Genspect's The Bigger Picture conference took place in Denver, Colorado on November 4th and 5th 2023. I was able to watch most of it online. It was wonderful to hear from the leading voices in the field bringing sanity back into the gender conversation.
The conference started with keynote speaker and journalist Michael Shellenberger, who coined a new term with which many audience members related: leftugee. Leftugee refers to those of us from the liberal left who believe in protecting the vulnerable but who no longer feel welcome in the left of today over the gender issue. A later related highlight of the conference was hearing from LGBT Courage Coalition co-founder and whistleblower Jamie Reed, who made a heartfelt plea to the audience to not give up on democrats and progressives.
Other key speakers on Day 1 included political commentator Wesley Yang, who highlighted the ways feelings have come to trump facts in law. Policy expert Leor Sapir focused his attention on the ways the education and medical systems are captured. Lawyer Vernadette Broyles shared legal cases that show what’s at stake, and psychiatrist Stephen Levine spoke about the different social and psychological factors that can contribute to the development of gender dysphoria.
Slide from Dr Stephen Levine’s presentation
Zhenya Abbruzzese, a founding member of Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), presented on the dubious science behind the administration of puberty blockers to minors, while Denise Caignon (4thWaveNow) chronicled the teen phenomenon of ROGD. Psychotherapist Joseph Burgo spoke about shame and the ways it can drive males to want to identify out of their birth gender. Other highlights of Day 1 included The Killarney Group’s introduction of a gender care framework that seeks to offer an alternative to WPATH’s highly medicalized guidelines. The evening ended with Sasha Ayad and Stella O’Malley interviewing detransitioned woman Chloe Cole live for their podcast Gender: A Wider Lens.
Day 2 took us deep into the science of sex and gender with first speaker Heather Heying, who delivered a riveting history of sexual reproduction across different species, from an evolutionary biology perspective. Biologist Colin Wright carried on where Heying left off, offering much needed “sanity affirmation therapy” surrounding the binary nature of sex in humans. After Wright, we heard from journalist Christina Buttons on the interrelationship between autism and gender dysphoria. FAIR in Medicine director Carrie Mendoza received cheers when she announced that she was working with the CDC to develop a billing code for detransitioners. A non-exhaustive list of additional speakers on Day 2 includes: Jennifer Lahl on assistive reproductive technology, James Lindsay on the marxification of gender, Corinna Cohn on political organizing, Linda Blade on gender and sports, and political scientist Wilfred Reilly on estimating detransition rates. The conference also gave voice to personal experiences from detransitioner Prisha Mosley, lawyer and parent Erin Friday, and wife of a transitioned husband Shannon Thrace.
Slide from Leor Sapir’s presentation
A full list of all the speakers at the conference is available online.
I was there and it was a fabulous event.
I’m mom to a FtM, now 19 years old. Been at this for five long and lonely years.
The speakers were inspiring.
The best part was meeting other parents.
Today I don’t feel so alone.