John Ronald Brown was an American surgeon who served the trans and gender diverse community. Brown’s career was dogged by legal troubles related to poor patient outcomes and deaths. Nicknamed “Butcher Brown” by the trans community, Brown was imprisoned for continuing to practice medicine after losing medical licensure.
Background
John Ronald Brown was born on July 14, 1922 and died in prison on May 16, 2010.
In the 1970s, Brown and partner James Spence were offering genital surgeries in San Francisco and planned a full-service clinic for medical gender transition, but those plans fell apart in 1973.
Transgender healthcare
Brown was one of the earliest surgeons to use an informed consent model, and many of Brown’s patients had been rejected by gender clinics with strict gatekeeping for trans healthcare. Brown also performed surgeries on patients seeking other kinds of body modification that colleagues would not perform. Many of Brown’s patients were desperate or poor, and they felt Brown was their best available option or only option.
Among other procedures, Brown offered orchiectomy, a crude vaginoplasty, and illegal silicone injections. Brown’s prices were often one-tenth of the cost of going elsewhere, and patients did not have to wait two years or more as was common at the time.
The quality of Brown’s results was generally considered unacceptable, earning Brown the nickname “Butcher Brown” among our community. Community-wide warnings about Brown’s dangerous practice were one of the most organized and unified examples of trans and gender diverse consumer activism in the 20th century.
Sanctions and convictions
In 1977, Brown’s medical license was revoked following the death of a patient, citing “gross negligence, incompetence and practicing unprofessional medicine in a manner which involved moral turpitude.” Brown then began illegally operating on patients in Mexico.
In 1990 Brown was convicted and imprisoned for practicing medicine without a license. Brown began performing illegal surgeries again following release.
In 1998, Brown performed an elective leg amputation for a patient who wished to have one leg removed. After the patient died from complications, Brown was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Brown died in prison from complications of pneumonia on May 16, 2010.
Cowan, Zagria (May 19, 2017) John Ronald Brown: part II. https://zagria.blogspot.com/2017/05/john-ronald-brown-part-ii.html
Moore, Michelle. (2003, October). TG in history: Butcher John Ronald Brown. TG Community News, 19-24. http://dallasdenny.com/Writing/2013/11/01/butcher-john-ronald-brown-2002/
Ciotti, Paul (December 15, 1999). Why did he cut off that man’s leg?LA Weekly https://www.laweekly.com/why-did-he-cut-off-that-mans-leg/
Virginia Hughes is an American writer and anti-transgender activist who is responsible for much of the transgender coverage in the New York Times science section since 2020.
Background
Virginia Cooper “Ginny” Hughes (born 1984) grew up in Marshall, Michigan. Hughes’ family ran a local business. Hughes graduated from the Battle Creek Area Mathematics and Science Center. Hughes then earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Brown University in 2005, then a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins in 2006. Hughes interned at NPR and Discover during that time.
Hughes then began freelancing and took a role at ScienceBlogs/Seed Media Group. Hughes married Randal “Randy” Vegter in 2012.
Hughes joined BuzzFeed in 2015, rising to Deputy Editor in Chief in 2019. Hughes joined the science desk at the New York Times in 2020 and soon helped bring over Azeen Ghorayshi and Katie J.M. Baker to write slanted pieces about gender diverse youth.
Hughes has served as an adjunct professor at NYU’s journalism school.
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John Lloyd is a British journalist and anti-transgender activist who has discussed trans issues in anti-transgender publication UnHerd.
Background
John Nicol Fortune Lloyd was born on April 15, 1946 in Anstruther, Fife, Scotland. Lloyd attended Waid Academy there, then earned a master’s degree from University of Edinburgh in 1967. After work in the alternative press and in television production, Lloyd joined the Financial Times in 1977. In 1986 Lloyd was editor of the New Statesman for a year, then returned to FT. In 1997 Lloyd was a columnist for The Times for a year, then returned to the New Statesman until 2003. In 2006 Lloyd co-founded the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at University of Oxford. Lloyd has written several books.
Lloyd has married twice and has one child, actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd.
Reporting on trans issues
Lloyd reported on Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill:
Every SNP minister and senior official must display their versions of this: the head Manichee, example to them all, is Sturgeon. And in the matter of the Gender Recognition Recognition Bill — which would allow children of 16 to change their gender, independently of their parents’ consent — she deploys its mechanisms with practised skill.
[…]
London’s Tavistock Clinic, home to England’s Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), became increasingly beset with complaints and controversy. Last summer, it was closed. Scotland has its own Gids centre: the Sandyford Clinic, in Glasgow. It, too, began to receive a growing list of complaints. Last September, Sinéad Watson, who started to identify as a man aged 20, and who had been prescribed testosterone treatments and had a double mastectomy, told UnHerd that she bitterly regrets it, and called for Sandyford to be closed.
The procedures and overall approaches at the Tavistock and Sandyford are not of liberation and joy, but of young men and women inadequately advised by clinicians who were, as one report noted, more concerned with “putting them quickly onto a pathway to transition”. These considerations closed the Tavistock Gids and now threaten Sandyford: they also inform the decision of the UK Government to animate a Section 35 Order under the 1998 Scotland Act — the legal basis for the Scottish parliament — which has, for the present, stymied the Scots nationalists’ momentum.
John McDermott is an American writer who sympathetically profiled anti-trans bigots for the New York Times.
McDermott takes issue with this profile and its entire framing, stating on April 10, 2023: “Insinuating I’m anti-trans is demonstrably false. I’ve never written a single sentence that attacks trans people or gender ideology.” The term gender ideology is an anti-trans dog whistle used widely among anti-transgender activists and religious conservatives.
For the Harvard-educated journalist who serves as Africa correspondent for The Economist and graduated from London School of Economics on a Fulbright Scholarship, see John McDermott.
Background
John Michael McDermott was born October 5, 1987. McDermott grew up in Illinois and graduated from Oak Park-River Forest High School in 2006, then earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010.
McDermott has written for Inc., Advertising Age, Digiday, Esquire, and MEL Magazine. McDermott has also freelanced for The New York Times, WIRED, Politico, The Atlantic, Playboy, Vice, Fast Company and the Chicago Tribune.
2017 MEL piece
McDermott waded into the subject of transgender athletes following Andraya Yearwood’s high school track wins, using the anti-trans dog whistle “biological sex”:
McDermott wrote a 2019 puff piece about anti-transgender media figures for the New York Times. The piece was greenlit and published in the Styles section by Choire Sicha.
As with any “cisgender people under siege” type article, McDermott’s piece presents these bigots as fearless truth-tellers akin to Galileo. McDermott interviewed zero trans people or media watchdogs critical of these bigots.
Attacking trans people is a get-rich-quick scheme that has proven effective for decades. Social scientists call McDermott’s tactic DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender). Biologist Julia Serano calls DARVO directed at trans people “the Dregerian narrative,” named after intellectual dark web member Alice Dreger, whom McDermott mentions.
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 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.”
McDermott, John (October 24, 2018). My high school years of white privilege. Chicago Tribune https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-america-to-me-docuseries-oak-park-river-forest-high-school-1025-story.html
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John Lichfield is a freelance writer based in France. Lichfield is the former Paris correspondent for The Independent.
2021 UnHerd piece
Lichfield wrote in anti-transgender publication UnHerd about a cartoon by Xavier Gorce that appeared in Le Monde. Gorce showed a small penguin asking a bigger penguin: “If I was to be abused by the adopted half-brother of the partner of my transgender father who is now my mother, would that be incest?” Many people felt the cartoon was in poor taste, and Le Monde apologized while leaving it up.
Lichfield’ spends his ‘s article makes a tendentious connection between transgender people and Islamist terrorists who shot up the offices of Charlie Hebdo over anti-Muslim cartoons.
Fluidity of gender is one thing. Fluidity of commitment to press freedom on the part of a great newspaper like Le Monde is another. If it’s permissible in the name of free speech to offend Muslims (even though that was not the intention of the Charlie cartoons) is it not permissible to offend transgender people (even though that was not Gore’s intention)? Is incest — long a taboo subject in France, as elsewhere — completely off-limits for satire or humour?
Susan Mineka is an American psychologist and anti-transgender activist. Mineka co-authored a college textbook on “abnormal psychology” that promotes many anti-transgender ideas, especially disease models like “autogynephilia.”
Mineka collaborated with other anti-trans activists while teaching at Northwestern University.
Background
Susan Mineka was born in June 1948 and grew up in Ithaca, New York. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, Mineka earned a doctorate from University of Pennsylvania in 1974. Mineka then did postdoctoral work at University of Wisconsin.
Mineka joined the faculty of Northwestern in 1987 and was named Professor Emerita in 2021.
Mineka was editor of The Journal of Abnormal Psychology from 1990 to 1994 and was editor for Emotion.
Hall, Julie (June 23, 2004). Psychology All-Stars: Susan Mineka.Association for Psychological Science https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/psychology-all-stars-susan-mineka
Ben Hamida S, Mineka S, Bailey JM (1998). Sex differences in perceived controllability of mate value: An evolutionary perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (4), 953 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.4.953
Susan Ann “Sue” Robins (born circa 1955) is an American transgender activist.
Note: for the American transgender activist based in Utah, see Susan Ann Robbins.
Background
Robins lives in the San Diego area and is involved in the local ham radio community, serving as editor of the newsletter for the Amateur Radio Club of El Cajon (WA6BGS).
Robins has been listed as involved in several LGBTQ activist organizations, including San Diego TransFamily, San Diego Transgender Community Coalition, and The Neutral Corner.
Robins is a well-known internet troll who has been banned from many social media platforms and websites. Blogger Bil Browning had to ban Robins from blog comments, and podcaster Rebecca Juro had to ban Robins from The Rebecca Juro Show. Activists Monica Helms and Monica Roberts have also described similar interactions.
Robins was involved in the USENET trolling at alt.support.srs and has also included a link to a site promoting the fake disease “Harry Benjamin Syndrome.”
Browning, Bil (March 4, 2008). I get fan mail. Bilerico Project. http://bilerico.lgbtqnation.com/2008/03/i_get_fan_mail.php
Abernathey, Marti (January 24, 2008). With Apologies to Radical Feminists. Bilerico Project. http://bilerico.lgbtqnation.com/2008/01/with_apologies_to_radical_feminists.php
Abernathey, Marti (October 14, 2007). When Will The GLB join the T? Bilerico Project. http://bilerico.lgbtqnation.com/2007/10/when_will_the_glb_join_the_t.php
Roberts, Monica (January 31, 2008). Hateraid From A WBT. TransGriot. https://transgriot.blogspot.com/2008/01/hateraid-from-wbt.html
Cooke, Suzan (March 2, 2009). Lynn Conway on Kenneth Zucker. Women Born Transsexual. https://womenborntranssexual.com/2009/03/02/lynn-conway-on-kenneth-zucker/
Note: an earlier version of this biography contained information which has been removed or corrected. My apologies for the mistake.
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Susan W. Coates is an American psychologist and a key figure in the pathologization of gender diversity. Coates and Kenneth Zucker developed non-affirming “interventions” for gender diverse children as part of their gender identity change efforts. Coates was involved in revising the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) to reflect these views.
Background
Susan Winship Coates was born in 1940. Coates earned a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence in 1962 and a master’s degree from Vassar in 1968. Coates earned a doctorate from New York University in 1976.
Coates served as Director of the Childhood Gender Identity Service at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center from 1980 to 1997. Coates served on the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. Coates has served on the teaching faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Coates has also served on the faculty of the Division of Sexuality and Gender in the Psychiatry Department of Columbia University.
In addition to work on childhood trauma, Coates has been an expert witness in a number of prominent trials, including the custody battle between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Coates had seen their child Satchel Ronan Farrow professionally.
Coates or someone closely associated has also heavily edited her Wikipedia biography to remove material Coates does not want reported.
Disease models of gender identity and expression
In 1989, a colleague summarized Coates’ presentation on the topic as follows:
Susan Coates spoke about “Conflict in Gender Identity of Boys.” She has studied boys with extreme boyhood femininity. All the boys in her study wished to be girls, preferred female activities, avoided rough-and-tumble play and liked cross-dressing. These boys all had other pervasive difficulties such as separation anxiety and depression. The mothers were often borderline narcissistic, depressed, dependent women who devalued men. Many of the mothers had been severely traumatized when their sons were two or three years of age. She postulated that maternal psychopathology impairs the child’s separation-individuation process. In order not to lose “Mommy” he merges with “Mommy.” Dr. Coates invoked a bio-psycho-social model but emphasized that the specific biological influences predisposing to childhood G.F.O. have yet been identified.
Leiter (1989)
In 1994, Coates spoke with the New York Times about therapy for “GIDC”:
With therapy, younger kids usually come to accept their own gender and feel good about their temperament. When we go back to evaluate them three years or so after therapy, they don’t have compulsive cross-gender fantasies anymore, or often don’t remember them. But if you don’t treat it until 9 or 10, it’s much harder to turn around. And beyond age 12 or so, there’s a good chance they’re on course to become a transsexual as adults.
(Goleman 1994)
Coates reiterated that maternal trauma when the child was two or three was often a factor (Goleman 1994). Coates reported with Kenneth Zucker that five to thirty times as many boys are treated for “GIDC” (Coates 1992).
In 2008, Coates published these “intervention” techniques for gender diverse children:
This paper reviews the origins of gender identity issues in preschool boys and presents an overview of treatment strategies for working with parents of boys and with the boy. The goals of treatment are to reestablish a secure attachment relationship with both of his parents, to develop a range of coping mechanisms for handling separation anxiety and aggression, to help the child to understand and enjoy his temperament, to help the child to be able to have same sex friendships, to develop gender flexibility and most importantly, restore his self esteem and his sense of authenticity. Specific treatment interventions are reviewed.
Coates (2008)
Selected publications by Coates
Listed by date of publication
Coates S, Lord M, Jakabovics E (1975). Field dependence-independence, social-non-social play and sex differences in pre-school children. Percept Mot Skills. Feb 1975 40:1, pp. 195-202 https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1975.40.1.195
Coates SW (1985). Extreme boyhood femininity: Overview and new research findings. In Ruth Corn, Zira DeFries, Richard C. Friedman, eds. Sexuality: New perspectives. Greenwood Press ISBN 9780313242076
Coates SW, Person ES (1986). Extreme boyhood femininity: isolated behavior or pervasive disorder? J Am Acad Child Psychiatry. 1985 Nov;24(6):702-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0002-7138(10)60113-6
Bradley SJ, Blanchard R, Coates SW, Green R, Levine SB, Meyer-Bahlburg HFL, Pauly IB, Zucker KJ (1991). Interim report of the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders. Archives of Sexual Behavior Volume 20, Number 4 / August, 1991 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01542614
Coates SW, Friedman RC, Wolfe S (1991). The etiology of boyhood gender identity disorder: a model for integrating temperament, development, and psychodynamics. Psychoanal. Dial., 1:481-523. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481889109538916
Coates S, Zucker KJ (1992). Gender identity disorders in children. In Kestenbaum CJ, Williams DT (Eds.) Handbook of clinical assessment of children and adolescents NYU Press. ISBN 0814746284
Marantz S, Coates SW (1991). Mothers of boys with gender identity disorder: a comparison of matched controls. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Vol. 30, Issue 2, pp. 310–315). https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-199103000-00022
Zucker KJ, Lozinski JA, Bradley SJ, Doering RW (1992). Sex-typed responses in the Rorschach protocols of children with gender identity disorder. Journal of Personality Assessment, Volume 58, Issue 2 April 1992 , pages 295 – 310. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa5802_9
Zucker KJ, Green R, Coates S, Zuger B, Cohen-Kettenis PT, Zecca GM, Lertora V, Money J, Hahn-Burke S, Bradley SJ, Blanchard R. Sibling sex ratio of boys with gender identity disorder. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1997 Jul;38(5):543-51. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1997.tb01541.x
Coates SW, Wolfe S. Gender identity disorder in boys: the interface of constitution and early experience. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 1995, 51:6-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/07351699509534015
Coates SW (2008). Intervention with preschool boys with gender identity issues. Neuropsychiatrie de l’Enfance et de l’Adolescence 56/6 (2008), 386-91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurenf.2008.06.004
Bryant K (2006). Making gender identity disorder of childhood: historical lessons for contemporary debates. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 3(3), 23-39. https://doi.org/10.1525/srsp.2006.3.3.23
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Susan Ann “Sue” Robbins is an American transgender activist who has been involved in philanthropic leadership at several LGBTQ activist organizations, including Utah Pride Center and Transgender Education Advocates (TEA) of Utah.
Note: for the American transgender activist based in California, see Susan Ann Robins.
Background
Robbins served in the Army from 1979 to 1999 and was married twice during that time. Robbins initially identified as a crossdresser and came out during the second marriage. After a period of negotiating a gender expression, in 2009 Robbins went out for a birthday makeover. Robbins then came out to an adult child and would go to events together. Robbins started Utah Tri-Ess Phi Delta chapter in 2011 and started hormones in 2014.
Robbins earned an Associates degree in computer studies from University of Maryland in 1995. Robbins then supervised training development for the US Army Signal Corps based at Fort Gordon, Georgia. Robbins then worked as an operations manager at Scientific Atlanta’s customer training center, then worked as a test engineer at L3 Technologies and L3Harris Technologies.
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“Tish Still” is the pen name of Tish Naughton, a British anti-transgender activist. Naughton is an unaccepting parent of a transgender child.
Background
Patricia “Tish” Naughton identifies as “a proud radical feminist mum” who is “spreading awareness about the impact of gender ideology on women’s rights.”
Naughton identified in UnHerd as “the mother of a son who identifies as part of the transgender community.”
Anti-transgender activism
Naughton runs a website called Gender Critical Woman Blog. Naughton has done interviews with Erin Brewer, James of @HumanGayMale, Graham Linehan, Isla Macy of Parents Against Gender Ideology in Schools, Woman’s Place UK, and Women’s Declaration International (WDI). Naughton is a contributor to anti-trans blog Reduxx.
Naughton has signed several open letters and petitions, including
a letter to the editor of The Times prepared by LGB Alliance characterizing gender affirming care for minors as “conversion therapy.” (2021)
support for anti-trans activist Allison Bailey “[in] the name of parents whose Gay Offspring are once again believing they are #BornWrong thanks to all the teaching materials supplied by Stonewall or with their endorsement.” (2021)
a petition titled Beyond WPATH attacking WPATH (2022)
an open letter fo United Nations commissioners supporting anti-trans activist Reem Alalem’s criticisms of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill (2022)
an open letter to Liz Truss and Boris Johnson claiming a Truss letter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission “undermines” EHRC’s upcoming guidance on single-sex services (2022)
an open letter by Sex Matters supporting anti-transgender activist Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls (2023)
an open letter critical of a Maternity Gender Inclusion Programme for midwives with information on trans people who give birth (2023)
the WHO Decides petition targeting trans-supportive experts convened by the World Health Organization (2024)
Naughton, Tish et al. (June 2, 2019). Trans ideology is damaging children.The Times https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/trans-ideology-is-damaging-children-k5nlhwmc8?region=global
