Miranda Yardley (born 1967) is a British accountant, publisher, and “autogynephilia” activist. Yardley identifies as transsexual and is a prominent conservative voice in the “gender critical” movement.
Background
Yardley earned a degree in accounting from Bangor University in 1990. Yardley started an accounting firm in 2000 and took over publishing music magazine Terrorizer in 2002 under the auspices of Dark Arts, Ltd. Yardley later added the titles Dominion and Sick Sounds.
In 2008, Yardley made a gender transition.
Activism
In 2014, Yardley became heavily involved in online fights about transgender politics, specifically rejecting the idea that trans women are women:
The gender critical approach establishes that âbeing a womanâ is not a matter of an individualâs identity. Someone who is gender critical recognises that trans women are biologically male (and trans men are biologically female), that human beings are sexually dimorphic, that we are all subject to sex-based socialisation from birth. These are not value judgements; being biologically male is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It is morally neutral.
This feminist approach views gender essentialism as the basis of womenâs oppression, which as an extreme example would include violence (by men) against women. This is not to say that all men are violent, rather that male socialisation has violent aspects (like female socialisation has aspects that are, to quote a phrase, âsugar and spice and all things niceâ). I therefore view gender as a harmful social construct which divides power unequally. I think of it as a hierarchy, with the sex-class âmaleâ at the top.
In 2018, Yardley was suspended from Twitter for saying Green Party spokesperson Aimee Challenor is a man. In April 2018 pro-trans cisgender activist Helen Islan brought a “transgender hate crime” complaint against Yardley that led to police involvement and a long investigation. The case was dropped in Yardley’s favor in March 2019.
Since that time, Yardley has been embraced by anti-transgender activists, appearing on their platforms, writing about trans community controversies, and working to change the UK’s 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Andrea James is an American filmmaker and consumer activist.
Background
Andrea Jean James was born on January 16, 1967 in Wisconsin. James and sibling Greg (born 1969) were adopted. Their parent Nancy (born 1937) worked at several nonprofits, and their parent Warren (1934-2016) ran a small farm before taking several roles at a steel mill.
James grew up in Franklin, Indiana, earned a bachelor’s degree in English, Latin, and Greek at Wabash College in 1989, then received a master’s degree in English at University of Chicago in 1990. James then worked in advertising in Chicago at the Chicago Tribune and several ad agencies. During gender transition, James developed several consumer resources for trans people, including tsroadmap.com, the predecessor to this website.
Media activism
James moved to Los Angeles and produced several popular instructional videos with Calpernia Addams, covering voice, makeup, facial feminization surgery, and coming out. They also produced and performed in the first all-transgender production of The Vagina Monologues in 2004. In 2008, they were in the first dating show with trans-attracted suitors, with Addams as the first out transgender star.
James served on the boards of several nonprofits and has consulted on and helped produce many film and television projects with trans themes.
James published the 2006 overview “A defining moment in our history.” The community response was described as “one of the most organized and unified examples of trans activism to date” (Surkan, 2007).
Academic backlash (2007)
Following a 2007 campaign of defamation led by the academics promoting disease models of gender identity and expression, James began working to close ringleader Kenneth Zucker‘s gender clinic at CAMH in Toronto. James gathered evidence for Zucker’s employer, presented a 2008 paper about the populist response called “Fair comment, foul play,” and began collecting information from former CAMH patients. Alice Dreger reprinted a piece from Zucker’s journal in the 2015 book Galileo’s Middle Finger, prompting James to respond with “Sexologyâs war on transgender children.” Zucker was fired in 2015 and the clinic was closed.
Media backlash (2014)
The American trans rights movement entered a decadent phase following the election of Barack Obama. Following a series of political gains, complacency and infighting reached a peak in late 2014, and both media coverage and public opinion began to turn negative. The backlash accelerated following the election of Donald Trump, concentrated on several hot-button topics: military service, sports, prisoners, public accommodation, and gender diverse youth.
Following publication of an egregiously biased 2018 cover story on transgender “desistance” in The Atlantic, James began working on The Transphobia Project, a long-term effort to document the key media figures and platforms engaged in propagating biased content about gender identity and expression.
Hiscott, Rebecca (June 26, 2019). This Is What Transphobia in the Media Looks Like. Kickstarter Magazine https://medium.com/kickstarter/this-is-what-transphobia-in-the-media-looks-like-3b9da535322e
When The Atlantic published its July/August 2018 cover story on transgender youth, Andrea James was among the chorus of trans writers and activists who excoriated it for being biased. âEditor Jeffrey Goldberg published it despite many warnings that it was likely to be a dog whistle, a kind of bias that most people wonât notice,â she says.
The article focused on the disputed concept of âdesistance,â which views gender nonconforming children as having a disease to be cured, delegitimizing the experiences and struggles of the majority of trans youth. âIt also came out that elite journalistsâ â including the author of the Atlantic piece â âwere excluding transgender journalists from backchannels where they were discussing coverage,â James says.
Bolded sections removed after complaint by Jesse Singal
Wilson was born in Detroit, Michigan and earned a bachelorâs degree in liberal arts from College of Wooster in 1982. She joined The Chronicle in 1985 and wrote for them until 2017. She and her husband Darryl Ozias (born 1956) have two sons. She joined the Iowa State University wrestling program as Director of Operations in 2017, having previously volunteered for Head Coach Kevin Dresser when one of her sons wrestled for Dresser at Virginia Tech.
The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003)
In 2003 and 2004, Wilson wrote six articles about the book and the fallout for the Chronicle. The first, which Dreger characterizes as “gossipy,” came out shortly after Bailey’s vulgar misuse of gender diverse children at Stanford University. Wilson joined Bailey on on one of his voyeuristic sex tours (see Charlotte Allen) to the gay nightclub Circuit with Anjelica Kieltyka and the woman called “Juanita” in his book. Wilson describes Bailey as using medical gatekeeping to gain access to young attractive trans women: “As a psychologist, he has written letters they needed to get sex-reassignment surgery, and he has paid attention to them in ways most people donât.”
In her 2008 article published by Kenneth Zucker, in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dreger singled out Wilson as the journalist who failed to cover the story objectively:
Wilson wrote these scandal reports as if she had just come upon the scene with no previous insider knowledge and no insider connections to use to figure out the truth behind this âcontroversy.â When I realized the strange role Wilson had played, I tried asking her and her editor why they hadnât used her before-and-after-scandal positioning to ask deep questions about why Baileyâs relationships appeared, at least in public accounts, to have suddenly changed with these women. Wilsonâs editor [Bill Horne] sent me back boilerplate: âWe stand by the accuracy, and fairness, of Robinâs reporting and are not inclined to revisit decisions Robin and her editors made here with regard to what to include or exclude from those stories in 2003.â But I was left obsessing about an if: If Wilson had used her special journalistic position as someone who was there just before the mushroom cloud, she might have seenâright awayâwhat I saw when years later I charted the journey.
Now, maybe Wilson would have concluded that Conway had just educated all these women into understanding they had been abused. But if she had taken this or any other theory of what had changed the scene so dramatically, and then bothered to look into the actual charges, as I was finally doing years later, she might have seen them fall apart one by one. And then she could have reported that. Was Wilson a good liberal simply afraid to look as though she was defending a straight, politically incorrect sex researcher against a group of supposedly downtrodden trans women? Had Conway and James scared the crap out of her, as they seemed to scare everybody else? Or was the explanation simpler? Was it just that trying to figure out what the hell was really going on would have taken too much time and other resources?
References
Dreger, Alice (2015). Galileo’s Middle Finger.
Dreger, Alice (2008). The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Wilson, Robin (September 3, 2016). Citing Safety Concerns, Northwestern U. Bans Tenured ‘Gadfly’ Professor From Campus.
Wilson, Robin (December 10, 2004). Northwestern U. Will Not Reveal Results of Investigation Into Sex Researcher.
Wilson, Robin (December 1, 2004). Northwestern U. Concludes Investigation of Sex Researcher but Keeps Results Secret.
Wilson, Robin (December 12, 2003). Northwestern U. Psychologist Is Accused of Having Sex With Research Subject.
Wilson, Robin (July 25, 2003). Transsexual ‘Subjects’ Complain About Professor’s Research Methods.
Wilson, Robin (July 17, 2003). 2 Transsexual Women Say Professor Didn’t Tell Them They Were Research Subjects.
Horne earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Cornell University and a law degree from Albany Law School of Union University in 1984. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1985 and practiced for several years before going into journalism, where he has published with bylines including William W. Horne and Bill Horne.
Horne joined the Chronicle in 2000 as Deputy Managing Editor, rising to editor from 2004 to 2007. He then held editor positions at World History Group from 2008 to 2013, then joined AARP in 2014 as Executive Editor of their magazine. His wife Kathleen “Kathy” Broadbent Horne is also a lawyer.
The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003)
Chronicle staffer Robin Wilson wrote six articles covering the controversy, and Dreger was critical of the coverage, citing her correspondence with Horne:
When I realized the strange role Wilson had played, I tried asking her and her editor why they hadnât used her before-and-after-scandal positioning to ask deep questions about why Baileyâs relationships appeared, at least in public accounts, to have suddenly changed with these women. Wilsonâs editor sent me back boilerplate: âWe stand by the accuracy, and fairness, of Robinâs reporting and are not inclined to revisit decisions Robin and her editors made here with regard to what to include or exclude from those stories in 2003.â
References
Dreger, Alice (2008). The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age. Archives of Sexual Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-007-9301-1
Dreger, Alice (2015). Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice. Penguin Books ISBN 978-0143108115
Christine McGinn is an American plastic surgeon based in Pennsylvania.
Background
Christine Noelle McGinn was born May 31, 1969 and grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. McGinn earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Moravian College in 1991, followed by a medical degree from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1995. McGinn then joined the United States Navy, Naval Aerospace Medicine Institute US Naval Flight Surgery Training.
McGinn made a gender transition starting in 2000.
McGinn was a consultand on the 2015 film The Danish Girl and has appeared on Dr. Oz, CNN with Anderson Cooper, IAm Jazz, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Memberships:
American Medical Association
American Osteopathic Association
American College of Osteopathic Surgeons
Society of United States Naval Flight Surgeons
Aerospace Medical Association
World Professional Association for Transgender Health
Gay and Lesbian Medical Association
Society for the Scientific Study of Sex
Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists
Kelley Winters (born April 18, 1957) is an American engineer and transgender rights activist. Winters has been an important figure in fighting against the pathologization of sex and gender minorities.
Background
Winters earned a bachelorâs degree from University of Illinois in 1979, then attended Eastern Illinois University and got married in 1980. She was later divorced after having two sons. Winters earned a PhD in computer engineering from University of Idaho in 1993.
In an interesting coincidence, her work built on the pioneering technology by Lynn Conway. Winters has since retired and focuses on activism.
Activism
Following her gender transition, Winters began working toward improving how trans people were depicted in clinical literature. Beginning in 2001, she began advocating for changes in the diagnosis “gender identity disorder” (GID) via her organization GID Reform Advocates.
âThis is my personal list of the most egregious problems with the current Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis. While far from comprehensive, it is perhaps a starting point for dialogue about how harm reduction of gender nomenclature might be possible in the DSMV.
Focus of pathology on nonconformity to assigned birth sex in disregard to the definition of mental disorder, which comprises distress and impairment.
Stigma of mental illness upon emotions and expressions that are ordinary or even exemplary for nontransgender children, adolescents and adults.
Lacks clarity on gender dysphoria, defined here as clinically significant distress with physical sex characteristics or ascribed gender role.
Contradicts transition and access to hormonal and surgical treatments, which are well proven to relieve distress of gender dysphoria.
Encourages gender-conversion therapies, intended to change or shame oneâs gender identity or expression.
Misleading title of âGender Identity Disorder,â suggesting that gender identity is itself disordered or deficient.
Maligning terminology, including âautogynephilia,â which disrespects transitioned individuals with inappropriate pronouns and labels.
False positive diagnosis of those who are no longer gender dysphoric after transition and of gender nonconforming children who were never gender dysphoric.
Conflation of impairment caused by prejudice with distress intrinsic to gender dysphoria.
Placement in the class of sexual disorders.”
Publications
Winters, Kelley (2009). Top Ten Problems with the GID DIagnosis. (PDF)
Winters, Kelley (2008). Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays From The Struggle for Dignity (2008) BookSurge ISBN-13:Â 978-1439223888
Carey Callahan is an American therapist and prominent member of the ex-transgender movement. Despite being 30 years old when deciding to take hormones for nine months before stopping, Callahan was extensively featured in the 2018 Atlantic article, “When a Child Says She’s Trans” by Jesse Singal.
Callahan is also a founder of the Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network (GCCAN), a group of activists with regrets about aspects of their gender transitions. GCCAN campaigns against current trans healthcare protocols, demanding more gatekeeping from therapists.
Callahan apparently does activism under the name Carey Callahan and works as a therapist under the names Carrie Maria Callahan, Carrie English, and Carrie Callahan-English.
Background
Carey Maria Callahan was born May 1, 1982. Callahan earned a bachelor’s degree from the The Ohio State University in 2004. After college, Callahan worked as a union field organizer, then as a counselor and educator at Marilyn G. Rabb Foundation, Lyon-Martin Health Services, and The Emily Program.
In June 2012, at age 30, Callahan came out as genderqueer and began therapy. In October 2012 Callahan began a course of bimonthly intramuscular testosterone injections. In March 2013, Callahan moved to San Francisco, but had trouble finding work. Callahan soon decided that the issue was “not a trans thing, but a trauma thing” related to past trauma, including a sexual assault in college. Callahan stopped testosterone in June 2013 and socially transitioned again about a year after that in 2014.
Callahan moved back to Ohio, earned a Master’s degree from the University of Akron in 2018, then worked at OhioGuidestone as a therapist from 2018 until May 2021. Callahan is married to lawyer James P. English (born 1977), and they are raising their child (born 2021).
In 2022 Callahan stated via email: “I sought out an affirming therapist when I should have been much more responsible about investigating the symptoms I was experiencing before seeking testosterone.”
Ex-trans activism
Callahan’s stated goal is “greater emphasis on and programming for those of us who explore but do not arrive at a trans identity.”
Callahan previously collaborated with Ky Schevers, another ex-trans activist who left the ex-trans movement because of “the role transphobic detrans communities play in organized transphobia.” In 2019 Callahan helped create Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network (GCCAN). Callahan stated via email in part:
My focus when organizing GCCAN was on democratic decision making within the group and I wasn’t careful like I should have been about making sure Ky’s partner understood I was passing information on to the board for transparency’s sake, not trying to steer the group into supporting harmful legislation. I thought when we got the chance to vote against working with a ROGD parents group our decision making process was working. While I believe my intent and work was misunderstood, I can see how I was creating that risk.
Callahan’s email concluded, “It’s very sad to me that I wasn’t able to do more to steer detrans people away from being used as pawns.”
In 2019 Callahan spoke on a panel organized by anti-trans extremist organization Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF). The panel also included moderator Traci Nally and gender critical panelists Corinna Cohn and Nina Paley. Callahan discussed a 2017 USPATH presentation and a similar canceled presentation at Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference. Callahan criticized informed consent and pediatric transition, promoted ex-trans media like Pique Resilience Project, and directed attendees to a since-deleted article titled “Advice for gender dysphoric teens” that contained links to other recommended ex-trans resources.
In 2023 Callahan testified in opposition to Ohio House Bill 68, a proposed law banning gender affirming healthcare for minors (the “Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act”) and banning transgender athletes competing in sex-segregated sports in Ohio high schools, colleges, and universities (the “Save Women’s Sports Act”). Callahan’s testimony concluded:
“I am begging you to stop attacking trans healthcare and trans people. I am begging you to stop referencing detransitioners such as myself as a justification for attacking trans healthcare and trans people. You arenât protecting children from becoming a detransitioner like me. You are exiling good people from our state, traumatizing kids and families, and working hard to make Ohio a less safe place to raise kids. You are doing real harm to me personally, to my neighbors who live a cul de sac up, to the lovely trans kids I know, to the lovely discerning kids I know, to the doctors and therapists who have put in the years of education and experience to improve peopleâs quality of life. Please drop this misguided experiment and use your elected positions to help Ohioans live good lives. Thank you.”
Ohio House Bill 68 passed in 2024, banning gender affirming care for minors.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Be Scofield is a transgender American activist critical of new religious movements. Scofield has characterized the progressive wing of the transgender rights movement as a âcult.â
Background
Scofield was born on October 29, 1980 and grew up in Naples, Florida. As a young adult, Scofield produced three albums of dance music under the name MC2000: Spiritual Awakening (1999), Musical Evolutions (2000), and Pyscho [sic, also sometimes styled correctly] (2000).
Scofield graduated from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in psychology/philosophy in 2006, then briefly attended the California Institute of Integral Studies before dropping out.
Scofield then worked at a yoga studio and ran a weekly âecstatic danceâ event called Metta Dance. After founding the education project Mettaversity and marketing project mettawebdesign, Scofield did marketing for sites GreenMedInfo.com and GreenMedTV.com while running a number of sites, including decolonizingyoga.com.
In 2011, Scofield came out as “trapped in the wrong body” and raised $1,640 in a crowdfunding campaign to cover gender transition costs. In 2013 Scofield earned a master’s degree in divinity at Starr King School.
Around 2018, Scofield began writing articles about alleged manipulative or abusive practices in new religious movements.
Scofield was banned from the platform Medium in July 2018 for violations including âmultiple instances of unverified and uncorroborated claims against individuals.â
Criticism of trans activism
In 2021, Scofield got involved in criticizing the transgender rights movement. Scofield specifically decries the âtactics used to silence Jesse Singal,â a writer known for laundering anti-transgender extremism into mainstream media outlets. Singal has parlayed attacks on transgender people into a lucrative career netting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Singal has been âsilencedâ into dozens of subsequent media appearances as an expert on transgender people, usually in the place of actual medical and legal experts.
In a comparison using the ACLUâs 1978 defense of a march by Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, Scofield frames criticism of Jesse Singal as a First Amendment issue: âWhen the totalist left decrees something ideologically wrong or hateful, that should be the impetus for the speech to be protected, not censored.â If a privately-owned platform or publication decides not to publish someoneâs writing, that is not a First Amendment issue. If activists warn the public about biased people negatively influencing trans rights, that is not censorship.
In a remarkable analogy, Scofield likens Jesse Singal to Martin Luther King, and media watchdogs like GLAAD to the FBI. Scofield condemns Singal’s critics as working âto silence, ruin and derail people and ideas deemed dangerous, or ideologically wrong.â This is exactly why Singal is a once-in-a-generation problem. Singal’s masterful use of the Dregerian narrative has brainwashed followers like Scofield into believing progressive leaders of the transgender rights movement are akin to J. Edgar Hooverâs FBI, and Jesse Singal is akin to the persecuted thought leader of a civil rights movement.
Staff report (March 6, 2003). Students protest Iraq War. Fort Myers News-Press
Scofield, Be (October 28, 2011). Living Out Loud: Iâm Transgender.Tikkun http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2011/10/28/living-out-loud-im-transgender
Briedis et al. v. Scofield, Washington State 19-2-05077-28 https://dockets.justia.com/docket/washington/wawdce/2:2019cv01494/277812
Baxter, J (May 30, 2019). The Misdeeds of Be Scofield and the Mysterious Orcas Island Death of Carla Shaffer. https://baxtersjournal.com/index.php/2019/05/30/the-misdeeds-of-be-scofield-and-the-mysterious-orcas-island-death-of-carla-shaffer/ [archive]
Ky Schevers is an American writer and activist who left the transphobic “ex-trans” movement. Schevers states on the Reclaiming Trans website:
Ky Schevers played a significant role creating and promoting the radical feminist detrans womenâs community. Under the name CrashChaosCats, she wrote, made videos, presented workshops and gave media interviews in order to talk about her experiences detransitioning and promote anti-trans feminist ideology. Eventually she became disillusioned with the radical feminist movement and recognized her detransition as a harmful anti-trans conversion practice. She writes now to raise awareness of the harms of ideologically motivated detransition and the role transphobic detrans communities play in organized transphobia.
Background
Gender critical troll Katie Herzog featured Schevers prominently in a widely criticized 2017 article about “detransition” that appeared in The Stranger. Schevers is given the pseudonym “Cass” in Herzog’s piece. For seven years, neither Herzog nor The Stranger updated the original piece or covered the subsequent developments. In 2024, The Stranger republished Schevers’ 2021 update.
Schevers was also mentioned in the 2018 profile of ex-trans activist Carey Callahan in the documentary that accompanied the transphobic Atlantic piece on “detransition” by Jesse Singal. Schevers is called “CrashChaosCats” or “Crash” in that publication.
Herzog claimed that many people in the ex-trans movement “detransition” because they have a harder life from less social acceptance:
That may be true for some detrans peopleâespecially trans women, who generally have a harder time passing and who lose the benefits inherent with appearing male in societyâbut it wasn’t the case for Cass, a 31-year-old detrans lesbian in California. Cass was severely bullied as a gender nonconforming kid and says transitioning actually made life easier. She started taking testosterone at 20, and her community was largely supportive. She didn’t have a hard time finding work or people to date. “People were definitely nicer to me after I transitioned and they saw me as a man instead of a butch dyke,” Cass said.
Three months before Cass started taking testosterone, her mom committed suicide. “Transitioning was kind of a survival strategy,” Cass said. And that worked for a while, but over time, she started to sense that her dysphoria was rooted more in the trauma of her mother’s death and her own internalized misogyny than in gender identity. As an adolescent, she had been masculine, butch. “I got a lot of very harsh, negative messages about what it meant to be a woman,” Cass said. “It got to the point where I couldn’t see myself as a woman without feeling the horror other people felt toward me. Living as a man provided a kind of refuge until I was ready to dive into all that.”
When she was ready, Cass, like Jackie, looked online for advice, and she met a woman a few years older who had detransitioned. Her experiences were the sameâfrom childhood bullying and internalized misogyny to the sense that transitioning hadn’t really solved her dysphoria at all. They became friends, talking over the course of a few months, and then, after nine years living as a man, Cass came out as a woman.
It’s been four years since Cass detransitioned. She changed the gender marker on her driver’s license back to female and asked her friends and family to call her by her birth name, but she still passes as male, with a deep voice and a shade of hair on her cheeks.
“Psychologically, it was harder to detransition,” she said. She compares it to the process of working through her mom’s suicide. “It involved a lot more dealing with my trauma and facing the self-destructive parts of myself. It’s not fun, but it’s worth it.”
Cass still hasn’t told the health-care providers who helped her through her transition about the change. In some ways, she faults them for enabling her transition, even though it’s exactly what she wanted at the time. She writes about her experience online, and in one post, she says that a favored therapist “helped me hurt myself. That definitely wasn’t her intention but that’s still what happened. This contradiction is difficult to face and understand.”
In addition to her writing, Cass recently started posting videos to YouTube, where there are a growing number of detransitioning confessionals. In one video, which has been watched nearly 900,000 times, a young man reflects on his decision to detransition after living as a woman. He’s beautiful and androgynous, with long lashes framing bright-blue eyes. “I’m not like every other boy,” he said. “I can accept that now.”
There’s an offline community of detransitioners as well: In 2014 and 2015, Cass led a workshop on detransitioning at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. (Michfest, as it was known, had a contentious history with the trans community due to its long-held “women born women” policy. The festival closed after nearly 40 years in existence in 2015.) Last year, Cass and 15 other detransitioned women got together on the West Coast for a weekend of workshops, meditation, and shared experience. Cass thinks it was the first gathering of its kind.
As one of the detransitioned women (“Cass”) interviewed for this article, I want to say I’m happy with how it came out and am glad women like me are finally getting more representation. I think it’s a very balanced and well researched piece of writing and best of all gives a marginalized group of people a chance to be heard. I’m very excited that detransitioned people are getting more opportunities to speak about our own experiences rather than having other people talk about what they think we are and what we mean. This is one of few articles out there that actually represents my life as a detransitioned woman.
I’m dismayed but not surprised by how some people are reacting to the issues this piece has raised. My life is not transphobic and making lives like mine more visible is not transphobic either. Reading that experiences like mine should not be talked about in public is infuriating. I get to be open and honest about my life and I get to work to make my experience and community more visible. There are people out there who need to know that there’s resources and support for them if they end up detransitioning. They need to know they’re not the only ones. I made a video in response to the article and people’s reactions to it that can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuI5rBWDâŠ
I would encourage people to also watch videos other detrans women made in response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqN_9rM8⊠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN6N6F6AâŠ
Since leaving the ex-trans cult
Schevers later teamed up with Lee Leveille to form Health Liberation Now! It is “a free, trans-run resource analyzing the social and political forces acting in opposition to health liberation for transgender, detransitioned, retransitioned, and gender diverse people, as well as those questioning their gender. We pair these analyses with collections of proactive resistance strategies that community organizers can use in pursuit of trans health liberation.”
References
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
