Sasha Ayad is a conservative American psychologist and a key figure in anti-transgender extremism. Ayad and collaborator Stella O’Malley are world leaders in the gender critical movement attacking transgender people, especially children.
Do not under any circumstances go to Ayad for any counseling of any kind. If you are a minor forced to see Ayad, do everything in your power to end the sessions and find a supportive local therapist instead.
Background
Sasha Ayad was born February 1, 1982 and attended University of Houston, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology.
Anti-trans activism
Ayad is connected to a number of anti-trans organizations, most of which are just part of a web farm with reciprocal links to make Ayadâs allies and their fringe ideologies seem more numerous and influential than they are.
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Martin Kafka is an American psychiatrist who subscribes to a number of disease models of human sexuality, including ones that are sometimes applied to trans and gender diverse people:
He served as a member of the Sexual and Gender Disorders Working Group (Paraphilias Sub-Committee) of the American Psychiatric Association for the formulation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), 5th Edition.
Background
Martin Paul Kafka was born in May 1947. He graduated from Columbia College in 1968, then earned his medical degree in 1973 from SUNY Downstate Medical Center. He completed his psychiatric residency at the University of Michigan in 1977. In 1999 Kafka was elected a full member of the International Academy of Sex Research.Â
References
Kafka MP, Henne J (). The Paraphilia-Related Disorders: An Empirical Investigation of Nonparaphilic Hypersexuality Disorders in Outpatient Males. J Sex Marital Ther. 1999 Oct-Dec;25(4):305-19. doi: 10.1080/00926239908404008
Tavris claims sexual orientation change efforts like “conversion therapy” are terrible, but gender identity change efforts are completely different.
Background
Carol Anne Tavris was born September 17, 1944 and grew up in Los Angeles. Tavris’s parent Dorothy was a lawyer, and parent Sam died when Tavris was 11.
Tavris earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and sociology from Brandeis University. Tavris then earned a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan.
Tavris was married to actor Ronan David O’Casey (1922-2012).
Tavris has written several widely-used psychology textbooks.
Anti-transgender activism
Tavris and other anti-transgender extremists like Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers have been logrolling for each other for years.
In 2022, Tavris published a piece in Skeptic repeating transphobic talking points packaged as “skepticism.”
Today, once again, the public is hearing only one side of an emotionally compelling issue: the transgender story. Once again, distinctions are ignored, this time between people for whom identification with the other sex began in early childhood and those whose rapid onset gender dysphoria started during adolescence.Â
[…]
 Saying you suffer from âgender dysphoriaâ is cool and common, just as saying you were sexually abused in your youth once was.Â
Tarvis is especially scornful of an On the Media episode, claiming it did not give time to the ex-transgender movement:
In its most glaring omission, âOn the Mediaâ said not a word about the âdesisters,â a term often used for those who make a social transition (changing their names and pronouns) but do not persist in having surgery and hormones or changing their gender identity, and often change back; or about the many (possibly thousands of) âdetransitionersâ who now regret that they had medical procedures. Many of them are bitter and angry that they have had irreversible voice and hair growth changes, underwent surgical procedures that cannot be corrected, and have become infertile.Â
[…]
Many gender professionals have marginalized, bullied, and tormented their colleagues who disagree. Politically organized âtransactivistsâ protest that any research on, say, factors contributing to the rise of cases of gender transition, the potentially negative consequences of transitioning, or the importance of counseling and treatment before transitioning are indications of the unacceptable idea that gender transition is a pathological problem or disorder.Â
[…]
But we may, at last, be entering a new phase. As usual, we can thank the first wave of writers who have refused to be cowed or bullied â Abigail Shrier in Irreversible Damage, Kathleen Stock in Material Girls, Helen Joyce in Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.Â
[…]
In November, 2021, Laura Edwards-Leeper and Erica Anderson, two psychologists whose practice has been devoted to offering transgender patients ethical, evidence-based treatment, wrote an editorial in the Washington Post. Their trans-supporting credentials are flawless.Â
Tavris also cites âThe Gender Affirmative Treatment Model for Youth with Gender Dysphoria: A Medical Advance or Dangerous Medicine?â by Alison Clayton.
“My thanks to Leonore Tiefer, PhD, for her resources, advice, and expertise.”
Selected publications
Estrogen Matters: Why taking hormones in menopause can improve women’s well-being and lengthen their lives–without raising the risk of breast cancer (with Avrum Bluming). Little, Brown Spark 2018 ISBN 978-0-316-48120-5
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (with Elliot Aronson) Mariner Books, 2020, ISBN 978-0-358-32961-9
Psychology (with Carole Wade, Samuel Sommers, and Lisa Shin) 2020, Pearson, ISBN 978-0-13-521262-2)
Psychobabble and Biobunk: Using Psychology to Think Critically About Issues in the News (Pearson, 2011, ISBN 978-0-205-01591-7)
The Scientist and the Humanist: A festschrift in honor of Elliot Aronson (with Marti Hope Gonzales and Joshua Aronson) (New York: Psychology Press, 2010 ISBN 978-1848728677)
Psychology in Perspective (with Carole Wade, Samuel Sommers, and Lisa Shin) (Three editions, latest 2001, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-028326-6)
The Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex (Simon & Schuster, 1992) (ISBN 0-671-66274-0)
Note: In 2025, this site phased out AI illustrations after artist feedback. The previous illustration is here.
Oren Amitay is a Canadian psychologist and anti-transgender activist involved in the gender critical movement.
Background
Oren Aaron Amitay was born in 1968. Amitay attended York University, earning a master’s degree in 1999 and a doctorate in 2006.
In 2014 Amitay founded Straight Kill Films and began promoting the work of several members of the so-called intellectual dark web, described as a gateway to the far right.
In 2017 Amitay was involved in a controversy over transgender discussions on the Ontario Psychological Association (OPA) listserv.
In 2019 Amitay was suspended from Twitter for gender critical activity and investigated for misconduct by employer Ryerson University.
Amitay, Oren (2018). Complete narrative of DocAmitay’s OPA listserv history [PDF] http://docamitay.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Complete_Narrative_of_DocAmitays_OPA_Listserv_History.pdf See also YouTube: 12345
Soh is a member of the intellectual dark web, a loose alliance described as a “gateway to the far right.” Soh has promoted a number of disease models of gender identity and expression:
Debra W. Soh was born in 1990, is of Malaysian-Chinese descent, and grew up in Canada.
Soh earned a doctorate from York University in 2016. Soh’s dissertation is titled: “Functional and Structural Neuroimaging of Paraphilic Hypersexuality in Men” The examining committee included K. Schneider, James Cantor, G. Turner, D. Stevens, D. Vanderlann, C. Davis
Soh left academia in order to promote anti-trans views in the media.
Anti-transgender activism
Soh authored the 2020 anti-trans book The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society.
Mark Roger Lepper (born December 5, 1944) is an American psychologist. He was the Psychology Department Chair at Stanford University who allowed J. Michael Bailey to engage in the vulgar misuse of gender diverse children on Stanford’s campus.
Stanford biologist Joan Roughgarden had contacted Lepper when she learned of Bailey’s upcoming lecture. From her 2003 report on the event:
I learned in March that the psychology department at Stanford had invited Bailey to give a regularly scheduled departmental seminar. I alerted the chair of psychology to the considerable risk attending such a speaker, because Baileyâs findings were of dubious quality, and likely to hurt and offend people. He said that the seminar series could accommodate a marginal speaker every now and then, and invited me to attend. My caution went unnoticed however, and Bailey was introduced as âcontroversial,â someone whose work has âimportant implications for law, medicine and social policyâ and as a âsuccessful teacher whose courses feature transsexuals stripping after class.â
What ensued was the most humiliating lecture Iâve ever personally attended.
David I. Miller is an American psychologist who published pathologizing research on sex and gender minorities while working with J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern University.
Background
Miller earned a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Physics from Harvey Mudd College in 2010, then did graduate work at University of California â Berkeley before earning a Ph.D. in Psychology from Northwestern University in 2018.
Hsu, K. J., Rosenthal, A. M., Miller, D. I., & Bailey, J. M. (2017). Sexual arousal patterns of autogynephilic male cross-dressers. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46, 247-253. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0826-z
Hsu KJ, Rosenthal AM, Miller DI, Bailey JM (2016). Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women. Psychological Medicine, 46, 819â827. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291715002317
Robinn Joachim Mentz Cruz MA, LMHC (born August 10, 1972) is an American therapist and workout instructor. Cruz is credited as Robinn J. Cruz by Anne Lawrence in the acknowledgements of the 2013 book Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies. That book presents transgender people as motivated to transition by a sex-fueled mental illness called “autogynephilia.”
Background
Mentz graduated from Argosy University in Seattle in 2007 and was likely a classmate of Lawrence’s. That school has since closed.
Mentz has worked at RJM Psychological Services, PLLC in Tacoma Washington since 2007.
MaĆgorzata Anna Ćamacz (1949â2017) was a Polish psychologist who also published in English as Margaret Lamacz. Her work focused on behavioral genetics and disease models of sex and gender minorities. She is the co-author of the 1989 book Vandalized Lovemaps: Paraphilic Outcome of 7 Cases in Pediatric Sexology with John Money.
Background
While earning her Master’s degree and Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, Lamacz worked with Money doing clinical psychology and pediatric sexology. There, she worked with transgender clients, as well as children and adolescents referred for developmental or behavioral issues related to sex and sexuality.
Lamacz went on to work on evidence of genetic susceptibility to schizophrenia. This work was done with fellow Catholic Paul McHugh, who shut down the gender clinic at Johns Hopkins.
According to a Polish newspaper, Ćamacz died after a long illness, and her ashes were interred at the Church of St. Giles in KrakĂłw.
Vandalized Lovemaps (1989)
Her work with Money on paraphilia led to the concept of “vandalized lovemaps.” She is co-author of his 1989 book Vandalized Lovemaps: Paraphilic Outcome of 7 Cases in Pediatric Sexology. Their book profiles seven young people based on Money’s neurodevelopmental theory of paraphilia development, based on observations in non-human animals. Money and Lamacz then make observations about each outcome once the seven are adults. Because they advocated intervention in the lives of sexually different children, some colleagues criticized their approach. She and Money proposed the term “gynemimetophilia” as part of a paraphilic model of attraction to transwomen.
Selected works
Money J, Lamacz M (1984). Gynemimesis and gynemimetophilia: individual and cross-cultural manifestations of a gender-coping strategy hitherto unnamed. Comparative Psychiatry. 1984 Jul-Aug;25(4):392-403. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-440X(84)90074-9
Money J, Lamacz M (1987). Genital examination and exposure experienced as nosocomial sexual abuse in childhood. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1987 Dec;175(12):713-21. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-198712000-00002
Pulver AE, Nestadt G, Goldberg R, Shprintzen RJ, Lamacz M, Wolyniec PS, Morrow B, Karayiorgou M, Antonarakis SE, Housman D, et al. (1994). Psychotic illness in patients diagnosed with velo-cardio-facial syndrome and their relatives. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 1994, Volume 182, Issue 8, pp. 476-477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00005053-199408000-00010
Blouin JL, Dombroski BA, Nath SK, Lasseter VK, Wolyniec PS, Nestadt G, Thornquist M, Ullrich G, McGrath J, Kasch L, Lamacz M, Thomas MG, Gehrig C, Radhakrishna U, Snyder SE, Balk KG, Neufeld K, Swartz KL, DeMarchi N, Papadimitriou GN, Dikeos DG, Stefanis CN, Chakravarti A, Childs B, Housman DE, Kazazian HH, Antonarakis SE, Pulver AE (1998). Schizophrenia susceptibility loci on chromosomes 13q32 and 8p21. Nature Genetics 20, 70 – 73 (1998) https://doi.org/10.1038/1734
Karayiorgou M, Kasch L, Lasseter VK, Hwang J, Elango R, Bernardini DJ, Kimberland M, Babb R, Francomano CA, Wolyniec PS, et al. (2005). Report from the Maryland Epidemiology Schizophrenia Linkage Study: no evidence for linkage between schizophrenia and a number of candidate and other genomic regions using a complex dominant model. American Journal of Medical Genetics Volume 54 Issue 4, Pages 345 – 353. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.1320540413
Pulver AE, Karayiorgou M, Wolyniec PS, Lasseter VK, Kasch L, Nestadt G, Antonarakis S, Housman D, Kazazian HH, Meyers D, et al. (2005). Sequential strategy to identify a susceptibility gene for schizophrenia: report of potential linkage on chromosome 22q12-q13.1: Part 1. American Journal of Medical Genetics Volume 54 Issue 1, Pages 36-43. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.1320540108
References
Hurtig AL, Levine SB, Weinrich JD. Vandalized Lovemaps [Review]. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 20, Number 3 / June, 1991 319-329. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541850
Francoeur RT, Taverner WJ (2004). Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Human Sexuality . McGraw-Hill College, ISBN 9780072371314 ASIN: B000OURRP2
Millon T, Blaney PH, Davis RD (1999). Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology (Oxford Series in Clinical Psychology) Oxford University Press, USA, ASIN B000OKSETU
Associated Press (September 3, 1998). New clues to schizophrenia. Rocky Mountain News
“Dr. MaĆgorzata Ćamacz, a psychologist, died on November 2, 2017 after a serious illness.” Her ashes were interred at the Catholic church in Raciborsko, a village southeast of KrakĂłw.
