Informed Dissent

Closing out Pride month, Cori Cohn and Lauren Leggieri sit down with pseudonymous writer Jack of Shadows — a cancelled public health professional, gay man, and contributor to our Substack — for a real conversation from inside the LGB about what happens when trans and queer politics collide with gay life. The conversation centers on “Odd Girls Out: Trans-Identified Women in Gay Male Spaces (Part 3:...

On today’s episode, Jamie Reed moderates a roundtable discussing the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox. At the table: Cori Cohn — co-host of Informed Dissent, who has testified in many states on this exact issue. Kara Dansky — attorney and author of The Abolition of Sex and The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls. She’s a former AC...

In This Episode We open with Lauren and Cori on Pride, the Endocrine Society’s annual conference, and the question nobody wants to answer: who is welcomed at Pride anymore? Then Jamie sits down with Dr. Leonard Sax — physician, psychologist, and author — to pull apart one of the most consequential statistical fabrications in the gender medicine literature: the claim that 1.7% of human births are i...

Episode Summary In Part Two of our conversation with Dr. Kenneth Zucker, we continue exploring what decades of clinical research actually shows about gender dysphoria in children and adolescents — and what gets lost when ideology replaces evidence. Dr. Zucker is a certified psychologist based in Toronto, Editor-in-Chief of Archives of Sexual Behavior , and one of the most cited researchers in this...

This week it’s just Jamie Reed — this weekend is the Endocrine Society’s annual conference in Chicago, so Headlines and the usual roundtable are off, and we’ll be back at full strength next week. In the meantime, you can stay current with our weekly news: every week the LGB Courage Coalition publishes a roundup of the stories that matter in gender medicine, science, and policy — the headlines you...

In This Episode Jamie Reed and Cori Cohn open the episode with analysis of the May 21 Senate HELP Committee hearing, Protecting Our Children: Exposing the Dangers of Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures on Minors , then turn to a new think tank brief counseling trans advocates to accept defeat on youth medical transition. Jamie closes the episode with her recorded conversation with Dr. Kennet...

Last week, Informed Dissent released covertly recorded audio from inside two sessions at the 2026 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco — audio that was leaked to us, and that we believe the public has every right to hear. This week, Jamie, Lauren, and Cori sit down to discuss what’s on those recordings and what it tells us about the current state of psychiatry’s relatio...

Informed Dissent This Week’s Episode Maine is a blue state — Democratic governor, Democratic legislature, transgender sanctuary state. And yet Protect Girls Sports in Maine gathered more than 70,000 signatures to put a sex-based sports and spaces question on the November ballot — nearly all of them from volunteers. This week, as this episode airs, the effort is in crisis: yesterday, Maine’s Chief...

About This Episode This episode contains audio recorded inside Session 1240 at the 2026 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, held Saturday, May 16, 2026. The session was a Continuing Medical Education offering titled Transgender Psychiatrists Speak: Reflections From Training, Patient Care and Professional Practice . It ran from 1:30 to 3:00 PM Pacific Time in Room 202...

INFORMED DISSENT — Special Edition Monday, May 19, 2026 About This Episode This episode contains audio recorded inside Session 1193 at the 2026 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco, held Saturday, May 16, 2026. The session was a Continuing Medical Education offering titled Transgender Care: Update on Evidence Base and Clinical Practice of Primary Care Child and Adolesce...

Montana has passed some of the most clearly sex-realist legislation in the country — and its courts are using one of the most expansive state constitutions in the country to block it. This week, Jamie sits down with Derek Oestericher, Chief Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs at the Montana Family Foundation, for a deep dive into three active cases that will shape not just Montana law...

About this episode Lauren Leggieri, Jamie Reed and Cori Cohn interview Ben Kawaller. Ben Kawaller is a journalist, playwright, and gay man whose writing and video reporting have appeared in the New York Post , Racket News , The Times UK , and The Free Press , where he hosted the sociopolitical interview series Ben Meets America . He’s a Harvard sociology graduate based in New York and a former Blo...

On This Episode PAS 2026 met in Boston at the end of April. On Sunday, a panel of four researchers and clinicians presented findings on pediatric gender medicine to 106 attendees. Before the session began, the PAS Program Chair informed the audience that every clinician approached to serve as a counterpoint speaker had declined to participate. The panel’s CME accreditation had been flagged for rev...

This week Lauren Leggieri, Cori Cohn, and Jamie Reed have a lot to get through — and we mean a lot. So take a page from the old NPR Saturday playbook: make something, drive somewhere, tend your garden, and let this one unspool over a few days. We brought three guests, and every one of them earned their seat at the table. We open with the New York Times story about a man who identifies as transgend...

This week on Informed Dissent, Jamie Reed, Cori Cohn, and Lauren Leggieri are joined by guest Dr. Julia Mason to discuss the landmark Finnish cohort study on psychiatric outcomes in gender-referred youth and SEGM's methodological appraisal of the Utah evidence review. Dr. Mason is a board-certified pediatrician, Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and founding board member of the Society...

This week on Informed Dissent, Jamie Reed and Lauren Leggieri are joined first by LGB CC Head Writer LeAnne Owen for a behind-the-scenes conversation about substantive writing, the stories driving this movement, and LeAnne’s belief that the work we are doing now will serve as the historical primary source documents for tomorrow. Then we are joined by two guests from Colorado — Erin Lee and Dr. Tra...

This week Jamie Reed, Lauren Leggieri, and Cori Cohn are joined by Kevin Kellar — a trial lawyer with thirty years of experience handling large-loss tort cases and litigation of all types, all over the country. Kevin specializes in dropping into cases as trial approaches, and he consults and advises on medicalized gender care litigation nationally. He is drawn to this work by his sympathy for the...

Jamie Reed, Cori Cohn, and Lauren Leggieri open the episode with a wide-ranging conversation about the gap between what people say online and what they actually do in real life — and the platforms that shape both. Cori has quit X. Jamie has questions about Tumblr. The hosts dig into the psychology of online activism versus real-world action, anchored by a recurring hypothetical: a young anarchist...

What the ASPS position statement on pediatric gender surgery actually says — and what it means. A listener’s guide to our episode for March 21 2026; names, the history, and what’s at stake. On February 3, 2026, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a nine-page position statement recommending that surgeons delay all gender-related surgery — breast/chest, genital, and facial — until a pati...

This week on Informed Dissent, Lauren Leggieri, Cori Cohn, and Jamie Reed break down a week that managed to be both absurd and consequential — sometimes at the same time. The first is a new paper out of the Amsterdam clinic — the team that invented the Dutch Protocol and launched a generation of pediatric gender medicine worldwide. De Rooy, Dekkers, Steensma, Popma, Kreukels, and de Vries looked a...

This week, Jamie and Lauren are joined by three guests pushing back against ideological capture in law, psychology, and education. Cori will be back next week. 🏛️ SCOTUS: Mirabelli v. Bonta The Supreme Court issued an emergency order vacating the Ninth Circuit’s stay of a district court injunction — protecting parents from California’s gender-identity nondisclosure policies in schools. Justice Bar...

Informed Dissent February 28, 2026 This week on Informed Dissent , Cori, Jamie, and Lauren break down Jesse Singal’s recent opinion piece in the New York Times and review some of the comments furiously written in the short window available. We also discuss what is happening in the state of Kansas regarding the implementation of the new sex-based driver’s license law. This Week’s Guest Dan Zakshesk...

This week on Informed Dissent , Jamie, Lauren, and Cori step into the breach — with guest Jennifer Sey. Jennifer Sey Jennifer Sey is an American author, filmmaker, business executive, and retired National Champion gymnast. She was the 1986 U.S. Women’s National Champion and 7x National Team member. She was the first gymnast to speak out about the abuses in the sport in her 2008 memoir, Chalked Up....

Informed Dissent — Week of February 14, 2026 With Jamie Reed, Lauren Leggieri, and Cori Cohn Guest: Dr. Patrick Hunter This week on Informed Dissent , Jamie, Lauren, and Cori go back to the Detransitioner lawsuit trying to parse a standard of care when the whole field went off the rails. They discuss weekly headlines and are then joined by Dr. Patrick Hunter for a wide-ranging conversation on pedi...

Informed Dissent — Show Notes This week, Lauren, Jamie, and Cori break down a cascade of developments that unfolded in rapid succession: a New York jury malpractice verdict and major medical organizations reversing course on youth gender surgeries. We also take a brief look at patient-facing spaces like Reddit to see whether families are already reporting canceled or delayed surgeries, noting that...