lawrence and members of a conservative-run eugenics thinktank) quickly gave way to a deluge of negative responses by a wide range of concerned communities, starting with academics, notably those responding to Bailey’s lectures exploiting gender-variant children. For a sense of the size and global scope of the protest, a petition against the book garnered over 1,300 signatures from 35 countries in just its first few days. Given our percentage of the population, this would be equivalent to obtaining millions of signatures in a few days from the general population.
Also speaking out were those of us working to stop defamation of trans people in the media, and even the research subjects portrayed in Bailey’s book. These voices were later joined by those from the gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex communities. In early 2004, hate group monitor Southern Poverty Law Center featured Bailey’s and Blanchard’s ties to neo-eugenicists and right-wing journalists.
In the wake of this, book sales tanked, Bailey has vacated his position as an officer of the International Academy of Sex Research and was subject of a full investigation by Northwestern University for failure to get informed consent. In November 2003, Bailey’s mentor Ray Blanchard finally resigned from HBIGDA after their officers wrote to Northwestern expressing concerns, suggesting that Blanchard will go down in history as what George Rekers is to homosexuality: the old-school holdout who outlived his time.
Executive Editor Stephen Mautner claimed in a 24 June 2003 letter that the book was subjected to “scientific review” and “was reviewed as a well-crafted and responsible work.” Mautner refers to Bailey as a “scientist” who follows “a legitimate avenue of scholarship and research.” In the wake of a full investigation into the systemic failures at the National Academies, they continue to remain silent about their culpability.
Bailey’s lurid and unscientific portrayal is easily disproven by successful trans women and men around the world leading joyous and productive lives after transition.
Introduction
Discrediting Bailey was the easy part. Framing the theoretical issues involved is the profoundly difficult part of this controversy. The Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence model of gender variance raises several issues regarding reproduction, assimilation, biological determinism, and what it means for trans people and society at large.
Please note that many of the concepts and terms discussed in the following articles are controversial and/or inconclusive. They give a sense of the issues at hand, and are not definitive statements on any particular subject.
Dr. Mildred Brown has observed in her clinical practice that some people seeking feminization do so for reasons other than the traditional motivation, and questions whether these reasons are “transsexual” in the clinical definition.
Homosexuality and gender variance represent an “evolutionary mistake” and “developmental error,” according to Bailey’s ideology. This disease model of these traits has led him to “gay gene” and “gay germ” hypotheses about causation. This section explores Bailey’s links to the eugenics movement. It includes extensive quotations from his work and includes a chart of “usual suspects” who are part of this movement.
The investigation
This site is designed to complement the concurrent Investigative Report by Lynn Conway. Our research into how this book got published and promoted focuses on the following six entities.
J. Michael Bailey’s employer. Northwestern faculty, administration, and students have had a range of responses to Bailey’s work and the charges leveled against him. This section documents these reactions.
This Toronto mental institution is home base for most of Bailey’s collaborators and is heavily involved in the North American eugenics movement. It is widely considered by gender-variant people and experts who work with them as out of touch and regressive.
This conservative-run eugenics think tank hopes to usher in “The Age of Galton.” Francis Galton coined the term “eugenics,” and this group represents a revival of the eugenics movement.
In March 2004, Amazon removed 35 customer reviews of Bailey’s book, all but one of which gave it the worst review possible. This had a net effect of raising his average rating a full point and giving the wrong impression that opposition to the book was evenly divided. Since that time, one or two anonymous trolls continue to add shill reviews, which are pretty easy to spot.
This group nominated Bailey for an award in February 2004, which led to immediate protests. The nomination was revoked in March 2004, the Director was ousted in 2005, and the site is currently offline.
Anne Lawrence is the chief apologist and collaborator with Bailey and Blanchard. Lawrence very strongly identifies as having a sex-fueled mental illness invented by Ray Blanchard. Lawrence’s career and life are now spent promoting this diagnosis.
In 2006, Bailey’s coworker Alice Dreger at Northwestern University began an ongoing backlash against the populist response to Bailey’s book, culminating in a one-sided hatchet job on key critics of Bailey.
Gender identity and expression take on different meanings within different systems of thought. Because medical technologies are available to assist in the somatic expression of these identities, several medicalized disease models of the phenomena have developed. This article examines three disease models as typically applied to those who seek feminization:
The GID model is currently considered legitimate within psychological literature and is a required diagnosis to receive access to trans health services in many places. The author reviews several problems with mental illness models, including “childhood gender nonconformity” and “transvestic fetishism,” two other “mental disorders” currently considered legitimate diagnoses. The author makes several analogies, asking readers to consider whether “racial nonconformity” or “religious identity disorder” seem legitimate as well.
Pathology (“birth defect” model)
This third metaphor of impairment describes a physical disorder rather than a mental one. The “order” implied by positioning these traits and behaviors as diseases reinforces heteronormative hierarchies. These models use scientific-sounding terminology to reinforce the social belief that the “purpose” or “function” of sex and sexuality is procreation. This leads to an examination of historic problems with anatomical thresholds for determining sex, and parallels with other bioethical debates about technologies that disrupt the “natural” order of procreative sexuality. The author suggests this is a phenomenon that is stigmatized in many cultures, and makes some suggestions for ways to consider it independently from models of sin or disease.
Some funny parodies, cartoons, and essays about this matter. I’m sure you need it by now.
Andrea Long Chu is an American writer and critic whose work frequently focuses on sex and gender.
Chu won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2023.
Background
Chu was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1992 and grew up in a Christian household in Asheville, North Carolina. Chu earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 2014 and a master’s degree from New York University in 2016.
Chu has written numerous book reviews and interviewed many notable public figures.
Writing on sex and gender
Much of Chu’s work is deliberately provocative. In 2018, Chu presented two works on sissy subculture and wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times titled “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.”
The thesis for Chu’s 2019 book Females is that “everyone is female and everyone hates it.”
Who’s Afraid of Gender? review (2024)
In 2024, Chu reviewed Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler in New York Magazine. Chu gives an excellent overview of the influence of Butler’s work on transgender rights. The piece is also notable for tracing the recent history of the anti-transgender movement. It lays part of the blame on those who embrace disease models of our community: “We must be able to defend this desire clearly, directly, and — crucially — without depending on the idea of gender.”
Chu notes the same tipping point in anti-trans activism that many trans people immediately noted:
In 2018, The Atlantic published a long cover story by the reporter Jesse Singal called “When Children Say They’re Trans,” focusing on the clinical disagreements over how to treat gender-questioning youth. The story provided a template for the coverage that would follow it. First, it took what was threatening to become a social issue, hence a question of rights, and turned it back into a medical issue, hence a question of evidence; it then quietly suggested that since the evidence was debatable, so were the rights.
Chu identifies three groups that compose the anti-trans bloc in America today:
the religious right
gender critical feminists (TERFs)
trans-agnostic reactionary liberals (TARLs)
Chu notes that the key outlet for the third group is the New York Times:
The Times is not alone; it is one of many respectable publications, including The Atlantic and TheEconomist, engaged in sanitizing the ideas promoted by TARLs in the more reactionary corners of the media landscape. Here one finds journalists like Singal, Matthew Yglesias, Matt Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan, Helen Lewis, Meghan Daum, and, of course, former Times staffer Bari Weiss. Many of these writers live in self-imposed exile on Substack, the newsletter platform, where they present themselves as brave survivors of cancellation by the woke elites. But they are not a marginal force.
We will never be able to defend the rights of transgender kids until we understand them purely on their own terms: as full members of society who would like to change their sex. It does not matter where this desire comes from. When the TARL insinuates again and again that the sudden increase of trans-identified youth is “unexplained,” he is trying to bait us into thinking trans rights lie just on the other side of a good explanation.
I am speaking here of a universal birthright: the freedom of sex. This freedom consists of two principal rights: the right to change one’s biological sex without appealing to gender and the right to assume a gender that is not determined by one’s sexual biology. One might exercise both of these rights toward a common goal — transition, for instance — but neither can be collapsed into the other.
Coleman, Madeleine Leung (March 15, 2024). Gender Identity Is Not Enough, [interview about Chu’s piece] The Critics / New York https://nymag.com/newsletter/2024/03/the-critics-march-15-2024.html
Chu AL (2019). The Impossibility of Feminism. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 30, no. 1 (Spring 2019). https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-7481232
Chu AL (November 24, 2018). My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/opinion/sunday/vaginoplasty-transgender-medicine.html
Chu AL (November 5, 2018). No One Wants It.Affidavit https://www.affidavit.art/articles/no-one-wants-it
Chu AL (2018). On Liking Women.n+1 30 (Winter 2018): 47–62. https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-30/essays/on-liking-women/
Chu AL (2018). Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans? Queer Disruptions 2 Columbia University, New York, NY March 1–2, 2018.
Chu AL (2018). Pornographic Spectatorship, or, Did Sissy Porn Make Me Trans? 2018 annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association UCLA, Los Angeles, CA March 29–April 1, 2018.
Chu AL (2017). The Wrong Wrong Body: Notes on Trans Phenomenology. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 4, no. 1 (February 2017): 141–52. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3711613
O’Brien, Michelle Esther (November 2, 2018). Interview with Andrea Long Chu. New York Public Library Community Oral History Project. http://oralhistory.nypl.org/interviews/andrea-long-chu-lpf5er
Debbie Hayton is a conservative transgender British educator and critic of mainstream transgender activism. Hayton gets money and attention by siding with those opposed to rights for sex and gender minorities.
Hayton’s work frequently appears in anti-transgender publications, most notably UnHerd and The Spectator. Hayton’s views have also appeared in Daily Express, Global Research, The Critic Magazine, Fox News, TalkTV, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and The Guardian.
Background
Deborah “Debbie” Hayton was born April 23, 1968. Hayton grew up in Consett in North East England. After graduating Blackfyne Comprehensive School in 1986, Hayton entered Newcastle University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1989 and a doctorate in 1992. Hayton worked in research until 1995, then began a career as a physics teacher. Hayton taught at Handsworth Grammar School in Birmingham from 1996 to 2002, then at King Henry VIII School in Coventry from 2002 to 2022. Beginning in 2016 Hayton began offering classroom timetable support and began freelance writing.
Hayton is based in Bristol, is married to Stephanie, and has three children. Hayton transitioned in 2012.
Activism and trolling
Hayton’s writing is a mix of first-person stories and gender critical views on several trans topics:
Hayton authored a letter supporting transphobic author Kathleen Stock. The letter was signed by like-minded gender critical trans people: Tina Daniels, Lily Geidelberg, Sophie Gibbons, Kristina Harrison, Seven Hex, Jennifer Kenyon, Claudia McLean, Sarah McDonnell, Fionne Orlander, Nyah Putzo, Toni Roche-Simmons, Katie Sangwell, Gillian Simpson, Sian Taylder, and Miranda Yardley.
Hayton appeared in the 2018 anti-trans propaganda piece Trans Kids: It’s Time to Talk hosted by Stella O’Malley.
Hayton enjoys trolling and mocking the trans community members who hold differing views. Hayton is known for wearing a T-shirt that says “Trans women are men. Get over it.”
Hayton, Debbie (May 9, 2022). My autogynephilia story. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2022/05/the-truth-about-autogynephilia/
Stanford, Peter (October 16, 2021). The trans women who support women’s rights.The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/16/meet-trans-women-agree-publicly-question-gender-self-identification/
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 Chroniclecited 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, “We have our thumb on our scale in the name of progress, fairness and shared humanity.” 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 right—but 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 Times’ 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 Tumblr’s 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 (I’m “Rachel”), 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 Tumblr’s 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 “trans man”, otherwise known as “FtM”. 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.
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 “TERFs”, 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 “autogynephiles” trying to infiltrate “female-only” spaces, and the social forces supposedly pushing lesbians to “dis-identify from femaleness” 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
Doyle, Jude Ellison Sady (March 24, 2021). What’s So Scary About Detransitioning? GEN. https://gen.medium.com/whats-so-scary-about-detransitioning-a8340daf3132
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, I’m 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.
