Jazz Jennings is an American media personality and transgender activist. Jennings is one of the most notable transgender youth to make a gender transition as a minor.
Background
Jennings was born October 6, 2000 in Florida. Parents Jeanette and Greg have four children in total. The surname Jennings is a pseudonym they chose to help protect their family’s privacy.
In 2007, Jennings was interviewed on 20/20 by Barbara Walters, leading to national recognition and additional appearances. In 2015, Jennings was the subject of the reality show I Am Jazz.
Jennings graduated from Broward Virtual School in 2019. Jennings was accepted to Harvard University, but deferred enrollment until 2023 to deal with “mental health setbacks.”
Jennings is involved in TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation, an organization the family founded to support trans youth.
References
Reischel, Julia (May 30, 2006). See Tom Be Jane.Village Voice https://www.villagevoice.com/see-tom-be-jane/
David Paisley is a Scottish actor and trans-inclusive LGBTQ+ rights activist.
Background
Paisley was born February 2, 1979 is originally from Falkirk. Paisley is one of seven children; Paisley’s parent Janet Paisley is a noted author.
David Paisley began acting as a teen and came out as gay at age 18. Paisley studied at University of Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian University before committing to acting full-time.
Paisley is known for roles in Tinsel Town, River City, Holby City, Casualty, and Eastenders.
Transgender activism
Paisley has been critical of trans-exclusionary queers like the LGB Alliance.
In 2021, Paisley had a dispute with Joanna Cherry, a Scottish politician and gender critical activist. Paisley called out Cherry for making a donation to a crowdfunder backed by anti-trans pressure group Fair Cop. Cherry sent a letter demanding Paisley retract the message, apologize, pay ÂŁ500 to a charity of Cherry’s choice, and pay ÂŁ2,000 in legal costs.
Following significant online abuse, Paisley considered deleting all social media accounts and leaving Scotland.
India Willoughby is an English journalist and media personality. Willoughby is Britain’s first transgender national television newsreader and the first transgender co-host of an all-women talk show, Loose Women.
Background
Willoughby was born September 2, 1965 in Carlisle, Cumbria and attended Trinity School in Shaw, Newbury.
Willoughby began working in journalism in 1986. Willoughby trained as a journalist (NCTJ) in newspapers before moving into radio and then television.Â
After presenting the news for ITV from 1999 to 2010, Willoughby then transitioned, going public in 2015 before returning to ITV in 2016.
In 2017, Willoughby was a guest on BBC’s Woman’s Hour. Host Jenni Murray asked several pointed questions, then wrote an op-ed telling trans women to stop calling themselves real women.
Willoughby then presented on Channel 5 from 2017 to 2018 before returning to ITV in 2018. Willoughby appeared on Celebrity Big Brother 2018.
Willoughby has made a number of controversial statements and often gets into arguments on social media. At one point the death threats against Willoughby got so bad that the UK’s counter-terrorism unit got involved.
Sam Brinton is an American nuclear engineer and LGBTQ activist. In 2022 Brinton briefly served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, the first openly genderfluid person in federal government leadership. The role ended after Brinton was accused of stealing luggage at airports.
Background
Samuel Otis Brinton was born in September 1987 and grew up in Perry, Iowa in a Baptist household. After coming out as bisexual, Brinton was reportedly sent to conversion therapy that practiced harsh aversion techniques. Much of Brinton’s subsequent activism focused on ending conversion therapy.
Brinton graduated from Perry High School in 2006, earned a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University in 2011, and earned a dual master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013.
According to an official biography, prior to the DOE role, Brinton held energy policy roles at the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Breakthrough Institute, the Clean Air Task Force, Third Way, and Deep Isolation.
Brinton married Kevin Rieck in 2019.
Theft accusations
Shortly after taking office in 2022, Brinton was accused of theft of women’s luggage at airports. The investigation uncovered at least three cases:
Washington Reagan (2018): reportedly arrested in May 2023
Las Vegas (July 2022): pled no contest, paid restitution, 180-day suspended sentence
Minneapolis (September 2022): mental health evaluation ordered
The scandal received widespread media attention and cost Brinton the DOE job.
Susie Green is a British gender rights activist who focuses on transgender youth. Green helped her child Jackie medically transition as a minor, including gender affirming surgery in 2010 at age 16. Green was involved in the British charity Mermaids as a trustee from 2011 to 2015, then as CEO from 2016 to 2022.
Background
Susie Marie Green was born in December 1957. She was an IT manager for Citizens Advice from 2002 to 2015. Green lives in Yorkshire, and is married to Tim Green. They have four adult children, including twins.
Green gave a 2017 talk at TEDx Truro that was criticized by anti-trans activists. Green later removed the video.
Green was a consultant on the 2o18 ITV drama Butterfly and helped shape the WPATH chapter on children and adolescents.
She got involved at Mermaids in 2000 because her daughter Jackie was trying to navigate gender transition as a minor. During her time as CEO, the debate about transgender youth intensified, particularly following a ÂŁ500,000Â grant from the National Lottery and corporate sponsorships.
Under Green, Mermaids launched the first legal challenge of its kind against the LGB Alliance, a trans-exclusionary charity which is critical of “gender ideology.” Mermaids sought to end its charitable status.
In late 2022, Mermaids was hit with several setbacks. New Mermaids trustee Jacob Breslow resigned after a 2011 presentation he gave at a conference for minor-attracted persons held by B4U-ACT came to light. Complaints from staff led to an outside audit conducted by DEI consultants the Social Justice Collective. Days after Green resigned, UK’s Charity Commission launched a statutory inquiry into Mermaids after reports that they offered chest binders to teens whose parents opposed their transitions.
Green has been recognized for her contributions to the trans community on several occasions, including an event at Buckingham Palace. In 2016 she won the Diversity Champion Award. In 2023 Green joined GenderGP as project manager on the GenderGP Trans Youth Fund.
SJC (2022). EDI Audit: Recommendations and Next Steps. https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EDI-Audit_-Recommendations-and-Next-Steps.pdf
Nicola Sturgeon is a Scottish politician who served as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 2014 to 2023.
Sturgeon became a target of gender critical activists for her support of gender recognition reform.
Background
Nicola Ferguson Sturgeon was born on 19 July 1970 in Irvine. She joined the SNP in 1986. She earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Glasgow School of Law in 1992. She soon began working as a solicitor and holding leadership roles within SNP. She served as Deputy First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014 under Alex Salmond, during which time she also served as Health Secretary. She was a key leader in SNP’s unsuccessful 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign. She was sworn in a First Minister later that year.
She and former SNP CEO Peter Murrell began a relationship in 2003 and married in 2010. Both were arrested and questioned about SNP finances several weeks after Sturgeon resigned in 2023.
Gender Recognition Reform
In 2016, the SNP vowed to review and reform the way that trans people change their legal gender via the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill . The bill passed in Parliament 86 to 39 in 2022. Weeks later, the UK Government prevented it from gaining Royal Assent under a section 35 order of the Scottish Act 1998. Sturgeon was attacked by critics for her response to the Isla Bryson case involving transgender prisoner housing.
Reverend Alexander Faludy is is a British Anglican priest who has written about trans issues in Hungary.
Background
Alexander “Alex” Faludy was born in 1983 and is grandchild of Hungarian poet György Faludy. Faludy is the youngest student admitted to Cambridge despite living with dyslexia. After earning a bachelor’s degree, Faludy did graduate studies at Oxford, then trained for the priesthood at Mirfield. Faludy served as parish priest in Newcastle from 2008 to 2018.
Trans coverage
Faludy has discussed the anti-LGBTQ policies enacted under Fidesz, Hungary’s right-wing populist party. They have rules prohibiting “promotion to minors” of subjects related to LGBTQ people. Faludi described in UnHerd how Hungary has also made legal change of gender impossible:
Imara Jones is an American journalist. Jones was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people of 2023.
Background
Jones was born on May 9, 1972 and grew up in the Atlanta area.
Jones earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1994 and a master’s degree from The London School of Economics and Political Science.
Jones held posts at Viacom, which included work on the campaign “Know HIV/AIDS and Fight for Your Rights: Protect Yourself” which garnered two EMMY Awards and a Peabody Award.
Jones was a Soros Equality Fellow and chaired the first-ever UN High-Level Meeting on Gender Diversity.Â
Jones’ Translash podcast did a limited series titled “The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality.” The series profiles a number of key anti-trans activists. Season 2 examines how through “the disinformation ecosystem constructed by the Christian Nationalist movement, anti-trans lies are laundered through some of the biggest and most respected news rooms in the country, and how this effort creates a world where the existence of trans people is questioned.”
Coan, Jamie Shearn (April 25, 2019). Imara Jones.New York Trans Oral History Project https://nyctransoralhistory.org/content/uploads/2021/12/NYC-TOHP-Transcript-144-Imara-Jones_UPDATED.pdf
2003 Peabody Awards Know HIV/AIDS and Fight For Your Rights: Protect Yourself Campaigns https://peabodyawards.com/award-profile/know-hiv-aids-and-fight-for-your-rights-protect-yourself-campaigns/ https://vimeo.com/160099072
Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer who writes on international politics, religion, culture, and humanism.
2020 UnHerd article
Using a question India Willoughby posed on Big Brother about dating transgender people, Leonard wrote for anti-transgender publication UnHerd about the so-called “cotton ceiling” debate about cisgender women who won’t date trans women.
Unfortunately, two years on, the ethics of refusing transsexual people as dating partners remains a fraught subject: questions such as âIs it transphobic for lesbians not to date trans women?â are being discussed online. Again, they tend to arouse strong reactions. Some lesbians, for instance, have expressed concerns that raising the question of whether they âshouldâ be attracted to trans women is a surreptitious attempt to pressure, manipulate and guilt trip them into shifting their sexual boundaries into unwanted sex in the name of being more âopenâ.
Of course, there are lesbians who are reluctant to date trans women because they believe they are not actually women (or at least not women in the same way biologically born women are)â. But itâs worth remembering that lesbians have endured a long history of attempts to control their sexuality, whether through hideous practices such as religious indoctrination, conversion therapy or âcorrectiveâ rape to âmake them straightâ. And why focus the attack on lesbians, when many straight men would also reject trans women as a potential mate?
This obviously provokes a wider question: when does a preference become a convenient cover for bigotry and prejudice? On some level, as this tweet declares, âdating is discriminationâ. But the question provoked by that Big Brother episode was: when is discrimination acceptable, and when is it unacceptable?
References
Leonard, Ralph (October 7, 2020). Is dating discrimination? UnHerd https://unherd.com/2020/10/the-dangerous-politics-of-desire/
Naomi Salama on suomalainen rakennusinsinööri ja “autogynefilia”-aktivisti.
Background
Salama was born on July 7, 1998 and grew up in Espoo.
Under the name Janus Syndrome, Salama released an electronic dance music album titled MMXIV in 2014.
Salama attended Aalto University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2020 before continuing on to a master’s degree. In May 2022, Salama began medical transition.
“Autogynephilia” activism
Like a few other neurodiverse trans people with poor social skills, Salama became fixated on an obscure disease model of gender identity and expression created in 1989 by Ray Blanchard. It classifies transgender women into two types: gay men (homosexual transsexuals) and paraphilic men (“autogynephilic” transsexuals). Salama claims to be the “autogynephilic” (AGP) type, which according to Blanchard means Naomi Salama is more likely to be sexually attracted to children, corpses, feces, animals, or have other “paraphilias.”
Most experts and trans people consider this fringe terminology to be scientifically biased and unfalsifiable, but a few isolated activists with personality problems embrace the idea.
âAutogynephiliaâ as a taxonomy appeals to a very specific type of person: neurodiverse, fixated on collecting and categorizing, socially isolated/eccentric, rigid thinking.
In June 2023 Salama sent me a message titled “add me to your stupid agp activist list you hack.”
hello!
I demand an explanation! why am I overlooked for your ridiculous agp activist list? after all, I seem to be an activist in this in the very literal word â very different to for example the researchers on the list.
I have repeatedly defended Blanchard, Bailey and Hsu and interact with all of them quite frequently. I am also friends with multiple other people on the list â such as Phil Illy or Naxela (why you would add him before me is beyond my comprehension, for example my twitter account @Naozymandias is way larger and I speak of agp way more and more publicly â even being retweetes by Blanchard occasionally)
as an academic myself, tho of different field of study, some of the researchers have urges me to do study into agp myself too, perhaps informally. I plan to do this after first finishing my thesis relating to urban economics.
I am also known to have created multiple “memes” relating to autogynephilia, folder of these has also been shared with multiple people on your list.
as you can clearly tell, I am invested in the subject and certainly should be considered an activist of sorts. this baffles me, why am I not on your list??? that feels rather insulting
thus, I demand to be added immediately regards undoubtedly in some sense of the word your enemy, autogynephilic transsexual, and student of urban planning and economics Naomi Salama
Salama spoke with romantic partner Alice Chizita about these bizarre beliefs, then sent a second message clarifying:
while *I* would be glad to be added, my girlfriend hopes I am not, as she would feel bad of that â because she is not in agreement with the typology and “Blanchardism” makes her feel bad and dysphoric.
Hopefully Alice can explain why this ideology is an unhealthy fixation and get Salama professional help. Perhaps Alice can also guide this person toward a better understanding of science. If that is not possible, perhaps Alice can get far away from this toxic person.
