Relaunch: Introducing Lauren Leggieri

Welcome to the relaunch of Informed Dissent! Each week, your hosts — Jamie Reed, Lauren Leggieri, and Cori Cohn — cut through the noise of the gender culture wars, tackling the stories behind lawsuits, medical controversies, school policies, and the very meaning of “gender.”

In this episode, Jamie introduces new co-host Lauren Leggieri. Lauren reflects on the moments that shaped her advocacy — from the Gavin Grimm Case in Virginia to early protests at the Endocrine Society Conference and the American Academy of Pediatrics Conference in Orlando.

She shares her experiences of being “canceled,” landing on the Transgender Map, and featured in Jennifer Block’s recent documentary. For Lauren, embracing her role as a gender non-conforming lesbian and emerging as an effective advocate has been a defining part of her journey.

Next week: A Tale of Two Conferences — Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine and Genspect, and the battle over what belongs in the DSM, and who actually has a say over that determination.

Enjoy the show and we welcome your comments below!

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In this episode, Cori and Ben take the mic without their cohosts to reflect on two pressing stories shaping the gender debate. We begin with former Mermaids CEO Susie Green’s latest effort to advance the cause of medical transition for children. From there, we turn to the recent tragedy in Minneapolis, examining how quickly it has become a political football for competing ideological tribes. What does this moment reveal about the trans movement today? And how do these flashpoints illuminate the wider struggle over truth, narrative, and power in the culture war?

* The Webberleys

* Susie Green’s TEDx talk

* Minneapolis shooting

* “Tired of being trans”

* Westman’s history

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In this episode, we discuss the activist-led campaign to discredit systematic reviews conducted by researchers at McMaster University because they were funded by SEGM (the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine). We examine the researchers’ response, whether the campaign gained traction, and what it reveals about the politicization of evidence.

From there, we step back to look at the broader landscape of systematic reviews on “gender-affirming care”—and whether the American public realizes just how weak the evidence base actually is. This naturally brings us to the University of Utah’s August 2024 review, which claimed that the evidence shows these interventions to be safe and effective. We break down what the Utah review got wrong and why its conclusions stand in sharp contrast to other systematic reviews.

Links:

McMaster statement

Gordon Guyatt

“No pride in pseudoscience” op-ed

WPATH suppresses publication of Hopkins reviews

SEGM - Utah report

Handmaid’s Tale season 6

The Human Scale

Wardley mapping

Alien Earth

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Today, Corinna and Ben speak with the psychiatrist Dr. Lauren Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz is a senior fellow with Do No Harm, the lead author of a 2025 paper on the health risks of estrogen use in males, and the coauthor of a chapter in Lawrence Krauss’s new anthology, The War on Science (“Gender-Affirming Care: The Abandonment of Medical and Academic Standards”).

* Arkansas ban stands

* Air Force reneges on retirement benefits

* DoE investigates Kansas

* “Emerging and accumulating safety signals for the use of estrogen

among transgender women”

* The War on Science

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Today we talk about the latest gender clinic closures and “pauses” on pediatric transition services and speculate about what the future holds for the young people who’ve been harmed by these practices. Who’s going to help them? How will they help them? Will anyone be held accountable for harming them? We discuss the case of Avery Jackson, the trans-identified boy who at age nine appeared on the cover of National Geographic’s 2017 “Gender Revolution” issue. Avery, medicalized at 11, is now in his late teens and identifies as nonbinary.

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* Leor’s piece on Meredithe McNamara

* Lisa’s piece on Avery Jackson

* “Gender Identity 5 Years After Social Transition”

* “I Transitioned My Child - I Regret It”

* NY Times article on blue state closures

* Chameleon’s Substack piece

* Ken Zucker

* My Mom Jayne

* Sandpipers

* Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America

* Kandinsky art

* The End of October

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Today the gang discusses the Trump Administration’s severing of its partnership with the Trevor Project, as well as California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show. Plus news headlines, announcements, and more!

* Trump defunds the Trevor Project

* TP’s 2023 fiscal report

* Trump Admin cutting off federal funding to hospitals providing GAC for minors

* Newsom on the Shawn Ryan Show

* “Trans woman shares struggles from behind bars in Lorain County men’s prison”

* PATHWAYS study

* Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic

Thank you for your continued support!

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Cori, Jamie, and Sarah catch up on their gender-related travels, which took Jamie to Washington DC for the Federal Trade Commission workshop on consumer fraud in gender medicine and Cori and Sarah to France for the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry conference. We also discuss new research on sexual satisfaction and whether or not it's possible to improve on the French man-on-the-street by adding cowboy boots.

* Tune in to the full FTC workshop here

* Glenna Goldis on consumer fraud in gender medicine

* Hannah Barnes on problems with the UK's proposed puberty blocker trial

* Cori Cohn on Missing Evidence: Why We Still Don’t Know What Surgery Does to Puberty-Blocked Boys

* New preprint from the Dutch clinic: Sexual satisfaction and dysfunction in transgender adults following puberty suppression treatment during adolescence

* LGB Courage Coalition at the Endocrine Society conference

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Alex Byrne is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT and the author of the book Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions. Last week, Alex revealed in a Washington Post op-ed that he was one of the nine co-authors of the anonymous HHS report on pediatric gender medicine. He is married to the evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven.

CORRECTIONS: UPenn is restoring titles and records and issuing apologies to female athletes. Not Penn State. And it’s Title IX, not Title X.

* HHS report

* Executive Order 14187

* “In Defense of Transracialism,” Rebecca Tuvel

* “A Defense of ‘Transracial’ Identity Roils Philosophy World,” NY Times

* Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism, Kathleen Stock

* “What Is It like to Have a Gender Identity?,” Florence Ashley

* “Ashley on Gender Identity,” Alex Byrne

* “The Deposition of Jack Turban,” Leor Sapir

* The Man Who Would Be Queen, Michael Bailey

* Ray Blanchard’s transsexualism typology

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Maud Maron is running to be Manhattan’s next District Attorney “to restore safety and sanity to our streets and subways.” She’s also a mom of four children who are all NYC public school graduates or students.

Maud worked as a public defender for over two decades at the Legal Aid Society in the Manhattan and the Bronx criminal courts. She taught criminal law at Cardozo Law School and has a long track record as an education advocate who champions public school education in New York City. She is a fierce champion of free speech, and won a 1st Amendment case against the NYC Dept. of Education just last year. She writes for the New York Post and other publications.

* MaudforManhattan.com

* Maud’s writing for the NY Post

* “How I stood up for free speech — and won my case against NYC’s education censors”

* CEC D2 meeting on gender ideology in NYC public schools (YouTube)

* Ben’s Substack post about the CEC D2 meeting

* Alaina Daniels

* Mamdani’s “LGBTQIA+” platform

* Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

* Russian & Turkish Baths

* “How to Grow Leeks”

* Jurassic World: Rebirth

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Today we’re joined by very good friend of the pod, Leor Sapir!

Leor Sapir is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston College and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University. Since joining MI, Sapir has become a widely recognized thought leader on topics related to pediatric gender medicine, education policy, and culture. Sapir is a regular contributor to City Journal, and he has co-authored amicus briefs for lawsuits on parental rights in education and is lead author of an important letter to the editor in the peer-reviewed academic journal, the Archives of Sexual Behavior, on “rapid onset gender dysphoria.”

* United States vs. Skrmetti

* Leor Sapir for City Journal

* The lost history of Christmas nobody cares about anymore - but should

* tomato cages

* The Catastrophe Hour

* Identity

* Special Interest

* Lost Christianities

* The Gnostic New Age

* Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christian Contexts

* Fashionable Nonsense

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