Advisory Board
Abigail Shrier
United States
Abigail Shrier is a journalist and author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020). A graduate of Columbia College, University of Oxford, and Yale Law School, her work regularly appears in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and other publications.
Named by the Economist among its “Best Books of the Year,” Irreversible Damage continues to receive many accolades. The Mail On Sunday described it as “Courageous. Vital. Brilliant. Humane.” For the Sunday Times, Abigail’s work was “explosive… punchy, analytical and written with zest and elegance.”
Az Hakeem, MBBS, FRCPsych
United Kingdom
Dr Az Hakeem is a consultant psychiatrist and medical psychotherapist based at The Priory Hospital, Roehampton, who also has an outpatient clinic on Harley Street, London. He offers treatment for a wide variety of mental health conditions.
He studied Medicine at University College London, completed House Officer posts in Medicine and Surgery at London and Glasgow teaching hospitals, and completed Senior House Officer training in Psychiatry on the Royal Free Hospital training scheme, gaining membership of The Royal College of Psychiatrists. He also completed Higher Specialist Training in Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at The Tavistock and Portman Clinics alongside a Kleinian full training analysis.
In 2011, in recognition of his contribution to Psychiatry and specialist Psychotherapy, Dr Hakeem was awarded Fellowship to The Royal College of Psychiatrists. In recognition of his contribution to Psychiatry and specialist Psychotherapy. In 2019, he was appointed Honorary Associate Clinical Professor at University College London (UCL) Medical School.
Bret Alderman, PhD
United States
Dr. Bret Alderman is a psychologist, writer, and life coach who received his PhD in Depth Psychology in 2013 from the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. His most recent book Eternal Youth and the Myth of Deconstruction addresses the philosophy of deconstruction as it appears in the works of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, a prominent figure in Queer Theory. His first book, Symptom, Symbol, and the Other of Language explores postmodern conceptions of language from a depth psychological perspective. He is also a contributing author of Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice. His recent interests include ideological possession, deconstruction, gender, and the interface between psychology and philosophy.
Carrie Clark
United Kingdom
Carrie Clark is a writer and researcher from the UK. In 2016 she was puzzled to learn from her otherwise intelligent, progressive friends that “Transwomen are LITERALLY women”. Not entirely convinced that this was the case she started researching the gender wars and was promptly ejected from her progressive friendship group for ‘transphobia’.
With her friend Helen Pluckrose and a group of dedicated volunteers Carrie helped found Counterweight in 2020, an organisation that supported people struggling with culture wars issues in their workplaces, schools and universities. In 2021 she joined Don’t Divide Us, a campaign for colourblind anti-racism where she co-produced a short film on the censorious impact of the term ‘Islamophobia’ and a series of events on issues including systemic racism and the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report. Between 2022-2024 she was the research officer at the Free Speech Union (FSU).
You can read Carrie’s reports at the Free Speech Union and Don’t Divide Us and her articles are available at spiked. Her report on politicised policing was featured in the Times and her research on viewpoint diversity in libraries was covered by the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. You can follow her work on X.
Carrie’s writing focuses on freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity and classical liberalism as natural antidotes to the capture of our institutions by dogmatic ideologies. John Stuart Mill is her dream dinner guest. She is interested in how we protect our systems of knowledge production and create policies and institutions that tolerate and value the diversity of beliefs we see in society. She doesn’t believe transwomen are LITERALLY women but she also doesn’t see why men shouldn’t wear dresses if they want to. After all, she herself has been known to wear trousers.
Colette Colfer
Ireland
Colette Colfer is a lecturer in world religions, ethics, and critical thinking in a higher education institution in the southeast of Ireland. Prior to her career in academia, she worked in print and broadcast journalism and won a number of national awards for her radio documentaries. She is also a widely published poet and was a runner up in Ireland’s Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2019. She is a member of the Heterodox Academy, an organization that works to promote viewpoint diversity in education.
In the 1990s, Colette worked in the arts and entertainment industry in Dublin. She was managing editor of the Dublin Event Guide for a number of years and also worked for a time as public relations manager in the Temple Bar Music Centre (now The Button Factory) and as supervisor with the African Cultural Project.
Colette has a particular interest in religion and has a degree with the Open University where she studied religious studies and sociology. In the 2000s, Colette worked in broadcast journalism and was a news reader and reporter with various Irish radio stations. She won the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s New Adventures in Broadcasting Award for a six part radio series about religious diversity and won a Phonographic Performance Ireland award for a radio documentary about the European Union. She was also awarded a Certificate of Media Initiative: Media and Multicultural Awards for a radio documentary about migrant African religious groups in Ireland. She was a recipient of the Mary Raftery Journalism Fund for researching diverse spiritualities in Ireland, and the resulting documentary was broadcast on Newstalk, and the feature article was published in Ireland’s newspaper of record, The Irish Times.
In 2006, Colette was awarded a scholarship at Waterford Institution of Technology to research Islam in Ireland for a Masters level degree, and since then, she has been lecturing, primarily in world religions. She has completed two post-graduate certificates in Holocaust studies – with Trinity College Dublin (2012) and University College Dublin (2023), both in association with Holocaust Education Ireland. In 2013, she fasted for the month of Ramadan, wrote articles, and spoke widely about the experience on national media outlets. In 2017, she organized a hugely successful World Hijab Day event in order to build bridges between communities, and she was the author of the chapter on ‘Ireland’ for the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, Volume 7.
Colette is a widely published poet and has had poems published in a range of online and print publications, including Poetry Ireland Review (edited, at the time, by Eavan Boland), Southword, Crannóg, the Stony Thursday Book, and the Moth, amongst many others. Two of her poems were included in the women’s poetry anthology ‘Unbridled’, edited by Scottish poet Magi Gibson and published in 2023. She was the winner of the Irish Times New Irish Writing March 2019 and between 2018 and 2022, she ran the successful open mic night ‘Spokes’, in Waterford city. She was also the co-producer and host of the Spokes podcast from 2020-2021. Her articles on a variety of topics have been published in outlets including The Critic, The Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Village Magazine, and Broadsheet.ie.
Colette is particularly interested in exploring the beliefs and practices associated with the concept of gender identity. Her key focus in the consideration of gender identity is on stressing the importance of dialogue and civil conversation, considering differing perspectives and beliefs, prioritizing evidence based research and approaches to policy, exploring the impacts of gender identity theory on wider sectors of society, allowing space in the public sphere for in-depth conversations between people with diverse views, backgrounds, beliefs.
Helen Pluckrose
United Kingdom
Helen Pluckrose is a political and cultural writer and commentator who highlights and opposes ideological capture in vital institutions. She is the author of The Counterweight Handbook: Principled Strategies for Surviving and Defeating Critical Social Justice Ideology – at Work, in Schools and Beyond and co-author of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why this Harms Everybody. Her forthcoming book, The Tyranny of Prevailing Opinion: Rejuvenating Liberalism in an Internet Age will address the rise of illiberal ideologies on the left and right and increasing political polarization and how to overcome it.
Helen’s academic background is in late medieval and early modern religious writing which is where she encountered postmodern thought and its evolution into contemporary critical theories and activism. In 2017-2018, she, along with James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, undertook what became known as The Grievance Studies Affair to expose ideologically biased, anti-scientific and discriminatory scholarship within the realm of social justice. She was the editor-in-chief of Areo Magazine dedicated to publishing a wide range of views on academia, culture, politics and art. In 2020, Helen gave up this role to found Counterweight, which she refers to as an ’emergency triage’ organisation to support people encountering problems ranging from indoctrination, censorship, disciplinary action, firing or social cancellation due to ideological bias in their workplace, university or children’s school. She continues to consult for organisations seeking to create empirical and ethical policies to oppose prejudice and discrimination that is genuinely inclusive of a diverse range of worldviews.
Helen, above all, just wants people to value evidence-based epistemology and the free exchange of ideas.
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” ― John Milton , Areopagitica
J.D. Haltigan, PhD
United States
Dr J. D. Haltigan is a researcher in the fields of developmental and evolutionary psychopathology, measurement science, and psychiatric nosology. His current work explores the interface between mental health, personality, and political attitudes and ideological beliefs. He is also interested in the issue of self-identity in the digital age. He has an h-index of 34 and nearly 5,000 citations.
Dr. Haltigan completed his Ph.D. in developmental psychology at the University of Miami (FL) and has held appointments at several universities, most recently at the University of Toronto in the department of psychiatry.
Jesper W. Rasmussen
Denmark
Jesper W. Rasmussen is a Danish filmmaker, writer, producer, and educator who serves as chairman of Dansk Regnbueråd (Danish Rainbow Council), which he co-founded in 2022. He describes himself as an “unwoke 18th-generation Dane” known for his sharp satire and scathing commentary. Under his leadership, the Danish Rainbow Council has worked to protect the rights of children and women from the imposition of gender ideology in schools and public spaces, leading a determined fight in the Danish parliament and culturally in Denmark.
Jesper spoke at Genspect’s 2024 conference in Lisbon about the risks of letting children medically transition and how his organization works to protect children and change policies in Denmark and beyond. He writes on his Substack, Ho-modpres (Gay Dissent).
Keira Bell
United Kingdom
Bell is a 25-year-old woman from England, UK who at the age of 16 began the process of a “sex change” with the help of the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) and University College London Hospital (UCLH) via hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and then surgery.
At the age of 22 she decided to halt further hormone treatments upon realising that there was a deeper, psychological issue as well as realising the negative physical and mental effects of cross-sex hormones. Moving forward she joined a judicial review case against the Tavistock GIDS to challenge the idea that under 18s could give informed consent to this experimental and harmful treatment. She is a firm believer in appropriate mental health care and advocates for the elimination of the stigma of mental health, and therefore gender dysphoria.
Lisa Littman, MD, MPH
United States
Dr. Littman is a physician-scientist whose research is focused on gender dysphoria, the experiences of people who desist (or re-identify) after identifying as transgender, and people who detransition after gender transition.
She is known for coining the phrase, “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (also called ROGD) to describe a phenomenon that has been observed by clinicians and parents and has been acknowledged by several detransitioners. Currently, ROGD is not a formal diagnosis. However, the evidence supporting the ROGD hypotheses has increased since the 2018 publication of the research.
She is a physician who is trained in Preventive Medicine and Public Health and in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her experience providing reproductive health care to teens and women and her public health training inform her research about gender dysphoria, desistance, and detransition. The findings of her 2018 publication, “Parent Reports of Adolescents and Young Adults Perceived to Show Signs of a Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria,” generated hypotheses about the potential role of psychosocial factors in the development of gender dysphoria.
Dr. Littman is currently the President and Director of the Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research. She has previously held academic positions at the Brown University School of Public Health and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Michael Shellenberger
United States
Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award winner, and the best-selling author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities (HarperCollins 2021) and Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (HarperCollins 2020).
He’s been called an “environmental guru,” “climate guru,” “North America’s leading public intellectual on clean energy,” and “high priest” of the pro-human environmental movement for his work, and “influential.“
Michael has broken major stories including: the Censorship Industrial Complex; World Economic Forum’s conflicts-of-interests and secretive finances; San Francisco’s supervised drug consumption site; FBI misinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop; Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker; San Francisco’s cash incentives for homelessness; Amazon Forest “lungs of the world” myth; climate pseudoscience; climate anxiety; the U.S. government support for fracking; and forest management, climate change, and California’s fires.
He is a leading energy expert who testifies and advises governments worldwide, including in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
Michael has testified to the U.S. Congress about climate change and public health(April 2023); Big Tech censorship (March 2023); the Censorship Industrial Complex(March 2023); climate change and the global energy crisis (September 2022); Texas & California electrical grid failures (April 2021); climate change and agriculture (February 2021); climate change and health (August 2020); climate change and energy (July 2020); and nuclear energy (January 2020).
He is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, an independent nonprofit research organization that incubates ideas, leaders, and movements, and a co-founder of the California Peace Coalition, an alliance of parents of children killed by fentanyl, parents of homeless addicts, and recovering addicts.
He has been a climate and environmental activist for over 30 years. He has helped save nuclear reactors worldwide, from Illinois and New York to South Korea and Taiwan, thereby preventing an increase in air pollution equivalent to adding over 24 million cars to the road.
In the 1990s, Michael helped save California’s last unprotected ancient redwood forest, inspired Nike to improve factory conditions, and advocated for a“new Apollo project” in clean energy, which resulted in a $150 billion public investment in clean tech between 2009 and 2015.
Michael lives in Berkeley, California. You can follow him on Twitter or email him by clicking here.
Michelle Mackness, MC, CCC
Canada
Michelle Mackness has worked in the helping profession for over 25 years. She’s been in clinical practice as a Registered Clinical Counsellor since 2014. Currently, Michelle is in private practice in Edmonton, Canada, where her practice is focused on gender, grief, substance use/concurrent disorders, emotional well-being, and existential issues.
Prior to her clinical career, Michelle worked in frontline social services supporting marginalised individuals struggling with addictions, psychiatric instability, poverty, and homelessness. As a clinician, she’s worked in health regions providing individual and group therapy addressing substance use/concurrent disorders, psychiatric instability, grief, complex trauma, identity formation, sexual orientation, and gender dysphoria.
Michelle is a member of GETA (Gender Exploratory Therapy Association), CTAN (Critical Therapy Antidote Network), and is a friend of HxA (Heterodox Academy).
Patrick Clarke, MBBS, FRANZCP
Australia
Dr Patrick Clarke has been a Consultant Psychiatrist for 26 years.
He is based in Adelaide, South Australia, working primarily in Private Practice, but has also worked in the Public sector in Rural and Remote Psychiatry since 1996.
He has 25 peer-reviewed publications, including five in Gender Medicine. His special interests are in severe treatment-resistant mood disorders, telemedicine, and he has developed an interest in Gender Medicine over the last five years. He has presented at and
convened numerous conferences.
He has been actively involved in the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists at both the state and binational level, sitting on a number of Committees and taking on leadership positions. He has experience in setting up services and systems for the College,
and in both the private and public sector.
He has been affiliated with Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine since 2020.
Rachel Rooney
United Kingdom
Rachel Rooney is a former SEN teacher and an award-winning children’s poet & author.
She has a particular interest in autism, having raised an autistic son alongside receiving a late autism diagnosis herself. She has also written ‘My Body is Me!’, a picture book published by TransgenderTrend.
Sarah Phillimore
United Kingdom
Sarah Phillimore is a family law barrister who has specialised in public law Children Act proceedings since 1999.
Since 2014, she has been the site administrator of www.childprotectionresource.online.
Shannon Thrace
United States
Shannon Thrace is the author of 18 Months: a Memoir of a Marriage Lost to Gender Identity. Called “important” by Quillette founder Jonathan Kay, and “brilliant” by bestselling author Helen Joyce, Shannon’s story details the deterioration of a formerly loving and stable fifteen-year relationship when her husband came out as transgender. She’s spoken on her experience in a 2017 TedX talk, at the 2023 Genspect fall conference, and on many podcasts and other forums.
Shannon’s graduate studies combined literature and philosophy with a focus on the crisis of meaning wrought by modernity. She revisits this work in her weekly Substack articles, exploring the death of God, the fragmentation of communities, the unbridled march of technology, and other assaults on humanity’s sense of purpose–alongside creative nonfiction vignettes and thoughts on living the good and ethical life.
Having witnessed gender dysphoria in a close and intimate way, Shannon is interested in furthering a deeper insight into the nature and healthy management of this difficult condition. She advocates for a fearless, pluralist and scientific approach, free of politically-motivated constraints, and driven by research and open discussion.
Stephen Levine, MD
United States
Dr. Levine is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
He is the solo author of six books, Sex Is Not Simple in 1989 (translated to German in 1992 and reissued in English in 1997 as Solving Common Sexual Problems); Sexual Life: A Clinician’s Guide in 1992; Sexuality in Midlife in 1998 and Demystifying Love: Plain talk for the mental health professional in 2006; Barriers to Loving: A clinician’s perspective in 2013; Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Sexual Problems: An Essential Guide for Mental Health Professionals in 2020. He is the Senior Editor of the first (2003), second (2010) and third (2016) editions of the Handbook of Clinical Sexuality for Mental Health Professionals. He has been teaching, providing clinical care, and writing since 197 and has generated original research, invited papers, commentaries, chapters, and book reviews. He has served as a journal manuscript and book prospectus reviewer for many years. He was co-director of the Center for Marital and Sexual Health/ Levine, Risen & Associates, Inc. in Beachwood, Ohio from 1992-2017. He and two colleagues received a lifetime achievement Masters and Johnson’s Award from the Society for Sex Therapy and Research in March 2005.