Sheri A. Berenbaum is an American psychologist and anti-transgender activist. Berenbaum is connected to several leading lights of academic transphobia, including J. Michael Bailey, Kenneth Zucker, and psychologists connected to the Human Behavior and Evolution Society..
Much of Berenbaum’s work is involved in shoring up the concept of “sex differences.”
Background
Sheri Ann Berenbaum was born on May 1, 1950.
Berenbaum earned a bachelor’s degree from The City College of New York, followed by a doctorate from the notoriously transphobic and conservative psychology department at University of California, Berkeley in 1977. Berenbaum’s dissertation focused on maintaining sex segregation. Berenbaum did a postdoctoral fellowship in behavioral genetics at University of Minnesota.
Berenbaum then taught at University of Health Sciences / Chicago Medical School. Berenbaum was affiliated with Southern Illinois University prior to joining PennState in 2001. Chicago Medical School
Much of Berenbaum’s work is about hormones and behavior and has been cited as a reason to force adolescents through unwanted puberty.
Anti-transgender activism
Some researchers, such as Kenneth J. Zucker, PhD, a psychologist and the head of the child and adolescent gender identity clinic at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, applaud Reiner’s study for renewing interest in the biological determinants of gender and calling into question the notion of some that gender identity is mainly socially constructed and determined by socialization.
That’s not to say, however, that socialization isn’t still a major or important factor, Zucker emphasizes. “The debate is still up in the air because there are other centers who have studied kids with the same diagnosis, and the rate of changeover from female to male is nowhere near what Reiner is reporting,” he explains. “It must be something about their social experience that is accounting for this difference.”
Contradictory evidence
Backing Zucker’s belief that socialization still plays a major role–and biology is only part of the story–is research by Sheri Berenbaum, PhD, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, and J. Michael Bailey, PhD, a psychologist at Northwestern University.
Berenbaum was quoted by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett in their 2022 New York Times piece on puberty blockers for gender diverse youth. That fearmongering piece came out amid the Times’ transphobic coverage crisis on the 2020s.
References
Bailey JM, Bechtold KT, Berenbaum SA (2002). Who are tomboys and why should we study them? Archives of Sexual Behavior 10.1023/A:1016272209463
Berenbaum SA, “Beyond Pink and Blue: The Complexity of Early Androgen Effects on Gender Development,” Child Development Perspectives 12, no. 1 (2018): 58.
Berenbaum SA, Bailey JM (2003). Effects on gender identity of prenatal androgens and genital appearance: evidence from girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 88, Issue 3, 1102–1106, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2002-020782
Berenbaum SA (1999). Effects of Early Androgens on Sex-Typed Activities and Interests in Adolescents with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. Hormones and Behavior Volume 35, Issue 1, February 1999, Pages 102-110
Chen, D. et al. (2020). Consensus Parameter: Research methodologies to evaluate neurodevelopmental effects of pubertal suppression in transgender youth. Transgender Health, 5, 246-257.
Twohey, Megan; Jewett, Christina (November 14, 2022). They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost? New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html
Resources
PennState (pure.psu.edu)
- Sheri A. Berenbaum
- https://pure.psu.edu/en/persons/sheri-a-berenbaum
- http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/s/a/sab31/berenbaum/bio.html
The Berenbaum Lab (berenbaumlabpsu.wixsite.com)
- https://berenbaumlabpsu.wixsite.com/
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)