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
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
Gerald Posner is an American writer, plagiarist, and anti-transgender activist.
Anti-transgender activism is a family business; Posner’s spouse Patricia Denise Levene “Trisha” Posner (born March 10, 1951) is also involved in the anti-transgender movement.
Background and plagiarism
Gerald Leo Posner was born May 20, 1954 in San Francisco. Posner’s parent Jerry was raised Jewish and was a shipping executive. Posner’s parent Gloria L. Posner was Catholic, and Posner was raised Catholic.
Posner attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory and earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1975. Posner earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1978. Posner practiced law until 1986.
Posner’s books include:
Mengele: The Complete Story (1986)
Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies: The New Mafia (1988)
Hitler’s Children: Sons and Daughters of Leaders of the Third Reich Talk About Their Fathers and Themselves (1991)
Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993)
Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998)
Motown: Music, Money, Sex and Power (2003)
Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 (2003)
Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Secret Saudi-U.S. Connection (2005)
Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth, and Power–A Dispatch from the Beach (2009)
God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican (2015)
Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (2020)
Posner was Chief Investigative Reporter for The Daily Beast, until resigning over serial plagiarism charges in 2010. Posner’s excuse at the time was:
in the quick turnaround I then obviously lost sight of the fact that it belonged to a published source instead of being something I wrote.
Posner (2010)
It later emerged that The Daily Beast was the tip of the iceberg. Posner’s books also had extensive instances of plagiarism, most notably Miami Babylon. Author Frank Owen demonstrated in court filings that Posner plagiarized liberally from Owen’s 2003 book Clubland. Via the Miami Herald, a publication that was also one of Posner’s many plagiarism victims:
Earlier this week, Posner, who holds a law degree, told The Associated Press that a flawed research methodology caused him to put passages from Clubland in Miami Babylon without proper credit. Last month, Posner quit as chief investigative reporter of The Daily Beast after a Slate.com writer noted several instances in which Posner used material from Miami Herald articles.
In 2013, Posner was named in a complex federal lawsuit brought by Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, against Posner’s book agent Samuel Pinkus. Via Vanity Fair:
Filed in New York District Court, the suit names Pinkus, his wife, former TV-news writer Leigh Ann Winick, and Gerald Posner, a Miami-based attorney and investigative journalist with a questionable reputation, as defendants. […]
When Posner filed the incorporation papers of Philologus Procurator, Inc., [PPI] in 2011, he was digging out from a journalism scandal. In February of the previous year, he had resigned as chief investigative reporter of the Daily Beast Web site following allegations of serial plagiarism. Later that same year, he was sued for copyright infringement by the Miami writer Frank Owen, who charged Posner with such pervasive plagiarism in his book Miami Babylon from Owen’s book about Miami, Clubland, that, as Owen said in his lawsuit at the time, Posner should be “eligible for the Guinness Book of World Records for copyright infringement.” (The lawsuit was settled out of court.)
By the end of 2012 it seemed Posner wanted out. He filed an amendment stating that he was no longer associated with PPI: “As of December 31, 2012, Sam Pinkus is the full and only owner of all shares of this corporation.”
Posner was later dismissed with prejudice from Lee’s suit, and the case was ultimately settled.
Posner and spouse are 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-trans activism
In 2023, Posner joined his wife in attacking healthcare for transgender children and adolescents. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about “transgenderism,” he criticized the legal off-label use of puberty blockers to halt unwanted puberty.
As an example of how Posner spins things, he mentions that puberty blockers are FDA approved to delay puberty, but he claims it is only for “a rare childhood disease caused by a genetic mutation.” He deliberately avoids saying “precocious puberty” because it undermines his entire thesis.
Delaying puberty, including in trans children and adolescents, is usually done to appease parents in addition to helping young people experiencing unwanted puberty. Most gender diverse youth (at least 19 in 20 in one study) continue transition, and many would prefer to go directly to hormones without delay. Posner concludes:
Ignoring the long-term dangers posed by unrestricted off-label dispensing of powerful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, combined with the large overdiagnosis of minors as gender dysphoric, borders on child abuse.
If a minor wants to halt unwanted puberty for whatever reason, and their family and healthcare provider agree after weighing the potential risks and benefits, that option should be available to all Americans.
Shafer, Jack (February 5, 2010). Plagiarism at the Daily Beast.Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/plagiarism-at-the-daily-beast-gerald-posner-concedes-lifting-from-the-miami-herald.html
Shafer, Jack (February 8, 2010). More Posner Plagiarism.Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/case-reopened-reviewing-new-examples-of-plagiarism-by-the-daily-beast-s-gerald-posner.html
Shafer, Jack (February 11, 2010). The Posner Plagiarism Perplex.Slate https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/making-sense-of-the-blog-statement-by-former-daily-beast-reporter-gerald-posner.html
Rothaus, Steve (Mar 20, 2010 ). Authors confront each other amid book scandal. Miami Herald https://www.miamiherald.com/living/article1935676.html [archive]
Staff report (February 28, 2010). Gloria Posner. San Francisco Chronicle https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/gloria-posner-obituary?id=21926876
Elfrink, Tim (May 10, 2020). Posner Plagiarizes Again. Miami New Times https://www.miaminewtimes.com/2010-05-20/news/posner-plagiarizes-again/ [archive]
Seal, Mark (August 2013). To Steal* a Mockingbird*?Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/08/harper-lee-dispute-royalties
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (2013). Lee v. Pinkus et al. (1:2013-cv-03000) https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2013cv03000/411469 https://www.sdnyblog.com/files/2013/07/13-Civ.-3000-2013.05.03-Complaint.pdf
Posner, Gerald (June 7, 2023). Opinion: The Truth About ‘Puberty Blockers.’Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-puberty-blockers-overdiagnosis-gender-dysphoria-children-933cd8fb
Peter Gajdics is a Canadian writer and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Peter Gajdics was born and raised in Vancouver. After undergoing “conversion therapy” in his 20s, he became a vocal opponent of the practice. He is the author of the 2017 book The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir.
Anti-transgender activism
Rather than acknowledge that we all face the same coercive “therapies” from hateful psychologists, Gajdics complained in Quillette that the “trans rights lobby” had co-opted the movement to end conversion therapy.
Kathleen Hayes is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Hayes believes the trans community is a “cult.”
Background
Hayes bas born in ~1968 and attended University of California, Berkeley. While there she joined the Spartacus Youth League, a revolutionary communist organization that espoused Trotskyist philosophies. Via Washington Post:
Kathleen Hayes, a Berkeley alum now working with the Spartacus Youth League, pauses from her task of passing out copies of the Workers Vanguard newspaper. She finds the disc disgusting: “The idea that the university that tried to squelch free speech is now putting up a monument to free speech is priceless. This is hypocritical. We know they can run anyone whose views they don’t like off campus.”
She said in 2022,”Since quitting in 2016, I’ve devoted myself to trying to better understand how and why so many leftists—including myself all those years—imbibe and express antisemitism.”
Hayes earned a master’s degree at Birkbeck, University of London, in 2020. Her thesis was ‘Marxism, the “Jewish Question” and the Holocaust: The Spectre Behind Contemporary Left Antisemitism.’
Her essay ‘Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir,’ was published in Fathom in 2021. At the time, she planned to work toward a doctorate.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2022 she presented a paper titled ‘Punch a TERF’ and ‘Smash the Zionists’: Misogyny and Antisemitism in the Contemporary Western Left:
Authoritarianism thrives on a dialectic of love and hate. Lonely, spiritually thirsty people in a fragmented modern world turn to authoritarian groups and movements not only for a sense of belonging and meaning, but what they experience as love. The exquisite comradeship the authoritarian group provides can only be enjoyed against another group, one deemed righteous to hate. That authoritarianism invariably fosters prejudice was best understood by the Frankfurt School, who noted that ‘the authoritarian must [their emphasis], out of an inner necessity, turn his aggression against out groups’. They also found authoritarians hated predictable clusters of groups: their typical rightwing antisemitic subject also hated black people, foreigners and gays and had retrograde views about women.
Today many of the same illiberal, authoritarian ‘progressives’ who spew antisemitism support a misogynist rampage in the form of transactivism. Much as anti-Zionist vitriol is really directed against all Jews, transactivists’ threats against ‘TERFs’ implicitly target all women. Both campaigns are driven by perverse claims about ‘privilege’. For the authoritarian left, (‘Zionist’) Jews and (‘cisgender’) women are ‘oppressors’, so hating them is not only just, but obligatory. Race—the suggestion that both groups are ‘white’—plays an essential role. The contemporary struggle against antisemitism therefore calls for also grappling with the threatening, bizarre, overtly anti-materialist offensive occurring on the terrain of gender.
She posted a similar piece in Quillette titled “Gender Ideology’s True Believers.”
Boudreau, John (July 28, 1992). Up against the scrawl.Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1992/07/28/up-against-the-scrawl/1d731e33-1992-486c-b299-d60786510ada/
Bernard Lane is an Australian writer and anti-transgender activist. Lane has written for anti-trans platforms including The Australian, MercatorNet, Quillette, and Substack.
Background
Lane earned a bachelor’s degree from UNSW in 1984.
Anti-transgender activism
Lane worked at The Australian from 1991 to 2022. While there, Lane created a dedicated section to attack transgender people.
In 2022 Lane began self-publishing the anti-transgender Substack Gender Clinic News.
In 2024 anti-trans psychiatrist Mikael Landén leaked a pre-publication paper by Sallie Baxendale to Lane. Baxendale’s academic literature review reflected Landén’s view that puberty blockade should be strictly controlled because of unknown risks, particularly cognitive effects. Baxendale then complained in anti-trans publication UnHerd, including a piece about how the literature review written by Baxendale was rejected by three journals as well as accepted by Acta Paediatrica. Baxendale claimed, “it wasn’t the methods they objected to, it was the actual findings.” Of the rejection reasons that Baxendale shared, all were about the obvious bias of the author and the stigmatizing potential from how the material is tendentiously presented.
References
Lane, Bernard (March 15, 2022). New media outlet examines the evidence for ‘gender medicine.’ MercatorNet https://mercatornet.com/new-media-outlet-examines-the-evidence-for-gender-medicine/78051/ [archive]
Konstantin Kisin is a Russian-British podcaster and anti-transgender activist. Kisin gets money and attention by attacking the trans community, especially gender diverse children.
Konstantin Vadimovich Kisin was born on December 25, 1982 in the former Soviet Union and grew up in the United Kingdom after Kisin’s family emigrated there in 1994.
Beginning around 2016, Kisin began performing on stage at numerous venues. In 2018, Kisin was invited to perform at a Unicef fundraiser at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies. Kisin refused to sign a behavioural agreement requiring that controversial topics be covered in a respectful and non-abusive way.
Kisin’s 2019 show Orwell That Ends Well played at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Kisin and Alina Kisina (born January 21, 1983 in Ukraine) were married on November 28, 2003. They have a child, Nikolai Kisin, born May 12, 2022.
Kisin is author of the 2022 book An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West.
Anti-trans activism
Kisin and Foster founded the hard-right podcast TRIGGERnometry in 2018. In 2020 they co-founded Avian Appreciation Limited in the UK.
Kisin and Foster have platformed over 100 of the world’s most notable anti-trans activists and gender critical public figures.
In anti-trans publication Quillette, Kisin complained about alleged mistreatment due to the podcast:
Even though my co-host is an old school leftie and I’m a centrist with a strong libertarian bent, we’ve been banned from comedy clubs and lost friendships in the industry over our “right-wing podcast.”
We’ve interviewed people about the evolutionary origins of racism, the biological differences between men and women, the gender pay gap, populism, capitalism, socialism, communism and much else besides, but nothing has made us pariahs quite like defending free speech.
I have probably met and interviewed more transgender people, gender-critical feminists, detransitioners and people engaged in the “trans debate” than almost anyone. In preparation for these conversations, I’ve read extensively about the origins of gender ideology, the medical realities of transition and the ideological underpinnings of this emerging phenomenon.
There is no such thing as 'gender-affirming care for minors'.
The correct term is 'cutting bits off confused children'.
— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) May 29, 2023
References
McCubbin, Kelly (February 11, 2023). Konstantin Kisin Is Taking You for a Ride.Medium https://medium.com/@MightyMicroscope/konstantin-kisin-is-taking-you-for-a-ride-8796ec59ff11
“Vera Lindner” is the stage name of Penka Kouneva, a Bulgarian-American composer and anti-transgender activist. Kouneva is a producer of the 2023 anti-trans film No Way Back, directed by Laura VanZee-Taylor. As producer, Kouneva is responsible for including convicted sex offender David Arthur Kendall as one of the ex-trans activists featured.
Prior to engaging in anti-trans activism, Kouneva worked on the trans-created Matrix franchise and has done orchestration for the Oscars, many video games, and many science fiction media projects.
Background
Penka Dinkova Kouneva (Пенка Динкова Кунев) was born February 25, 1967 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Kouneva came to the US in 1990 to attend Duke University, earning a doctorate in 1997. In 2000 Kouneva moved to Los Angeles and brought several family members over.
Kouneva married musician Daniel M. Schweiger on August 29, 2004. Schweiger is a writer for assignmentx.com, buzzine.com, filmmusicmag.com, and Venice Magazine. Schweiger writes liner notes and has a composer podcast called On the Score.
They have one child born in 2006. Kouneva has stated, “The defining experience of my early 40’s was the birth of my daughter,” which came at a creative crossroads.
Kouneva is sometimes credited as Penka Kouneva-Schweiger. Because their child is likely a beneficiary of the Schweiger & Kouneva Living Trust, it’s likely not possible for their child to share any opinions that contradict Kouneva’s.
Kouneva has released several albums and has been involved in composing and orchestrating many projects. Kouneva frequently collaborates on orchestration with composers who include Steve Jablonsky, Nathan Barr, Don Davis, and Hans Zimmer.
Selected video games
Kouneva has created work for Atari, Activision, Blizzard, EA, Microsoft, Sony, Steam, Ubisoft, among others.
Enter the Matrix (2002)
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria (2005) & Legion (2016)
Call of Duty 3 (2006)
Transformers: The Game (2007) & Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Gears of War 2 & 3 (2008 & 2011)
The Sims 3 (2009)
Prince Of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (2010)
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (2010) & Heart of the Swarm (2013)
Dragon Age II (2011)
Kinect Disneyland Adventures (2011)
Diablo III (2012)
Overwatch 1 & 2 (2016 & 2022)
Selected film and television
Kouneva has created work for Disney, DreamWorks, Lionsgate, New Line, Paramount, Regent, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros., among others.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Hostel (2005 & 2007)
Transformers (2007)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)
The Oscars (2020)
Anti-transgender activism
Kourneva became an anti-trans activist at the height of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. Kouneva’s teenage child, who had previously come out as lesbian, came out as trans and asked to be referred to by a new name and masculine pronouns.
Kourneva was radicalized after reading the anti-trans book Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier.
Kourneva found a lesbian therapist, who affirmed the teen, much to Kourneva’s dismay. Kourneva refused their child’s requests for a binder and dietary supplements. Kourneva learned that the therapist suggested that Kourneva’s child speak with the family’s health insurance company about coverage for trans healthcare. That is when Kourneva pulled their child from therapy and left Los Angeles to have their child to volunteer on a farm. Concerned about losing custody because of these anti-trans views, Kourneva came up with a strategy:
What I had to do is show love, support, and kindness without affirming the delusion. Without affirming the ideology, and drawing a very clear boundary that you’re loved, you’re safe, but we will do absolutely nothing medical until you are 18.
In order to engage in anti-trans activism without having it connected to a lucrative career, Kouneva created the alias “Vera Lindner.”
Kouneva also uses the fictitious business name “Panacol Productions dba PKS, Inc.” PKS stands for “Penka Kouneva Studios, Inc.,” a California corporation Kouneva created in 2018. Under the Panacol banner, Kouneva produced the 2023 anti-trans film No Way Back.
The press release for the film was put out by Panacol and lists Kouneva as contact:
Eckerling, Debra L (August 3, 2018). Penka Kouneva Scores With Video Games.Jewish Journal https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/236837/penka-kouneva-scores-video-games/
American Federation of Musicians Local 47 (afm47.org)
Diana Fleischman is a Brazilian-American evolutionary psychologist and anti-transgender activist. Anti-trans activism is a family business; Fleischman’s spouse Geoffrey Miller also holds harmful views about sex and gender minorities.
Background
Diana Santos Fleischman was born in São Paulo, Brazil and grew up in the United States. Fleischman earned a bachelor’s degree from Oglethorpe University. Under advisor David Buss, Fleischman earned a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin 2009, then did postdoctorate work at UNC Chapel Hill.
In addition to evolutionary psychology, Fleischman is also a proponent of effective altruism, a philanthropic movement with a disproportionate number of anti-trans activists. The movement is best exemplified by cryptocurrency scammer Sam Bankman-Fried.
Fleischman is also a proponent of various aspects of eugenics, including polygenic embryo screening. Fleischman characterizes this as an aspect of transhumanism.
Fleischman and Geoffrey Miller married in 2019 and have one child.
Sex segregationism
Fleischman’s life’s work is shoring up the idea of a sex binary in humans. In a 2021 online course on “sex differences,” the syllabus included most of the key sex segregationists in academia.
The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality with Tom Booth and Paul Irwing
Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior: Eight Counterpoints with David A. Puts, David C. Geary, and David P. Schmitt
Peter Fitzgerald
Biological sex differences relevant to mental health with Timothy G. Dinan
Diana Fleischman:
“Most people miss this reason women don’t want casual sex”
(2014). Women’s disgust adaptations. In Weekes-Shackelford VA, & Shackelford TK (Eds.), Evolutionary perspectives on human sexual psychology and behavior
David C. Geary
The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education. with Gijsbert Stoet
Sex Differences in Children’s Play
Sex differences in social development from Male, Female by David Geary
Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior: Eight Counterpoints – Marco Del Giudice, David A. Puts, David C. Geary, and David P. Schmitt
His Standards or Hers? How Men and Women Define Success
Matt Ridley
Red Queen hypothesis in The Red Queen
Stuart Ritchie
Cordelia Fine’s “Testosterone Rex” — A Review
David P. Schmitt
Would you agree to sex with a total stranger?
The Truth about Sex Differences
Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior: Eight Counterpoints – Marco Del Giudice, David A. Puts, David C. Geary, and David P. Schmitt
Aurora Sola
The science of sex differences is nothing for feminists to be afraid of
Steve Stewart-Williams
Men women and STEM with Lewis G Halsey
Larry Summers
President Summers’ Remarks at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Jan. 14 2005
Bo Winegard
The Myth of Pervasive Misogyny with Corey Clark
Unlike most of these people, Fleischman at least mentions a few people who disagree with this ideology, most notably Cordelia Fine, Daphna Joel, and Gina Rippon.
Anti-LGBT activism
Fleischman is associated with Aporia, formerly known as Ideas Sleep Furiously. Matthew Archer helped found it in 2021. In 2023 Bo Winegard joined after a long run as a Quillette contributor, and Fleischman became a podcast host.
Fleischman appeared with Louise Perry to discuss sex robots.