“Posie Parker” is a stage name of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, a British anti-transgender extremist. Keen-Minshull is one of the most strident campaigners against trans rights in history. Keen-Minshull’s events often turn into tense standoffs due to gender-critical and fascist supporters.
Background
Kellie-Jay Nyishie Keen was born June 13, 1974 and grew up in Somerset with an older sibling. Keen earned a bachelor’s degree in theology from University of Leeds. Keen worked for Posie Parker photography, Cornhill Publishing (joining as a consultant in 1999), and GDS International.
Keen-Minshull married Ryan Miles Minshulll aka “Max Ford” (born 1974) in 2008. Minshulll runs DigiLive Events. They have four children: Roman, Artemus, Mabel, and Carter. They were all delivered as c-sections. The youngest was born in ~2008, three days after their marriage.
Anti-trans activism
Keen-Minshull is listed as a leader of three entities:
Woman By Definition Ltd (incorporated 2020, dissolved 2021)
Keen-Minshull is also a special advisor to anti-trans organization Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF).
Out-of-home ad campaigns
In 2018 Keen-Minshull paid for a billboard in Liverpool that said “woman, wÊmÉn, noun, adult human female,” a slogan used by anti-transgender activists. It was taken down following complaints. Keen-Minshull then had the same message placed in Leeds, which was also taken down.
In 2020 Keen-Minshull paid for a poster that said “I â„ JK Rowling” to run in an Edinburgh railway station before it was taken down. This inspired Chris Elston and Amy Hamm to do the same thing in Vancouver. It also inspired Speak Up For Women in New Zealand to place billboards in 2021 that said “adult human female.”
Social media
Keen-Minshull has been temporarily and permanently restricted on various social media platforms.
In 2018 gender critical organization Woman’s Place UK said they would no longer be working with Keen-Minshull. Others have expressed similar concerns due to Keen-Minshull’s association with right-wing and fascist activists.
In 2019 Keen-Minshull and Julia Long recorded themselves verbally abusing trans HRC press secretary Sarah McBride at the US Capitol. HRC then criticized religious conservative group The Heritage Foundation for their role in bringing the two to their event. Keen-Minshull has also published attacks on Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre director Mridul Wadhwa, who is trans.
Keen-Minshull and allies have held anti-trans rallies in Manchester, Bristol, Brighton, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Glasgow. Following a 2020 WoLF conference in New York, Keen-Minshull went to Atlanta for the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming Championship to protest trans swimmer Lia Thomas. Keen-Minshull then scheduled appearances in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (cancelled), Tacoma, Austin, Chicago, New York, and Belfast. Following a Melbourne event that was attended by Nazis, Keen-Minshull’s Wellington event shut down early and required a police escort due to the thousands of counter-protestors, one of whom doused Keen-Minshull with tomato soup.
After returning to the UK, Keen-Minshull announced the creation of the Party of Women in order to run for office.
Media
Keen-Minshull is a favored source among right-wing and anti-transgender activists:
Keen-Minshull has said about cisgender women who support trans rights:
Each and every one of you women who stand in my wayâeach and every one of youâlet me just tell you, you will be annihilated. Because I genuinely donât lose.
Greer was born 29 January 1939 in Melbourne. Greer’s parent lived under an assumed identity as an adult. Greer’s family was Catholic, but Germaine Greer longed to assume a Jewish identity as an adolescent. Greer learned Yiddish, joined a Jewish theatre group, dated Jewish people, and reportedly “felt Jewish.”
After graduating from convent school, Greer earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Melbourne, a master’s degree from University of Sydney and a doctorate in English from Newnham College, Cambridge.
Greer was sexually assaulted in college, which strongly influenced Greer’s thinking and writing on sex and gender.
In 1968, Greer began teaching at University of Warwick. Greer was officially married to Paul du Feu from 1968 to 1973, but Greer cheated on du Feu seven times in the first month, and they separated. Greer wrote for Oz and co-founded Suck, a “new pornogrqaphy” venture based around sexual liberation that sometimes depicted graphic nonconsensual sex. Suck published a nude photo of Greer, prompting Greer to resign.
In 1970 Greer published The Female Eunuch, an important second-wave feminist text. Greer said, “I don’t like women. I probably share in all the effortless and unconscious contempt that men pour on women.” Greer had notable debates with Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley, and others throughout a steady string of television appearances.
Greer founded the Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature as part of her work to reclaim women’s cultural contributions. Through the 1990s Greer continued to write about women’s issues.
Anti-transgender activism
Greer has made many inflammatory comments about trans people. One chapter of Greer’s 1999 book The Whole Woman is titled “Pantomime Dames.” In keeping with the views presented in The Female Eunuch, Greer wrote:
Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women, men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex.
She added: âWhen a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho), it is as if he murders her and gets away with it.â
Greer protested the appointment of trans physicist Rachael Padman to a women’s college and Glamour magazine’s 2015 Woman of the Year honor given to Caitlyn Jenner.
References
Greer, Germaine (1999). The Whole Woman. London: Transworld Publishers Ltd. p. 64. ISBN 978-0385720038
De Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko (24 October 2015). Cardiff University Rejects Bid to Bar Germaine Greer. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/world/europe/cardiff-university-rejects-bid-to-bar-germaine-greer.html
Campbell, Beatrix; et al. (14 February 2015). We cannot allow censorship and silencing of individuals. The Observer. Archived from the original on 13 October 2018. Retrieved 12 October 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181013014630/https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship
Kara Dansky is an American lawyer, sex segregationist, and anti-transgender activist. She is president of WDI USA, the American chapter of Women’s Declaration International.
Background
Kara Patrice Dansky was born March 17, 1972.
Dansky earned a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1994 and a juris doctor degree from University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Founder and Managing Director of One Thousand Arms.
Special Advisor to the Director of the New York City Mayorâs Office of Criminal Justice
Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Securityâs Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Executive Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.
Public defender and federal law clerk at the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico
Staff attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Senior Counsel with the ACLU Center for Justice
Dansky is a member of the bar for the District of Columbia and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
2021 book
In November 2021, she published The Abolition of Sex: How the âTransgenderâ Agenda Harms Women and Girls.
Maya Forstater is a British anti-transgender activist and sex segregationist. Forstater brought the case Forstater v Centre for Global Development Europe that established that gender critical views are protected as a belief under the UK’s Equality Act 2010.
Background
Maya Forstater was born on July 3, 1973 in London. Forstater’s parent is film producer Mark Forstater. Forstater earned a degree from Newcastle University. Forstater has published work for the United Nations on corporate social responsibility and economic development.
Anti-transgender activism
Forstater made a number of anti-transgender statements on social media that resulted in a UN contract not being renewed in 2019. Forstater filed a lawsuit claiming these gender critical views are protected under the Equality Act 2010. Forstater lost her initial case, which was then appealed to a tribunal. Forstater won the appeal in 2021, and the tribunal found in 2022 Forstater had suffered direct discrimination for holding anti-transgender views.
In 2020, Forstater co-founded anti-trans group Sex Matters and serves as Executive Director.
References
Cases
Forstater v CGD Europe & Ors [2021] UKEAT 0105_20_1006 IRLR 706, [2022] ICR 1 https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2021/0105_20_1006.html
Suissa, Judith; Sullivan, Alice (2021). The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education. 55 (1): 55â82. https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1467-9752.12549
Lierre Keith is an American environmentalist and author. Keith is a founder of environmental organization Deep Green Resistance, a radical feminist group that has been criticized for anti-transgender views.
Background
Keith was born in 1964 and went to high school in Brookline, Massachusetts. In the 1980s Keith was involved in a number of feminist projects, including Vanessa and Iris: A Journal for Young Feminists, the journal Rain and Thunder, the groups Women Against Violence Against Women, Minor Disturbance, Feminists Against Pornography.
Keith’s environmental activism includes the 2009 book The Vegetarian Myth and the 2011 book Deep Green Resistance, co-authored with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay. McBay left in 2012, citing increasing anti-trans views of the other co-founders.
Anti-trans activism
Keith helped found the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF). WoLF was founded in 2013, incorporated in 2016, and earned non-profit status in 2018. They have held meetings called WoLF Fest since 2016 that largely consist of anti-transgender networking and presentations.
In a sympathetic 2014 piece by Michelle Goldberg titled “What Is a Woman?” Keith explained:
Trans women say that they are women because they feel femaleâthat, as some put it, they have womenâs brains in menâs bodies. Radical feminists reject the notion of a âfemale brain.â They believe that if women think and act differently from men itâs because society forces them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lierre Keith, a speaker at Radfems Respond, femininity is âritualized submission.â
[…]
Three years ago, she co-founded the ecofeminist group Deep Green Resistance, which has some two hundred members and links the oppression of women to the pillaging of the planet.D.G.R. is defiantly militant, refusing to condemn the use of violence in the service of goals it considers just. In radical circles, though, what makes the group truly controversial is its stance on gender. As members see it, a person born with male privilege can no more shed it through surgery than a white person can claim an African-American identity simply by darkening his or her skin. Before D.G.R. held its first conference, in 2011, in Wisconsin, the group informed a person in the process of a male-to-female transition that she couldnât stay in the womenâs quarters. âWe said, Thatâs fine if you want to come, but, no, youâre not going to have access to the womenâs sleeping spaces and the womenâs bathrooms,â Keith told me.
References
McBay, Aric (May 14, 2013). DGR and Transphobia. http://www.aricmcbay.org/2013/05/14/dgr-and-transphobia/
Derrick Jensen is an American environmentalist and author. Jensen is a founder of environmental organization Deep Green Resistance, a radical feminist group that has been criticized for anti-transgender views.
Background
Jensen was born on December 19, 1960. Jensen earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado School of Mines in 1983 and a master’s degree from Eastern Washington University in 1991.
In 2011, Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Aric McBay founded Deep Green Resistance. McBay left due to the organization’s positions on transgender people.
Anti-transgender views
Jensen’s concerns center around postmodernism and queer theory. Jensen believes these theories are attempts to justify nonconsensual sex with minors. Jensen also claims any dissent from acceptable views will lead to cancelation:
This is the cult-like behavior of the postmodern left: if you disagree with any of the Holy Commandments of postmodernism/queer theory/transgender ideology, you must be silenced on not only that but on every other subject. Welcome to the death of discourse, brought to you by the postmodern left.
Jensen has laid out these anti-trans views in a number of essays and posts:
The Emperor’s New Penis
Liberals and the New McCarthyism
Letter to a Publisher: On the Destruction of Discourse and the Cult of the Postmodern Left
Derrick Jensen Resistance Radio
Jensen is host of a show that has included many environmentalists, some trans-inclusive feminists, and anti-transgender activists:
Houlberg, Laura (2017). “The End of Gender or Deep Green Transmisogyny?”. Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-88657-2.
Pellow, David Naguib (2019). Eco-Defence, Radical Environmentalism and Environmental Justice. Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics. Routledge. p. 112. ISBN 9781315619880.
Stephanie Davies-Arai is a British anti-transgender activist. Davies-Arai is director of Transgender Trend, a clinical advisor to anti-trans hate group Genspect, and has been involved in numerous anti-trans campaigns in the UK and beyond.
Background
According to Lily Maynard:
Stephanie & her twin sister Helen were born in Chester in the late 50s, hot on the heels of their older sister Gill. Their father was a bank manager and their mother a housewife and librarian, who managed and reorganised information systems for the Leicester police after their move to a small market town when the twins were seven.
Davies-Arai wrote: “I am a heterosexual woman who lived most of my childhood wanting to be a boy; for a few years my sister and I would answer to nothing except our ârealâ names: Bill and Mike. I entered puberty kicking and screaming.” The twins dressed as schoolboys and engaged in “tomboy” activities until age 12. At puberty Davies-Arai reportedly became bulimic.
Davies-Arai trained as a sculptor after attending Wyggeston Grammar School for Girls in Leicester. Davies-Arai earned a bachelor’s degree from Gwent College of Higher Education in 1979, took courses at St. Martins College, and earned a master’s degree from Bidai University of Art & Design in 1990. While there, Davies-Arai gave birth to the first of four children. Davies-Arai’s sculptures began to be primarily about pregnancy and motherhood.
Davies-Arai and spouse moved back to England. Davies-Arai’s oldest child had behavioral problems. In 2000, Davies-Arai was a founder of Lewes New School, a small private school in East Sussex where that child might get specialized attention. Davies-Arai became a certified educational trainer in 2003.
Materials on how to deal with troubled children led to Davies-Arai’s “parental rights” activism:
âIt was too child-centred. It kind of treated children as victims in a way, as if they always had a problem. It didnât seem to give permission for parental authority.â
In 2008 Davies-Arai and spouse divorced. Davies-Arai began the training course Communicating with Kids, which was later developed into a 2014 book.
Anti-trans activism
As the four children reached adulthood, Davies-Arai was writing a weekly parenting blog.
Davies-Arai founded Transgender Trend in 2015 after being outraged by an article titled “Parenting a Transgender Child” by Sarah Virginia White. Davies said:
Youâre validating a childâs false belief. You wouldnât get that in any other area, in any parenting book. Itâs not healthy when listening to your child becomes so key that it becomes âyou must agree with your childâ. If you believe that your child knows best, youâre then supposed to follow the child. The child becomes the adult and the adult becomes the child.â
After getting more and more into the transphobic “parental rights” movement, Davies-Arai produced an anti-trans schools guide “Supporting gender diverse and trans-identified students in schools” in 2018.
After Liz Truss announced plans to change the UK’s Gender Recognition Act in 2020, an open letter signed by about 8,000 cisgender women said “we are incredibly concerned that the language you have used is very similar to the anti-trans rhetoric used by transphobic hate groups and organisations such as Womanâs Place UK, Transgender Trend and the LGB Alliance.”
In 2022, Davies-Arai was awarded the British Empire Medal by Queen Elizabeth II.
Davis, Lisa Selin (June 13, 2022). From Tomboy to Transgender Trend. https://lisaselindavis.substack.com/p/from-tomboy-to-transgender-trend
White, Sarah Virginia (February 20, 2015). Parenting a Transgender Child. HuffPost https://www.huffpost.com/entry/parenting-a-transgender-child_b_6709858
Davies-Arai, Stephanie (2015). Is My Child Transgender? https://stephaniedaviesarai.com/is-my-child-transgender/
Kat Rosenfield is an American writer and “dissident feminist” whose work frequently appears in conservative outlets.
Background
Rosenfield earned a bachelor’s degree from Drew University in 2003. Rosenfield worked in marketing and publicity before becoming a reporter at MTV in 2010. Rosenfield has done freelance work in pop culture.
Rosenfield is an advice columnist at anti-trans publication UnHerd and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast with Phoebe Maltz Bovy.
Like many trans-suspicious writers, Rosenfield claims to be part of a left-wing but “heterodox” movement standing up against cancel culture to speak the truth.
Thereâs a loose but growing coalition of lefties out there, artists and writers and academics and professionals, whoâve drawn sympathetic attention from conservatives after being publicly shamed out of the progressive clubhouse (that is, by the type of progressive who thinks there is a clubhouse, which is of course part of the problem). Itâs remarkably easy these days to be named an apostate on the left. Maybe you were critical of the looting and rioting that devastated cities in the wake of George Floydâs murder by police in 2020. Maybe you were skeptical of this or that viral outrage: Covington Catholic, or Jussie Smollett, or the alleged racial abuse at a BYU volleyball game that neither eyewitness testimony nor video evidence could corroborate. Maybe you were too loud about the continued need for due process in the middle of #MeToo. Maybe you wouldnât stop asking uncomfortable questions about the proven value of certain divisive brands of diversity training, or transgender surgeries for kids, or â come the pandemic â masking. Maybe you kept defending the right to free speech and creative expression after these things had been deemed âright-wing valuesâ by your fellow liberals.
When Bari Weiss and team went after a Missouri children’s hospital and its gender clinic with some questionably obtained medical records of children and adolescents, Rosenfield sided with the unsupportive parents:
Zooming out for a moment here, seems both unsurprising and weâll-articulated by the original piece that the child who wants [life-altering medical procedure] against a parentâs wishes is going to have a different perspective on said topic than the parent https://t.co/3leYalr6SV
In a piece on author and anti-trans activist JK Rowling, Rosenfield makes the oft-used false equivalence of Christians protesting Rowling’s occult themes and trans people and their supporters protesting Rowling’s vocal support of anti-transgender activists:
In the 15 years since Harry Potter made his final stand against Voldemort, the angst directed at Rowling has evolved from nebulous fears of neo-paganism into a far more sustained and focused rage over her perceived transphobia. But when it comes to the shape the anger takes, very little has changed. Rowlingâs haters canât stop her from writing, and they canât stop people from reading her writing â but by god, theyâll do what they can to make sure those people donât enjoy it.
This framing was later used by Megan Phelps-Roper in “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” a podcast apologia produced by Bari Weiss.
References
Rosenfield, Kat (August 9, 2021). How cancel culture hurts the Left.UnHerd https://unherd.com/2021/08/how-the-left-will-lose-the-culture-wars/
Rosenfield, Kat (October 27, 2022). Why I keep getting mistaken for a conservative.National Review https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/11/07/why-i-keep-getting-mistaken-for-a-conservative/
Rosenfield, Kat (September 2, 2022). JK Rowling sees through her enemies.unHerd https://unherd.com/2022/09/j-k-rowling-sees-through-her-enemies/
Rosenfield, Kat (September 10, 2020). How Do I Stop Being a TERF?Persuasion https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-do-i-stop-being-a-terf
Christopher Rufo is an American professional anti-transgender activist. Attacking trans rights is part of Rufo’s conservative activism at the Manhattan Institute and elsewhere.
Christopher Ferguson “Chris” Rufo was born August 26, 1984 and grew up in Sacramento, California. Both parents are attorneys.
Rufo earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 2006 and a master’s degree from Harvard Extension School in 2022. Rufo has worked at The Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute, and Discovery Institute.
Rufo has produced documentaries and has run for public office in Seattle.
Rufo is best known for conservative activism around critical race theory, intersectionality, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and homelessness.
Rufo and spouse Suphatra “Kip” Paravichai live in Gig Harbor, Washington with their three children.
Anti-transgender activism
As part of a push to end public libraries and public education, Rufo has heavily promoted the idea that LGBTQ people are “groomers,” echoing similar efforts in the 1970s. As part of these “save the children” initiatives, Rufo seeks to stop schools from discussing LGBTQ people and their role in American history and culture (so-called “Don’t Say Gay” activism). Rufo is a major force behind threats and protests at Drag Queen Story Hour events.
In 2023, Florida’s anti-trans governor Ron DeSantis named Rufo to the board of trustees of New College of Florida, part of an attempt to turn the school conservative.
References
Bond-Theriault, Candace (April 19, 2022). The Right Targets Queer Theory.The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/society/christopher-rufo-queer-theory/
Dreher, Rod (October 25, 2022). Chris Rufo Vs Drag Queen Story Hour Groomers.The American Conservative https://www.theamericanconservative.com/chris-rufo-vs-drag-queen-story-hour-groomers/
Gad Saad is a Lebanese-Canadian marketing professor and anti-transgender activist involved in the intellectual dark web, a gateway to the far right.
Background
Gad Saad was born October 13, 1964 in Lebanon. Saad’s Jewish family fled during the civil war in 1975 and moved to Montreal.
Saad attended McGill University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1988 and a master’s degree in 1990. Saad then attended Cornell University, earning another master’s degree in 1993 and a doctorate in 1994.
Saad teaches marketing at Concordia University and is known for promoting evolutionary psychology. Saad has authored several books and articles and writes a blog on Psychology Today. Saad’s YouTube channel and podcast are titled The Saad Truth.
Anti-transgender activism
When psychologist Jordan Peterson refused to use gender-neutral pronouns for transgender people, Saad invited Peterson on The Saad Truth. The episode was extremely popular and started Saad on an anti-trans crusade.
Saad has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience many times, often discussing Saad’s trolling and provocations about gender identity and expression.
Laroche, Michel; Saad, Gad; Cleveland, Mark; Browne, Elizabeth (2000). “Gender Differences in Information Search Strategies for a Christmas Gift”. Journal of Consumer Marketing. 17 (6): 500â522. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760010349920.