Another Incident of Censorship Around Trans Issues by the Society of Scientific Study of Sexuality in the Removal of Dr. James Cantor From Their Listserv
I sent this to contacts at science journals and in academia. My view is that scientists who enforce activist agendas and have emotion-driven responses to difficult topics should not be hired into positions of power over scientific discourse, entrusted to properly educate students, or set up as role models to LGBT, or any youth.
To the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality,
I am writing this regarding an incident involving Dr. Zoë Peterson, the SSSS board, and Dr. James Cantor that appears to be an example of catering to disordered emotional reactions and authoritarianism enacted to ostracize individuals who fail to adhere to extremist identity politics ideology. You banned Dr. James Cantor from your listserv over arguments about contemporary trans activism. This appears wholly unjustified.
Disclaimer- this is an editorial as I can only go by publicly available material. I will remove this post if there is some evidence Dr. Cantor did something wrong. Because the public exchange on the listserv does not. Accusations of "harassment" are not credible.
Dr. Cantor's original piece that started the incident is below. Recently there was a controversy around J.K. Rowling expressing concerns about overmedicalized youth, an increase in stories of transition regret, and the impacts trans activism has on women. An example of a significant impact is MtFs are destroying women's sports records in events such as powerlifting and cycling because they have biological advantages. Cantor's article contains no hateful language. Many reasonable people, including trans people, concur with Dr. Cantor's points. And a discussion about the use of the term "TERF" is relevant, given there are appalling numbers of examples of gender identity activists threatening people with the most violent and sexually explicit language using the word TERF. There is no comparable behavior in scale from people who have criticisms of gender identity activist demands in attempts to threaten and silence people.
http://www.sexologytoday.org/2020/07/when-is-terf-not-terf.html
His response to you removing him for defending his points about the impacts of gender identity activism on women and children:
http://www.sexologytoday.org/2020/08/open-letter-of-resignation-from-society.html
This incident is part of a broader issue many people realize is doing great harm to academia, science, society in general, and to young people who increasingly can't cope with encountering even mild challenges to their world-views. The anger over this incident by others involved who support Cantor appears justified, and this incident has negatively impacted your group's function and reputation.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eqinm828tbm8ugv/SSSS%20Discussion%20thread.pdf?dl=0
I am a board member of Gender Health Query. It is an LGBT medical watchdog organization regarding pediatric medical transition for gender dysphoric minors. Cross-sex hormones, double mastectomies, and vaginoplasties are offered to youth under-age, even for non-binary identities, and even if the youth had no history of serious GD as a small child. We formed due to real-world examples of harm we see from this to some young people and the very behavior you have displayed.
https://www.genderhq.org/australia-trans-youth-concern?rq=Hunt
There are so many examples now, we have entered a period where plausible deniability one doesn't know it's happening is no longer possible. It is the job of scientists such as yourselves to know this. This should be discussed, not censored.
Trans activism doesn't only affect the trans community, and people must openly acknowledge this even if it offends some people:
1) Socially transitioning and medicalizing gender dysphoric children/teens affects the LGB community due to the well-documented association of childhood GD and adult LGB identity. We are observing harm happening to LGB youth from transitioning at too young an age. Most are lesbian and bisexual young women now coping with permanent medical effects. Medicalizing tweens causes sterility and may affect bone health, cognition, and destroy sexual function permanently. A growing population of LGB people takes this extremely seriously.
2) MtF demands to be included in every female activity, including sports like rugby, have resulted in serious sports injuries and female athletes having their records destroyed.
3) Population data around biological sex and sexual orientation are compromised. With the change of birth certificates and other public records, social scientists will no longer know the accuracy of sex-based data around crime statistic or the number of lesbians in a population which now includes a large percent of biological males who identify as women and lesbians. This profoundly affects other groups' rights to accurate information and to understand themselves.
4) Demands on others to use the dozen or so nonbinary pronouns, complete with lawsuits, violate other's rights to free speech and free thought.
Your “science” society appears to be intent on censoring and socially punishing anyone who shares these valid concerns. Dr. Peterson claimed that the problem was James Cantor's "tone," not the content of his ideas. This is an incredibly weak argument if one reads the thread in question. Dr. Cantor's comments were merely firm, while the opposing comments were mostly emotion-driven and provided no solid evidence about the issues raised. The comments some listserv members made were manipulative with the intent to silence:
I greatly appreciate your remarks, and yes, as a trans person and a professional in the field of sexuality studies, the original piece in question was a difficult and frankly irresponsible read --especially in light of the fact that 21 trans people have been murdered in 2020so far (the vast majority of whom are Black trans women).
Note- all murders are horrific, but trans murders are not higher than those for other groups such as women in general or black men. The epidemic reported in the media is a false narrative that will harm trans youth by making them believe they are always in danger. And this should not be wielded to shut down opinions about medicalizing children or female sports and prisons. This is not the rhetoric SSSS should cater to for multiple reasons.
I would just like to express a great sense of violence that I feel from being exposed to this conversation, particularly the points that rest on invalidating and undermining any person's claim of, 'you may not have intended to, but you're hurting me. please stop.
Interpreting Cantor's statements as violent has no basis in reality. No one should ever allow this type of discourse to control others in any surroundings, much less space for scientific debate. You will find multiple trans voices that claim this now standard rhetoric is anti-intellectual and poor role modeling. The full quote is in a publically posted Youtube video. This is an example of why you will not hide what really happened from the outside world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKt_knNr6M8
Second, as queer, Trans* person myself, this chain, and the multiple previous ones have been very difficult to stomach. It's hard to watch yourself be systematically torn apart over and over and over again and still put yourself in the fight."
Medicalizing dysphoric minors who may be pre-gay and MtFs entering female designated entities affect LGB people and women, not just trans people. They matter as well. No group is privileged over another. People's subjective experiences cannot be used to silence debate. You are scientists and should not be creating environments where people are not expected to be resilient in the face of disagreements. Instead, you issued apologies to "trans and nonbinary" people.
Many activists experienced in addressing these topics agree with Cantor’s statements that the media, academia, and scientists are being controlled by people who have cluster B personality disorders. This is behavior psychologists and sex researchers should be able to spot and understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SGva6eWTDQ
Censorship around gender identity activist issues is silencing debate and is intentionally sweeping some harm we are seeing happening from this under the rug. Science journals and academia are complicit. Some examples below:
Bath Spa University shut down an attempt to study detransitioners, a population that appears to be growing.
Brown University removed a link to a study providing evidence trans-identification is acting as a social contagion in teens.
The OPA banned psychologist Oren Amitay from their listserv due to his "tone." Does this sound familiar?
eNuero removed an article following perfectly reasonable inquiry about how the brain functions regarding identity and rumination because it made some trans activists feel invalidated.
Reddit removed all lesbian, gay, and bisexual spaces set up to address the problems of gender identity activist extremism and an increase in transition regret among LGB youth because activist extremists wish to destroy these conversations anywhere they take place. They succeed.
The SSSS has already proven itself to be a gender identity activist organization in the vein of the activism that went after Ray Blanchard, Micheal Bailey, and Alice Dreger, as documented in Galileo’s Middle Finger. You treated Kevin Hsu very poorly after an activist screamed at him for an award-winning paper that mentioned autogynephilia, a condition many trans people say they have. They are quite open and active on the Internet. It’s not possible to deny the reality it exists in the Internet age. One may consider doing so to be malpractice.
There are many other examples. The SSSS is continuing a long and well-established tradition here. Many people see it for what it is. Here is documentation regarding just how extreme this authoritarianism is, including liable, threats of violence, threats to people's families, and threats to destroy people's careers. This manipulation of discourse by extremist activists must stop. The cowardice in the face of this manipulation must stop.
For the sake of your journal (The Journal of Sex Research) and the sake of the academy, consider if any of you should be in leadership positions or teaching young people at universities in democracies. If you want to be activists, organizations like Gender Spectrum and Gender Odyssey are available to you and can offer employment in line with your thinking and activism. Since emotion-driven identity politics seems to be what controls you over having adult discussions about complicated subject matter, here is the identity politics argument:
"Dr. Peterson and SSSS have decided to ‘privilege’ one group's narrative over the interests and humanity of other groups affected by gender identity activism, currently very loud and very powerful in censoring and controlling media, tech companies, LGBT organizations, and science. You have chosen to privilege a group deemed at the top of some perceived oppression hierarchy over other groups like LGB people and women. You have chosen to privilege a group of trans people making hyperbolic claims of "speech is violence" over an out gay man justifiably concerned about the specter of eugenics on pre-gay and lesbian children, who may experience intense but transient gender dysphoria, who are being medicalized by age ten now. You have chosen to privilege the discourse of "wounded" trans people who want no debate about their subjective, postmodern queer theory-driven ideology over more rational trans people who want to role model reality-based world-views and resilience to trans youth. You have chosen emotional manipulation over frank talk out of an inappropriate form of altruism based on your arrogance in thinking you know who is and isn't worthy of it."
I protest this as a person who is part of the LGBT community.
Justine Kreher