Meghan Emily Murphy was born November 30, 1978 and grew up in Vancouver. Murphy’s family was reportedly “not just left, but most left.” Murphy’s parents were a Marxist labour activist who served as a shop steward at Canada Post and a feminist who worked in arts administration. Murphy has a sibling.
Murphy said, “I have left the left because I donât wish to be part of a cult.”
Rejecting femininity was fine, except that it developed into a disdain for âwivesâ and âmothersâ who had predictively and passively capitulated to the patriarchy, choosing mundane lives for reasons I could not possibly imagine.
Murphy says this rightward political trajectory felt like being excommunicated:
The left disavowed me long ago for insisting that pornography and prostitution was not an empowering choice sexually liberated women make for fun and wealth, then again for understanding that penises are male and girls who cut their hair short and replace pink frilly dresses with bowler hats and mismatched high top converse are not ânon-binaryâ or âtransâ or âboys,â but simply little girls who donât want to play by old-fashioned rules.
Murphy, Meghan (September 7, 2016). Are we women or are we menstruators?Feminist Current https://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/09/07/are-we-women-or-are-we-menstruators/ [archive]
Stephanie Davies-Arai is a British anti-transgender activist. Davies-Arai is director of Transgender Trend, a clinical advisor to anti-trans organization Genspect, and has been involved in numerous anti-trans campaigns in the UK and beyond.
Background
According to Lily Maynard:
Stephanie & her twin sister Helen were born in Chester in the late 50s, hot on the heels of their older sister Gill. Their father was a bank manager and their mother a housewife and librarian, who managed and reorganised information systems for the Leicester police after their move to a small market town when the twins were seven.
Davies-Arai wrote: “I am a heterosexual woman who lived most of my childhood wanting to be a boy; for a few years my sister and I would answer to nothing except our ârealâ names: Bill and Mike. I entered puberty kicking and screaming.” The twins dressed as schoolboys and engaged in “tomboy” activities until age 12. At puberty Davies-Arai reportedly became bulimic.
Davies-Arai trained as a sculptor after attending Wyggeston Grammar School for Girls in Leicester. Davies-Arai earned a bachelor’s degree from Gwent College of Higher Education in 1979, took courses at St. Martins College, and earned a master’s degree from Bidai University of Art & Design in 1990. While there, Davies-Arai gave birth to the first of four children. Davies-Arai’s sculptures began to be primarily about pregnancy and motherhood.
Davies-Arai and spouse moved back to England. Davies-Arai’s oldest child had behavioral problems. In 2000, Davies-Arai was a founder of Lewes New School, a small private school in East Sussex where that child might get specialized attention. Davies-Arai became a certified educational trainer in 2003.
Materials on how to deal with troubled children led to Davies-Arai’s “parental rights” activism:
âIt was too child-centred. It kind of treated children as victims in a way, as if they always had a problem. It didnât seem to give permission for parental authority.â
In 2008 Davies-Arai and spouse divorced. Davies-Arai began the training course Communicating with Kids, which was later developed into a 2014 book.
Anti-trans activism
As the four children reached adulthood, Davies-Arai was writing a weekly parenting blog.Â
Davies-Arai founded Transgender Trend in 2015 after being outraged by an article titled “Parenting a Transgender Child” by Sarah Virginia White. Davies said:
Youâre validating a childâs false belief. You wouldnât get that in any other area, in any parenting book. Itâs not healthy when listening to your child becomes so key that it becomes âyou must agree with your childâ. If you believe that your child knows best, youâre then supposed to follow the child. The child becomes the adult and the adult becomes the child.â
After getting more and more into the transphobic “parental rights” movement, Davies-Arai produced an anti-trans schools guide “Supporting gender diverse and trans-identified students in schools” in 2018.
After Liz Truss announced plans to change the UK’s Gender Recognition Act in 2020, an open letter signed by about 8,000 cisgender women said “we are incredibly concerned that the language you have used is very similar to the anti-trans rhetoric used by transphobic hate groups and organisations such as Womanâs Place UK, Transgender Trend and the LGB Alliance.”
In 2022, Davies-Arai was awarded the British Empire Medal by Queen Elizabeth II.
Davis, Lisa Selin (June 13, 2022). From Tomboy to Transgender Trend. https://lisaselindavis.substack.com/p/from-tomboy-to-transgender-trend
White, Sarah Virginia (February 20, 2015). Parenting a Transgender Child. HuffPost https://www.huffpost.com/entry/parenting-a-transgender-child_b_6709858
Davies-Arai, Stephanie (2015). Is My Child Transgender? https://stephaniedaviesarai.com/is-my-child-transgender/
Graham Linehan is an Irish comedy writer and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Linehan was born May 22, 1968 in Dublin. Linehan’s initial career was as a comedy writer. Linehan helped create and write on shows including Father Ted, Black Books, The IT Crowd, Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye, and The Fast Show.
Anti-transgender activism
Linehan became an anti-transgender activist after the 2008 The IT Crowd episode “The Speech” was criticized as transphobic. Channel 4 pulled the episode from their streaming service in 2020, infuriating Linehan.
Linehan’s subsequent fixation on trans people led to the end of both Linehan’s comedy career and marriage. A review of Linehan’s 2023 book Tough Crowd summarizes “the extremity of Linehanâs rhetoric”:
In my view, and that of his critics, some of his online remarks have been plainly and unapologetically transphobic: Linehan has characterised the trans rights movement as âpaedophilicâ and called trans activists and allies âgroomersâ. Itâs true enough that his former life is in tatters: the controversies led to the end of his marriage, the abandonment of a planned, lucrative Father Ted musical, and his agent dropping him.
[…] Often, Linehan paints trans women as predators, men looking to insinuate themselves into womenâs spaces in order to assault them with greater ease. When convenient, they are made out to be victims, brainwashed and exploited young queer people who are convinced to âmutilateâ their bodies in the name of ideology.Â
[…] To an extent, the bookâs very existence disputes the pretence of Linehan to have been deplatformed. If Linehan had siloed his anti-trans views somewhat, rather than warp them into a life-consuming vocation, his once-glittering TV career might well have remained intact to this day.
Derrick Jensen and Graham Linehan (9 December 2018). Resistance Radio â Guest: Graham Linehan (Podcast). Podbean. The opposition is so extreme and so frightening that eventually everyone is asking you to stop. My feeling is that I can’t, because it’s too important. It’s too important to the women in my life and it’s too important to me. I’m now in a position where I can answer the question honestly of, if you were around at the time of something terrible happening like Nazism, or whatever it happened to be, would you be one of the people who said “no, this is wrong”, despite being opposed? I feel happy in myself that I’ve been one of the people standing up and saying “no, this is wrong”, despite everyone telling me not to do it.
Kate Coleman is an anti-transgender sex segregationist in the UK who runs the Keep Prisons Single Sex website. Coleman’s primary focus is the Gender Recognition Act and how transgender prisoners are housed.
Background
Coleman was born in September 1971. Coleman’s graduate work was done at King’s College London and University College London. Coleman’s academic work was in the division of psychiatry at the Centre for Behavioural and Social Sciences in Medicine under the supervision of Simon Dein, and:
examines the experiences of providing palliative care services to the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, North London.
This research builds on her MSc research, conducted at the Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care, Policy & Rehabilitation, King’s College London.
Coleman’s full name is Catharine Victoria Helen Coleman-Brueckheimer, since marrying telco executive Simon Daniel Brueckheimer. The two were officers in Synectyx Ltd.
2018 statement to Parliament
Written submission from Dr Catharine Coleman (EEA0206)
At present women and girls, as a sex, are a protected class. If self-ID becomes law, and it becomes possible for any male to legally become a woman, the status of women and girls as a protected class according to sex becomes impossible to maintain. Women and girls are vulnerable and require protection under the EA due to biological sex, not any vague notions of ‘gender identity’ – it is the material reality of biological sex that is the issue, not one’s identity as a consideration separate from sex. Pertinent issues include: Domestic violence refuges, prisons, hospital wards to name but a few. The status of women and girls as a protected class according to biological sex should not be put at risk.
October 2018
Website
Coleman created the Keep Prisons Single Sex website in 2020. Coleman is assisted in this work by Rob Brailsford and Beverley Dale (bev13thdisciple).
References
Written submission from Dr Catharine Coleman (EEA0206) -https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/95839/pdf/
Vigo, Julian Savage Minds https://savageminds.substack.com/p/kate-coleman#details
Graham Linehan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_oL7gW8eA
British Thought Leaders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkk_eosyuWc
Coleman, Kate (17 December 2020). Women’s prisons should be single-sex. Centre for Crime and Justice Studies https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/womens-prisons-should-be-single-sex
Object UK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMgYezcLrsg
Talk TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUZ8QNiqyKQ
Coleman-Brueckheimer, Kate; Dein, Simon (2011). Health care behaviours and beliefs in Hasidic Jewish populations: a systematic review of the literature. J Relig Health. 2011 Jun;50(2):422-36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-010-9448-2.
Coleman-Brueckheimer K, Spitzer J, Koffman J (2009). Involvement of Rabbinic and communal authorities in decision-making by haredi Jews in the UK with breast cancer: an interpretative phenomenological analysis. Soc Sci Med. 2009 Jan;68(2):323-33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.10.003.
Sabine Hossenfelder was born September 18, 1976 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. Hossenfelder attended Goethe University Frankfurt, earning an undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1997 and a doctorate in physics in 2004. Hossenfelder has researched and taught at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, University of Arizona, University of California, the Perimeter Institute, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Sweden, and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.
Hossenfelder began working as a popular science writer in 2006. Hossenfelder’s first Youtube video was in 2011.
Hossenfelder married Stefan Scherer in 2006. They have twins born in 2010.
Views on trans and gender diverse people
Hossenfelder views trans youth as a scientific debate rather than a debate about science and its historic misuses.
Hossenfelder uncritically uses many disease models created by behavior scientists to describe sex and gender minorities. Diseases were once widely accepted among scientists to describe gay and lesbian people, until they were forced to stop by activists. It is still socially acceptable among people like Hossenfelder to describe trans, intersex, and gender diverse people using disorders, diseases, and metaphors of impairment and disability.
Among the contested diseases and terms Hossenfelder uses are:
comorbidities: trans people have other mental disorders
gender affirming care
“trapped in the wrong body”
“cutting off parts of the anatomy”
“some people are making a lot of money with this”
discusses puberty blockers risks, no discussion of benefits
“there are at present no high-quality studies that conclusively demonstrate these treatments are beneficial”
the shift in gender ratio among trans youth
“we don’t understand the long-term consequences”
YouTube
Videos include clickbait “just asking questions” titles:
“Trans athletes in women’s sports: Is this fair?” (2022)
This video looks at the field of sex science the way others use sports to make claims about race science. It does at least step back and take a big-picture look. Hossenfelder and I both believe that there is no long-term future for sex-segregated competitive sports.
“Is being trans a social fad among teenagers?” (2023)
This video is too caught up in a lot of unscientific assumptions about trans people being disordered and diseased.
Cathy Young is a writer and anti-transgender activist.
Background
Yekaterina Jung was born on February 10, 1963 in Russia to Marina (born 1936) and Alexander Jung (1935â2011). Young’s family moved to the United States in 1980. Young became a naturalized US citizen in 1987 as Catherine Alicia Young and earned a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in 1988.
Young is a writer at The Bulwark, a cultural studies fellow at the Cato Institute, a columnist for Newsday, and a contributing editor to Reason.
Young has authored two books.
References
Young, Cathy (October 5, 2023). Toxic culture on the right or left is wrong.Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/culture-wars-transphobia-lgbt-gender-transgender-anthropology-i0un1yec
Young, Cathy (February 16, 2023). Transgender rights is a complex topic.Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/transgender-rights-glaad-i0un1yec
Young, Cathy (June 21, 2022). Transgender rights require a more civil debate.Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/columnists/cathy-young/transgender-rights-athletes-lia-thomas-swimming-i0un1yec
Meredith Kopit Levien is an American media executive who was CEO of The New York Times Company during its sharp increase in anti-transgender coverage. Under Kopit Levien’s watch, the New York Times parent company continued its trans-exclusionary hiring practices for journalists and maintained its hostile workplace environment for trans-supportive employees.
No transgender journalist or executive has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851. In 2023 the San Francisco Chronicle cited a Times employee who said the organization has no trans reporters.
Background
Meredith Andrea Kopit was born February 28, 1971 to Carole Toby Kopit (born 1941) and Marvin Kopit (1940â2012). Levien grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Kopit Levien earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Virginia in 1993.
Kopit Levien worked in a series of digital advertising roles at i33/AppNet, Atlantic Media, and Forbes Media, where Levien diluted the brand with “Brandvoice” that allowed brands to self-promote as Forbes contributors. The controversial practice was very lucrative, and Kopit Levien became chief revenue officer in 2012.
In 2013 Kopit Levien joined the New York Times Company as head of advertising. Kopit Levien implemented “paid posts” there as well, which earned a promotion to chief revenue officer in 2015. Kopit Levien revamped the ad department and ran a brand campaign. In 2017 Kopit Levien was named COO. In 2020 Kopit Levien became CEO and joined the Board.
Kopit Levien is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and serves on the board of directors of Instacart.
Kopit Levien was married to sports executive Jason Miles Levien (born May 17, 1971). They have one child named Justice, born in 2010.
Veazey, Kyle (February 16, 2013). Jason Levien followed roundabout path to Grizzlies’ front office. The Commercial Appeal [archive] https://www.commercialappeal.com/sports/grizzlies/jason-levien-followed-roundabout-path-to-grizzlies-front-office-ep-362544418-329050301.html
-https://archive.ph/TZc26
Pompeo, Joe (September 29, 2014). Going native at the Times. Capital New York. [archive] http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/09/8553419/going-native-emtimesem
Brown, Abram (March 11, 2023). The News Business Is in Crisisâbut Not The New York Times Co. The Information https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-news-business-is-in-crisis-but-not-the-new-york-times-co
A.G. Sulzberger is an American journalist responsible for the surge of anti-transgender coverage in the New York Times from 2018 onward.
No transgender journalist has appeared on the New York Times masthead since its founding in 1851.
Background
Sulzberger’s family has controlled the New York Times since 1896.
Arthur Gregg Sulzberger was born August 5, 1980 in Washington, DC. After attending private school in New York, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Brown University in 2003. He worked at the Providence Journal from 2004 to 2006, The Oregonian from 2006 to 2009, and The New York Times starting in 2009. He was soon named an associate editor and began publishing internal reports on long-term business strategy. In 2016 he was named deputy publisher. He beat out his cousins Sam Dolnick and David Perpich to succeed his father as publisher in 2018, then was named chair of The New York Times Company in 2021.
Sulzberger’s anti-transgender policy and strategy
In 2023, hundreds of Times staffers signed a letter expressing concern about anti-trans coverage under Sulzberger’s leadership.
GLAAD also presented a letter with notable signatories that had three requests:
STOP: Stop printing biased anti-trans stories.
LISTEN: So many trans people are wary of the Times, and do not trust the Times. Hold a meeting with transgender community members and leaders, and listen throughout that meeting.
HIRE: Genuinely invest in hiring trans writers and editors, full time on your staff.
Nozlee Samadzadeh, a computer programmer with the Times, posted a screenshot of an email she wrote to Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger that said she has lost trust in management over its defense that those who criticized the Timesâ trans coverage engaged in âadvocacy.â
âTo dismiss yesterdayâs letter from Times contributors… is disrespectful to the very journalists whose work weâve chosen to publish,â she wrote. âAnd on the very next day to publish Pamela Paulâs piece on JK Rowling, someone whose platform is big enough not to need our âdefenseâ and who has caused very real harm to the trans community, is difficult not to interpret as a provocation.â
More recently, weâve heard similar arguments about journalism putting lives at risk emerging from our coverage of the debates inside the medical community over care for transgender children. Critics have accused our work of ââboth sidesâ fearmongering and bad-faith âjust asking questionsâ coverageâ and have suggested that even acknowledging a broader range of views on this topic has legitimizedâwittingly or notâa repressive legal effort to undermine the rights and the safety of a group that faces significant prejudice. âThe pretense of objectivityâthe newsroom ideal that all âsidesâ of an issue should be heardâoften harms marginalized people more than it helps them,â wrote one critic of our coverage. âIf you say âI want to live,â and I say âNo,â what happens next isnât a debate; itâs murder.â
The Times has covered the surge of discrimination, threats, and violence faced by trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people, including the rapidly growing number of legislative efforts attacking their rights. Weâve also covered the many ways in which people challenging gender norms are gaining recognition and breaking barriers in the United States and around the world. Yet our critics overlook these articlesâand there are hundreds of themâto instead focus on a small number of pieces that explore particularly sensitive questions that society is actively working through, but which some would prefer for the Times to treat as settled.
Sulzberger, A. G. (October 7, 2015). Our Path Forward (PDF). The New York Times Company. https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/m/Our-Path-Forward.pdf
Sulzberger, A. G. (January 1, 2018). A Note from Our New Publisher. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/01/opinion/Arthur-Gregg-Sulzberger-The-New-York-Times.html