Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian author whose comments about transgender people have been criticized as transphobic.
Background
Adichie was born 15 September 1977 Enugu in Nigeria. Adichie’s seminal parent was a professor, and Adichie’s birth parent served as a college registrar. Their family is Catholic, and Adichie has five siblings.
Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria before coming to the US and enrolling at Drexel University before transferring to Eastern Connecticut State University, where Adichie earned a bachelor’s degree in 2001. Adichie then earned master’s degrees at both Yale and Johns Hopkins before winning a MacArthur Fellowship that took Adichie to Harvard.
Adichie began publishing work in 1997 and has since written many poems, short stories, and books that have earned a number of awards and prizes. Adichie gave a TED Talk in 2009 and a TEDx talk in 2012 that were well received.
Views on transgender issues
2017 comments
Although Adichie has criticized anti-LGBT laws in Nigeria, Adichie was accused of transphobia in 2017 when asked if trans women are women. Adichie said, “My feeling is trans women are trans women.”
Adichie later clarified on March 13:
Perhaps I should have said trans women are trans women and cis women are cis women and all are women. Except that ‘cis’ is not an organic part of my vocabulary. And would probably not be understood by a majority of people. Because saying ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ acknowledges that there is a distinction between women born female and women who transition, without elevating one or the other, which was my point. I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people.
2020 comments
In 2020, Adichie voiced support for J.K. Rowling after Rowling complained about the “new trans activism” that had labeled Rowling a TERF and a transphobe. After Adichie got criticism for calling Rowling’s piece “perfectly reasonable,” Adichie complained about “cancel culture” and “the American liberal orthodoxy.“
There’s a sense in which you aren’t allowed to learn and grow. Also forgiveness is out of the question. I find it so lacking in compassion. How much of our wonderfully complex human selves are we losing?
I think in America the worst kind of censorship is self-censorship, and it is something America is exporting to every part of the world. We have to be so careful: you said the wrong word you must be crucified immediately.
[…] The orthodoxy, the idea that you are supposed to mouth the words, it is so boring.In general, human beings are emotionally intelligent enough to know when something is coming from a bad place.
2022 comments
In 2022, Adichie expanded on these views about “this whole trans thing” in The Guardian:
This is the driving logic of her fear for free speech: that she can’t say biological sex is inalienable without sparking a storm. “So somebody who looks like my brother – he says, ‘I’m a woman’, and walks into the women’s bathroom, and a woman goes, ‘You’re not supposed to be here’, and she’s transphobic?”
When the interview countered that if her sibling really were trans, “You’d probably think treating him with dignity and respect was more important than where he went to the toilet?”
[Adichie] “But why is that?” she asks. “Why can’t they be equal parts of the conversation?”
[reporter] “Maybe because dignity is more important?”
[Adichie] “Not if you consider women’s views to be valid. This is what baffles me. Are there no such things as objective truth and facts?”
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Clarifying. Facebook Archived from the original on 26 February 2022.
Flood, Alison (16 June 2021). ‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony. The Guardian. Retrieved 30 June 2021. we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow. I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.
Choire Sicha is an American writer and anti-transgender activist.
While running the New York Times Style section, Sicha claimed, “We will aggressively cover politics, gender, sexuality, health, crime, shoes and contouring,” but the only notable gender coverage was a piece by John McDermott sympathetically profiling numerous anti-transgender public figures.
Background
Choire Arthur Sicha was born November 19, 1971 and grew up in Southern California, according to self-reports.
Parent Jeffrey Sicha (born 1940) is a Rhodes Scholar and philosopher who currently lives in Atascadero, California with Sadie Kendall, creator of Kendall Farms Crème Fraîche. The elder Sicha occasionally publishes philosophical texts. Sicha’s other birth parent is often mythologized in various origin stories and appears to have been the primary caregiver. Sicha graduated from Evanston Township High School in Illinois in 1989.
From 1991 to 1997, Sicha did HIV/AIDS activism at organizations including Larkin Street Youth Services, People with AIDS Coalition, HIV Law Project, and Visual AIDS. From 1997 to 2003 Sicha was director of Manhattan art gallery Debs & Co. During that time Sicha reportedly shared a “shitty East Village rabbit warren with Dale Peck” and was a key figure in developing “blog voice,” the snarky Gen X tone that further metastasized into millennial Twitter and Tumblr voice.
On October 22, 2011, Sicha married commercial real estate executive David Michael Valdez. They spend much of their time in the Hudson Valley north of New York City.
Gawker
Nick Denton founded Gawker in 2002 and appointed Elizabeth Spiers editor. When Spiers left, Sicha served as editor for a year before Jessica Coen replaced Sicha in August 2004. While Sicha was editing at Jared Kushner’s New York Observer from 2005 to 2007, then writing for Radar, the Gawker feature “Gawker Stalker” became more and more invasive. Sicha returned to Gawker and continued ramping it up:
Gawker had always sold itself as mean but it now became, actually, very mean. Sicha, who liked to pretend to be a news organization, had sent “correspondents” and “interns” to official media events. Coen found more of them, and she sent them not only to launches and readings but also to private parties, where they took embarrassing party photos. This was the important development: the decision to treat every subject, known or unknown, in public or private situations, with the fascinated ill will that tabloid magazines have for their subjects. Spiers had invented the best-known element of Gawker, “Gawker Stalker,” which compiled reports of celebrity encounters. Really this had started as a support group for Condé Nast assistants, who wrote in to say what it felt like to see Anna Wintour in person and, also, what she was wearing. As the feature expanded, under Spiers and Sicha, it remained a record of that nice New York moment: seeing a Hollywood face. During Coen’s tenure, Gawker Stalker morphed from a list, to a list with photographs, to an interactive map that tracked its subjects through Manhattan with unnerving immediacy.
Sicha later called Gawker Stalker “the bane of my existence.”
Libertarian anti-trans activist Nick Gillespie named Sicha one of the “50 Most Loathsome NYers.”
When Spiers left, […] she handed the reins to Choire Sicha (yes, folks, that’s pronounced “Cory”, and yes, it’s a dude) who turned Gawker into an unreadable circle-jerk for the cream of New York City’s wannabe media asshole crop. To read Gawker now is no longer an enjoyable five minutes in the morning; it’s stumbling into a horrifying online cocktail party hosted by a humorless, obnoxious prick and attended by his even less interesting obnoxious prick friends.
The Awl and 2013 book
Sicha co-founded The Awl with David Cho and Alex Balk in 2009 and edited there until taking the Style section job at the New York Times. The Awl folded in 2018.
Sicha authored the 2013 book Very Recent History.
2019 New York Times piece
Sicha claimed on many occasions that gender would be covered at the Times:
“[The] Style desk covers change, it covers generational change, it covers change in how we talk about gender, it covers young people. It covers technology, and it covers love, marriage and how we look. Those are all things that are incredibly fraught at this time, and they’re supposed to upset people.”
Gender was conspicuously absent from subsequent coverage, with one notable exception. Sicha greenlit and published John McDermott’s 2019 puff piece about gender critical media figures. Sicha and McDermott interviewed zero trans people or media watchdogs critical of these bigots.
Conspicuously absent from the Times piece are quotes and stories from the people who have been deemed—both by the canceled and their chroniclers—supporting players in the culture war debate: the trans individuals the canceled have concerned themselves with, and whose lives and health are at stake.
People Sicha and McDermott profiled sympathetically include:
Katie Herzog: “Herzog became a member of a unique emerging class of people — journalists, academics, opinion writers — canceled for bad, conservative or offensive opinions.”
Jesse Singal “Mr. Singal has written frequently on trans people in ways that have upset vocal members of that community. His stature has only grown, including on Twitter, where he mocks woke culture and identity politics. He is one of many who simultaneously talk about their cancellation experience while also noting that they also haven’t really been canceled.”
Sicha has had a relationship with Vox Media starting in 2016, returning to their property New York after the stint at the New York Times. Sicha profiled Daniel and Grace Lavery and their partner, Lily Woodruff in 2024.
Sicha has wisely deleted almost all tweets interacting with anti-trans media figures. Those have been left out for now as a courtesy. In 2024, Sicha scrubbed the account, noting for a time “find me on other less transphobic platforms.”
Chafin, Chris (June 3, 2014). The Awl and the rise of downtown Brooklyn. Brooklyn Magazine http://www.bkmag.com/2014/06/03/the-awl-and-the-rise-of-downtown-brooklyn/
Gregory, Alice (August 13, 2013). Choire Sicha, the anti-blogger. The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/choire-sicha-the-anti-blogger
Jenn Burleton is an American musician and activist whose later work focuses on trans and gender diverse youth. Burleton is the program director for TransActive Gender Project.
Background
Jennifer Eileen “Jenn” Burleton was born in November 1953 and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Burleton’s parent Hugh “Eddie” Burleton (1914–1984) was also a musician. Jenn Burleton has a sibling Hugh, Jr. (born 1940).
After graduating from Milwaukee’s Washington High School in 1970, Burleton was involved with progressive musical organizations Sing Out and Up With People.
In 1983 Burleton married Cheryl Ann Noonan (born 1957). Burleton made a gender transition in the 1980s and began working in community activism.
In 2006 Burleton was involved in founding TransYouth Family Allies. Burleton soon left and founded TransActive Education and Advocacy in 2007. That organization later became affiliated with Lewis & Clark University.
The piece summarizes Burleton’s activism after attending endocrinologist Norman Spack’s presentation on puberty blockers at the 2006 Philadelphia Trans Health Conference.
Transgender activists across the country pushed for early and easy access to the treatment. At a 2006 Philadelphia medical convention, Jenn Burleton, an advocate from Oregon, heard Dr. Spack describe his experience starting to treat adolescents with blockers. Like others of her generation, Ms. Burleton, now 68, could not medically transition until adulthood, and puberty had been traumatic. Treating adolescents with blockers was “game-changing,” she said. Back home, Ms. Burleton prodded pediatric endocrinologists to adopt the practice for their patients. “We have a chance to prevent them from being emotionally broken,” she recalled saying.
Shortly after the piece was published, Burleton said on Facebook:
I stand by my comments quoted in this article. The truth and evidence is out there, as are examples of objective journalism about transgender lives. Sadly, “out there” does not include the New York Times.
Kowalska, Monika (May 29, 2014). Interview with Jenn Burleton.The Heroines of My Life https://theheroines.blogspot.com/2014/05/interview-with-jenn-burleton.html
Twohey, Megan; Jewett, Christina (November 14, 2022). They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html [archive]
Since 2008, Latty has been a clinical psychologist with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, specializing in post-traumatic stress treatments. Latty is currently based in Oregon.
Background
Elizabeth Marie Latty was born in July 1975. Latty earned a doctorate from Northwestern University in 2009. Latty discussed research interests as a graduate student:
In a broad sense, my research interests lie in the broad category of sexual arousal and sexual orientation, along with those of my advisor. My first year project involved studying the sexual arousal patterns of post-operative male-to-female transsexuals. Our lab was able to use the results we obtained to further support results we found for natal women, as reported in our controversial combined study including work done by Meredith Chivers, Gerulf Rieger, Mike Bailey and myself. (Latty 2004)
Anti-trans research
Latty and friends make sweeping unsubstantiated claims about sexuality in gender diverse women based on plethysmographic guesswork (Latty 2003):
To rule out the possibility that the differences between men’s and women’s genital sexual arousal patterns might be due to the different ways that genital arousal is measured in men and women, the Northwestern researchers identified a subset of subjects: postoperative transsexuals who began life as men but had surgery to construct artificial vaginas.
In a sense, those transsexuals have the brains of men but the genitals of women. Their psychological and genital arousal patterns matched those of men — those who like men were more aroused by male stimuli and those who like women were more aroused by the female stimuli — even though their genital arousal was measured in the same way women’s was.
“This shows that the sex difference that we found is real and almost certainly due to a sex difference in the brain,” said Bailey. (Tremmel 2003)
The authors of “Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies” (Lawrence 1998) and The Man Who Would Be Queen (Bailey 2003) did not choose their titles just for provocation. They seek to prove that trans and gender-diverse women are really men, with “brains of men” (Tremmel 2003) who display “male-typical” sexual arousal (Lawrence 2003). They also want to use us to claim that sexual orientation is immutable by asserting trans women who change their dating preferences after transition didn’t really change their orientation.
The results from Latty’s 11 transgender women are heralded as proof of several theories held by Bailey, Blanchard, and Lawrence, but the sample size and questionable methodology makes these claims hardly supportable.
In May 2004, Latty presented a paper with Bailey and Liz Sullivan at Rosalind Franklin University:
Sexually explicit images were used in conjunction with the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Self report ratings of these images resulted in significant differences for gender and sexual orientation in undergraduates. These results support previous research demonstrating category-specificity for men and provide further evidence of a more complex pattern of sexual arousal in women. (Latty 2004)
Latty was caught up in the publicity Bailey generated at the time The Man Who Would Be Queen came out. Below is a passage where Latty discusses the plethysmograph devices on which they base their claims.
At Bailey’s sex lab, really a tiny office on the second floor of a tiny addition to Northwestern’s Swift Hall, Elizabeth Latty , one of his graduate students, shows clips of explicit seventies-era porn, intercut with more neutral stimuli like landscapes. Latty shows the vaginal probe used to measure lubrication during the female arousal study, then the penile gauge for the male portion. “It’s kind of like a fancy rubber band,” she says. Over the course of two years, Bailey and his team of Ph.D.s have run subjects, solicited first from ads in the paper, then drawn from Northwestern students, to test how much genital arousal plays in sexual orientation. The female portion of the study was funded through a controversial $147,000 grant from the federal National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, paying women up to $75 to watch porn. (Zambreno 2003)
Bailey JM. The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism. Joseph Henry Press, ISBN 978-0309084185
Drier S, Anderson K (April21, 2003). Prof’s book challenges opinions of human sexuality. Daily Northwestern http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/04/21/3ea39785e6cef?in_archive=1 [archive]
James AJ. Plethysmograph: a disputed device. tsroadmap.com version of 16 May 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20050206090753/http://tsroadmap.com/info/plethysmograph.html [archive]
Latty EM, Bailey J (unpublished, 2003). Sexual arousal of male-to-female transsexuals: male-typical or temale-typical patterns? http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/SPRStudent/%20Awards/2002/latty.pdf [archive]
Latty EM. Research interests. J. Michael Bailey faculty website. Retrieved 17 May 2004. http://www.psych.nwu.edu/psych/people/faculty/bailey/latty.html [archive]
Latty EM, Sullivan EA, Bailey JM (May 28, 2004). Gender and Sexual Orientation Differences in Self-report Arousal to Sexually Explicit Images. American Psychological Association meeting, 28 May 2004. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/convention/program/search/viewProgram.cfm?Abstract_ID=5940&AbType=&AbAuthor=40334&Subject_ID=&Day_ID=all&keyword= [archive]
Lawrence AA (online, 1999). Men trapped in men’s bodies: an introduction to the concept of autogynephilia. Originally at annelawrence.com http://home.swipnet.se/~w-13968/autogynephilia.html [archive]
Lawrence AA, Latty, EM., Chivers M, Bailey, JM (2003). Measuring sexual arousal in postoperative male-to-female transsexuals using vaginal photoplethysmography. International Academy of Sex Research conference http://www.iasr.org/meeting/2003/Program%20booklet.pdf [archive]
Tremmel, PV (June 12, 2003). Study suggests difference between female and male sexuality. Northwestern University press release http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/nu-ssd061203.php [archive]
Zambreno K (April 3, 2003). Dr. Sex: Michael Bailey gets into gay genes. New City Chicago http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/2392.html [archive]
Jennifer Pritzker is an American investor and philanthropist who focuses on military causes. Pritzker is the first out transgender billionaire.
Background
Jennifer Natalya Pritzker was born on August 13, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois. Pritzker has two siblings and two half-siblings. Pritzker’s family founded the Hyatt hotel chain and controlled a diversified holding company that was sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 2013. In 2023 the family’s net worth was estimated at about $37 billion, with Jennifer Pritker’s share around $2 billion.
At age 23, Pritzker enlisted in the army, rising to the rank of sergeant. Pritzker earned a bachelor’s degree in 1979 from Loyola University of Chicago, then returned to the Army to serve as a commissioned officer until 1985. Pritzker then served in the Army Reserves and Illinois Army National Guard until 2001 rising to rank of lieutenant colonel.
In 1995, Pritzker founded the nonprofit Tawani Foundation. In 1996 Pritzker founded wealth management firm Tawani Enterprises. In 2003 Pritzker founded the Pritzker Military Library. Pritzker is involved in a number of private equity and national security ventures.
Pritzker has been married three times and has three children. Pritzker came out as transgender in 2013.
Transgender philanthropy
In 2003, the Tawani Foundation made a $1.35 million donation to the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to study the feasibility of transgender people serving in the military and in the ranks of police and fire departments.
In 2016, through Tawani Foundation, Pritzker gave a $2 million donation to create the world’s first endowed academic chair of transgender studies, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia; Aaron Devor was chosen as the inaugural chair.
Pritzker was a major Republican donor until the party began sustained legislative attacks on transgender people un Donald Trump.
Some anti-transgender activists, including Rick Wiles, Jennifer Bilek, and Helen Joyce, have concocted a conspiracy theory that a cabal of Jewish billionaires including Pritzker are behind the transgender movement.
Butler, Jack (June 28, 2022). The Money behind the Transgender Movement.National Review https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-money-behind-the-transgender-movement/
Leveille, Lee (July 5, 2021). The Mechanisms of TAnon: Where it Came From. Health Liberation Now! https://healthliberationnow.com/2021/07/05/the-mechanisms-of-tanon-where-it-came-from/
Leveille, Lee (April 12, 2021). The Mechanisms of TAnon: What is “TAnon”?Health Liberation Now! https://healthliberationnow.com/2021/04/12/the-mechanisms-of-tanon-what-is-tanon/
Veale completed a doctorate at Massey University in 2012. Veale then worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, researching the health of Canadian transgender youth.
In 2015 Veale was appointed Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Waikato.
Veale has served on the Board of Directors of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and has served as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Transgender Health. Veale also helped to establish the University of Waikato Rainbow Staff/Student Alliance. Projects include:
Veale has attempted to refute Ray Blanchard and the controversial diagnosis of “autogynephilia” by applying Blanchard’s Core Autogynephilia Scale to people who are not trans women. This in effect reified the diagnosis itself, allowing “autogynephilia” activistAnne Lawrence to retort that “Transsexual groups in Veale et al. (2008) are ‘autogynephilic’ and ‘even more autogynephilic.'”
In 2022, Veale and biologist Julia Serano published a paper refuting J. Michael Bailey and Kevin Hsu, who made the claim that “autogynephilia in women” does not exist. Veale and Serano argued that “autogynephilia” is a flawed framework and expanded on Serano’s model of “female embodiment fantasies,”
JF Veale, RJ Watson, T Peter, EM Saewyc (2017). Mental health disparities among Canadian transgender youth. Journal of Adolescent Health 60 (1), 44-49 265 2017 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.09.014
BA Clark, JF Veale, M Townsend, H Frohard-Dourlent, E Saewyc (2018). Non-binary youth: Access to gender-affirming primary health care. International Journal of Transgenderism 19 (2), 158-169 125 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2017.1394954
RJ Watson, JF Veale, EM Saewyc (2017). Disordered eating behaviors among transgender youth: Probability profiles from risk and protective factors. International Journal of Eating Disorders 50 (5), 515-522 126 2017 https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.22627
JF Veale, T Peter, R Travers, EM Saewyc (2017). Enacted stigma, mental health, and protective factors among transgender youth in Canada. Transgender Health 2 (1), 207-216 116 2017 https://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2017.0031
N Adams, R Pearce, J Veale, A Radix, D Castro, A Sarkar, KC Thom (2017). Guidance and ethical considerations for undertaking transgender health research and institutional review boards adjudicating this research. Transgender Health 2 (1), 165-175 114 2017 https://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2017.0012
J Veale, EM Saewyc, H Frohard-Dourlent, S Dobson, B Clark (2015). Being safe, being me: Results of the Canadian trans youth health survey. Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC) 146 2015 [PDF] https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/Diff/gahps/SARAVYC_Trans%20Youth%20Health%20Report_EN_Final_Web.pdf
F Pega, JF Veale (2015). The case for the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health to address gender identity. American Journal of Public Health 105 (3), e58-e62 https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302373
Veale J, Clark DE, Lomax TC (2012). Male-to-female transsexuals’ impressions of Blanchard’s autogynephilia theory. International Journal of Transgenderism. 13 (3): 131–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2011.669659.
Veale JF, Lomax T, Clarke D (2010). “Identity-Defense Model of Gender-Variant Development”. International Journal of Transgenderism. 12 (3): 125–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2010.514217
JF Veale, DE Clarke, TC Lomax (2010). Biological and psychosocial correlates of adult gender-variant identities: A review. Personality and Individual Differences 48 (4), 357-366 93 2010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2009.09.018
JF Veale (2008). Prevalence of transsexualism among New Zealand passport holders. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 42 (10), 887-889 93 2008 https://doi.org/10.1080/00048670802345490
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Susan Evans is a British psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Evans was a key critic of trans healthcare for gender diverse youth at the Tavistock. The clinic was later closed.
Evans and spouse Marcus Evans co-authored the 2021 book Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults.
Evans worked for 12 years at the Tavistock in the Adult Department, Youth Gender Identity Service and for the Portman Clinic in Probation officer supervision and as Programme Organiser and senior clinical lecturer. Evans was also a Senior Fellow of the University of East London.
Evans has been a member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation, London Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Service, and the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC).
2021 book
The following people are mentioned in the acknowledgements:
We are grateful to the following people who have generously given their time and expertise to the development of this book: Annie Pesskin, Ian Williamson, Richard Stephens, Margot Waddell, Frances Grier, and Ema Syrulnik, as well as all our colleagues at the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. We are grateful to Kate Pearce at Phoenix for offering to publish this book.
2022 Tavistock closure
Evans was involved in the attacks on gender affirming care for gender diverse you at the Tavistock clinic, a federally funded gatekeeping facility with unethically long wait times due to underfunding.
Evans’ version of things was reported via anti-trans activist Bari Weiss:
I was a nurse working on a team that recklessly prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids. I blew the whistle in 2005. Now the government is finally listening.
References
Evans, Sue (August 4, 2022). How Tavistock Came Tumbling Down.The Free Press https://www.thefp.com/p/how-tavistock-came-tumbling-down
Jamie Faye Fenton is an American computer programmer and game developer best known for work on the 1981 game Gorf and what became Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director, MacroMind Director, and MacroMind VideoWorks), a precursor of the software Flash. Fenton was also an early innovator in creating the “video glitch” visual aesthetic.
After making a gender transition in the late 1990s, Fenton became an important figure in the transgender community for creating early online transgender resources in the 1990s. In 1995, with Cindy Martin and JoAnn Roberts, Fenton created and launched tgforum.com, an online forum for transgender people.
Background
Jamie Faye Fenton was born on April 25, 1954. Fenton attended University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the early 1970s. Fenton has created several notable early works of digital art and software:
Datsun 280 ZZZAP (1976)
Checkmate (1977)
Digital TV Dinner (1978)
Bally Astrocade BASIC (1980)
Gorf (1981)
Robby Roto (1981)
Fenton made a gender transition around 1998.
Comments on Bailey (2003)
In 2003, Fenton got involved in the controversy involving the book The Man Who Would Be Queenby anti-trans sexologist J. Michael Bailey. One issue was Bailey’s promotion of the concept of “autogynephilia,” a disputed “paraphilia” created by Ray Blanchard in 1989 as part of a sexualized way to divide transfeminine people into two groups:
“Homosexual transsexuals,” whom Blanchard considers gay males with a fetish for straight men
“Autogynephilic transsexuals,” whom Blanchard considers straight males with autoerotic interest in feminization
Bailey’s popularization of Blanchard’s ideas was a turning point in transgender history, where the community united in condemnation of this harmful book.
Fenton was one of the few trans people who did not condemn Bailey’s book outright, writing about “autogynephilia” as if it were settled science and reifying it as an acceptable term. Fenton was also a prominent member of an online “autogynephilia support” group. Fenton published an essay called “The Lemonade Stand of Desire” and promoted an idiosyncratic “dual motive theory,” part of writings about why people are transgender. In 2004, we corresponded at length after I put up a version of this page criticizing Fenton’s involvement and writings.
In 2012, Fenton requested that I remove this page. Fenton said the posts that I quoted “do not represent my views on the subject.”
Comments on Dreger (2016)
In 2015, historian Alice Dreger published Galileo’s Middle Finger, which reprints Dreger’s defense of Bailey that was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, a journal edited by Bailey, Blanchard, and other “autogynephilia” activists. At the same time, the journal’s editor Kenneth Zucker was being investigated for performing reparative therapy on gender-expansive children at Toronto clinic CAMH. Zucker was fired that year and the clinic was shuttered.
Reading through Dreger’s writings, it is hard to find many differences between her positions and those of intensely transphobic sources like The Federalist or hate groups like the FRC. All of them oppose the idea that transgender women are women. They all take the position that gender identity isn’t real, and they deny the lived experiences of transgender people. They all support autogynephilic theory, which is used primarily to label transgender people as sexual deviants. All of them oppose laws against reparative therapy. All of them oppose affirming models of care for transgender youth.
Dreger wrote an open letter denouncing Lambda Literary Foundation for their decision, and “Hobbie” and Fenton came out with new blogs simultaneously. Dreger is notorious for attempting to create the appearance of consensus for fringe ideas. It’s a shame that Fenton doubled down by siding with Dreger, further tarnishing a previously excellent legacy of service to the community.
Pow, Whit (2020). Stored in Memory: Recovering Queer and Transgender Life in Software History.Letters and Science https://uwm.edu/letters-science/event/stored-in-memory-recovering-queer-and-transgender-life-in-software-history/ [not archived] https://www.proquest.com/openview/1605775af4a8e04c2d2b90faad6b7fef/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=44156
Cates, Jon (2018). Chicago New Media, 1973-1992. University of Illinois Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-252-08407-2.
Betancourt, Michael (2017). The Invention of Glitch Video. https://www.michaelbetancourt.com/pdf/Betancourt_TheInventionofGlitchVideo.pdf [archive] https://www.academia.edu/66641089/The_Invention_of_Glitch_Video_Digital_TV_Dinner_1978_
The earlier version of this profile that includes our extensive correspondence was at this URL: https://www.tsroadmap.com/info/jamie-faye-fenton.html [archive]
Marta Meana is a Spanish-American psychologist and anti-transgender activist deeply involved in publishing and promoting disease models of gender identity and expression, with a focus on sexualized taxonomies of transgender people like “autogynephilia.”
Background
Meana was born in Madrid, Spain on December 1, 1957. Meana attended McGill University, earning a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree before earning a doctorate in 1996, writing a dissertation on dyspareunia. Meana had a post-doctoral research fellowship in women’s health at the University of Toronto.
Meana joined the psychology department at University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1997. From 2018 to 2020, Meana was interim President of UNLV. Meana retired in 2024.
After years of following the developments surrounding the publication of TMWWBQ in real time, it was interesting to step back and read Dreger’s comprehensive reconstruction of events. The story that emerges is reminiscent of classical drama. It comes complete with a protagonist (Bailey), antagonists (Conway, James, McCloskey), characters caught in the crossfire (Kyeltika), and a balanced and half-detached chorus (Dreger) explaining to the audience (the rest of us) the lessons to be learned from the melee. Mercifully, this drama did not end up a tragedy, but it shares significant qualities with the latter. It features a well-meaning, though necessarily flawed, protagonist with the requisite amount of hubris and a group of antagonists whose sordid means nullify any possible empathy the audience may have had with their perceived injury. The chorus seems open-minded and fair, although perhaps a little naïve in her belief in the healing power of her narrative.
Meana, Marta (2013). Gender Identity Diagnoses: History and Controversies. In Gender Dysphoria and Disorders of Sex Development (pp.137-150). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7441-8_7
“Emily Hobbie” is the pseudonym of an American transgender activist who created one of the important early transgender forums, GenderPeace. The support forum was active from 2002 until it was eventually ruined by transgender troll Denise Magner. The site went offline in 2008.
Background
“”Emily Hobbie” was born in 1969 and graduated from Brookland-Cayce High School in 1987. “Hobbie” earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Virginia in 1991. “Hobbie” worked at Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation in 1992, designing the space frame fuselage of the Perseus A, NASA’s Small High Altitude Science Aircraft (SHASA). From 1992 to 1993, “Hobbie” worked in the UVa Department of Applied Mechanics as a graduate research assistant. Hobbie then worked at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in several techincal roles from 1994 to 2015.
“Autogynephilia” activism
“Hobbie” began having significant personal life issues in 2009, and by 2015, Hobbie had turned to Alice Dreger for attention and validation, as Denise Magner and many other indigent trans people had done previously. At some point, “Hobbie” became an “autogynephilia” activist.
In 2016, “Hobbie” read Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger and began getting involved in the trans community response, almost all of which was negative. When the Lambda Literary Foundation rescinded their nomination of the book for a possible award in March, “Hobbie” sprung into action defending Dreger. “Hobbie” and fellow “autogynephilia” activist Jamie Faye Fenton launched blogs supporting Dreger on the same day in March 2016. This was the only entry by “Hobbie”:
I hate “AGP” as it’s misrepresented. Here is my representation.
I think the way I experience what I think of as my gender is most intensely is during sex. I suspect this is true for the vast majority of people and part and parcel of being sexual beings. I don’t believe in a “true” gender any more than a “true” sex — sex and gender are both way complicated — but I do think that the gender I feel most keenly during sexual arousal is the gender that makes the sense for me to live by, and happily tracks with the gender my sexual partners and society in general relate to me as much more naturally than that suggested by my XY chromosome or naughty bits with which I was born.
“Hobbie,” under the username TugWildGeese, created a single-purpose account on Wikipedia and used it between April 6 and 10, 2016 to puff up Dreger’s biography.
As with Magner, there’s a lot more to this sad tale. It’s a shame that someone whose legacy would have been fondly remembered tacked on this unfortunate epilogue during a time of personal crisis.
