Interventions designed to prevent, halt, or reverse non-cisgender experiences are known as conversion therapy. The scientific consensus is that these practices are “pseudoscientific,” and experts on torture have identified these pseudoscientific practices as “torture.” As such, these interventions represent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which are scientifically demonstrated to cause brain damage, life-long disabilities, and significantly shortened lifespans. In short, severe emotional abuse is torture; conversion interventions are severe emotional abuse, interventions designed to prevent, halt, or reverse non-cisgender experiences are… Read more.

In this article, I will debunk the five arguments fascists currently use to target transgender people. All fascist movements are predicated upon the myth of categorical purity. Because the material reality of individual humans is not one defined by discrete category, fascism always seeks to conflate people with words and category. It is for this reason that fascism is incompatible with human flourishing. Read more.

Under political pressure for being too liberal from several far-right candidates, Abbott issued what is an effectively fake directive targeting trans children and their families. Read more.

Dave Chappelle’s cisgender enablers repeatedly assert that anti-trans “jokes” are "just jokes" and not an essential aspect of the dehumanization process. So, let us put cisgender media’s claim to the test. The pushback against supporting the dehumanization of trans people began with a trans employee for Netflix writing, “I work at @Netflix. Yesterday we launched another Chappelle special where he attacks the trans community, and the very validity of transness – all while trying to pit us against other marginalized… Read more.

The newest claim making the sex essentialist activist rounds is that transition will probably cause you to have a stroke or heart attack. TERFs and other sex essentialist activists, from the political right to the skeptic-bro left, point to a new trans study from the Netherlands: The forthcoming study to be published in March 2019 said that trans women and men may be at higher risk for cardiovascular events and that, "oth physicians and transgender individuals should be aware of… Read more.

Dr. Littman lies, possibly misleading parents into withholding care from trans kids. Recently the author of a Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) study lied to a credulous Canadian reporter who printed misleading medical and psychological information that can encourage parents to withhold evidence-based care from their children. The following is an excerpt from Canada’s The Globe and Mail newspaper: Dr. Littman describes the condition experienced by these girls as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD).… Read more.

By Cristan Williams Today, the actual medical group, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released several pieces of evidence-based guidance to support the care and protection of transgender youth. This included a detailed press release, user-friendly info kit, and a citable evidence-based review of the best practices for trans care for youth. A google news search returns one website that's covering AAP's important news while dozens of sites covered a… Read more.

While the GOP in Texas has recently made it clear that they intend to persist in promoting the various lies that support transphobic "bathroom bills," they've taken their anti-trans hysteria further by claiming that various cisgender Democrats running for office are perhaps transgender. Perhaps most well known is the specularly failed attempt to make a photo of Beto wearing a 90s-era grunge dress while in his punk band Foss a political issue. Self-described "deplorable" and "Tea Party Original" GOP candidate for Texas… Read more.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the decades-old organization that issues the international standards for medical and psychological care for trans people, responded to the media hype over a "study" that purports to have discovered a new pathology it calls "Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria" (ROGD), saying ROGD, "is distinct from the gender dysphoria observed in individuals who have previously been described as transgender." The "study" (such as it is) asked largely anonymous commenters from 3 anti-trans sites"In recent years,… Read more.

TERF activist censors Radical Feminist voices to sneak hate into the classroom. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) activist, Sheila Jeffreys has written a new academic book that claims to inform readers of the various ways TERF culture, "has all been disappeared from history." Chief among those Jeffreys' claims to have the power to disappear TERFs from history is an "influential men’s cross-dressing rights movement which enforces men’s access to lesbians wherever we seek to meet or network." To support this fact claim,… Read more.

Updates from the UK division of the Trans Advocate:   The Conservative government came out this week calling for a consultation on how to best reform the Gender Recognition Act, or G.R.A. of 2004. This comes at a time when the "debate" over trans rights in the UK is front and center in the TERF friendly UK press. The transphobic rhetoric centers over access to, quote, "women's only spaces" end quote. However, the GRA does not even deal with public… Read more.

Yes, they worked to make people believe the YouTube Shooter was a trans woman and the mainstream media didn't want you to know, but that's a symptom of a larger problem. On April 3rd, 2018, an armed shooter opened fire at the Youtube headquarters in California. Shortly afterward, as is becoming an epidemic in our current online culture, conspiracy theories and misinformation made the rounds faster then verifiable information could be gathered. There were claims that the shooter was Muslim,… Read more.

Here’s how Slate begins its article on the concerning trend of autistic people being diagnosed as trans: Gender specialists first noticed decades ago that a large number of people who seek treatment for gender dysphoria also seemed to have autistic traits. Research on this phenomenon goes back to at least the 1990s, when the first case study of an autistic child with gender dysphoria (then called gender identity disorder) was published. As studies investigating the co-occurrence (or correlation) between gender dysphoria and… Read more.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, like HRC before them, is throwing the transgender community under the bus. Members of the Caucus Board encouraged candidates in the current election to support and seek the endorsement of the anti-transgender group, the Baptist Ministers of Houston Area and Vicinity (there are several variations of their name). The Baptist Ministers of Houston Area and Vicinity (HBVHAV) ran false anti-transgender advertising during the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) fight, falsified petitions… Read more.

The anti-trans movement created a new pathology they're shopping around to various (mostly right-wing) news outlets. It's called "rapid onset gender dysphoria" and you catch it from websites like DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Reddit. A great takedown of this internet illness was published by the Advocate and I encourage you to check it out. Having said that, I want to focus on the more obvious, yet overlooked flaws of this concocted condition: it asserts itself to be both "rapid onset" and "gender… Read more.

UPDATE (4/20/22): This article was updated to respond to spurious recommendations from the Florida Department of Health, which assert the same debunked claims this article fact-checks. Having learned that the mainstream publication The Atlantic has paid professional anti-trans concern troll Jesse Singal to write about trans issues, I want to address his well-worn arguments before he can make them. To do so, I will assert and then substantiate a few things: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)… Read more.

The TransAdvocate produced a short documentary to examine the political right's propensity to focus on bathrooms when it comes to trans equality. The reality is, the political right always focuses on bathrooms, privacy, and sexual safety concerns when taking a stand against equality, no matter the oppressed population. This documentary examines, from a historical perspective, why this political rhetoric works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHzrPGyiwqo Podcast Extra Transcript In Illinois, one of the states that joined North Carolina in suing the Obama Administration for… Read more.

As readers might be aware, the UK media is engulfed in a new and ongoing round of media-created trans panic of the same type that lead to the death of Lucy Medows in 2013. Already, media hysteria coupled with the concern trolling homunculus that is all things "gender critical," has pushed a trans teen caught in the UK media's crosshairs to desperation. Riding the wake of this media madness is Linda Bellos, a sex essentialist "radical feminist" who took to an… Read more.

This week's podcast is an audio essay: On The Make It A Slur Campaigns: Are Misogynist, Homophobe & TERF Slurs? By: Cristan Williams Narrated by: Nikki Delgado Duration: 25 minutes Essay Summary: Anti-equality activists, seemingly from the left and right, have worked together to make certain feminist and queer language taboo. In this audio essay, the TransAdvocate takes a deep dive into the ways in which anti-equality activists work together to coordinate efforts to control the… Read more.

Into the nexus of the 'gay alt-right feminist' movement I received notice that an opinion leader in the sex essentialist activist community had linked to one of my articles titled, You Might be a TERF if... The article lists explicit instances of ideological hate and real-life violence (up to and including attempted murder) carried out in the name of a form of sex essentialist 'feminism' that developed in the US during the mid-to-late 1970s. The Feminist Current, a site substantially dedicated… Read more.

You may have heard that a clothing-optional spa in Toronto turned away a trans woman and that has caused a stir. What you may not understand is why she was turned away. Articles explaining the situation often completely omit one very important detail: the trans woman who was booked at the spa was not planning to make her genitals anyone’s business. While the spa is clothing-optional, there is no compulsory nudity. According to The Torontoist, “King asked if her… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-v-interview-with-zuckers-patient-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19727.htm"  style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Five: Zucker's Patient [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-vii-interview-with-affirmative-therapy-pioneer-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19880.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 7: Affirmative Therapy By Cristan Williams Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the sixth installment in this series on… Read more.

  By M. A. Melby As an educator, it is my duty to give all students an opportunity to learn and to succeed. In service to this duty, Universities are legally required to maintain a non-hostile environment. I am also devoted to imparting information that may be incongruous with my students strongly held beliefs. With the goal of meaningful instruction and students’ personal growth in mind, I may encourage frank discussions on… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-iii-the-report-controversy-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19672.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Three: Controversy [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-v-interview-with-zuckers-patient-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19727.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Five: Zucker’s Patient By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the fourth installment in this series… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-ii-the-history-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19630.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Two: The History [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-iv-interview-with-the-camh-medical-director-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19703.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Four: CAMH Director By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the third installment… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.transadvocate.com/part-i-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19556.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part One: Introduction [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.transadvocate.com/part-iii-the-report-controversy-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19672.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Three: Controversy By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the second installment in… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.transadvocate.com/part-ii-the-history-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19630.htm" target="blank" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Part Two: The History By Cristan Williams   Foreword With the recent enthusiastic promotion of disco-era ideas about trans people and gender identity in general, the TransAdvocate felt that it would be important to release a comprehensive review of these ideas. In this series that will feature the tag #DiscoSexology, the TransAdvocate… Read more.

Johns Hopkins was an early pioneer in American trans care until anti-LGBT activist Paul McHugh began working at the hospital. In 1979, McHugh was able to end trans care at Johns Hopkins and later wrote that it was his goal to force the closure of the hospital's gender program saying, "It was part of my intention, when I arrived in Baltimore in 1975, to help end it." McHugh went on to describe his professional assessment… Read more.

By Kelly Winters, PhD Jesse Singal, the Senior Editor at nymag.com, has enlisted his New York Magazine blog to promote the widely publicized presumption that painful distress with birth-assigned sex and gender are just a phase for the great majority of children who suffer it: While the actual percentages vary from study to study, overall, it appears that about 80 percent of kids with gender dysphoria end up feeling okay, in the long… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Almost without exception, all news stories covering the US Attorney General's suit against North Carolina omits the rather significant fact that when North Carolina took federal money tied to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and Title IX, they signed a contract with the federal government explicitly agreeing to not discriminate on the basis of “gender identity”. Unlike what you may have heard, this breach of contract is… Read more.

On Monday, May 9th, the United States Attorney General, Loretta Lynch came out swinging against North Carolina's commitment to discriminating against trans people. The speech that AG Lynch gave is incredibly striking and stands as a singular moment in the history of trans advocacy. While numerous sites will pair soundbites with their own commentary and others will inevitably misrepresent her words, we at the TransAdvocate wish to simply let the AG's words… Read more.

Once again, news media around the globe proves that they'll promote just about anything anti-trans, without verification. Zinnia Jones released an in-depth analysis and debunking of YouTuber Joey "Salads" Saladino's "transgender bathroom experiment" wherein Saladino dons a bad wig so that he can stage and film what he presents to be the actual fear of (cis) women when they encounter what's supposedly a trans woman in the women's bathroom. The UK's Daily Mail --the same news… Read more.

A 2011 Swedish study proves that trans people are more suicidal due to transition, are likely rapists and that trans women exhibit male socialization. Or does it? Perhaps you've heard that a Swedish study found that trans people who access medical care are more likely to commit suicide. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, former Johns Hopkins chief psychiatrist and anti-LGBT activist Dr. Paul McHugh cited a Swedish study to make the following fact assertion: A 2011 study… Read more.

On August 22, 2015, the NY Times ran an article by Richard A. Friedman titled, "How Changeable Is Gender?" One might be excused for mistaking the piece as an earnest call to the medical community for better interventions for the trans community. Alarmingly, Friedman warns readers that science has found that post-operative transsexuals are at significant risk of suicide and moreover, maybe medical treatment isn't actually the right approach after all, especially for trans kids. Friedman gravely recounts a scientific study that… Read more.

Or not. Perhaps you've seen this image floating around the Internets today:   As InfoWars reports, "The California Green Party is attracting controversy after posting an image on its official Instagram page which promotes 'free slaps' to be metered out to ‘straight white men’." However, when this image came out, the California Green Party didn't have an Instagram account. In fact, the first time the image showed up on the internet was when it was posted to 4chan. If… Read more.

While her mom talks to CNN to profess her love and support, Leelah's Reddit posts paint a homelife defined by bullying and fear. Much has been written about Leelah Alcorn's suicide note* which identifies conversion therapy and unsupportive parents as contributing factors to what happened to Leelah. Under the weight of public condemnation, Leelah's mother, Carla Alcron told CNN that "e told him that we loved him unconditionally. We loved him no… Read more.

Gender Critical Feminism (GCF) is a euphemism for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF). There is no ideological difference between the TERF and "Gender Critical Feminist" (GCF) movement; they are one in the same. GCF teaches that because sex is a natural binary, intersex people are actually just deformed men and women and trans people are always the sex they were assigned at birth. As Janice Raymond’s acolyte Sheila Jeffreys wrote, “sex” is fixed and referring to trans women with female pronouns is… Read more.

It has long been asserted that the iconic TERF opinion leader, Janice Raymond, played a part in bringing an end to the public and private coverage of transgender medical care, resulting in measurable death and suffering within the trans community. Unsurprisingly, Raymond rejects any assertion that she has blood on her hands. Over on TheTERFs.com, Raymond objects to the following assertion: “It was only after the NCHCT published Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that… Read more.

(Added emphasis to specific statements by Lisa Vogel and/or official MichFest press releases and documents is added throughout the piece with bolded orange text.) Lisa Vogel posted an official Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MichFest) statement on her Facebook page on August 18th, 2014. The statement is in regards to MichFest and the long-running womyn-born-womyn policy/intention for the festival. It's been crossposted a number of times, including to the LGBT news site Between The Lines. Lisa… Read more.

In the middle of a cool August night in 1991, Nancy Burkholder was thrown out of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) because she’s a trans woman.  Burkholder was Janis Walworth’s friend and she was outraged that MWMF’s would engage in anti-trans discrimination. Walworth, a cisgender radical lesbian feminist,  immediately began to educate MWMF attendees about trans people. After coping with threats of violence and dealing with having her consciousness-raising… Read more.

What follows is a continuation of my interview with Radical Feminist lesbian icon, Robin Tyler. In the previous piece, Tyler talked about being beaten by TERFs for trying to protect a trans woman from their assault. In this portion of the interview, Tyler describes how a TERF's fist at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) led her to conclude that it was time for her to start her own women's music festival.… Read more.

Robin Tyler is an iconic Radical Feminist lesbian who talked with me about the ways she confronted TERF violence and oppression against trans women. We discussed Tyler’s involvement with the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference. For some context on why this particular conference was so important, Susan Stryker sums it up well: Elliott also served on the organizing committee of the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference, planned for April of 1973 in Los Angeles, and she had… Read more.

Sandy Stone was a problem that Janice Raymond, author of The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, decided to take care of. Raymond felt that Stone -- an out trans woman who was part of the radical feminist lesbian separatist music collective, Olivia Records -- didn’t belong. Raymond engineered a smear campaign that nearly destroyed the Collective and put Stone’s life in jeopardy, culminating in armed TERFs asserting their intention to murder Stone. Olivia Records was a successful… Read more.

Many of the TERFs I’ve had the displeasure of meeting move through life belligerently sexing physical phenomena and behavior (especially rape) while simultaneously (and ironically) proclaiming themselves to be critical of gender.  For TERFs, there is no difference between mentally contextualizing a body as a sex attribute and the body itself. TERFs have such a long history of, with all the asperity of a hellfire creationist, asserting that sexing everyone is better/different/more natural than gendering everyone that I hold no hope they will see past their own… Read more.

This is a long-form article on MichFest's co-founder and current producer Lisa Vogel. The article contains extensive text of what Vogel has stated regarding trans people over several decades, as well as analysis and commentary on her carefully evolved language, but unevolved perspective, that trans women are males. Lisa Vogel, a co-founder and the producer of the Michigan Women's Music Festival (known more commonly as MichFest and by the acronym MWMF), has consistently defined trans women as both… Read more.

Part III of the 'Sexing the Body is Gender' Series: Debunking TERF Essentialism In Part II, what gender is and is not was discussed and the ways in which we contextualize our bodies were reviewed. In this section, essentialism arguments regularly asserted as being self-evidently true are reviewed and deconstructed. When appealing to a substance – say, genetics, chromosomes, etc. – as being a sexed essence which defines how we collectively regard the… Read more.

TERFs tend to behave much like a fundamentalist echo chamber so that once a new malicious anti-trans trope is created, it is quickly disseminated and replicated until the trans community and/or allied communities must waste their time addressing the fallacies. Therefore, the TransAdvocate has put together this list of debunked anti-trans TERF tropes for your reference. The Cotton Ceiling: TERFs assert that Planned Parenthood conspired to helped teach trans people how to force lesbians to have sex with them and this amounts to corrective… Read more.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently ran an op-ed by the right-wing anti-transgender psychiatrist, Paul McHugh. McHugh purposefully misrepresented the research he cited in his article, misleading WSJ readers, and the wider population into believing the lie he was selling. When the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) learned of the McHugh hoax, they responded. While WPATH Board Member, Dr. Dan Karasic, responded to McHugh and the WSJ published the response, they refused to publish the part where WPATH notes that McHugh misrepresented the research… Read more.

Engaging in fraud in order to overturn LGBT and especially trans equality in cities throughout the nation is nothing new for anti-equality bigots. In the past anti-equality efforts, election fraud was limited to purposefully deceiving voters about trans equality or intimidating voters. Recently, the TransAdvocate documented an anti-equality activist using county property to attempt to circumvent a Texas election law. The Houston Area Pastor's Council (AKA, the Texas Pastor's Council, AKA, the US Pastor's Council) is the Texas-based anti-queer group that is heading up… Read more.

In a June 12th opinion article in the Wall Street Journal, well-known anti-transgender psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh attempts to make a case against supporting hormonal and surgical transition for transgender individuals. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, has been actively working against the medical treatment of trans people since the 1970’s. As the university’s chief psychiatrist, he was instrumental in closing the Johns Hopkins Gender Program in 1979, one of the first programs of its kind, citing… Read more.

Judith Butler is a preeminent gender theorist and has played an extraordinarily influential role in shaping modern feminism. They've written extensively on gender, and her concept of gender performativity is a central theme of both modern feminism and gender theory. Butler's essays and books include Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993) and Undoing Gender (2004). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc However, the concept of gender performativity… Read more.

Discourse surrounding the term tranny has become more than a little heated. In fact, a RuPaul Drag Race runner-up enacted the mock execution of a trans woman named Parker Molloy for the apparent crime of asking that folks not be so casual with the language people use while killing trans people. Andrea James thought the mock execution was "hilarious" and a HuffPo Gay editor promoted the video.  There's a number of posts out there critiquing the mock execution of Parker Molloy. This article will not substantively focus on these… Read more.

The following is a peer-reviewed paper originally published in Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society. The article was co-authored by the TransAdvocate Editor, Cristan Williams and Dr. Rawson of the College of the Holy Cross. K.J. Rawson, Cristan Williams, 2014 The current ubiquity of the word transgender might imply that it is an uncomplicated word.1 It circulates widely—in the media, in academia, and in the titles of organizations, archives, and resource centers—to the extent… Read more.

In a situation that recalls the recent controversy around MMA Fighter Fallon Fox, Chloie Jönsson, a trans woman, was recently banned from competing in the women’s division of Reebok’s CrossFit athletic competition, a high-intensity endurance fitness challenge with a cash-prize of $250,000. She is now suing Crossfit for $2.5 million for discrimination. In the letter to her lawyer, obtained by TMZ, CrossFit contends that:  This is simply wrong as a matter of human biology and if you can’t see… Read more.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF) are quick to make fact assertions about the term, TERF. According to TERFs, the term is a slur and use of the term makes one a misogynist.   Others assert that the term is insulting, hyperbolic, misleading, and ultimately defamatory. Allen actually calls for more people to recognize radical feminists as a hate group and then pointedly adopts the term Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to refer to them throughout the article. Make no mistake, this is a slur.… Read more.

The one thing that you have to realize is that everything the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) did to a trans kid in Colorado was about PJI's desire to stop a law in California that codified equality standards for trans children. Law makers in California proposed legislation that would help ensure that California's trans children would be able to have a school experience free from institutionalized oppression. PJI hated this idea and decided that were going to fight it every… Read more.

Official Souvenir Program of the 1979 National March on Washington, Page 40 It should be noted that the organizer of the 1st MOW was Ray Hill from Houston, Texas. Hill was a significant supporter of both trans inclusion and trans empowerment. Trans Leader from Houston, Phyllis Frye (center, holding American flag) Phyllis Frye, leading the Texas contingent [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/71779612" params="" width=" 100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] Official Souvenir Program of the 1979 National March on Washington, Page 1 "Gay is… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Arizona state senator, Steve Yarbrough (R) sponsored Senate Bill 1062, hailed as a "property rights" bill aimed at ensuring that business owners and social service organizations would have the right to discriminate on the basis of religious freedom. Devon Mills, speaking for Yarbrough's office said, "It allows business owners to use religion as a reason to deny someone business if it conflicts with their religious belief." Arizona Democrats, who argue the legislation is a way to legalize discrimination against LGBT… Read more.

On Saturday, January 4, 2014, the Toronto Star published an anti-trans hoax without first fact checking. The claim was that a 70 year old woman was undressing in a Toronto-area YMCA when a male-bodied individual "who was pre-everything" and who had been given access to the women's changing area merely because they claimed to be trans, stripped nude, walked around, and with an erection hit on the elderly woman. The Toronto Star twice published this claim. On Friday, the Star tried… Read more.

Ex-gay groups are pounding their high chairs insisting that AB 1266 is not in effect. They claim that merely because they turned in signatures - valid or no - AB 1266, the California law codifying protections for trans children in schools, is on hold. The media and liberal politicians are doing their best to scare school officials into implementing AB 1266 right away. The media is reporting that AB 1266 is now in effect and must be implemented by every… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Jewlyes Gutierrez, 16-year-old trans sophomore at Hercules High School On December 4, 2013 an investigative reporter, Jennifer Lopez interviewed the police department about a case against a trans Hercules High School student who had fought back against school bullies: Detective Putten returned my phone call. This was in reference to Jewlyes Gutierrez, a transgender student who  was being bullied and harassed at her high school. The context that I had contacted Detective Putten… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams In its landmark 2009 decision on responsible communication in the public interest, Canada’s highest court asserts this principle: “Freedom does not negate responsibility. It is vital that the media act responsibly in reporting facts on matters of public concern, holding themselves to the highest journalistic standards.” If the Toronto Star does not live up to this responsibility in everything it publishes — in the newspaper, on its websites and through social media — we undermine our… Read more.

Sometimes, one just has to call out pure, unadulterated bullsh**. The following is my letter to the Toronto Star editor as submitted. Dear Letters to the Editor, I'm concerned about the question in the most recent that Ethically Speaking columnist Ken Gallinger posted in his most recent column entitled Transgender woman’s behaviour in changeroom unacceptable. The question maligns both transgender women and the management of YMCAs and YWCAs, and it wasn't fact-checked for accuracy. The question in the… Read more.

On Saturday, the Toronto Star's "ethics" journalist, Ken Gallinger, unquestioningly published the incredible claim that an elderly Toronto women was hit on in the YMCA women's locker room by a male-bodied individual who was walking around the women's locker room fully nude, replete with erection. Fact checking is not what we do here at the Toronto Star! The article claimed that the nude and erect individual was allowed into the women's locker room because they merely… Read more.

In their December 30, 2013 press release Co-ed Bathroom Bill Update: Legislature Still Has To Hold It, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) claims that the California Success and Opportunity Act (the act that that they're attempting to rebrand as the "Co-ed Bathroom Bill") doesn't go into effect on January 1, 2014. Sacramento, CA-- A referendum has put on hold a 37 word bill which would have opened up restrooms, locker rooms and showers in K-12 public schools to students “irrespective… Read more.

OutSmart magazine asked me to write a piece on the TERF phenomena. My 2500+ word article featured just two sentences that mentioned Cathy Brennan's behavior. Cathy Brennan - a Maryland attorney, activist, leader and a public face of TERFism - is demanding that my article be edited so that it remains silent about her behavior in the modern TERF movement. Lie for me or else! Brennan asserted that she's hired lawyers to successfully go after other media… Read more.

The Paradise Post decided to feature one the more ridiculous talking points on offer by anti-equality forces. The "Specificity Critique" is when bigots decry trans equality laws for being policy instead of procedure. I find it ironic the same people who decry the claimed tyranny of Big Government are the same who decry the fact that they aren't micromanaged by the State in the roll-out of trans-inclusive policy. The specificity critique is the last fig leaf of a bigoted ideology. In… Read more.

By Cristan Williams @cristanwilliams Charlotte Burrous, a reporter for the Canon City Daily Record asserted that parents of students spoke out at a school board meeting: Parents of students in the Florence-Penrose School District expressed concern during Monday's regular board meeting about a transgender Florence High School girl who has been granted permission by the school, and the district, to continue to use the girls' restroom at the school. Yeah, they're talking about Jane Doe: Before… Read more.

Recently, an equality effort in Florida was defeated by appealing to the 'trans people = rape' meme. As it turned out, appealing to this meme was deliberate and is, in fact, part of a curriculum currently being taught to anti-LGBT activists. The TransAdvocate obtained audio from one of the training sessions given by the Christian Family Association (CFC) on October 5th, shortly after their successful defeat of a Florida equality measure that included trans people. The curriculum taught at this training… Read more.

Recently Katherine Svenson, a Delta county School Board member in Colorado, found herself the topic of controversy after remarking that trans kids should be castrated before they use the restroom. What news reports failed to note was that Svenson is the co-founder of an anti-gay ministry: Cached 2010 copy of TellASIA founding members Here's some of what TellASIA spends its time doing: It so happened that the dates of the final conference coincided with the date when South… Read more.

Would you be surprised to learn that a wildly popular front group TERF attorney, Cathy Brennan runs is fake? The group, Organizing for Women's Liberation (OWL) claims to have received well over 100,000 FaceBook likes and is the more palatable face of Cathy Brennan's hate group. OWL mixes anti-trans messaging in with news reports chronicling rape and brutality against women, thereby linking "trans" to real violence against women. The reality is that OWL is a fake group whose "like" numbers… Read more.

The TransAdvocate has documented numerous unethical and/or illegal actions by Pacific Justice Institute backed movement seeking to repeal protections for trans children in California. We've caught them bullying a trans kid to the brink of suicide in an effort to manufacture talking points. We've caught them committing election fraud over and over again. We've caught them lying in the press and lying to the public and today, we've  uncovered evidence of signature gatherers attempting to intimidate a trans advocate when she asked… Read more.

The mere mention of the incident should send shivers down your spine. Trans people who support protections based on gender identity should feel nervous when Colleen's name is mentioned. If you're trans, you should hope that this incident fades into the distance and is never brought up in polite conversations. For the uninitiated, here's a recap from Fox News: A Washington college said their non-discrimination policy prevents them from stopping a transgender man from exposing himself to young girls inside… Read more.

With talking points, it's easy to demonize a class of people as a class of people. When confronted with one, very humanized person who belongs to that class of people, it can be hard for someone to stick to the class demonization talking points. An example on point: the demonization of trans female youth as a class of people -- people described by the demonizers as male -- as bathroom and locker room predators of cisgender girls. The Pacific Justice… Read more.

Some of you may be shocked to learn that staff at Heritage Middle School in St. Leonard, MD are forcing school children to crossdress in order to make them understand the hardship trans and gay people are facing. It must be true because here's a photo of the school children: "These Two Children Were Paired As A Post-Op And Pre-Op Transsexual Couple" Horrifying, isn't it? Right wing activist groups thought so: Who's PFOX you ask? Well, PFOX is… Read more.

NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR PAYMENT TYPE CITY STATE ZIP EMPLOYER OCCUPATION AMOUNT TRANSACTION DATE SEAN FIELER MONETARY PRINCETON NJ 8540 EQUINOX PARTNERS PARTNER $80,000.00 9/25/2013 PACIFIC JUSTICE INSTITUTE MONETARY SACRAMENTO CA 95827 $10,000.00 9/23/2013 HAGMAN FOR SENATE 2016 NON-MONETARY CHINO HILLS CA 91709 $7,013.73 9/26/2013 HERMAN ROWLAND, SR MONETARY FAIRFIELD CA 94533 JELLY BELLY CANDY COMPANY CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD $5,000.00 9/26/2013 CHRISTINE HALLADAY MONETARY NEWHALL CA 91321 SELF HOMEMAKER $1,000.00 9/24/2013 ROBERT MACK MONETARY HILLSBOROUGH CA 94010 UNEMPLOYED $1,000.00 9/27/2013… Read more.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is the ex-gay organization that stirred up the right-wing word by claiming that a trans kid (who I will refer to as Jane Doe, for reasons of safety) in Colorado was harassing cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets jumped at the story without conducting any fact checking, prompting members of the right wing community to call for the death of the trans kid. Last week, PJI made the following statement on the notorious right-wing site, World Daily News: Transgender… Read more.

In the seemingly never-ending morass of falsehoods coming from the likes of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), a new claim of trans harassment is being pushed in the media by members of the PJI-backed coalition of organizations who are trying to dismantle protections for California transgender school children. In this iteration of the trans bathroom meme,  it's claimed that LA school girls are being harassed by a trans kid who crawls up and over the bathroom stalls in order to watch… Read more.

It All Depends On The Audience The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) has been at the center of a controversy because of what they've clamed about the behavior of a trans student at a Colorado high school. They've turned her into a predator...a monster...a "nightmare" example of what trans female youth will do if they are universally allowed into any public school's girls locker rooms and restrooms. And as Transadvocate editor-in-chief Cristan Williams has pointed out, one of their transparent reasons… Read more.

I wanted to go ahead and get this interview out there ASAP. I'll make a more in-depth post soon - including how PJI responds to Jane Doe's mother and what they think about ex-gay and ex-transgender conversion therapy (clue: they think it's worth fighting for). Here's the interview:   [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/116441769" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]   UPDATE: An amazing Reddit user has transcribed this entire interview!   Tip this TransAdvocate! Writers for the TransAdvocate work hard to… Read more.

I’d like to introduce you to a 16 year old high school student who I’m going to refer to as “Jane Doe.” I’m calling her "Jane" because, after an ex-gay organization orchestrated an international smear campaign against her, numerous individuals have stated that she should be beaten and killed. Jane recently moved to a small Colorado town with her two moms. Jane transitioned from male to female two years ago with the blessing of her therapist. In October 2011, Jane… Read more.

Groups who want a legal right to discriminate against transgender children seem to be pulling out all the stops. An ex-gay group, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), recently went on an ugly smear campaign targeting a Colorado trans kid in what seems to be a ham-handed effort to manufacture talking points for their California battle against trans children. While the campaign was proven to be a hoax, it nonetheless resulted in the conservative community calling for the beating death of the innocent… Read more.

Okay. Maybe the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) doesn't think that they're admitted their charge of "harassment" is fake, but I'll let you be the judge. The PJI is a right-wing activist organization and huge supporter of the ex-gay movement as well as the debunked practice of conversion therapy. Recently, the PJI stirred up the right-wing word by claiming that a kid in Colorado was helped by the public school system to harass cisgender girls in the restrooms. Right wing media outlets… Read more.

On Sunday, October 13, 2013 the Daily Mail published a story titled, Girls ‘harassed’ in school bathroom by transgender student told his rights trump their privacy, but pulled the article after it became apparent that the story fabricated. An early promoter of the lie was David McCaine at the Examiner:   On October 11, David ran with this story without fact checking. The TransAdvocate took him to task for his irresponsible behavior and I've just learned that David has done the right thing:… Read more.

On Sunday, October 13, 2013 the Daily Mail published a story titled, Girls 'harassed' in school bathroom by transgender student told his rights trump their privacy: The story, exposed by the TransAdvocate as a lie concocted by right wing ideologues, elicited the following responses from the Daily Mail readers: Give him a throat punch when no one is looking. Tell it to use the boys room! Is anyone surprised by this? What happened to the days when boys and girls were… Read more.

The push for radical transgender rights in schools is trumping privacy rights at one Colorado high school. A male student at Florence High School who claims to be a transgender has been harassing girls in the bathroom. When parents complained, school officials said the boy's rights as a transgender trumped their daughters' privacy rights. - charismanews.com Right wing news outlets are falling over themselves to bemoan the sad state of our public school system now that the law allows transgender… Read more.

The mere mention of the "cotton ceiling" should send rapey shivers up your spine. If you've not heard of it here's the lowdown from feminists: Transgender cotton ceiling rapists hold male-only (Planned Parenthood-sponsored) seminars, write books, host lecture tours, and endlessly spam lesbian websites and blogs with rape and murder threats over lack of male “inclusion” in lesbian social gatherings, lesbian organizing, lesbian events, lesbian music festivals, and – most importantly- lesbian bedrooms. http://tinyurl.com/ms5289e Planned Parenthood Toronto is helping to sponsor… Read more.

Victoria Brownworth, self proclaimed "award winning" TERF journalist (though she calls herself RadFem), hates me. Like, a lot. I wrote the following factual account of how she used her privilege to coerce a trans minor (actions Brownworth herself describes as both creepy and wrong) to expose his genitals to her: Gawking at TransKid’s Genitalia is “Freedom of Speech” says Philly PD Instead of owning her privilege and/or lapse of professionalism, she went on the offensive: She… Read more.

Sheila Jeffreys has for years claimed that trans surgery is the product of some malevolent conspiracy: could be likened to political psychiatry in the Soviet Union. I suggest that transsexualism should best be seen in this light, as directly political, medical abuse of human rights. The mutilation of healthy bodies and the subjection of such bodies to dangerous and life-threatening continuing treatment violates such people's rights to live with dignity in the body into which they were born,… Read more.

Using the cis- and trans- taxonomy to reference gender behavior was used as early as 1914. The transgender community didn't invent its use, nor is its current use inconsistent with its use in 1914.  When discussing gender, cis simply means same and trans simply means to cross. Whether it was 1914 or 2014, when someone uses cis regarding gender, it is simply a recognition that one is not trans. Likewise, whether it was 1914 or 2014, when someone uses trans regarding gender, it… Read more.

Editor's Note: This is part of a TransAdvocate series on religion. This series seeks to explore how various religions conceptualize trans and how trans people conceptualize religion. Eunuch Ebed-Melek successfully argues against the rest of King Zedekiah’s court and leads a team of 30 men to rescue the prophet Jeremiah from a well. (Jeremiah 38)   By Daniel Gonzales Ben Johnson of LifeSiteNews is in a tizzy over Pat Robertson’s declaration that transgender people altering… Read more.

I've discussed in the over 6500 posts on this blog (and had fun eviscerating ) these seven transphobic tropes that seem to constantly pop into articles about this community and radfem hate screeds. Questioning Transphobia has a excellent series of articles that eviscerate the seven most common anti-trans arguments.  And you know as a TransGriot public service I'm going to make it easy for you to find them. Thanks to Questioning Transphobia's Queen Emily for the hard solid thinking and… Read more.

RadFem 2013 organizer, Cathy Brennan responds to this post in a totally rational, non-hateful way. For the second year in a row, the TERF hate conference  has been booted from their venue. For the second year in a row, the TERF hate leadership is claiming to be victims of a conspiracy. Last year is was a transgender conspiracy and this year it's a so-called "Men's Rights" conspiracy: Here's why the TERF's claim they're being booted from their venue:… Read more.

  Those in her corner cite studies that show that testosterone production is diminished by several years of estrogen therapy, while adversaries contend that those studies are flawed, and that she has an unfair advantage in muscle mass. - MMA Fighting Look, she’s huge! She’s not just huge, she’s got a fucking man’s face. I mean, you can wear all the lipstick you want. You want to be a woman and you want to take female hormones, you want to… Read more.

The MMA world has been a-buzz after learning that MMA fighter Fallon Fox is trans. A popular site for all things MMA recently posted an article that was quite good. The author sought out the informed opinion of experts and the resulting article was both insightful and balanced. However, the follow-up article failed in every way the first succeeded. Instead of using the informed opinion of a professional who has first-hand knowledge of the physiology of post-transition trans folk, the site used the opinion of Dr. Johnny Benjamin. Benjamin took great pains… Read more.

August, 1970 Readers knock, praise the big parade Editor: As a subscriber and reader of your paper, I would like to comment on the Christopher Street West Parade held last Sunday (June 23) here in L.A. I consider myself pretty well up on what is happening regarding current affairs relevant to our segment of society, and I felt this type of demonstration was a great idea. I guess I thought too soon. That parade did more harm than good. By… Read more.

Multiple news outlets have reported on the recent torture, murder, and mutilation of a mid-western trans rapper. The rapper, Evon Young went missing January 2. The official story is that 5 men were arrested for torturing, mutilating, murdering, immolating and then throwing Evon in a dumpster because someone thought Evon maybe stole something... or maybe it's that Evon was killed as part of a gangland initiation rite... or may it's that Evon was killed in a burglary gone wrong. While the official story… Read more.

In the wake of the President Obama's historic speech referencing Stonewall, NPR ran a piece asking and purporting to answer the question, "So, what was Stonewall?" The article calls upon Martin Duberman, now 82, to retell the story of Stonewall. Martin Duberman published the first history of Stonewall in 1993. His history significantly featured trans folk. Bizarrely, the NPR author Liz Halloran seems to rewrite Duberman's history, spending many lines minimizing the trans aspect of Stonewall:  "I liked the mix of people," he said. "It was not… Read more.

I've witnessed many arguments and misunderstandings explode over the conflation of these THREE dimensions of what we in trans discourse collectively refer to as gender: Gender Orientation: One’s subjective experience of one’s body, including its sexed attributes. Gender Identity: Identity labels used when socially constructing sexed personas within the context of social groupings. Gender Expression: One's situational expression of cultural cues which communicate gender identity. Note that gender identity and expression are absolutely culturally influenced. However, even if you stick me on a deserted island, I am… Read more.

Or not. A lot has been made over a Cathy Brennan - a TERF - being “attacked” at a dyke event by event organizers and some cis and trans folk. Here’s the video of what occurred: http://vimeo.com/44796073 I watched the 20 min video and never saw the “assault” Brennan later claimed. She states in the video description that the encounter was videoed when folks started yelling; there’s no mention of violence prior to the video starting. It seems that she may have been taking poetic license… Read more.

A case of voyeurism that has gripped the media was initially reported on a local Idaho news station: A man who identifies as a transgender woman has been arrested after they took photos of other women inside of the changing room at Target in Ammon. On Monday the Bonneville County Sheriff's Office responded to the Ammon Target store where an adult female says a person taking pictures of her while she was inside a changing room trying on clothes. The woman noticed… Read more.