In 2020, YouTube took down two anti-trans videos featuring Candace Owens for violating their policy on hate speech, wherein being transgender was likened to schizophrenia and disease.
Anti-trans content
DETRANS: The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care (October 25, 2023)
Sarah Vaci is an Anglo-Hungarian artist and anti-transgender activist.
Vaci’s activism focuses on the ex-transgender movement. Similar to the ex-gay movement of the 20th century, ex-trans activists and their supporters often believe people can be cured of being transgender through “desistance” or “detransition.”
Vaci is associated with anti-trans extremist group Genspect.
Background
Vaci was born on September 22, 1977. After graduating James Allen’s Girls’ School, Vaci earned a bachelor’s degree from Ravensbourne University London in 1996. Following ten years of working in SEN schools and with children with autism, Vaci earned master’s degrees in 2008 from Goldsmiths, University of London and from the Institute of Education.
Vaci worked in animation and film production from 1999 to 2010, including roles at The Film and Video Workshop. From 2008 to 2014, Vaci ran digital workshops at The British Museum. Vaci then opened a studio to work independently.
Vaci is based in Devon and uses the nickname “Lordy.” Vaci joined anti-trans group Genspect as a digital content creator in 2023.
Metamorphosis 100
On March 12, 2022, Vaci began profiling people whose gender identity or expression has shifted more than once and who identified as women at the time Vaci profiled them.
Because transition regret is so rare, Vaci has spent substantial time trying to find 100 verifiable people in the world to profile. A number of people profiled have withdrawn or asked to be removed, so the current number of profiles is misleading.
Nina Power is a British philosopher and anti-transgender activist from the movement’s gender critical faction. Power is a sex segregationist who promotes the unfounded conspiracy theory that transgender people are “erasing” lesbians and tomboys.
Background
Power was born around 1980 and attended University of Warwick, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Power then earned a doctorate from Middlesex University.
Power’s book The One-Dimensional Woman (2009) examines pornography, consumer capitalism, and the ideology of “women’s work.” In the 2021 book What Do Men Want?: Masculinity and Its Discontents, Powers proposes the term heterosociality “to appeal for a new appreciation of sexual difference based not on conflict, antipathy and commodification, but on friendship, trust and mutual respect between the sexes.”
Power hosts the podcast The Lack with political theorist Benjamin Studebaker and filmmaker Helen Rollins.
Walsh goes further than his dumb-beardy act, pinning various medical and psychological practitioners on why they think it’s a good idea to give children an osteoporosis-causing drug also used in chemical castration. Their answers are terrifying: Children will know when they’re ready; children know best; the drugs are reversible (they are not). Nobody, in fact, knows the long-term effect of giving young people (or adults) cross-sex hormones. What we do know isn’t good; they don’t reduce negative thoughts in the gender-dysphoric children who take them, for example.
On the erasure of “tomboys,” Power says:
Today, the boyish girl is in danger of being told she was “born in the wrong body,” and whisked off to a gender clinic to begin the journey from puberty blockers to breast removal to reproductive surgery and, ultimately, infertility. Setting children on this path—one that many regret—is an obvious, grotesque harm.
Power has been critical of Nicola Sturgeon, Dylan Mulvaney, and that shining example of the failures of federally centralized “gender clinics,” the Tavistock.
References
Power, Nina (June 14, 2022). Trans Barbarism.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/trans-barbarism
Power, Nina (January 24, 2023). The Trans War on Tomboys.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/the-trans-war-on-tomboys [references photo from ~1991n when she was 10 or 11]
Power, Nina (February 16, 2023). Nicola Sturgeon’s Trans Folly.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/nicola-sturgeon-s-trans-folly
Power, Nina (March, 2023). Welcome to TERF Island.Compact https://compactmag.com/article/welcome-to-terf-island
Pamela Garfield-Jaeger is a conservative American therapist and activist in the anti-vaccine and ex-transgender movements.
Do not under any circumstances go to Garfield-Jaeger for any kind of therapy. If you are a trans or gender-diverse minor being forced to see Garfield-Jaeger, do everything in your power to end the sessions and find a supportive local alternative.
Background
Pamela H. “Pam” Garfield was born on July 31, 1973. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College in 1996 and a master’s degree from New York University in 1999, Garfield-Jaeger was licensed in California in 2005. Garfield-Jaeger has done social work and therapy in New York and California at several locations, including The Family Center, Unity Care Group, Starlight Adolescent Center, YMCA, Institute on Aging, and Adolescent Counseling Services. Garfield-Jaeger has had a standalone LCSW practice since 2007 and has offered photography services.
Garfield-Jaeger “resides in Pacifica, California and loves coastal living.” Garfield-Jaeger’s spouse is civil engineer Gregory Owen “Greg” Jaeger (born August 1968), President and CEO of North Coast Engineering in San Miguel.
Conservative activism
Garfield-Jaeger is an ambassador for Turning Point USA (TPUSA), an American nonprofit promoting conservatism on high school, college, and university campuses.
Garfield-Jaeger is critical of vaccine mandates, mask mandates, critical race theory, and “the harms of gender medicine.”
Garfield-Jaeger is an advisor to the conservative anti-trans parent group Mom Army.
Anti-vaccine activism
On Garfield-Jaeger website, it says:
After losing her job at Sutter Health in 2021 due to Vaccine mandates, Pamela has been building a curriculum to guide parents through the mental health system. Her goal is to provide parents with the information and language so they can be the best advocates for their child’s mental health. Pamela’s mission is to educate parents on how to avoid therapists who lack skill or try to indoctrinate their children.
Anti-transgender activism
Garfield-Jaeger is active in the ex-transgender movement. Similar to the ex-gay movement of the 20th century, these anti-trans activists believe that they can prevent or cure children from being transgender. Garfield-Jaeger became alarmed when “half the girls identified as trans” in the outpatient mental health program at Mills Peninsula/Sutter Health:
I’m a licensed therapist who discovered how extremely wrong gender affirmative therapy is simply because it became so radical and widespread in the last 5 years. I took a hiatus from my profession due to a physical disability and when I returned, the changes were shocking. My views on gender ideology are not politically motivated.
Garfield-Jaeger also promotes the ex-trans propaganda film Dysconnected:
Over the past few years, a transgender tsunami has swept the nation, completely overtaking the medical, educational, and counseling industries, and forever altering hundreds of thousands of young girls’ lives. What is going on? How did it come to this? Who is behind it? And what is coming next? Filmmaker and father Don Johnson traveled the country to find out.
According to a 2023 promotion for a conservative women’s event:
Pamela has done several podcasts and YouTube interviews and starred in three documentaries about the harms of gender medicine. You can stream “Dysconnected” by Don Johnson from www.dysconnectedmovie.com. There is a forthcoming film from the Epoch Times (not yet released and title unknown) and another by Simon Esler called “Cut-Daughters of the West” soon to be available on YouTube. Pamela is part of the advisory board of a new movement called MOM Army (www.mom-army.com). Many of them are sexual abuse and trafficking survivors with a mission to stop the war on our children.
Garfield-Jaeger was on hand to document “Detransition Awareness Day,” a 2023 Sacramento gathering of about 10 ex-trans people, 30 supporters, and hundreds of counter-protestors. Participants included “Chloe Cole,”“detransaqua,”“Layla Jane,”“Exulansic,”“onedonebunu,”, Allie Snyder, Ciara Wall., Jay W. Richards, and Abel Garcia
References
Bay Area GOP (March 15, 2023). Therapy, Not Indoctrination. Mid Peninsula Republican Women Federated https://bayareagop.com/wp-content/images/MPRWF-March2023.pdf
Amy E. Sousa is an American anti-transgender extremist. Sousa is an unlicensed therapist, according to self-reports. Do not go to Sousa for therapy of any kind.
A search for Sousa’s therapy license in the State of Washington database did not show any results in 2023.
Background
Amy Elizabeth Sousa was born February 26, 1976. Sousa earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University and a master’s degree from Pacifica Graduate Institute. After living in New York for 15 years, Sousa moved to Port Townsend, Washington in 2009. Sousa was formerly involved in Key City Public Theatre. Sousa as also been involved in Sootsprites Productions and has volunteered for the local film festival.
“My activism has included organizing multiple protests: Against Biden’s EO in Washington DC, against the UN in New York City, against swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA championships in Atlanta, against child gender clinics in Seattle, free speech events, speaking at state legislature in defense of women/girl’s sports and in defense of single sex prisons for women, as well as speaking at school board meetings to protect kids from indoctrination by sex denying curriculum.”
When Sousa’s friend Julie Jaman was permanently banned from the local YMCA pool following an anti-trans encounter in 2022, Sousa organized those protests as well.
Sousa has been involved in additional protests against Marci Bowers and others who provide gender affirming care.
RevFoXX
Sousa is a member of anti-transgender group RevFoXX (“Reality Encompassed Values” for XX). They claim they are “advocating for the safeguarding of women & children, observing objective reality in solidarity, and countering the narrative of the gender lobby in the United States.” Members include:
Michael Shermer is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Shermer has devoted considerable space for anti-trans views in the publication Skeptic and on the podcast The Michael Shermer Show.
Background
Michael Brant Shermer was born September 8, 1954 in Los Angeles, California.
Shermer earned a bachelor’s degree form Pepperdine in 1976 and a master’s degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton in 1978. Shermer got involved in competitive cycling during this time.
Shermer earned a doctorate from Claremont Graduate University in 1991. Shermer helped found the Skeptics Society in 1991. Shermer has taught at Glendale Community College, Occidental College, and Chapman University.
For 18 years Shermer was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. Shermer has been dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct since 2013. Shermer has produced and appeared in a number of television shows about science and pseudoscience.
Shermer, Michael (November 14, 2024). Postmortem 2024. Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/postmortem-2024
Shermer, Michael (March 14, 2024). Death by Theory.Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/death-by-theory
Shermer, Michael (June 11, 2024). What’s It Like to Be Trans? [letter from a conservative transmedicalist] Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/whats-it-like-to-be-trans
Shermer, Michael (July 8, 2022). What is a Woman, Anyway?Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman-anyway
Shermer, Michael (December 9, 2021). Trans Athletes and Conflicting Rights.Skeptic https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/trans-athletes-and-conflicting-rights
Loury, Glenn (April 25, 2023). Does “T” Belong with “LGB”?-https://glennloury.substack.com/p/does-t-belong-with-lgb
Jennifer Finney Boylan is an American author, professor, and activist. Boylan has written several memoirs and novels and has frequently appeared in the media to discuss trans issues.
Notable work involving gender and media includes:
The memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003)
Giving the thumbs up to an anti-trans article by Lisa Selin Davis (2017)
Signing the Harper’s letter with J.K. Rowling and dozens of other anti-trans activists, later withdrawn (2020)
Background
Boylan was born June 22, 1958.
Boylan graduated from Wesleyan University in 1980, then completed graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. Boylan was a professor at Colby College from 1988 to 2014, then took an appointment at Barnard. Several of Boylan’s early books were published prior to beginning transition in 2000. Boylan wrote an opinion column for the New York Times from 2007 to 2022 among other writing.
In 1988 Boylan married Deirdre Finney Boylan (born 1960). They have two children, Sean (born 1996), and Zaira (born 1994) who is also trans.
Boylan served on the board of GLAAD and has held other roles at organizations benefiting sex and gender minorities. Boylan has appeared on Oprah and the Caitlyn Jenner reality show I Am Cait.
Anti-drag factionalism
Boylan was a key figure with Christina Kahrl in the 2014 transbian attacks led by Parker Molloy that were critical of drag artists and the offensive language some of them use. This strain of respectability politics reached a boiling point when the three of them combined their ongoing anti-drag and anti-slur crusades to extract an apology from RuPaul and RuPaul’s Drag Race for a transphobic segment that was ultimately pulled. They bragged about taking over GLAAD, an organization built by the entire community that had previously helped settle intra-community disputes out of the public eye. In a mutually beneficial piece of logrolling, Boylan told Molloy:
“This is, to coin a phrase, not your father’s GLAAD, and this is not the work that was being done a decade ago. One reason why I think we’ve been able to make a little progress is that GLAAD is now largely run by trans people. We occupy positions from staff to volunteers to the board of directors, including its national co-chair, which is me. These are our lives we are talking about; the people demeaned by incidents like this one are the men and women who work here. And other cis staff members have been working for trans rights for years and years now. I am proud of the board and staff for their passion.”
Even after being presented with extensive evidence of Parker Molloy’s abuse and slurs toward other trans people, Boylan remained one of Molloy’s staunchest supporters. In exchange, Molloy would write publicity pieces for Boylan and launder them through Advocate.com until being suspended and ultimately resigning.
2020 Harper’s Letter
Boylan was a signatory on the 2020 “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” in Harper’s Magazine. That open letter was criticized for the high percentage of “gender critical” people in the media, most notably anti-trans extremist J.K. Rowling. Boylan had been in awe of Rowling to the point that in 2010 Boylan created a children’s fantasy series called Falcon Quinn that shared remarkable similarities with Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise.
Boylan asked to be taken off the Harper’s Letter, claiming ignorance of the other signatories, while trans economist Deirdre McCloskey remained a signatory.
Books
Remind Me to Murder You Later (1988)
The Planets (1991)
The Constellations: A Novel (1994)
Getting In (1998)
She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003)
I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir (2008)
Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror (2010)
Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor (2011)
Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders (2013)
Foreword fo Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community (2014)
James, Andrea (July 24, 2014). The GLAAD Board’s “Tranny” Trouble: How Its Trans Takeover Is Reshaping LGBT Politics. Queerty https://www.queerty.com/the-glaad-boards-tranny-trouble-how-its-trans-takeover-is-reshaping-lgbt-politics-20140724 [archive]
Molloy, Parker Marie (March 29, 2014). Logo, RuPaul’s Drag Race Respond to Antitrans Slurs. Advocate.com https://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/03/29/logo-rupauls-drag-race-respond-antitrans-slurs
J.K. Rowling is a British author and the most prominent anti-transgender activist in the world. Rowling has used wealth and influence to cause tremendous harm to the trans rights movement worldwide, and particularly in the United Kingdom.
opposing legal recognition on the basis of gender identity and expression
opposing value-neutral and inclusive scientific language about human anatomy and body functions
supporting the “LGB erasure” conspiracy theory, particularly the conspiracy that gender-affirming care is “conversion therapy” on lesbian, gay, and bisexual minors
opposing those who note Rowling is transphobic or a TERF, often threatening legal action against those who do
opposing what Rowling calls the “new trans activism”
Background
Joanne “Jo” Rowling was born on July 31, 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England. Rowling’s parents both served in the British Navy before marrying. Rowling has a younger sibling Dianne. Rowling earned a bachelor’s degree from Exeter in 1987.
Rowling came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series in 1990. After holding several unfulfilling jobs, Rowling moved to Portugal to teach English. There, Rowling met journalist Jorge Arantes, and they married in 1992. They had a child Jessica in 1993, but Rowling left because the relationship was abusive. They divorced in 1995. Rowling earned a teaching certificate in 1996 and began teaching.
The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997. Since publication of the final book in 2007, the series has amassed a huge fandom for the franchise, including movie series, plays, video games, amusement park tie-ins, and extensive merchandizing. Rowling is one of the most successful authors in the history of publishing.
In 2001 Rowling married physician Neil Murray and purchased Killiechassie House, a Scottish estate. They have two children: David (born 2003) and Mackenzie (born 2005).
Rowling subsequently wrote additional children’s books and adult novels, including some under the pen name Robert Galbraith.
Anti-transgender activism
After a series of increasingly anti-transgender statements starting in 2019 with a tweet in support of anti-trans activist Maya Forstater. In 2022 Rowling came out against the proposed Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. As Rowling’s anti-trans views became more strident, Rowling began openly supporting anti-transgender extremists in the UK and beyond.
Rowling also created Beira’s Place, a privately funded trans-exclusionary help center for cisgender women who have experienced sexual assault or domestic violence. Rowling was enraged that other local resources offered help to trans people who had been sexually assaulted. Rowling was also enraged that the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre’s CEO Mridul Wadhwa is transgender. In a 2021 interview, Wadhwa said “this is about who has power and who doesn’t,” adding:
Sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well. And so, you know, it is not discerning crime. But these spaces are also for you. But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices, because how can you heal from trauma and build a new relationship with your trauma, because you can’t forget, and you can’t go back to life before traumatic incident or traumatic incidents. And some of us never, ever had a life before traumatic incidents. But if you have to reframe your trauma, I think it is important as part of that reframing, having a more positive relationship with it, where it becomes a story that empowers you and allows you to go and do other more beautiful things with your life, you also have to rethink your relationship with prejudice. Otherwise, you can’t really, in my view, recover from trauma and I think that’s a very important message that I am often discussing with my colleagues that in various places.
2024 comments on Nazi persecution of trans people (2024)
On March 13, 2024, X user jaytuberr posted in a thread on trans healthcare, “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?” Rowling then responded, “How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?” Many people interpreted Rowling’s post as denial of the 1933 Nazi looting and burning of Magnus Hirschfeld’s clinical books and research on trans people and sexual minorities. Rowling stated in part: “I’m familiar with such activists’ assertions that transgender people have been uniquely persecuted and oppressed throughout history, but claims that trans people were ‘the first targets’ of the Nazis – a claim I refuted on X, and which led to these accusations – and that I ‘uphold [Nazi] ideology around gender’ is a new low.”
Critics
Rowling’s critics include numerous LGBT rights organizations, authors, actors who have appeared in filmed versions of Rowling’s books, and the vast majority of the trans community.
Thorpe, Vanessa (14 June 2020). JK Rowling: from magic to the heart of a Twitter storm. The Observer. Archived from the original on 4 July 2020. Retrieved 6 July 2020. Arrayed on Rowling’s side are some of the veteran voices of feminism, including the radical Julie Bindel, who spoke out in support this weekend: “Her political position is nothing to do with transgender issues. She has always been a feminist and she has inspired generations of young women and men to look into issues of sex-based discrimination,” she told the Observer.
JK Rowling backs protest over Scottish gender bill. BBC News. 6 October 2022. Retrieved 28 December 2022. Author JK Rowling has supported a protest rally by wearing a T-shirt calling Scotland’s first minister a “destroyer of women’s rights”.
Schwirblat, Tatiana; Freberg, Karen; Freberg, Laura (2022). Chapter 21: Cancel culture: a career vulture amongst influencers on social media. In Lipschultz, Jeremy Harris; Freberg, Karen; Luttrell, Regina (eds.). The Emerald Handbook of Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Media. Emerald Publishing Limited. doi:10.1108/978-1-80071-597-420221021
Trisha Posner is an American writer and anti-transgender activist who also publishes under the name Patricia Posner.
Anti-transgender activism is a family business; spouse Gerald Posner is also involved in the anti-transgender movement.
Background
Patricia Denise Levene was born in London on March 10, 1951 and grew up in Islington, doing some dance training at the Aida Foster Theatre School before dropping out of Arts and Media School Islington.
After coming to New York City in 1978 and working as an artist, hotel manager, and employee at the Swedish recording label SWS, Trisha Poser married Gerald Posner after they met on a blind date. They soon began collaborating on books. Posner’s website states:
I conduct every interview with him, sift through thousands of pages of original documents in government and private archives, and work on early drafts of manuscripts.
In a profile for Florida International University’s Artspeak, Posner reiterated this work as a researcher to the authors: “On those projects, she conducted every interview with him, sifted through thousands of pages of original documents in government and private archives, and worked on the early drafts of manuscripts.”
In the late 1990s Posner started a monthly column about developments in women’s health.
This is Not Your Mother’s Menopause: One Qoman’s Natural Journey through Change (2000)
No Hormones, No Fear: A Natural Journey Through Menopause (2007)
The Pharmacist of Auschwitz: The Untold Story (2017)
In 2010, Gerald Posner was revealed to be a serial plagiarist, which was attributed to “a flawed research methodology.”
The Posners own Area 51 Consulting LLC. They are also officers of the non-profit Antisemitism Watch, Inc., a Florida Domestic Non-Profit Corporation filed on November 22, 2022. Miami DJ Oren Nizri is also an officer.
Anti-transgender activism
Posner was offended during cancer treatment when when a healthcare provider described the condition as chest cancer. Even though Posner is well-versed in the historic dangers of attacking a persecuted minority, Posner jumped into anti-transgender activism with zeal, offering up a version of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that cisngender women are being “erased” by transgender people.
Posner claimed that friends were also afraid of expressing outrage about inclusive medical terms that encompass all people with the same disease:
you’re called a Republican for whatever reason that is, or [you’re called] transphobic. Then, of course, you had JK Rowling, who really stood up to everybody, and they canceled her. But then for me, there wasn’t much to cancel. So then I looked at the UK Health Project, and they had a woman with a man sitting next to her – pregnant man – it just seemed all a bit bonkers to me.
Posner, Patricia (May 9, 2022). When did “woman” become a dirty word?Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/woman-become-dirty-word-transgender-gender-fluid-nonbinary-lgbtqia-sogie-supreme-court-leak-dobbs-roe-wade-birthing-person-medicine-11652124897