SaidIt is a social media platform created as an alternative to reddit. After many “gender critical” users and groups were banned on reddit for anti-transgender hate speech, some of those banned users moved to SaidIt.
SaidIt claims it has less censorship than reddit and claims to be “one of the safe havens for truth seekers, alt-historians, and conspirophiles in an increasingly globally thoughtpoliced state.” It is a toxic online community and a service of choice for online anti-transgender content.
SaidIt’s 2022 Google results show two anti-transgender subsaidits among the top results.
Background
SaidIt was founded in 2017.
Moderators
magnora7 (Texas)
d3rr (California)
TheAmeliaMay (Arkansas) aka conservative transgender woman Amelia May Johnson [resigned]
In the past, when the saidit.net domain was shut down, the domain would sometimes redirect to the SaidIt subreddit (r/saiditnet). Calculating the Jaccard index of posts, participants on the SaidIt subreddit accrete into five reddit community clusters:
Helen Lewis is a British author and anti-transgender activist who launders gender critical extremism into mainstream media. Lewis is a sex segregationist who claims to be writing from a feminist/leftist viewpoint. Lewis demonstrates that anti-trans sentiment extends into every political point of view and movement.
Lewis’ anti-trans views center around:
Challenging legal recognition of trans people in systems developed on the basis of sex, particularly opposing the UK’s Gender Recognition Act
Maintaining systems of sex segregation, particularly in matters of law, public accommodation, prisons, sports, and other sex-segregated institutions
Maintaining the strict gatekeeping of trans healthcare via government control, developed under nationalized heath systems (so-called “gender clinics”) in the 20th century
Maintaining medico-juridical control over trans and gender diverse people though disease models and medical requirements for legal recognition (sterilization requirements, etc.)
Maintaining non-affirming models of care for gender diverse youth, developed last century for “the prevention of transsexualism” and now widely outlawed
Background
Lewis was born in 1983, grew up Catholic in Worcester, and attended St Mary’s School there. Lewis then read English at St Peter’s College, Oxford, followed by a journalism degree from City University London. Lewis no longer identifies as Catholic.
After graduating, Lewis worked at the Daily Mail, then joined the New Statesman in 2010. Lewis married designer and creative director Matthew “Matt” Hasteley in 2010 and wrote professionally as Helen Lewis-Hasteley from 2010 until their divorce in 2013. During the marriage, Lewis met and got involved with someone else, eventually leaving the marriage. Like many gender-critical public figures, this starter marriage seems to have had a significant impact on Lewis’ views about sex and gender.
Lewis married Guardian digital editor Jonathan Haynes in 2015. In 2019 Lewis joined the staff of The Atlantic, which has never had an out trans person listed on their masthead in its 160+ years of existence. In 2020 game developer Ubisoft removed Lewis’ voice from in-game audio in Watch Dogs: Legion due to transphobic views.
2017 Times op-ed
Lewis has been critical of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act, claiming that what used to be called the “real life test” that lasts for two years should be required for anyone to be legally recognized as their gender. In a piece titled “A man canât just say he has turned into a woman,” Lewis wrote:
What the government proposes is a radical rewriting of our understanding of identity: now itâs a question of an internal essence â a soul, if you will. Being a woman or a man is now entirely in your head. In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a womenâs changing room? Thatâs why feminists have raised the alarm over the move to self-identification, along with some older trans people who fear that âtrendstersâ will erode the goodwill they have worked hard to acquire.
2018 New Statesman op-ed
Lewis was accused of laundering transphobic talking points into a major media outlet around the topics of sex segregation and trans healthcare for youth.
Want to talk about how letting people self-define their gender might affect female-only spaces such as prisons and changing rooms? Then youâre a bigot, cloaking your bigotry in the language of âlegitimate concernsâ. Want to discuss whether we are rushing to medicalise gender non-conforming children because they and their desperate parents have been sold the idea there is a universal âfixâ for their profound, genuine unhappiness? These are yet more âlegitimate concernsâ that can be dismissed, even as medical professionals warn that not every gender non-conforming child will benefit from puberty blockers and (later) medical transition.
We should all be in favour of the right of transgender people to live their lives free of discrimination, harassment and abuse. […] But the right of someone who has been through male puberty, with the consequences for skeleton and muscle development that brings, to compete in womenâs sports that depend on raw strength? Thatâs more difficult. […]
Our ideas about gender are undergoing a profound shift. I hope that they will end up in a place where a boy can wear a princess dress without people assuming he is âreallyâ a girl.
2018 GQ interview of Jordan Peterson
In September 2018, Lewis interviewed fellow anti-trans activist Jordan Peterson for GQ. It quickly turned into a tense but civil debate that went viral. One of the few times they agree in the 90-minute conversation is on what Lewis calls “transgender issues.” At about 1:09.45, Lewis’s views overlap significantly with Peterson’s anti-trans viewpoints. Lewis repeats the unsupported generalization that “transgender activists” believe they have a “female soul.” Lewis also believes “We are very quick to diagnose and treat children in a way that I find â and not waiting for the research â and that I find concerning.”
Lewis, Helen (July 2020). Why Millennial Harry Potter Fans Reject JK Rowling. [stealth edited to How J. K. Rowling Became Voldemort] The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/07/why-millennial-harry-potter-fans-reject-jk-rowling/613870/
Lewis, Helen (April 2021). What Happened to Jordan Peterson?The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/what-happened-to-jordan-peterson/618082/
Lewis, Helen (26 October 2021). In Defense of Saying âPregnant Women.âThe Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/pregnant-women-people-feminism-language/620468/ [headline stealth edited to Why Iâll Keep Saying âPregnant Womenâ]
Joseph Kahn is an American journalist responsible for the surge of anti-transgender coverage in the New York Times from 2022 onward.
No transgender journalist 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.
Note: for the trans-supportive filmmaker, see Joseph Kahn.
Background
Joseph F. “Joe” Kahn (born August 19, 1964) is one of three children born to executive Leo Kahn and Dorothy Davidson Kahn. Leo Kahn made a fortune in wholesale and retail food sales, first as founder of Purity Supreme and later as a co-founder of office supply retailer Staples. Dorothy Kahn died in 1975; Leo Kahn then married Emily Perkins Gantt Kahn in 1976.
Kahn was a legacy admission at Harvard University, earning a bachelor’s degree in history in 1987 and a master’s degree in East Asian studies in 1990.
In 1989, the Chinese government ordered Kahn to leave the country for working as a reporter while using a tourist visa. Kahn worked at The Dallas Morning News, then the Wall Street Journal before joining the Times in 1998. Kahn was Beijing bureau chief at the Times from July 2003 until December 2007, during which time Kahn and colleague Jim Yardley won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Kahn then served as Deputy Foreign Editor before serving as Managing Editor from 2016 until 2022. That year Kahn was named Executive Editor.
2023 response to over 1,000 trans-supportive colleagues
On February 15, 2023, over 1,000 New York Times contributors signed an open letter objecting to the Times’ increasingly hostile coverage of transgender issues.
On the same day, GLAAD delivered a second letter and organized a protest in front of Times headquarters.
The next day, Kahn and Opinion Editor Katie Kingsbury warned their colleagues they were violating company policy. Their warning conflates the two letters and dismisses the ethical concerns of their colleagues as “advocacy.”
Colleagues,
Yesterday, the New York Times received a letter delivered by GLAAD, an advocacy group, criticizing coverage in The Times of transgender issues.
It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name.
Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy. That policy prohibits our journalists from aligning themselves with advocacy groups and joining protest actions on matters of public policy. We also have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another’s journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks.
Our coverage of transgender issues, including specific pieces singled out for attack, is important, deeply reported, and sensitively written. The journalists who produced those stories nonetheless have endured months of attacks, harassment and threats. The letter also ignores The Timesâ strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society. A full list of our coverage can be viewed here, and any review shows that the allegations this group is making are demonstrably false.
We realize these are difficult issues that profoundly affect many colleagues personally, including some colleagues who are themselves transgender. We have welcomed and will continue to invite discussion, criticism and robust debate about our coverage. Even when we don’t agree, constructive criticism from colleagues who care, delivered respectfully and through the right channels, strengthens our report.
We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.
We live in an era when journalists regularly come under fire for doing solid and essential work. We are committed to protecting and supporting them. Their work distinguishes this institution, and makes us proud.
Joe & Katie
During an all-hands meeting, Kahn asked Carolyn Ryan to speak to the newsroom. Via Vanity Fair:
“I want to talk to you briefly about journalistic independence,â Carolyn Ryan said during an all-hands meeting for the New York Times newsroom earlier this month. The Times managing editor, sporting a pinstripe pantsuit, spoke from a stage where she was seated between fellow managing editor Marc Lacey and executive editor Joe Kahn. âWe donât do our work in an effort to please organizations, governments, presidents, activist groups, ideological groups,â she said in a recording of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair, noting this has been âa bedrock principle of ours for generationsâ that âmany of us feel in our bonesâ but âcan really get obscured in the modern media landscape, which these days has populated with so many more partisan players.â
Ryan praised the paperâs coverage of the Supreme Courtâs Dobbs decision; Astead Herndonâs podcast The Run-Up;Michael Powellâsreport on whether the ACLU was losing its way; and Megan Twoheyâs âthoughtful, careful, well-reported story looking at medical treatment for teens who are transitioning and the lack of scientific research around some of the puberty blockers.â She assured the newsroom that theyâll be hearing more about journalistic independence throughout the year. âAnd sometimes that will be an annoying note on deadlines saying, you know, we canât use that language because it reallyâŠreflects an activist-group way of looking at an issue and we donât want to do that,â she said, noting being as âpanoramic as possibleâ is not only âgood journalismâ but âkey to how we think about attracting new, more readers and satisfying a need thatâs really out there.â
Emily Bazelon is an American writer and anti-transgender activist whose work has been cited to support anti-trans legislation in America. Bazelon wrote a 2022 New York Times Magazine feature about trans healthcare for minors that anti-trans legislators use to justify bans and restrictions affecting healthcare and legal rights for people of all ages. This page documents Bazelon’s historic role in the oppression of trans and gender diverse people.
Background
Emily C. Bazelon was born March 4, 1971. Like many cisgender reporters on this subject, much of Bazelon’s life and many opinions were shaped by a medico-juridical worldview and by extraordinary privilege. Bazelon’s grandparent was federal judge David L. Bazelon, a pioneer in the field of mental health law and namesake of the nonprofit Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington DC. Bazelon’ parent Richard L. Bazelon (born 1943) is a lawyer, and parent Eileen A. Ferrin Bazelon (born 1944) is a psychiatrist. Both practice in Pennsylvania. Emily Bazelon has three siblings: Dana, Jill, and Lara.
Bazelon attended the elite Germantown Friends School, then graduated from Yale in 1993. Bazelon earned a law degree from Yale Law School in 2000 and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Bazelon had a Dorot fellowship in 1993 and was named a Soros Justice Media Fellow in 2004. Bazelon clerked for Judge Kermit Lipez in 1997. Bazelon married Paul E. Sabin (born 1970). They have two children, Eli and Simon.
2022 New York Times piece
In June 2022, Bazelon published “The Battle Over Gender Therapy” in the New York Times. It is part of their long-running “cisgender person under siege” stories placing non-trans people at the center of their coverage of trans issues.
Bazelon’s piece is centered on cisgender psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz.
It also launders the extremist views of Genspect into the New York Times. Genspect defined the rise in transgender-identified children as a “gender cult” and mass craze, “suggesting that exposure to transgender kids, education about trans people, and trans ideas on the internet could spread transness to others.” Some parents from Genspect stated transgender people should not be able to transition until the age of 25. The article also referenced a Substack newsletter by an anonymous Genspect parent titled “It’s Strategy People!” about how the organization gets its perspective into the media by purposefully not referring to transgender children as “mentally ill” or “deluded.”
The article was criticized by transgender people, including Dr. Sunny Moraine, who described the article as “sanitizing wildly transphobic talking points,” and Instructor Alejandra Caraballo of Harvard Law School, who described it as having “only just further opened the door for eliminationist policies.”
PinkNews stated the article “uncritically platformed gender-critical group Genspect” and spread “vile rhetoric.”
The Texas Observer accused Bazelon of “elevat[ing] a handful of outliers and their discredited theories about trans people to prominence they do not enjoy among the medical community” for “the sake of ‘balance’ and objectivity” and that “the article echoes right-wing fear-mongering about whether trans kids should be allowed to transition and even suggests their existence could be dangerous to other young people.” The Observer notes, “All of this could have been avoided had Bazelon listened to more experts and included more transgender people. That includes Ky Schevers and Lee Leveille, who run a trans advocacy group called Health Liberation Now! Bazelon communicated extensively with them both while working on the article, conducting interviews that were ultimately discarded.” The Observer added that “the state of Texas is using it as evidence in an ongoing attempt to investigate trans-supportive healthcare as ‘child abuse’.” Schevers said “The NYT just platformed a group made up of transphobic parents & conversion therapists who’ve written about how they have the same end goals as hardline trans eliminationists but moderate their views to try to break into the mainstream.”
2023 attack on union leadership
Bazelon was also a signatory on the 2023 letter drafted by Jeremy W. Peters attacking their own union leadership. The Guild had raised concerns about the Times’ hostile work environment for trans journalists. A Times employee told the San Francisco Chronicle there were still no trans reporters on staff in 2023.
2023 Missouri Attorney General ruling
Below is an example of how Bazelon’s 2022 piece is used to deny healthcare and other rights to trans and gender diverse people living in Missouri.
15 CSR 60-17.010 Experimental Interventions to Treat Gender Dysphoria
(2) It is an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful practice for any person or health organization to provide a covered gender transition intervention to a patient (or refer a patient for such an intervention) if the person or health organization:
(D) Fails to ensure that the patient has received a full psychological or psychiatric assessment, consisting of not fewer than 15 separate, hourly sessions (at least 10 of which must be with the same therapist) over the course of not fewer than 18 months to explore the developmental influences on the patientâs current gender identity and to determine, among other things, whether the person has any mental health comorbidities; 32
32 Compare Bazelon, âThe Battle Over Gender Therapy,â The New York Times Magazine, June 15, 2022, updated March 17, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html (noting certain researchers admit and assert that only the Amsterdam clinic, âwith its comprehensive assessments,â has procured results showing strong psychological benefits for individuals who medically transitioned in adolescence, and observing the Amsterdam clinic currently requires âat least six monthly [mental health] sessionsâ following âa longer period on a waiting listâ prior to beginning treatment) [PDF]
Responses by Bazelon
2022 tweets [preserved record of Bazelon’s deleted tweets]
Bazelon joined psychiatrist Scott Leibowitz to discuss the piece.
Brand, Madeline (June 15, 2022). Why are doctors pulling away from gender-affirming health care? Press Play with Madeline Brand, KCRW https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/senate-nevada-lgbtq-jennifer-grey/trans-gender-health-care
Staff report (March 4, 1966). Eileen Ferrin Engaged To Richard L. Bazelon.New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1966/03/05/archives/eileen-ferrin-engaged-to-richard-l-bazelon.html
Bazelon, Emily (15 June 2022). The Battle Over Gender Therapy.The New York Times. https://web.archive.org/web/20220616095935/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/magazine/gender-therapy.html
Amy Beth Bloom (born June 18, 1953) is an American author, producer, and therapist. She is author of the 2002 nonfiction book Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Cross-dressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites with Attitude.
Background
Bloom’s mother Sydelle was a psychotherapist and writer. Her father Murray was an author of books and magazine articles.
Bloom earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater/Political Science from Wesleyan University in 1975 and her Masters Degree in Social Work from Smith College in 1978.
She has authored several fiction books and was creator of the 2007 television drama State of Mind.
Normal (2002)
The book is expanded from her April 2002 Atlantic Monthly article âConservative Men in Conservative Dresses.â Bloom has several points of contact with the community.
A Dignity Cruise to Catalina Island
The Fall Harvest 2000 gender convention in St. Louis
Tri-Ess leaders Jane Ellen and Mary Francis Fairfax
She quotes psychologist Ray Blanchard, who says: “They emulate the women they want to be – some kind of confusion between attraction to a sexual object and being the object.” When Bloom mentioned that she’s been told that crossdressing is relaxing for its practitioners, Blanchard was quick to shut that down:
‘Of course it’s not relaxing,’ Blanchard says, with some heat. ‘Heels and makeup and a wig and a corset? It’s preposterous. Even women don’t find that relaxing. Relaxing is a pair of sweatpants, clothing that doesn’t even feel like clothing. Cross-dressers want to normalize this, to have it seen as relaxation and self-expression.’
Bloom seems to agree:
Crossdressers wear their fetish, and the gleam in their eyes, however muted by time or habit, the unmistakable presence of a lust being satisfied or a desire being fulfilled in that moment, in your presence, even by your presence, is unnerving. The mix of the crossdressersâ own arousal and anxiety and our responsive anxiety and discomfort is more than most of us can bear.
Bloom concludes of the crossdressers she met:
There is no innate grasp of female friendship, of the female insistence on relatedness, of the female tradition of support and accommodation for oneâs partner and of giving precedence to the relationship overall.
Nancy Nangeroni complained in an open letter to The Atlantic that the piece was a “glib caricature.” J. Michael Bailey recommended it in his book The Man Who Would Be Queen because it “angered many autogynephiles.”
References
Bloom, Amy (2002) Conservative Men in Conservative Dresses. The Atlantic; April 2002, Vol. 289 Issue 4, p. 94.
Chandler Ellis Burr (born 1963) is an American journalist and perfume curator. Burr is known for his hereditarian views on sexual orientation and sex differences, and he claims that his critics “hate science.”
Burr was born in Chicago and graduated from Christian Science school Principia College. He then worked in the Southeast Asia bureau of The Christian Science Monitor. Burr later wrote for The Atlantic and US News & World Report. He identifies as gay and atheist and has written extensively about the perfume industry.
Views on sexual orientation
Following a 1993 Atlantic cover story on “homosexuality and biology,” Burr expanded that work into the 1996 book A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation. That book also briefly covers the search of causes of gender identity and expression.
Views on bisexuality
As with many other HBI members, Burr has defended controversial psychologist J. Michael Bailey, in particular Bailey’s claims that men are “straight, gay, or lying,” a pernicious belief among some biased gay men and sexologists that male bisexuality doesn’t exist.
Burr wrote the following after New York Times journalist Benedict Carey presented an uncritical look at Bailey’s claims the bisexual men are “lying.”
The passage in bold perfectly summarizes why people like Burr can’t see their bias. Burr believes that because both “the right” and “the left” take issue with his spurious views, that Burr must be correct. This is a classic “argument to moderation” fallacy.
July 12, 2005
To the Editor:
Some gay and bisexual advocates are condemning “Straight, Gay or Lying?” regarding a study suggesting that bisexuality may not exist among human males – something those of us familiar with the scientific literature have known since, basically, forever.
Compare this hysterical – and anti-science – reaction to the conservative Christians’ anti-science reaction to studies showing that homosexuality is an inborn orientation like left-handedness. They’re identical.
The right hates science because the data contradict (in the case of homosexuality) Leviticus; the left because the data contradict the liberal lie that we’re environment-created, not hard-wired in any way.
These particular scientific facts are making these advocates scream like members of the extreme right, though it’s they who always tells the right to let go of concepts that are contradicted by science.
Chandler Burr New York The writer is the author of “A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation.”
Donna Martina Cartwright (born October 4, 1946) is an American journalist and labor activist. Cartwright served as a copy editor for The New York Times for about 30 years, transitioning on the job in 1997 and retiring in 2006. Cartwright was named to the NLGJA LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame in 2014.
Background
Cartwright was born in Hackensack, New Jersey. Cartwright was also involved in creating and leading some of the most important trans rights organizations, including:
Pride at Work
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey
National Center for Transgender Equality
TransEpiscopal
Gender Rights Maryland
2000 media criticism
In 2000, Cartwright published a piece on how cis journalists were “Trivializing and Silencing Transgender People in Queer Media.” Cartwright wrote:
Transgender people, long marginalized in the gay and lesbian community and “written out” of its history, have been making a modest comeback in recent years. Many queer organizations routinely recognize our presence through the use of such phrases as “the GLBT community” to describe their missions or constituencies; that some of these “natives” might be capable of uttering words comprehensible to civilized people too often seems beyond the imagination of the “normalized” queer writer. Funny, gays and lesbians were seen in just such terms, not so long ago âŠ.
Both this renewed visibility and its problems are reflected in a recent work of queer history, Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney’s book. Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (Simon & Schuster, 1999) which covers the period from the late 1960’s until the late 1980’s. Clendinen and Nagourney pay serious attention to many of the controversies over the place of trans- gender people in the queer movement over the last 30 years. Unfortunately, they treat us largely as a disempowered, voiceless “other,” passive objects of history rather than subjects.
DAYS OF FURY By many accounts, 1973 was a difficult year for transgender queers: a rising tide of separatism in the lesbian/ feminist movements culmi- nated in an explosion of hatred and hysteria at the West Coast Lesbian Conference in Los Angeles in April; two months later, similar tensions erupted at the New York City Pride March.
Out for Good gives a compelling picture of these events: in L.A., Beth Elliott, a lesbian male-to-female transsexual, one of the conference organizers, was scheduled to sing as part of the conference’s opening ceremonies. She had been at the center of a bitter dispute over her transsexuality in the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis in late 1972.
Elliott is a fascinating figure; unfortunately, Clendinen and Nagourney seem oblivious to the pos- sibility that she might have had some- thing of value to contribute to their account. She is not quoted in Out for Good, and she says that they never interviewed her. By her own recollec- tion, she is the first “out” transsexual lesbian feminist. She transitioned at the age of 19, and soon thereafter was invited to join the Bay area Daughters of Bilitis chapter â at that point, the membership felt her transsexuality was not a disqualification.
“Wanting to make the freedom I was experiencing safer and available to more women,” she says, she began doing volunteer work at the chapter’s office. After several months, in the fall of 1971, she was elected Vice- President in a two-candidate race.
In the summer of ’72, however, trouble appeared in the form of lesbian separatists who began to press their perspective on the chapter as a whole. Tensions rose over various issues, from Elliott’s transsexuality to demands that the editor of the chap- ter newsletter be brought under offi- cial oversight. In the fall of that year, Elliott ran for re-election as Vice- President and was defeated in a cam- paign in which her transgender his- tory may have been a tacit issue. A few months later, in a separate vote, transsexuals were ruled ineligible for membership.
Out for Good skews history a bit in its account of the struggle in the San Francisco D.O.B. The book says Elliott’s “demand to be admitted into the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis had torn the group apart. The D.O.B. had devoted eighteen months to arguing about whether there was a place in the Daughters of Bilitis for a transsexual, before finally and bitterly voting ‘No’.”
But Elliott’s account, which is supported by a look at back copies of Sisters, the San Francisco D.O.B. ‘s magazine, is rather different. The battle took up at most a few months, not 18, and it was not over her “demand to be admitted,” but over her expulsion.
Perhaps Clendinen and Nagourney relied on the recollection of someone involved in the conflict, decades after the fact. All the more reason to have balanced their sources.
Cartwright added:
Not that this incident is exactly unknown territory for queer writers. Pat Califia, in her book Sex Changes (1997) quotes a member of the chap- ter who “had actually been present at the stormy meeting where [Elliott] was ousted âŠ
“This doesn’t feel okay to me/ she said. ‘She worked harder than anyone else in D.O.B. She gave a lot to that organization. There was no good reason to kick her out. She hadn’t done anything wrong except be a transsexual. You wouldn’t believe some of the vile and vicious things other women said to her. And she just sat and listened to all of it, kept her dignity and answered them back without losing her temper or calling anybody names/”
A few months later, some of Elliott’s enemies in the San Francisco battle attended the conference in L. A. and created an uproar when she went on stage to sing. They demand- ed that she leave, the performance was brought to a halt, and the issue was debated for hours and ultimate- ly put to a vote.
Out for Good says there was a slim majority in favor of allowing Elliott to sing, but according to contemporary sources, the margin was overwhelming. Barbara McLean’s “Diary of a Mad Organizer” in the Lesbian Tide confer- ence issue says the women voted three to one to hear Elliott, while The Advocate (May 9, 1973) also calls the vote “overwhelming.” The separatists and some others in the audience walked out. According to The heritage of sexual sophistication.”
Advocate, Elliott later received a standing ovation from “most of the 1,200 women present.” The next day, Robin Morgan, the writer and editor who later became a leading figure in the rightward drift of radical feminism, devoted part of her keynote address to a vicious, hateful attack on transgender women. In it, she suggested that we enjoy being harassed on the street (doesn’t that sound sickeningly familiar?), said that we “parody female oppression,” accused us of “leeching off women” and demanded that we be excluded from women’s space.
In a three-page account of the controversy at the conference. Out for Good quotes Morgan at length, and, somewhat more briefly, Jeanne Cordova (editorial coordinator of Lesbian Tide and an organizer of the conference) in Elliott’s defense. But neither Elliott nor any other transsex- ual is quoted; are we not up to speak- ing for ourselves? Elliott still lives in California, and eventually managed to become active again in the lesbian and leather communities; surely she might have been asked about her feelings concerning that day. And it is not exactly a daunting task to reach her; this writer managed it without great difficulty.
And Out for Good is not exactly neutral in tone. In addition to the factual errors and omissions, consider this description of Elliott: “She might have been the only woman in the room wearing a skirt or a gown â except for the fact that Beth Elliott wasn’t a woman. Beth Elliott was a preoperative transsexual, a man in the process of trying to become a woman, who, to complicate things, claimed to be a lesbian.”
At another point. Out for Good refers to “the near-riot that Beth Elliott had caused.” Well, it takes more than one person to cause a riot, and all Beth Elliott did was accept an invitation to sing. It was who she was, not what she said or did, that “caused” the near-riot.
Elliott, who was also a founding member of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club and who played an active role in the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform, paints an interesting picture of the early post-Stonewall queer move- ment. She says that many lesbians “judged individual transsexual women on the content of their character,” adding that “there were a lot of lesbians who had no interest in the legendary political correctness of the 1970’s.”
She also notes that many of the early-70’s lesbian communities were “very sex-positive ⊠and the ‘sex purity’ movement never managed to control the lesbian community as a whole.
James also describes an incident of alleged inappropriate boundary crossing in Lawrenceâs photography of Jamesâ genitals for Lawrenceâs website www.annelawrence.com. James says Lawrence was inappropriately seductive while James had her clothes off. Lawrence denies this.
Thereâs more to the story. A year or so ago, Donna Cartwright, another transsexual woman, described to Tapestry an experience virtually identical to that reported by James. At that time we chose not to go forward with an unverified allegation. This allegation has now been substantiated in the form of Jamesâ complaint. Lawrence denies this incident also.
Wilson was born in Detroit, Michigan and earned a bachelorâs degree in liberal arts from College of Wooster in 1982. She joined The Chronicle in 1985 and wrote for them until 2017. She and her husband Darryl Ozias (born 1956) have two sons. She joined the Iowa State University wrestling program as Director of Operations in 2017, having previously volunteered for Head Coach Kevin Dresser when one of her sons wrestled for Dresser at Virginia Tech.
The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003)
In 2003 and 2004, Wilson wrote six articles about the book and the fallout for the Chronicle. The first, which Dreger characterizes as “gossipy,” came out shortly after Bailey’s vulgar misuse of gender diverse children at Stanford University. Wilson joined Bailey on on one of his voyeuristic sex tours (see Charlotte Allen) to the gay nightclub Circuit with Anjelica Kieltyka and the woman called “Juanita” in his book. Wilson describes Bailey as using medical gatekeeping to gain access to young attractive trans women: “As a psychologist, he has written letters they needed to get sex-reassignment surgery, and he has paid attention to them in ways most people donât.”
In her 2008 article published by Kenneth Zucker, in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Dreger singled out Wilson as the journalist who failed to cover the story objectively:
Wilson wrote these scandal reports as if she had just come upon the scene with no previous insider knowledge and no insider connections to use to figure out the truth behind this âcontroversy.â When I realized the strange role Wilson had played, I tried asking her and her editor why they hadnât used her before-and-after-scandal positioning to ask deep questions about why Baileyâs relationships appeared, at least in public accounts, to have suddenly changed with these women. Wilsonâs editor [Bill Horne] sent me back boilerplate: âWe stand by the accuracy, and fairness, of Robinâs reporting and are not inclined to revisit decisions Robin and her editors made here with regard to what to include or exclude from those stories in 2003.â But I was left obsessing about an if: If Wilson had used her special journalistic position as someone who was there just before the mushroom cloud, she might have seenâright awayâwhat I saw when years later I charted the journey.
Now, maybe Wilson would have concluded that Conway had just educated all these women into understanding they had been abused. But if she had taken this or any other theory of what had changed the scene so dramatically, and then bothered to look into the actual charges, as I was finally doing years later, she might have seen them fall apart one by one. And then she could have reported that. Was Wilson a good liberal simply afraid to look as though she was defending a straight, politically incorrect sex researcher against a group of supposedly downtrodden trans women? Had Conway and James scared the crap out of her, as they seemed to scare everybody else? Or was the explanation simpler? Was it just that trying to figure out what the hell was really going on would have taken too much time and other resources?
References
Dreger, Alice (2015). Galileo’s Middle Finger.
Dreger, Alice (2008). The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Wilson, Robin (September 3, 2016). Citing Safety Concerns, Northwestern U. Bans Tenured ‘Gadfly’ Professor From Campus.
Wilson, Robin (December 10, 2004). Northwestern U. Will Not Reveal Results of Investigation Into Sex Researcher.
Wilson, Robin (December 1, 2004). Northwestern U. Concludes Investigation of Sex Researcher but Keeps Results Secret.
Wilson, Robin (December 12, 2003). Northwestern U. Psychologist Is Accused of Having Sex With Research Subject.
Wilson, Robin (July 25, 2003). Transsexual ‘Subjects’ Complain About Professor’s Research Methods.
Wilson, Robin (July 17, 2003). 2 Transsexual Women Say Professor Didn’t Tell Them They Were Research Subjects.
Horne earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Cornell University and a law degree from Albany Law School of Union University in 1984. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1985 and practiced for several years before going into journalism, where he has published with bylines including William W. Horne and Bill Horne.
Horne joined the Chronicle in 2000 as Deputy Managing Editor, rising to editor from 2004 to 2007. He then held editor positions at World History Group from 2008 to 2013, then joined AARP in 2014 as Executive Editor of their magazine. His wife Kathleen “Kathy” Broadbent Horne is also a lawyer.
The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003)
Chronicle staffer Robin Wilson wrote six articles covering the controversy, and Dreger was critical of the coverage, citing her correspondence with Horne:
When I realized the strange role Wilson had played, I tried asking her and her editor why they hadnât used her before-and-after-scandal positioning to ask deep questions about why Baileyâs relationships appeared, at least in public accounts, to have suddenly changed with these women. Wilsonâs editor sent me back boilerplate: âWe stand by the accuracy, and fairness, of Robinâs reporting and are not inclined to revisit decisions Robin and her editors made here with regard to what to include or exclude from those stories in 2003.â
References
Dreger, Alice (2008). The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age. Archives of Sexual Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-007-9301-1
Dreger, Alice (2015). Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice. Penguin Books ISBN 978-0143108115
Wheeler earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Psychology from University of Massachusetts Boston in 1978 and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1980. He contributed to the Chronicle of Higher Education before becoming International Editor in 2000 and Managing Editor of the Global Chronicle in 2006. He was named Editor of Al Fanar Media in 2012 and has been based in London.
