Uwe Steinhoff is an academic and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Steinhoff earned a degree in philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt. After graduation Steinhoff travelled for nine months in Central America. Steinhoff earned a doctorate in Würzburg. Steinhoff has held roles at Humboldt-University Berlin and Oxford University.
Steinhoff teaches in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong.
References
Steinhoff, Uwe (June 11, 2022). The Transgender Craze and the Babble about “Self-Identifying as a Woman”: Why Men Who Think They’re Women Are Psychotic and the Politicians Humoring Them Are Opportunistic https://uwesteinhoff.com/2022/06/11/the-transgender-craze-and-the-babble-about-self-identifying-as-a-woman-why-men-who-think-theyre-women-are-psychotic-and-the-politicians-humoring-them-are-opportunistic/
Steinhoff, Uwe (20 Jul 2022) Gender Ideology Comes to Germany. Quillette https://quillette.com/2022/07/20/gender-ideology-comes-to-germany/
Allan Stratton is a Canadian playwright and novelist. Stratton has been critical of several aspects of the trans rights movement.
Background
Stratton was born in 1951 in Stratford, Ontario. Stratton attended University of Toronto, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1973 and a master’s degree in 1974.
Beginning in 1977, Stratton has written several plays and novels. Stratton’s 2017 novel The Way Back Home features a transgender character named Zoe Bird.
Stratton is gay and married.
References
Stratton, Allan (August 29, 2022). A call for nuance and clarity on trans terminology. The Line https://theline.substack.com/p/allan-stratton-a-call-for-nuance
Stratton, Allan (22 June 2021 ). The ‘Gender Supremacist’ Threat to the Progressive Alliance: Part One of a Three-Part Series https://quillette.com/2021/06/22/the-gender-supremacist-threat-to-the-progressive-alliance-part-one-of-a-three-part-series/
Stratton, Allan (27 Jul 2021). Rescuing the Radicalized Discourse on Sex and Gender: Part Two of a Three-Part Series https://quillette.com/2021/07/27/rescuing-the-radicalized-discourse-on-sex-and-gender-part-two-of-a-three-part-series/
Stratton, Allan (21 Sep 2021). The Progressive Case for Renouncing Gender Extremism: Last of a Three-Part Series https://quillette.com/2021/09/21/the-progressive-case-for-renouncing-gender-extremism-last-of-a-three-part-series/
Stratton, Allan (April 29, 2022). If You Care About Trans Rights, Don’t Let Predators Pick Their Pronouns https://quillette.com/2022/04/29/predators-dont-get-to-pick-their-pronouns/
Stratton, Allan (June 16, 2022). Ricky Gervais Knows No Fear https://quillette.com/2022/06/16/ricky-gervais-knows-no-fear/
Stratton, Allan (3 Aug 2022). Dave Chappelle vs. the New Puritans. https://quillette.com/2022/08/03/dave-chappelle-vs-the-new-puritans/
Cathy Young is a writer and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Yekaterina Jung was born on February 10, 1963 in Russia to Marina (born 1936) and Alexander Jung (1935–2011). Young’s family moved to the United States in 1980. Young became a naturalized US citizen in 1987 as Catherine Alicia Young and earned a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in 1988.
Young is a writer at The Bulwark, a cultural studies fellow at the Cato Institute, a columnist for Newsday, and a contributing editor to Reason.
Young has authored two books.
References
Young, Cathy (October 5, 2023). Toxic culture on the right or left is wrong.Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/culture-wars-transphobia-lgbt-gender-transgender-anthropology-i0un1yec
Young, Cathy (February 16, 2023). Transgender rights is a complex topic.Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/transgender-rights-glaad-i0un1yec
Young, Cathy (June 21, 2022). Transgender rights require a more civil debate.Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/transgender-rights-athletes-lia-thomas-swimming-i0un1yec
Sabine Hossenfelder was born September 18, 1976 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. Hossenfelder attended Goethe University Frankfurt, earning an undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1997 and a doctorate in physics in 2004. Hossenfelder has researched and taught at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, University of Arizona, University of California, the Perimeter Institute, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Sweden, and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
Hossenfelder began working as a popular science writer in 2006. Hossenfelder’s first Youtube video was in 2011.
Hossenfelder married Stefan Scherer in 2006. They have twins born in 2010.
Views on trans and gender diverse people
Hossenfelder views trans youth as a scientific debate rather than a debate about science and its historic misuses.
Hossenfelder uncritically uses many disease models created by behavior scientists to describe sex and gender minorities. Diseases were once widely accepted among scientists to describe gay and lesbian people, until they were forced to stop by activists. It is still socially acceptable among people like Hossenfelder to describe trans, intersex, and gender diverse people using disorders, diseases, and metaphors of impairment and disability.
Among the contested diseases and terms Hossenfelder uses are:
comorbidities: trans people have other mental disorders
gender affirming care
“trapped in the wrong body”
“cutting off parts of the anatomy”
“some people are making a lot of money with this”
discusses puberty blockers risks, no discussion of benefits
“there are at present no high-quality studies that conclusively demonstrate these treatments are beneficial”
the shift in gender ratio among trans youth
“we don’t understand the long-term consequences”
YouTube
Videos include clickbait “just asking questions” titles:
“Trans athletes in women’s sports: Is this fair?” (2022)
This video looks at the field of sex science the way others use sports to make claims about race science. It does at least step back and take a big-picture look. Hossenfelder and I both believe that there is no long-term future for sex-segregated competitive sports.
“Is being trans a social fad among teenagers?” (2023)
This video is too caught up in a lot of unscientific assumptions about trans people being disordered and diseased.
Meghan Emily Murphy was born November 30, 1978 and grew up in Vancouver. Murphy’s family was reportedly “not just left, but most left.” Murphy’s parents were a Marxist labour activist who served as a shop steward at Canada Post and a feminist who worked in arts administration. Murphy has a sibling.
Murphy said, “I have left the left because I don’t wish to be part of a cult.”
Rejecting femininity was fine, except that it developed into a disdain for “wives” and “mothers” who had predictively and passively capitulated to the patriarchy, choosing mundane lives for reasons I could not possibly imagine.
Murphy says this rightward political trajectory felt like being excommunicated:
The left disavowed me long ago for insisting that pornography and prostitution was not an empowering choice sexually liberated women make for fun and wealth, then again for understanding that penises are male and girls who cut their hair short and replace pink frilly dresses with bowler hats and mismatched high top converse are not “non-binary” or “trans” or “boys,” but simply little girls who don’t want to play by old-fashioned rules.
Murphy, Meghan (September 7, 2016). Are we women or are we menstruators?Feminist Current https://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/09/07/are-we-women-or-are-we-menstruators/ [archive]
Nina Paley is an American animator and anti-transgender extremist.
Paley is involved in the free culture and “gender critical” movements.
Background
Nina Carolyn Paley was born May 3, 1968 in Urbana, Illinois. Paley’s parent Hiram Paley was a mathematician.
Paley graduated from University High School in 1986 and attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for two years before dropping out.
Paley began publishing comics at a young age before moving into animation in 2002 following a divorce.
Paley directed the animated features Sita Sings the Blues (2008) and Seder-Masochism (2018). After having many problems navigating legal clearance for music recorded in the 1920s by Annette Hanshaw, Paley got involved in the free culture movement. Paley releases work under a copyleft license and has created work supporting intellectual property reform.
Paley has been active in debates about overpopulation and has done work for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
Anti-trans activism
Paley identifies as gender critical and has made a number of controversial comments about gender identity and expression.
In 2020, Paley was one of 58 signatories to an open letter defending author and anti-transgender activist J.K. Rowling. A number of the signatories have been involved in gender critical activism.
In 2021, Paley and Corinna Cohn started the podcast Heterodorx to discuss gender controversies. In 2023 Paley created a set of playing cards featuring extremists and outliers in recent gender controversies.
Merli, Melissa (October 21, 2012). Studio Visit: Nina Paley. The News-Gazette http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2012-10-21/studio-visit-nina-paley.html
Merli, Melissa (June 13, 2013). Urbana artist Paley putting quilt art on display. The News-Gazette http://www.news-gazette.com/arts-entertainment/local/2013-06-13/urbana-artist-paley-putting-quilt-art-display.html
Merli, Melissa (August 10, 2014). Paley’s ‘This Land Is Mine’ a viral hit. The News-Gazette http://www.news-gazette.com/arts-entertainment/local/2014-08-10/paleys-land-mine-film-viral-hit.html
Ramanathan, Lavanya (September 25, 2008). An Ancient Tale, Newly Animated. The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092404245.html
Dey, Jim (May 7, 2019). Furor over gender issues puts Urbana artist’s film in crosshairs. The News-Gazette https://www.news-gazette.com/news/jim-dey-furor-over-gender-issues-puts-urbana-artists-film-in-crosshairs/article_5a620967-c4dd-5b70-b86d-5729e2097134.html
Kate Coleman is an anti-transgender sex segregationist in the UK who runs the Keep Prisons Single Sex website. Coleman’s primary focus is the Gender Recognition Act and how transgender prisoners are housed.
Background
Coleman was born in September 1971. Coleman’s graduate work was done at King’s College London and University College London. Coleman’s academic work was in the division of psychiatry at the Centre for Behavioural and Social Sciences in Medicine under the supervision of Simon Dein, and:
examines the experiences of providing palliative care services to the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, North London.
This research builds on her MSc research, conducted at the Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care, Policy & Rehabilitation, King’s College London.
Coleman’s full name is Catharine Victoria Helen Coleman-Brueckheimer, since marrying telco executive Simon Daniel Brueckheimer. The two were officers in Synectyx Ltd.
2018 statement to Parliament
Written submission from Dr Catharine Coleman (EEA0206)
At present women and girls, as a sex, are a protected class. If self-ID becomes law, and it becomes possible for any male to legally become a woman, the status of women and girls as a protected class according to sex becomes impossible to maintain. Women and girls are vulnerable and require protection under the EA due to biological sex, not any vague notions of ‘gender identity’ – it is the material reality of biological sex that is the issue, not one’s identity as a consideration separate from sex. Pertinent issues include: Domestic violence refuges, prisons, hospital wards to name but a few. The status of women and girls as a protected class according to biological sex should not be put at risk.
October 2018
Website
Coleman created the Keep Prisons Single Sex website in 2020. Coleman is assisted in this work by Rob Brailsford and Beverley Dale (bev13thdisciple).
References
Written submission from Dr Catharine Coleman (EEA0206) -https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/95839/pdf/
Vigo, Julian Savage Minds https://savageminds.substack.com/p/kate-coleman#details
Graham Linehan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_oL7gW8eA
British Thought Leaders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkk_eosyuWc
Coleman, Kate (17 December 2020). Women’s prisons should be single-sex. Centre for Crime and Justice Studies https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/womens-prisons-should-be-single-sex
Object UK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMgYezcLrsg
Talk TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUZ8QNiqyKQ
Coleman-Brueckheimer, Kate; Dein, Simon (2011). Health care behaviours and beliefs in Hasidic Jewish populations: a systematic review of the literature. J Relig Health. 2011 Jun;50(2):422-36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-010-9448-2.
Coleman-Brueckheimer K, Spitzer J, Koffman J (2009). Involvement of Rabbinic and communal authorities in decision-making by haredi Jews in the UK with breast cancer: an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Soc Sci Med. 2009 Jan;68(2):323-33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.10.003.
Adam Nagourney is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Nagourney’s dismissive views of trans and gender diverse people have been noted by peers and historians.
Nagourney and Jeremy W. Peters claimed in the New York Times that there is a “medical disagreement” in 2023 about trans healthcare. There is clear medical consensus on best practices which is opposed by a conservative fringe minority.
Background
Adam Nagourney was born on October 10, 1954. Nagourney earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from SUNY Purchase in 1977.
Nagourney joined The New York Times in 1996.
1999 book Out for Good
Nagourney has long been known for dismissive views of trans and gender diverse people. Dudley Clendinen and Nagourney co-authored the 1999 book Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America. By the late 1990s, only out-of-touch old gay cis men called our rights movement “gay rights.” The most common inclusive term at the time was GLBT (later amended to LGBT).
Nagourney’s coverage of the activism in Minnesota that led to the nation’s first transgender-inclusive human rights laws reveals this anti-trans bias:
As Donna Cartwright has pointed out in “Distorting Mirror: Trivializing and Silencing Transgender people in Queer Media,” (Transgender Tapestry Magazine), even one of the most extensive accounts of that history, Adam Nagourney and Dudley Clendinen’s Out for Good, “treats [trans people] largely as a disempowered, voiceless ‘other.’” In their account of the Minnesota struggles about trans inclusion, for example, Cartwright notes that Nagourney and Clendinen “primarily quote opponents of trans-inclusion, and to a lesser extent, gay advocates for transgender rights,” while failing to let the voices of transgendered activists appear in their narrative. Cartwright also points out that “their description of us ‘gender queers’ virtually drips with condescension.”
As an example, here is how Nagourney and Clendinen describe trans folk singer Beth Elliott (p. 165ff):
The program included a performance by a folksinger named Beth Elliott, a tiny woman with a guitar slung around one shoulder, beads around her neck, wearing granny glasses and an earth-mother gown. Indeed, she might have been the only woman in the room wearing a skirt or a gown – except for the fact that Beth Elliott wasn’t a woman. Beth Elliott was a preoperative transsexual, a man in the process of trying to become a woman, and who, to complicate things, claimed to be a lesbian. The radical lesbians from San Francisco recognized her, or him, the moment she, or he, stepped onstage. This was the same transsexual whose demand to be admitted into the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis had torn the group apart.
2019 book Pride
In the 2019 photo anthology Pride: Fifty Years of Parades and Protests from the Photo Archives of the New York Times, Nagourney omitted nearly every contribution of trans and gender diverse Americans. The book omits the terms transsexual and transvestite completely, as well as historical figures like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. The term transgender is mentioned just nine times, compared to gay (69 times), lesbian (20 times), bisexual (1 time), and LGBT (3 times).
Cartwright, Donna (2000). Distorting Mirror: Trivializing and Silencing Transgender People in Queer Media. Transgender Tapestry Issue 91 https://archive.org/details/transgendertapes9120unse https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/v979v310m
Purchase College. Adam Nagourney ’77. https://www.purchase.edu/live/profiles/3378-adam-nagourney-77
Barbaro, Michael (June 1, 2023). How the G.O.P. Picked Tans Kids as a Rallying Cry. New York Times -https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/podcasts/the-daily/anti-trans-bills.html
Sulzberger, A. G. (October 7, 2015). Our Path Forward (PDF). The New York Times Company. https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/m/Our-Path-Forward.pdf
Sulzberger, A. G. (January 1, 2018). A Note from Our New Publisher. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/01/opinion/Arthur-Gregg-Sulzberger-The-New-York-Times.html
The New York Times; Nagourney, Adam (2019). Pride: Fifty Years of Parades and Protests from the Photo Archives of the New York Times. Abrams, ISBN 9781683355878
Clendinen, Dudley; Nagourney, Adam (1999). Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America. Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9780684810911
Mike Abrams is an American journalist involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times during the 2020s. He became Director, Journalism Practices and Principles in 2020.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Note: for the American evolutionary psychologist, see Mike Abrams.
Background
Abrams earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Penn State University in 1994. He was editor of the school paper. He worked at The York Daily Record and The Virginian-Pilot before joining the Times as an editor in 2004. He edited in the sports, news, and culture departments before being in charge of standards and training for editors in 2019. He was named Director, Journalism Practices and Principles in 2020.
Abrams is part of The New York Times Corps, a talent-pipeline program for college students to receive career guidance from Times journalists over a multiyear period. Since the Times has not had a trans journalist on their masthead since their founding in 1951, perhaps he can be part of the necessary change.
Anti-trans coverage
In 2023, Abrams told The Daily Beast that “action plans were developed among Times leadership, but that the paper can’t control how people will respond to or share its coverage.” He said:
“I think we’re in a sensitive moment in our country. There are clear threats in a number of states, particularly to transgender individuals. It heads into an already heightened atmosphere. Some of the reaction we’re seeing would have been inevitable. There’s going to be intense opinions of our coverage, particularly when you see people cherry-picking details from those reports for their own means.”
Michael Slackman is an American journalist involved in anti-transgender coverage at the New York Times. He was named to the masthead in 2019 amid the paper’s surge in biased coverage about trans issues.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Background
Michael E. Slackman was born in July 1961. Slackman graduated from the Northeastern University School of Journalism in 1984.
He covered the New York City suburbs before joining Newsday. While he was working there, Newsday won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for spot reporting.
He left Newsady in 2001 for the Los Angeles Times, where he was Moscow bureau chief until 2003.
Slackman joined the Times in 2003 as a reporter on Metro before being named bureau chief for Berlin, then Cairo. He was named to the masthead in 2019.
He is married to multimedia artist Wendy Vissar. They have an adult son, Nikolas.