Foundations of the Contemporary Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network

Throughout the last five years, a major question has been: “How did the anti-transgender pseudoscience movement achieve success so quickly?” In responding to this question, it is important to first note that cisnormativity is nothing new. Anti-transgender sentiment has been vocalized louder and mobilized more efficiently in recent years, but this is due to decades of countermovement activism by the institutions of the anti-LGBTQ+ religious right. Recent successes are also due in large part to the work and intersections of three groups: anti-LGBTQ+ movement organizations, and two groups of mental health practitioners – an old guard of mostly sexologists who experienced fading fortunes in the 2010s and a new guard of reactionary mental health practitioners, who have forced into the scientific record their beliefs about what caused some of their own children to come out as trans...