No Middle Ground in Transgender Discussions

"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 2020 so far [the vast majority of whom are Black trans women]."                                          "It makes me question the motivations and priorities of an author who wishes to come out in support of Rowling, rather than using their platform to demand justice for the lives lost due to transphobic violence."                                                           Jules Purnell, trans person, associate director, sexual-violence prevention, Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania

Dr.James Cantor

"No compromise, no in-between is allowed. they're not even thought crimes. It's 'Oh, clearly you're on the other team. If you don't belong to my religion, your religion is not allowed to speak."                                                             "My 27-year association with SSSS must come to an end.  In the present culture war between science and popular appeal, the SSSS Board of Directors selected the latter. This is not the first time the SSSS Board abused their authority to silence science opposing their personal political views, and no valid organization can be in the name of science in name only.  I am grateful to the other sexuality scientists who have resigned in sympathy, both publicly and privately."                                                                 "To acknowledge the facts: I have long posted news items and opinion pieces to SSSS’s member listserv.  In July, I posted an essay of my own, When is a TERF not a TERF, challenging the extremism that has taken over public discussion of trans issues, pointing out, for example, that the unwillingness ever to recognize anyone’s transition is different from citing the research suggesting children should wait until age 12 to transition."  Dr.James Cantor, sex researcher, Toronto

"Many members of the Board felt that Dr.Cantor had demonstrated a pattern of harassment against several other members -- even after those other members had repeatedly asked him to stop."                                                                             "The Board determined that Dr.Cantor's unwillingness to be responsive to other members' requests to cease his argumentative and harassing posts violated the guidelines of the listserv."                                                                                           Psychology professor, Indiana University Zoe Peterson, president, Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

"James can be provocative, but he's always very fact-based. I understand from a psychological perspective that to some people words are experienced as violence. [But] I'm not so sure that a professional listserv is the place that needs to accommodate this particular sensibility."                                                                   "I believe in the creation of safe spaces, but sometimes we all have to step out of our safe spaces."                                                                                                        Dr.Jack Drescher, Columbia University psychiatry professor, gender-identity expert, Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research

Dr.Cantor posted an essay on the online forum of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality of which he had been a member for 27 years, as a highly respected, high profile researcher into transgenderism. His essay on listserv complained of "extremists" castigating those who question some of the tenets of the transgender movement, in particular that children who identify with another gender begin transitioning before they reach puberty.

Without doubt Dr.Cantor would have understood from past experience that questioning one of the canons of the transgender movement would garner an instant, defamatory response, and his most certainly did, leading him to resign his membership, with yet another complaint, that the group he had long been associated with as a leading scientific expert on transgender issues capitulated to popular acceptance rather than scientific evidence on the trans issues of the day.

He was accused of encouraging hatred, to the point of inciting violence toward trans people. As far as Dr. Cantor is concerned, and he counter-charged as much, it is attitudes such as that, typifying a form of "emotional blackmail" disqualifying people with views that sit between the extremes of anti-trans hatred and militant trans activism that lie at the heart of the problem between both communities.

Formerly a professor at University of Toronto, currently in private practise, Dr.Cantor is clearly not a conformist, comfortable with merely surrendering to the hard-position stance of dedicated trans activists. When the fray ignited and controversy arose, and the scientific group he was part of chose to chastise him by denying him posting privileges for the site as a consequence, he decided to post an open letter of resignation.

Thousands rallied outside Brooklyn Museum in New York to support trans rights on Sunday, June 14, 2020.  CNN

In which he stated his position and accused the society of succumbing to popular appeal, preferring to leave science in the dust as a result of the "culture war" between the two. Dr.Cantor observed that his commentaries on sexuality-related topics have been posted on the listserv for the past 20 years, never coming up against reactions of the type he was latterly confronted with. And the reason is obvious enough; after struggling as society's underdog Historically, the trans community is now enjoying the abject abnegation of mainstream society.

Others of his colleagues, also members of the society, chose to stand on the dignity and veracity of science as opposed to the acceptance of popular opinion and the flavour of the day's favoured causes, and followed suit in resigning membership. Prominent gender-identity experts decided the society's reaction and handling of the episode failed to cover them in glory as a leading group of scientists, capitulating to emotion over reason.

Transgender rights rally, New York REUTERS/Demetrius Freeman

Dr.Cantor's reputation resided in his studies at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for research on pedophilia. His studies with the use of MRI scans suggested that the predilection of pedophiles was hard-wired. In private psychological practise, he has raised his voice against transphobia, he has promoted a transgender bill of rights, but he believes that gender dysphoria - a sense of not being in the right biological gender -- is not as common as claimed by activists. 

It is his belief that surgical transitiioning is unnecessary for some people, likening the willingness of clinicians to accept gender-identity disorder as the cause of mental health illness as similar to the belief that once prevailed in repressed childhood sexual abuse memories, long discredited but for a few rare instances. While he argued in the much-criticized essay that no defence exists for discrimination of transgender people in  housing, employment, sports and public washroom access, he is dismissive of trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a term used to discredit popular author J.K.Rowling, along with those who claim children should not begin transitioning before age 12.

About 15,000 people attended the Black Trans Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn   Getty Images