Stephanie Davies-Arai
This content was last updated March 26, 2024, 9:26 p.m. UTC
Stephanie Davies-Arai is a British communicator and activist most known for founding the gender critical website and organization Transgender Trend. She is also a clinical advisor to the anti-trans organization Genspect.
She has published numerous anti-trans articles in outlets like the Huffington Post and The Critic, as well as appearing on numerous gender critical podcasts. She has appeared at many anti-trans events as a public speaker. She is also an author and has contributed to books critical of gender affirming care. She has her own website with a largely similar focus.
In jumping straight to the assumption of the statistically most unlikely outcome that a child is transgender, aren’t we just reinforcing those gender stereotypes, and in fact doing exactly the same as the parent who forces a child to conform?
Education and Credentials
Davies-Arai earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in sculpting and fine arts from Gwent College of Higher Education. She then earned her Master of Arts in sculpting from Bidai University of Art & Design, Japan.
She then spent several years working as a teaching instructor, having written a book on communicating with children.
In 2022, Davies-Arai was awarded the British Empire Medal by Queen Elizabeth II.
Institutional and Ideological Affiliations
Davies-Arai is the founder of British anti-trans website Transgender Trend. She is also a clinical advisor to the international gender critical organization Genspect.
For the Genspect: The Bigger Picture conference, Davies-Arai met with 4thWaveNow to promote gender critical views. She was also interviewed by 4thWaveNow in 2015.
She has also been interviewed by the LGB Alliance. She has worked with Graham Lineham in a discussion, and has appeared on Kellie-Jay-Minshull’s show several times.
Core Activism
Most of Davies-Arai’s anti-trans activism comes with the work she does for her organization Transgender Trend. As the founder of the organization, she often shares social media posts or articles, as well as being mentioned on the website frequently. She also is responsible for many of the actions Transgender Trend has done, including campaigning to the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission against trans inclusion or writing leaflets for the organization.
She reports getting into transgender issues based on the ‘No More Page 3’ campaign, which aimed to oppose sexism. Some of her fellow organizers did not want to exclude transgender women, and she was concerned by this, which led her further into the issue. After writing an article on her parenting blog about trans kids, she was contacted by 4thWaveNow to get further into transgender issues.
She then published an anti-trans article in the Wales Art Review about the supposed experimentation on transgender children.
On her website, Davies-Arai offers training to instill her views about transgender individuals to educators, in addition to resource packs. An example of a prominent resource pack of hers can be seen with one entitled “Supporting gender diverse and trans-identified students in schools,” which suggests discouragement of a child’s divergent gender identity along with exclusion from trans-inclusive bathrooms.
She used to be a frequent Huffington Post columnist, where she wrote articles critical of sexism, sex work, and transgender people.
Other articles by her focusing more specifically on transgender people have been published in The Critic
Along with Toby Young, Davies-Arai wrote the short book for adults ‘Transgender Children: A Discussion’ which provides a critical view of gender affirming parenting.
Davies-Arai was a special guest at the Genspect: A Bigger Picture conference, where she had her own panel. She has been featured in multiple videos by Genspect where she is critical of affirming trans people’s genders.
She also spoke at the ‘Thinking Differently– Feminists questioning gender politics’ conference in 2016.
Davies-Arai appeared on the anti-trans podcast Gender: A Wider Lens, hosted by Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad. She has also appeared on the Broad Views podcast with Lisa Selin Davis.
She also wrote the gender critical children’s book My Body Is Me, which is promoted through the Transgender Trend website. This book discourages children from identifying as transgender. She has also contributed to several chapters in anti-trans books alongside other authors.