Phyllis Chesler vs. transgender people

Phyllis Chesler is an American author, therapist, and anti-transgender activist. Chesler has written for a number of anti-trans publications, ijncluding Quillette, Tablet, Epoch Times, and 4W.

Chesler has appeared on anti-trans programs, including Epoch Times, An American Conversation Podcast, Maiden Mother Matriarch, and the Feminist Current podcast.

Background

Phyllis Chesler was born on October 1, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Chesler earned a bachelor’s degree from from Bard College in 1963, then attended the New School for Social Research, earning a master’s degree in 1967, and a doctorate in 1969. In 1969, Chesler co-founded the Association for Women in Psychology and began teaching at Richmond College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY). Chesler later became a full professor and remained until retiring in 1998.

Chesler’s first major publication, Women and Madness, was released in 1972 and became a foundational work of second-wave feminism. Chesler helped establish the National Women’s Health Network in 1974. Chesler’s subsequent books include About Men (1978) and With Child: A Diary of Motherhood (1979).

In 1988, Chesler participated in the first all-women’s prayer with a Torah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and the following year co-founded the International Committee for Women of the Wall. Chesler published a Torah commentary in 2000 and an anthology on women’s prayer rights in 2002. Chesler’s memoir An American Bride in Kabul was published in 2013.

Anti-trans activism

In a 2019 Quillette article ostensibly honoring Barbara Seaman, Chesler outlined various grievances about recent women’s studies:

“I find myself surrounded by an angry, entitled, and barbaric patriarchy. I am referring to the movements to ban or restrict abortion; legalize and/or decriminalize prostitution and to legalize commercial surrogacy; the quantum rise of sex slavery and trafficking as well as Islamist terrorism, gender apartheid, and censorship; the obsession with transgender victimization; the disappearance of “women” from women’s studies which long ago morphed into gender studies and then into LGBTQIA studies; and in the massive increase and normalization of pornography.”

In another 2019 Quillette article, Chesler complains about the new generation of feminists:

“My generation of feminists called out sexual harassment, rape, and incest, but our radical analyses were disappeared by the obsessions with post-colonialism, multi-cultural relativism, anti-black racism, post-modernism, the evil of “whiteness,” Western civilization, Israel, and “Islamophobia,” the triumph of gender over sex, the importance of queerness and transgender rights.”

In 2024, Chesler compared the trans rights movement and the Free Palestine movement, writing, “The Palestine True Believers and the Trans True Believers both prize their narratives over and above the evidence of history, archeology, anthropology, geography—and far above the reality of biology and genetics.” Chesler then complained about actions taken against other anti-trans psychologists:

The vehemence with which campuses policed the boundary of acceptable transgender discourse was evinced in vitriolic attacks on dissenting faculty, most notably the 2018 attack on Brown University behavioral scientist Lisa Littman. Littman’s study, published in PLOS One, indicated that peer group pressure, often via social media, affected “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” in teenagers, especially girls, triggering a fierce backlash. The implication that the rise in transgender identity could be attributed partly to “social contagion”—presumably lessening the role of inherent self-discovery—led activists to demand that the paper be withdrawn and Littman censured. Obediently, the publication PLOS One began a “post-publication review” and Brown University pulled a promotional press release from its website. Littman ultimately published a revised version of the study that Rutgers University psychology professor Lee Jussim described as an “Orwellian correction” having nothing to do with the requisites of sound scholarship.

This vigilant policing of transgenderism made another quite public appearance in 2023 when academic publisher Springer retracted a paper by Ray Blanchard [sic] and J. Michael Bailey on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.” [note: Bailey’s actual co-author was “Suzanna Diaz,” aka Monica Hegmann.]

Chesler later listed “some very honorable radical feminist and lesbian feminist groups and individuals including: The Women’s Liberation Front (WOLF), Feminist Current (Meghan Murphy), 4W (M.K. Fain), Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence (Donna Hughes), and Spinifex Press (Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne.).” Chesler also praised and mentioned Abigail Shrier, Bruce Bawer, Joe Rogan, Sheila Jeffreys, Jennifer Bilek, Janice Raymond, The Federalist, Hilary Cass, and Leor Sapir.

Anti-trans coverage

Vitalosova, Dana (June 16, 2021). Interview: Phyllis Chesler was Cancelled Before It was Cool. Before the “transgender debate,” there was Palestine. 4W https://4w.pub/phyllis-chesler-cancelled-interview/

Perry, Louise (June 20, 2019). How a Feminist Prophet Became an Apostate—An Interview with Dr Phyllis Chesler. Quillette https://quillette.com/2019/06/20/how-a-feminist-prophet-became-an-apostate-an-interview-with-dr-phyllis-chesler/

Selected writing by Chesler

Chesler, Phyllis (June 6, 2025). What About that Algerian Male Boxer and his Gold Medal? Phyllis’s Newsletter https://phyllischesler.substack.com/p/what-about-that-algerian-male-boxer

Chesler, Phyllis (Fall 2024). The Transgender and Anti-Israel True Believers. Academic Questions https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/37/3/the-transgender-and-anti-israel-true-believers

Chesler, Phyllis (August 26, 2024). The Stakes for Women in This Election Are Enormous. Phyllis’s Newsletter https://phyllischesler.substack.com/p/the-stakes-for-women-in-this-election

Chesler, Phyllis (September 14, 2022). Disinvited: The leadership of New York’s West End Synagogue is too committed to the ever-changing progressive party line to suffer a radical feminist like me. Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/disinvited-west-end-synagogue-phyllis-chesler

Chesler, Phyllis (March 2, 2023). Oh Malala: Why Make a Film on Trans ‘Women’? 4W https://4w.pub/oh-malala-why/

Chesler, Phyllis (October 28, 2022)). The Identity Trap: Part 1: Can a full human life really be boiled down to a series of labels? 4W https://4w.pub/the-identity-trap-part-1/

Chesler, Phyllis (October 28, 2022). The Identity Trap: Part 2: When identity is front and center, women are the ones left out. 4W https://4w.pub/the-identity-trap-part-2/

Chesler, Phyllis (April 21, 2022). Setting the Record Straight on Second-Wave Feminists: A recent article in The Federalist uses my work out of context to defame feminists like Kate Millett and blame them for the recent transgender movement. 4W https://4w.pub/setting-the-record-straight-on-second-wave-feminists/

Chesler, Phyllis (March 17, 2022). Woke Women’s Studies: A feminist conference at Barnard sounded promising but devolved into a conformist and incomprehensible discourse-fest. Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/woke-womens-studies

Chesler, Phyllis (August 4, 2021). The Progressive Erasure of Feminism: The radical feminist revolution has been hijacked. Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/progressive-erasure-of-feminism

Chesler, Phyllis (April 9, 2021). Woke Andrea Dworkin: Martin Duberman distorts the life and work of a pioneering feminist genius to make her more pleasing. Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/woke-andrea-dworkin

Chesler, Phyllis (January 27, 2021). Andrea Revised: Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist As Revolutionary by Martin Duberman. https://phyllis-chesler.com/articles/andrea-revised-andrea-dworkin-the-feminist-as-revolutionary-by-martin-duberman

Chesler, Phyllis (November 13, 2019). The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is for Good Women to Do Nothing. Quillette https://quillette.com/2019/11/13/the-only-thing-necessary-for-the-triumph-of-evil-is-for-good-women-to-do-nothing/

Chesler, Phyllis (June 20, 2019). The End of an Era—A Feminist Firebrand Looks Back. Quillette https://quillette.com/2019/06/20/the-end-of-an-era-a-feminist-firebrand-looks-back/

Media

Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry and Phyllis Chesler (July 27, 2025). On the Front Line of the Second Wave – Phyllis Chesler | Maiden Mother Matriarch Episode 155. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD_RyyrYouI

EpochTV / American Thought Leaders with Jan Jekielek and Phyllis Chesler (January 16, 2024). https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/phyllis-chesler-gender-apartheid-and-the-silence-of-faux-feminists-5564450