Nellie Bowles is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Bowles is director of strategy of anti-trans group blog The Free Press, which Bowles co-founded with spouse Bari Weiss.
Background
Elizabeth C. “Nellie” Bowles was born on April 20, ~1989 to Nellie Bowles Lathrop, a writer and gardener, and Henry M. Bowles, an entrepreneur who co-founded Bowles-Langley Technology. Bowles is a descendant of cattle magnate Henry Miller and transportation magnate Thomas Crowley. A 2024 profile noted:
Bowles grew up in San Francisco, where her family has been based for six generations. Her Greek Orthodox mother worked as a stockbroker (but is now a garden writer); her episcopalian father is an entrepreneur (who recently sold an alertness testing company), and because they split up when she was young, she has lots of siblings, âsteps and halves â seven of us altogetherâ.
Bowles earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 2010. and was a 2011 Fulbright Fellow. Bowles was originally a tech reporter:
“Prior to joining the Times, she was a correspondent for VICE News Tonight on HBO and a writer for the Guardian, Recode, and California Sunday. Before becoming a reporter, Nellie worked on epigenetics research at the University of California, San Francisco, and as a fellow with a neuroscience laboratory at McGill studying hypnosis. She was the 2011-2012 Fulbright Fellow to Swaziland.”
From 2017 to 2021, Bowles covered technology and culture for The New York Times, where Weiss also worked. They began a relationship in 2018 and later got married. Bowles converted to Judaism to marry Weiss. They have two children (born in 2022 and 2024).
Anti-transgender activism
In addition to being deeply involved in the creation and growth of The Free Press, Bowles is author of the 2024 book Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History. The book has several sections that mock transgender people and progressive views about gender identity and expression.
Tal Fortgang wrote in anti-trans group blog City Journal:
Bowles posits early on that she wrote her book to help people not keyed into the finer points of revolutionary theory understand the developments of the last few years. Certainly, she has provided useful case studies, with specific observationsâlike the way certain transgender activists talk about what it means to be a womanâripe for analysis and critique.
Anti-trans activist Cathy Young praised the book, noting its coverage of trans registered sex offender Darren Merager and the 2021 Wi Spa controversy in which Merager was found not guilty on all charges in 2025:
In the section on transgender activism, Bowles expresses the increasingly common concern that kids who donât conform to gender norms are being thoughtlessly steered toward trans identities and interventions without which many of them would have grown up as gay adults like herself. A fascinating chapter explores a 2021 incident in which a male-bodied sex offender whose documents affirmed a female identity caused a commotion by being in a women-only nude area of a Los Angeles spa; many progressives first denied that it happened and then claimed that as a transgender woman, the individual had a right to be naked in front of women and teenage girls.
In a review for Tablet, Kathleen Hayes notes Bowles’ disdain for Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu:
âThe Best Feminists Have Always Had Ballsâ describes the novel developments in feminism since it came to be led by transwomen â people who in a less enlightened age were termed men. When one of these trans feminists, Andrea Long Chu, explains in a book of gender theory that females are not full human beings, but holes, any woman who isnât a transphobe smilingly agrees.
In a review of Bowles’ book for the New York Times, Laura Kipnis wrote:
I was intrigued to learn that Bowles was once an activist herself: a high school crusader for gay rights who has since married a woman. She acknowledges being the beneficiary of a previous generationâs progressivism, and her vestigial liberal heart still occasionally bleeds; she reports tearing up during an antiracism workshop. Itâs the crazy activism sheâs against â you know, the âfringeâ stuff.
By fringe, she means trans. Sheâs peeved that some trans women are trying to redefine feminism in ways that seem to her to be anti-woman, resents that lesbians risk being erased by trendy all-purpose queerness and fears that as a married lesbian mother she will have her own rights swept away by anti-trans backlash. Given the Dobbs decision, all precedents are possibly imperiled, but the culprit isnât transgender-rights activists. Itâs the religious right and the Supreme Court, both of which get a pass from Bowles, as do Donald Trump and every elected Republican.
References
Young, Cathy (May 16, 2024). A former progressive skewers the movement. Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/nellie-bowles-black-lives-matters-progressivism-transgender-j61rfwzs
Walden, Celia (May 26, 2024). Nellie Bowles: âItâs not healthy to tell kids that being white is bad.â The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/26/nellie-bowles-interview-morning-after-the-revolution-nyt/
Henley, Tara (May 16, 2024). Transcript: Nellie Bowles. Lean Out with Tara Henley https://tarahenley.substack.com/p/transcript-nellie-bowles
Kipnis, Laura (May 14, 2024). Skewering Leftist Excess With Mockery and Sneers. New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/books/review/morning-after-the-revolution-nellie-bowles.html
Fischer, Molly (May 10, 2024). Nellie Bowlesâs Failed Provocations. The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/nellie-bowless-failed-provocations
Kaiser, Charles (May 11, 2024). Morning After the Revolution review: a bad faith attack on âwoke.â The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/11/morning-after-the-revolution-review-nellie-bowles
Hayes, Kathleen (August 15, 2024). Chronicle of a Renegade. Jewish Journal https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/books/373949/chronicle-of-a-renegade/
Mikics, David (May 22, 2024). What Nellie Saw. Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/what-nellie-saw
Whiting, Sam (October 31, 2021). Beatrice Bowles, a San Francisco heiress who cast off high society to host parties for the counterculture, dies at 78. San Francisco Chronicle https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Beatrice-Bowles-a-San-Francisco-heiress-who-cast-16572280.php
Selected writing by Bowles
Bowles, Nellie (August 5, 2022). TGIF: They/Them/She/Her. The Free Press https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-theythemsheher
Bowles, Nellie (April 5, 2024). TGIF: Happy Cesar Chavez Trans Visibility Easter Day. The Free Press https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-cesar-chavez-trans-visibility-easter
Media
Sullivan, Andrew (Jun 14, 2024). Nellie Bowles On Ditching Wokeness. The Dishcast https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/nellie-bowles-on-ditching-wokeness
Megyn Kelly (September 6, 2023). Media and Left Celebrate Transgender Man Who Joined Sorority After Lawsuit Ends, with Nellie Bowles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zQLcWeGKgY
Resources
Nellie Bowles (nelliebowles.com)
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
Muck Rack (muckrack.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Medium (medium.com)