Joseph Kahn is an American journalist responsible for the surge of anti-transgender coverage in the New York Times from 2022 onward.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. In 2023 the San Francisco Chronicle cited a Times employee who said the organization has no trans reporters.
Note: for the trans-supportive filmmaker, see Joseph Kahn.
Background
Joseph F. “Joe” Kahn (born August 19, 1964) is one of three children born to executive Leo Kahn and Dorothy Davidson Kahn. Leo Kahn made a fortune in wholesale and retail food sales, first as founder of Purity Supreme and later as a co-founder of office supply retailer Staples. Dorothy Kahn died in 1975; Leo Kahn then married Emily Perkins Gantt Kahn in 1976.
Kahn was a legacy admission at Harvard University, earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 1987 and a master’s degree in East Asian studies in 1990.
In 1989, the Chinese government ordered Kahn to leave the country for working as a reporter while using a tourist visa. Kahn worked at The Dallas Morning News, then the Wall Street Journal before joining the Times in 1998. Kahn was Beijing bureau chief at the Times from July 2003 until December 2007, during which time Kahn and colleague Jim Yardley won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Kahn then served as Deputy Foreign Editor before serving as Managing Editor from 2016 until 2022. That year Kahn was named Executive Editor.
2023 response to over 1,000 trans-supportive colleagues
On February 15, 2023, over 1,000 New York Times contributors signed an open letter objecting to the Times’ increasingly hostile coverage of transgender issues.
On the same day, GLAAD delivered a second letter and organized a protest in front of Times headquarters.
The next day, Kahn and Opinion Editor Katie Kingsbury warned their colleagues they were violating company policy. Their warning conflates the two letters and dismisses the ethical concerns of their colleagues as “advocacy.”
Colleagues,
Yesterday, the New York Times received a letter delivered by GLAAD, an advocacy group, criticizing coverage in The Times of transgender issues.
It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.
Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.
Our coverage of transgender issues, including specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written. The journalists who produced those stories nonetheless have endured months of attacks, harassment and threats. The letter also ignores The Times’ strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society. A full list of our coverage can be viewed here, and any review shows that the allegations this group is making are demonstrably false.
We realize these are difficult issues that profoundly affect many colleagues personally, including some colleagues who are themselves transgender. We have welcomed and will continue to invite discussion, criticism and robust debate about our coverage. Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our report.
We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.
We live in an era when journalists regularly come under fire for doing solid and essential work. We are committed to protecting and supporting them. Their work distinguishes this institution, and makes us proud.
Joe & Katie
During an all-hands meeting, Kahn asked Carolyn Ryan to speak to the newsroom. Via Vanity Fair:
“I want to talk to you briefly about journalistic independence,” Carolyn Ryan said during an all-hands meeting for the New York Times newsroom earlier this month. The Times managing editor, sporting a pinstripe pantsuit, spoke from a stage where she was seated between fellow managing editor Marc Lacey and executive editor Joe Kahn. “We don’t do our work in an effort to please organizations, governments, presidents, activist groups, ideological groups,” she said in a recording of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair, noting this has been “a bedrock principle of ours for generations” that “many of us feel in our bones” but “can really get obscured in the modern media landscape, which these days has populated with so many more partisan players.”
Ryan praised the paper’s coverage of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision; Astead Herndon’s podcast The Run-Up;Michael Powell’sreport on whether the ACLU was losing its way; and Megan Twohey’s “thoughtful, careful, well-reported story looking at medical treatment for teens who are transitioning and the lack of scientific research around some of the puberty blockers.” She assured the newsroom that they’ll be hearing more about journalistic independence throughout the year. “And sometimes that will be an annoying note on deadlines saying, you know, we can’t use that language because it really…reflects an activist-group way of looking at an issue and we don’t want to do that,” she said, noting being as “panoramic as possible” is not only “good journalism” but “key to how we think about attracting new, more readers and satisfying a need that’s really out there.”
Williamson worked as Multi-Disciplinary Team Leader/Senior Practitioner at the Sheffield Gender Identity Clinic, an adult service in the UK. Williamson resigned in 2019 amid “clinical concerns” about the rapidly-changing demographics and increasing complexity of the patient population, and over the assessment process in NHS gender services.
Williams’ resignation stated in part:
Over the last eighteen months, I have repeatedly discussed my clinical concerns about the inadequacy of the assessment pathways at the clinic. I have also regularly highlighted the increasing vulnerability and complexity of people referred to the clinic. That is, that although a minority of people have gender identity concerns, for a majority, medical transition is the solution to difficulties separate from gender. This is supported by audits I have undertaken. These patients may meet the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria and transsexualism, but their primary difficulties are not about gender. These include autism, past trauma, significant childhood and adolescent bullying, personality disorder, mental illness, body dysmorphia and eating disorders. The clinic is wedded to a medically-focused pathway which does not adequately explore this context. The service fails to fully consider the psychological and social factors which might influence a person’s decision to transition. Wider political pressures and the demands of a lengthy waiting list have led to a focus on streamlining the service which has eclipsed clinical robustness. Similar concerns have been raised by clinicians working in gender services in other NHS Trusts.
References
Williamson C (2019). Resignation Letter to Senior Operational Manager Covering Sheffield Gender. Identity Service, Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS. cited in https://doi.org/10.1177/263440412110107
Jacob Edward “Ed” Les is a Canadian pediatrician who has written inflammatory materials about trans and gender diverse people.
“Dr Sarah” (February 1, 2019). The Transphobic Comments Of Dr Jacob Edward Les. Geeky Humanist / Freethought Blogs https://freethoughtblogs.com/geekyhumanist/2019/02/01/the-transphobic-comments-of-dr-jacob-edward-les/ [archive]
Resources
Ed Les (dredles.com) [site active 2018–2021: archive]
Benedict Carey is an American author and writer who played a key role in laundering anti-LGBTQ propaganda into the New York Times. Carey’s uncritical puff pieces about the work of J. Michael Bailey, Richard Green, Robert Spitzer, and Alice Dreger caused years of delays in debunking that work.
In 2022 I began a campaign to extract an apology from the New York Times and get corrections, updates, or retractions on Carey’s pieces. Because Carey claims part of his job is “exposing BS” and as a professional courtesy, I am giving Carey the first opportunity to revisit these stories. Stay tuned for updates.
Background
Benedict James “Ben” Carey was born March 3, 1960 in San Francisco and grew up mostly in Evanston, Illinois. Carey earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the University of Colorado in 1983. Carey then earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University in 1985. Carey wrote for trade magazine American Shipper before becoming a staff writer for consumer health and medical magazine Hippocrates (published 1987–2001, renamed Health).
Starting in 1997, Carey began freelancing. In 1998 Carey married writer and publishing executive Victoria Margaret von Biel (born March 2, 1960), who also earned a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern. Their two children were born soon after. Carey covered health and wellness for the Los Angeles Times from 2000 to 2004. In 2004 Carey moved to the New York Times with returning science journalist Richard “Rick” Flaste. Carey covered science there until 2021.
The Times was notorious for diligently reporting unethical and irresponsible research about sex and gender minorities, almost all of which emanated from the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Their coverage of Robert Spitzer’s poorly supported claims that gay people can change their sexualities was particularly egregious.
Carey and colleague Nicholas Wade were also heavily involved in using the Times science section to promote questionable science that supported their hereditarian viewpoints about scientific controversies, like race and intelligence or sexuality. Carey is a strong believer in disease models of human traits and behaviors, especially mental illness.
2005 anti-bisexual piece
Carey’s piece “Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited” presented J. Michael Bailey’s claims that “true bisexuality” does not exist in males. GLAAD and FAIR condemned the piece. In 2011, a different Times reporter followed up with Bailey’s new claim of suddenly discovering male bisexuality after getting payments from the American Institute of Bisexuality.
2007 anti-transgender piece
Carey delivered a major media coup to Kenneth Zucker and allies who support conversion therapy on gender diverse youth. Carey was given an advance copy of Alice Dreger’s cover-up of J. Michael Bailey’s Danny Ryan “trans cure” fabrication. Carey reported that Dreger’s research into Bailey “concluded that he is essentially blameless.” Carey uncritically repeated Dreger’s strawman claims that trans people believe they are “victims of a biological mistake — in essence, women trapped in men’s bodies.” Carey also glossed over Bailey’s sexual misconduct reported by the woman known as “Juanita” in the book: “she stood by the accusation but did not want to talk about it.”
The site also included a link to the Web page of another critic of Dr. Bailey’s book, Andrea James, a Los Angeles-based transgender advocate and consultant. Ms. James downloaded images from Dr. Bailey’s Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided. (Dr. Bailey is a divorced father of two.) Ms. James said in an e-mail message that Dr. Bailey’s work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect.
Carey did not note that I was quoting and paraphrasing Bailey’s book, and that I had apologized in 2003 (Bailey’s son, who was an adult in 2003, did not accept the apology and Bailey’s daughter did not respond). Carey reiterated Dreger’s conclusion: “the accusations against the psychologist were essentially groundless.”
I had insisted to Carey’s editors that I be interviewed, so Carey asked me just one question. When my answer was “too long,” Carey said there was only room for 13 words.
Subsequent developments
In addition to a host of other ethics issues, Bailey hosted a live “fucksaw” class demonstration for students that led to Bailey’s signature human sexuality class being permanently canceled by Northwestern. The “fucksaw” incident was not covered by Carey.
Dr. Green, who was also a forceful advocate for gay and transgender rights in a series of landmark discrimination trials,
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association sided with Dr. Green and other influential figures, including Dr. Judd Marmor and Dr. Robert Spitzer, and decided to drop homosexuality from its diagnostic manual.
In his early work, Dr. Green found that many effeminate boys grow up to be gay. He reviewed that and other research in his 1987 book, “The ‘Sissy Boy Syndrome’ and the Development of Homosexuality.”
“If you can’t make a male attracted to other males by cutting off his penis, how strong could any psychosocial effect be?” said J. Michael Bailey, an expert on sexual orientation at Northwestern University.
Dr. Bailey believes that the systems for sexual orientation and arousal make men go out and find people to have sex with, whereas women are more focused on accepting or rejecting those who seek sex with them.
But Dr. Bailey believes the effect, if real, would be more clear-cut. “Male homosexuality is evolutionarily maladaptive,” he said, noting that the phrase means only that genes favoring homosexuality cannot be favored by evolution if fewer such genes reach the next generation.
Carey sourcing Bailey on gay parenting
Carey, Benedict (January 29, 2005). Experts Dispute Bush on Gay-Adoption Issue. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/experts-dispute-bush-on-gayadoption-issue.html
“You can’t force families to participate, and there aren’t that many of them out there to start with,” said Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University who has studied gay men raising boys.
“There is also a strong volunteer bias: the families who want to participate might be much more open about sexual orientation” and eager to report positive outcomes, Dr. Bailey said.
Creager, Cindi (July 7, 2005). New York Times Promotes Bisexual Stereotypes in “Straight, Gay or Lying?” GLAAD https://www.glaad.org/action/write_now_detail.php?id=3827 [archive]
Letters: Debating a hypothesis https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9401E1DD163DF93BA1575BC0A9619C8B63.html
G. Eugene Pichler (2016) The Transsexual Delusion: “On August 21, 2007 Benedict Carey of the New York Times published a damning article into the behavior of Conway et al.”
Alice Dreger (2015) Galileo’s Middle Finger: “Finally, Carey’s piece was published in the New York Times, and he amazed me by his ability to sum up the salient points in a couple thousand words. More important, Carey’s report turned around the public story of what had really happened. Mike was elated. Mike’s family was elated. Ray Blanchard was elated. Scientists all over the world were elated.”
John Casey (2007) letter to NYT editors: “Benedict Carey casts this story as a matter of politically correct thugs trying to undermine Dr. J. Michael Bailey’s legitimate scientific research. But even Dr. Bailey’s defenders admit the research in question turned out to rest on shoddy anecdotal evidence. In light of that fact, the story can’t possibly concern ”the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom,” as someone quoted in the article claims. The question was whether his book had any legitimate scientific basis. And it didn’t. But perhaps that doesn’t make for a very interesting story.”
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Martin Kafka is an American psychiatrist who subscribes to a number of disease models of human sexuality, including ones that are sometimes applied to trans and gender diverse people:
He served as a member of the Sexual and Gender Disorders Working Group (Paraphilias Sub-Committee) of the American Psychiatric Association for the formulation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), 5th Edition.
Background
Martin Paul Kafka was born in May 1947. He graduated from Columbia College in 1968, then earned his medical degree in 1973 from SUNY Downstate Medical Center. He completed his psychiatric residency at the University of Michigan in 1977. In 1999 Kafka was elected a full member of the International Academy of Sex Research.
References
Kafka MP, Henne J (). The Paraphilia-Related Disorders: An Empirical Investigation of Nonparaphilic Hypersexuality Disorders in Outpatient Males. J Sex Marital Ther. 1999 Oct-Dec;25(4):305-19. doi: 10.1080/00926239908404008
Benjamin Boyce is an American YouTuber who promotes alt-right and intellectual dark web viewpoints, with a special focus on gender critical anti-transgender movements. Boyce is a key promoter of the ex-transgender movement.
Note: For the British musical artist born in 1968, see benjamin-boyce.com
Background
Benjamin Arthur Boyce was born on July 7, 1976 in Ukiah, California to Dan and Teresa Boyce. Boyce grew up in a religious household. Boyce’s family moved frequently around California, living in Milpitas, San Jose, Loomis, and Rocklin. Boyce’s parents met in Bible college and reportedly came under the influence of a charismatic minister named Gordon, who had been paralyzed after being shot. The families under Gordon’s control were split up. Teresa was given to another family, and Dan inherited two “spiritual children” from the minors who were part of other families. At 14 Boyce reportedly became “intensely sexual.”
Boyce’s family eventually left the group, and they were shunned. Dan went to a seminary school in Chicago while Benjamin remained behind in Rockland to complete high school, staying with a family that was part of their church.
Boyce attended Covenant Bible College in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, a vocational Bible college which has since closed. Boyce then moved to Chicago in 1995. Boyce’s parents then took over a church in Fresno, California, and Boyce remained in Chicago until age 24. Boyce moved many times looking for a church, eventually moving to Portland. Boyce has been involved in Subud, “a direct spiritual experience of the soul being reawakened by the power of God.”
Boyce got a job at a preschool and would write at night. Boyce is also an aspiring children’s entertainer who has recorded and performed under the names Benjamin, Benzo, Benjamin Arthur, and Benjamin Ampersand.
In 2010 Boyce released the album Scariously, which includes songs like “(I Have Had An) Accident,” about a young child accidentally defecating and then removing soiled clothes.
In 2011, Boyce released the album Wildling under the name Benjamin Arthur. In 2012, Boyce released the EP Combustible Sundress, and in 2013 released the EP confessions of a headless man under the name Eo Ipso. In 2013, Boyce self-published the book Iconogasms under the banner of Critically Othersuch Press.
Boyce attended Evergreen State College from 2013 to 2017 and witnessed a major conflict involving the school’s progressive faction that led to the resignations of professors Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, members of the so-called intellectual dark web. Boyce began commenting about conservative politics following those experiences.
Boyce was an elementary school bus driver for the Griffin School District in Washington State from 2017 to 2020. During that time Boyce founded Othersuch Constructs LLC, which lasted from 2017 to 2018.
Anti-trans activism
In 2018, Boyce started a YouTube channel and podcast called Calmversations, alternately titled The Boyce of Reason. Despite the show’s relaxed tone, Boyce’s guests are often strident critics of progressive aspects of the trans rights movement.
Tavris claims sexual orientation change efforts like “conversion therapy” are terrible, but gender identity change efforts are completely different.
Background
Carol Anne Tavris was born September 17, 1944 and grew up in Los Angeles. Tavris’s parent Dorothy was a lawyer, and parent Sam died when Tavris was 11.
Tavris earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and sociology from Brandeis University. Tavris then earned a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan.
Tavris was married to actor Ronan David O’Casey (1922-2012).
Tavris has written several widely-used psychology textbooks.
Anti-transgender activism
Tavris and other anti-transgender extremists like Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers have been logrolling for each other for years.
In 2022, Tavris published a piece in Skeptic repeating transphobic talking points packaged as “skepticism.”
Today, once again, the public is hearing only one side of an emotionally compelling issue: the transgender story. Once again, distinctions are ignored, this time between people for whom identification with the other sex began in early childhood and those whose rapid onset gender dysphoria started during adolescence.
[…]
Saying you suffer from “gender dysphoria” is cool and common, just as saying you were sexually abused in your youth once was.
Tarvis is especially scornful of an On the Media episode, claiming it did not give time to the ex-transgender movement:
In its most glaring omission, “On the Media” said not a word about the “desisters,” a term often used for those who make a social transition (changing their names and pronouns) but do not persist in having surgery and hormones or changing their gender identity, and often change back; or about the many (possibly thousands of) “detransitioners” who now regret that they had medical procedures. Many of them are bitter and angry that they have had irreversible voice and hair growth changes, underwent surgical procedures that cannot be corrected, and have become infertile.
[…]
Many gender professionals have marginalized, bullied, and tormented their colleagues who disagree. Politically organized “transactivists” protest that any research on, say, factors contributing to the rise of cases of gender transition, the potentially negative consequences of transitioning, or the importance of counseling and treatment before transitioning are indications of the unacceptable idea that gender transition is a pathological problem or disorder.
[…]
But we may, at last, be entering a new phase. As usual, we can thank the first wave of writers who have refused to be cowed or bullied — Abigail Shrier in Irreversible Damage, Kathleen Stock in Material Girls, Helen Joyce in Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.
[…]
In November, 2021, Laura Edwards-Leeper and Erica Anderson, two psychologists whose practice has been devoted to offering transgender patients ethical, evidence-based treatment, wrote an editorial in the Washington Post. Their trans-supporting credentials are flawless.
Tavris also cites “The Gender Affirmative Treatment Model for Youth with Gender Dysphoria: A Medical Advance or Dangerous Medicine?” by Alison Clayton.
“My thanks to Leonore Tiefer, PhD, for her resources, advice, and expertise.”
Selected publications
Estrogen Matters: Why taking hormones in menopause can improve women’s well-being and lengthen their lives–without raising the risk of breast cancer (with Avrum Bluming). Little, Brown Spark 2018 ISBN 978-0-316-48120-5
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (with Elliot Aronson) Mariner Books, 2020, ISBN 978-0-358-32961-9
Psychology (with Carole Wade, Samuel Sommers, and Lisa Shin) 2020, Pearson, ISBN 978-0-13-521262-2)
Invitation to Psychology (with Carole Wade) (6th edition, 2014, Pearson, ISBN 978-0-205-03519-9)
Psychobabble and Biobunk: Using Psychology to Think Critically About Issues in the News (Pearson, 2011, ISBN 978-0-205-01591-7)
The Scientist and the Humanist: A festschrift in honor of Elliot Aronson (with Marti Hope Gonzales and Joshua Aronson) (New York: Psychology Press, 2010 ISBN 978-1848728677)
Psychology in Perspective (with Carole Wade, Samuel Sommers, and Lisa Shin) (Three editions, latest 2001, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-028326-6)
The Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex (Simon & Schuster, 1992) (ISBN 0-671-66274-0)
Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion (1983, Revised edition 1989, Touchstone, ISBN 0-671-67523-0)
EveryWoman’s Emotional Well-Being: Heart & Mind, Body & Soul (Doubleday, 1986, ISBN 978-0385185615)
The Longest War: Sex Differences in Perspective (with Carole Wade) (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977, revised 1984, ISBN 978-0155511866)
The Redbook Report on Female Sexuality: 100,000 married women disclose the good news about sex (Delacorte, 1977, ISBN 978-0385288675)
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
SaidIt is a social media platform created as an alternative to reddit. After many “gender critical” users and groups were banned on reddit for anti-transgender hate speech, some of those banned users moved to SaidIt.
SaidIt claims it has less censorship than reddit and claims to be “one of the safe havens for truth seekers, alt-historians, and conspirophiles in an increasingly globally thoughtpoliced state.” It is a toxic online community and a service of choice for online anti-transgender content.
SaidIt’s 2022 Google results show two anti-transgender subsaidits among the top results.
Background
SaidIt was founded in 2017.
Moderators
magnora7 (Texas)
d3rr (California)
TheAmeliaMay (Arkansas) aka conservative transgender woman Amelia May Johnson [resigned]
In the past, when the saidit.net domain was shut down, the domain would sometimes redirect to the SaidIt subreddit (r/saiditnet). Calculating the Jaccard index of posts, participants on the SaidIt subreddit accrete into five reddit community clusters:
Michael G. Riley is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Under Riley’s editorship, academic trade publication The Chronicle of Higher Education favorably covered contributor Alice Dreger’s anti-trans activism on several occasions. This ethically questionable arrangement is part of the publication’s pattern of bias favoring academics in the academic exploitation of sex and gender minorities.
Background
Michael George “Mike” Riley was born on February 10, 1959. Riley earned a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University in 1981 and a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 1985.
Riley’s first journalism job was at The Dispatch in Lexington, North Carolina. Riley was editor of The Roanoke Times, editor and senior vice president of Congressional Quarterly, and editorial director of Bloomberg Government as well as senior correspondent and bureau chief for TIME magazine.
Riley lives in Arlington, Virginia with spouse Arline and their two children.
Riley was named president and editor in chief of The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2013.
