Joseph Burgo vs. transgender people

Joe Burgo is an American author and anti-transgender extremist. Burgo runs the anti-trans website Beyond WPATH, which is critical of mainstream healthcare organization WPATH. Burgo promotes “gender exploratory therapy” (GET) as well as gender identity change efforts (GICE), practices that are outlawed in California. Burgo is an advisor for anti-trans groups like Genspect and others.

Burgo appears in conservative and anti-trans media, including Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Benjamin Boyce, Wesley Yang, and Roger McFillin.

Background

Joseph Mark “Joe” Burgo was born on May 6, 1955. Burgo is from Taft, California, graduated from Inglewood High School, and got a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA.

Burgo holds graduate diplomas from California Graduate Institute (CGI) in West Los Angeles. California’s Board of Psychology stated that CGI was an unaccredited institution from 1976 to 2008. CGI was merely approved by the now-defunct California Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education, but not accredited. As journalist Jeff Walker noted:

CGI’s repeated pleas for accreditation have been rebuffed because it lacks a sufficient number of full-time staff, a decent library, and other features that students of the thousands of accredited albeit mediocre colleges throughout North America take for granted. In prestige this Ph.D. is, aside from the mail-order variety, rockbottom.
Walker (2012)

Burgo has written a number of books about narcissism and shame.

Burgo was in a “heterosexual marriage” for 17 years and has three children. Burgo then married Michael George Eha (born September 1953), a publicist associated with Me Rep Inc. and Michael Eha & Associates. They have been together since about 2003 and split their time between Palm Springs and London.

Anti-transgender activism

Burgo stated in 2023:

One of my children is trans-identified and alienated from me. And that was my introduction to this space back in 2014, and it’s part of the reason I started getting interested in things like autogynephilia, because I just took a deep dive into everything about trans, trying to find out everything. And then I found out that there was this thing called autogynephilia, which seemed stunning to me. I’d never heard of it before, and read The Man Who Would Be Queen and Blanchard, and more recently read Anne Lawrence’s work. And I look at these guys… I suppose it’s partly because my journey has been about making peace with myself as a man, feeling better about my own masculinity, which oddly I feel better about in my gay life than I did in my heterosexual life… my ostensibly heterosexual life.
Yang (2023)

Burgo is convinced that trans people are driven to transition by narcissism and/or shame, particularly shame about being gay. Burgo promotes the “ex-transgender” movement, similar to the ex-gay movement. Anti-trans therapists call a shift in gender identity or expression “desistance” for children and “detransition” for adults. Via Slate:

Genspect also supports an organization called Our Duty, which has stated that “it should be the objective of any advanced civilization presented with this problem to TARGET 100% DESISTANCE, and as early as possible.” Desistance means when someone stops identifying as transgender and pursuing medical transition.

When asked for an interview, GETA team member Joseph Burgo—who is also vice-director of Genspect—said that he and the rest of the GETA team declined to comment.
Santoro (2023)

Burgo is very upset about being forbidden to practice “gender exploratory therapy” because California made it illegal:

In California, where I’m licensed to practise as a clinical psychologist, law prohibits me from engaging ‘in sexual orientation change efforts with a patient under 18,’ which includes alternative ‘gender expressions’. For this reason, I must turn away the many distraught parents who reach out for help with their gender nonconforming, autism spectrum, or gay and lesbian children who have recently become trans-identified. To do otherwise would expose me to potential malpractice lawsuits and challenges to my licensure, a vulnerability which trans-rights activists do not hesitate to exploit in order to intimidate those who question the affirmative-care model.

Burgo wrote in the conservative Daily Caller:

For the troubled young men in my psychotherapy practice who have de-transitioned — that is, lived for a number of years as if they were women and then reverted to their biological sex — their female identity represented such as idealized false self. By imagining themselves to be female, my clients had taken flight from a shame-ridden self which was felt to be defective, damaged, and beyond repair. When this defensive new identity finally broke down, they found themselves engulfed in pain, confusion and shame, and as a result sought professional help.

Meanwhile, the militant trans-identified male continues shoring up his idealized false self. He insists he’s no different from and deserves the same rights and privileges as biological females. When others insist upon the reality of biological sex and assert that trans women aren’t actually women, he feels persecuted; on some level, this challenge to his sense of self may even feel life-threatening. His envy of biological women — for embodying the idealized state he longs for but can never truly reach — may lead to vindictive and physical assaults upon their persons. He wants to destroy them and the truth they embody.

References

Santoro, Helen (May 02, 2023). How Therapists Are Trying to Convince Children That They’re Not Actually Trans. Slate https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/gender-exploratory-therapy-trans-kids-what-is-it.html

California State Postsecondary Education Commission (March 16, 1987). Changes in California State Oversight of Private Postsecondary Education Institutions. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED285479.pdf

Barrett, Stephen (February 15, 2007). California Psychology Schools That Were Approved But Not Accredited Between 1991 and 2016. CredentialWatch https://quackwatch.org/credential/non/california_approved/

California Board of Psychology (2003). Unaccredited California Approved Schools: A History and Current Status Report. https://web.archive.org/web/20070216203504/http://www.psychboard.ca.gov/licensing/unaccredited.htm

Walker, Jeff (2012). Ayn Rand Cult, p. 156. ISBN 9780812698190

Burgo, Joseph (April 14, 2023). Are Trans Rights Activists Victims — Or Bullies? Daily Caller https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/14/opinion-are-trans-rights-activists-victims-or-bullies-dr-joseph-burgo/

EPISODE 73 – Shame Narcissism and the Transition Fantasy w Joe Burgo -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqLEGg6e5zc

Burgo, Joseph (August 16, 2022). The ‘Failed’ Boy. Genspect https://genspect.org/the-failed-boy/

Burgo, Joseph (May 5, 2023). In Flight from Manhood. Genspect https://genspect.org/in-flight-from-manhood/

Buttons, Christina (October 19, 2022). New Declaration Launches Opposition To Leading Transgender Health Association. Daily Wire https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-declaration-launches-opposition-to-leading-transgender-health-association

Yang, Wesley (July 28, 2023). Joseph Burgo on autogynephilia, the state of psychotherapy, ROGD, and challenging WPATH. Year Zero with Wesley Yang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9lhPyA7CAI