Geoffrey Miller is an American evolutionary psychologist who holds a number of fringe views that are sex segregationist and anti-transgender.
Anti-transgender activism is a family business; Miller’s spouse Diana Fleischman is also an anti-trans activist.
Background
Geoffrey Franklin Miller was born on April 23, 1965 in Cincinnati, Ohio. After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology and psychology from Columbia University in 1987, Miller earned a doctorate in cognitive psychology from Stanford University in 1994. Miller took a position at University of New Mexico in 2001 and has written a number of books:
If you think autogynephilia is a 'fringe idea', you don't know anything about contemporary sex research, and you have no business writing about this issue.
When you hear the phrase 'trans woman', what is your first, reflexive, gut-level reaction about what this phrase means? 1) biological man who identifies as a woman 2) biological woman who identifies as a man 3) it confuses me; I have to think about it 4) other/just show results
Meredith Chivers is a Canadian psychologist who researches women’s sexuality. Chivers has also published harmful work about transgender people. This page of notes and references supplements the overview of Chivers’ work and harm it’s caused.
Catherine C Classen, Meredith L Chivers, Sara Urowitz, Lisa Barbera, David Wiljer, Susan O’Rinn, Sarah E Ferguson, Saskia Poels, Jos Bloemers, Kim van Rooij, Irwin Goldstein, Jeroen Gerritsen, Diana van Ham, Frederiek van Mameren, Meredith Chivers, Walter Everaerd, Hans Koppeschaar, Berend Olivier, Adriaan Tuiten, Richard Pittini, Sophie Grigoriadis, Laura Villegas, Lori E Ross
SageLab members
Meredith L. Chivers
Anna Chouchkova
Kaylee Clark
Samantha Dawson
Deryn Duesbery
Katherine Fretz
Shawna Girard
Lucas Hildebrand
Jackie S. Huberman
Graham Hutchings
Matthew Kan
Emily McBride
Michelle McCowan
Meghan McInnis
Nicole Persall
Kelly Suschinsky
Amanda Timmers
Samuel Yoon
References
Chivers, ML (August 30, 1999). Question about porn preferences. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&edition=&selm=1.-yri-24*1%40panix.com
This week, the Kinsey Institute will play host to the 29th annual conference for the International Academy of Sex Research. […] Meredith Chivers, who studies female sexuality at Northwestern University and traveled to the conference from Toronto, said she is particularly interested in the exploration of this topic.
“What I’m most looking forward to is having an opportunity to see where research in female sexuality is in lots of disciplines,” Chivers said. “I’m interested in seeing the contributions being made in the field of female sexuality and enriching my own ideas.”
Chivers said conferences like this are important because it is a chance to come face to face with other people in the field and see who is behind the research they have been reading.
“Sitting down and shooting ideas to each other is the real exciting part of conferences,” Chivers said.
Real (2003)
Everyone else took this as an opportunity to bash me, my advisor, and the research I do. It’s really a shame. Neither I, nor Mike Bailey, has any agenda. If folks took the time to read this research without negative preconceptions, they might see this. We know so little about female sexual arousal and I hope that this project might illuminate some of the misconceptions out there. Given the hostile reception, I think I’ll stop posting on this list.
Leopoldt, Jennifer and Jinna Yun (July 10, 2003). Sexuality research funding draws critics. Daily Northwestern http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/07/10/3f0cfb88ad9b7 [archive]
A Northwestern Ph.D. candidate will present results of sexual arousal research she conducted with NU Prof. J. Michael Bailey — which has drawn criticism from the Republican wing of Congress — when she speaks at a federally-funded sexuality conference next week. […] But Meredith Chivers, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology at NU who will speak about sexual arousal research she conducted with Bailey, said the conference does merit funding.
“Sexuality is an intrinsic part of being human and it’s a major oversight not to encourage research in this area and to support it,” Chivers said.
Bailey, a psychology professor who teaches human sexuality at NU, also defended the need for researchers to study sexuality.
Like the conference, Bailey and Chivers’ sexual arousal study also encountered criticism for obtaining government funding.
A $147,000 National Institutes of Health grant funded the research, which studied the effect of pornography on females to determine whether sexual arousal is as category specific for women as it is for men. […] Chivers said she was surprised at the controversy over funding for Bailey’s research and the sexuality conference. Bailey said he thought politicians singled out his and Chivers’ research because “it was easy for them to mischaracterize and make fun of.”
“They used our research to make their argument, but in fact I think our research is important and interesting, and scientists who know about the issues and what we’re doing have found it really cool,” he said.
Real, Bonnie (July 17, 2003). IU’s Kinsey Institute at center of sex research in week’s conference: Annual seminar gives researchers chance to discuss face-to-face. IDS News http://www.idsnews.com/story.php?id=17388
Lemonick, Michael D. (January 19, 2004). Biology: The chemistry of desire.TIME 163(3):68-72, 75. https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993148,00.html
Carey, Benedict (2005-07-05). “Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/straight-gay-or-lying-bisexuality-revisited.html
Denizet-Lewis, Benoit (2014-03-20). The scientific quest to prove bisexuality exists. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/magazine/the-scientific-quest-to-prove-bisexuality-exists.html
Mick, Hayley (January 5, 2010). Female desire more complicated. The Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/conditions/study-female-desire-more-complicated/article572656/
Bergner, Daniel (2009, Jan. 25). What do women want?The New York Times Magazine, p. 28. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html
McIlroy, Anne (February 27, 2009). Hot and bothered.The Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/hot-and-bothered/article714183/
Marcus Evans is a British psychoanalyst whose clientele has included trans and gender diverse people. Evans was a key critic of trans healthcare for gender diverse youth at the Tavistock. The clinic was later closed.
Evans and his wife Sue Evans co-authored the 2021 book Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults.
Evans graduated from Bembridge in 1976. He served as head of nursing at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust from 1998-2018). Evans was Clinical Director of the adult & adolescent departments between 2011 & 2015. In 2018 he began working in private practice.
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.
Stella O’Malley is a conservative Irish therapist and anti-transgender extremist. O’Malley is a global ringleader in the modern ex-transgender and gender critical movements and a major supporter of anti-transgender efforts worldwide.
O’Malley founded SPLC-designated anti-trans hate group Genspect. O’Malley frequently collaborates with American clinician Sasha Ayad to uplift other conservative and anti-transgender voices.
Do not under any circumstances go to Stella OâMalley for any counseling, trans or otherwise. If you are a minor forced to see O’Malley, do everything in your power to end the sessions and find supportive local resources instead.
Background
O’Malley was born on November 16, 1973. O’Malley grew up with three siblings in the Dublin area in a household where at least one parent was alcoholic.
O’Malley and spouse Henry Thompson, a construction contractor, live in Birr, County Offaly with their two children RĂłisĂn Thompson (born November 9, 2007) and Muiris Thompson (born August 5, 2009). O’Malley’s self-described parenting style is “impatient, moody and cranky” with “a very low threshold for ordinary whining.”
O’Malley was host of the 2018 propaganda piece Trans Kids: It’s Time To Talk. It features conservative and anti-trans activists, including James Caspian, Heather Brunskell-Evans, Venice Allan, Miranda Yardley, and people from the ex-trans movement
O’Malley is connected to a number of anti-trans organizations, most of which are just part of a web farm with reciprocal links to make O’Malley’s allies and their fringe ideologies seem more widespread 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.
