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Bryan Caplan and transgender people

Bryan Caplan is an American economist and anti-transgender activist. Caplan signed the 2025 Manhattan Statement on Higher Education, a manifesto signed by many key figures in anti-trans activism. Caplan was a “distinguished founding member“ of anti-trans trans group Society for Open Inquiry in Behavioral Science.

Background

Bryan Douglas Caplan was born on April 8, 1971 in Northridge, California. Caplan earned a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1993 and a doctorate from Princeton University in 1997. Caplan began teaching at George Mason University in 1997.

Anti-trans activism

Caplan has approvingly written about anti-trans extremist Matt Walsh and frequently cites anti-trans academics, including Khytam Dawood, J. Michael Bailey, and Nicholas G. Martin.

In a complete failure of the intellectual Turing Test, Caplan summarizes the efforts of anti-trans activists J. Michael Bailey and Alice Dreger thus:

Michael Bailey is one of the world’s foremost sex researchers, best-known for the ahead-of-its-time The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism (2003). Alice Dreger profiles Bailey in her Galileo’s Middle Finger, chronicling the persecution Bailey suffered simply for arguing that autogynephilia is a major cause of gender dysphoria.

Bailey and the book The Man Who Would Be Queen were protested for the following reasons:

  • Bailey’s vulgar misuse of children, presenting their images for laughs in crass lectures without knowledge or consent of the children
  • fabricating the “Danny Ryan” case report of a “cured” gender diverse child
  • having sex with a trans woman described in the book without divulging their relationship
  • claiming pansexual people are “gay, straight, or lying”
  • vastly underrepresenting the size of the transgender community
  • promoting harmful views held by anti-trans conversion therapist Kenneth Zucker (later fired)
  • promoting disease models of transgender sexuality and attraction to transgender people

Dreger and the book Galileo’s Middle Finger were protested for helping to cover up the “Danny Ryan” fabrication and presenting Bailey as an “academic freedom” martyr.

References

Sherman, Fraser (September 11, 2023). A pair of sexists and the things they think. https://frasersherman.com/2023/09/11/a-pair-of-sexists-and-the-things-they-think/

Selected writing by Caplan

Caplan, Bryan (November 25, 2025). “Don’t Be a Feminist.” Heterodox Stem https://hxstem.substack.com/p/dont-be-a-feminist

Caplan, Bryan (August 22, 2025). Fixing Higher Ed: The Bailey-Caplan Convo. Bet On It https://www.betonit.ai/p/fixing-higher-ed-the-bailey-caplan

Caplan, Bryan (June 16, 204). What Natalists Should Learn from LGBT: Or, “Fertility Pride! Learning from the Shocking LGBT Success Story.” Bet On It https://www.betonit.ai/p/lessons-of-the-lgbt-explosion

Caplan, Bryan (July 5, 2023). Woman: A Non-Circular Definition. Reflections on Matt Walsh’s *What Is a Woman?* Bet On It https://www.betonit.ai/p/woman-a-non-circular-definition

Caplan, Bryan (April 7, 2022). Explaining the LGBT Explosion. Bet On It https://www.betonit.ai/p/lgbt-explosion

Caplan, B. (2006). The Economics of Szasz. Rationality and Society, 18(3), 333–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463106066377

Media

Michael Bailey with Bryan Caplan (July 20, 2025). Bryan Caplan Interview: “What is Worth Saving In Universities and What Should We Do?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl01txha-9U

Resources

Bryan Caplan (bcaplan.com)

Substack (substack.com)

X/Twitter (x.com)

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)