The Gender Spectrum Charitable Fund, commonly shortened to Gender Spectrum, was an organization that promoted transgender ideology among youth. It provided resources, conferences, and “social groups” for families of children experiencing gender dysphoria. ¹ It emphasized teaching transgender awareness and issues to adult professionals who interact with children, especially “teachers, pediatricians, mental health providers, camp counselors, lawyers and judges, clergy, and coaches.” ² In September 2023, the organization announced it would cease all operations, and appears to be defunct as of November 2023 with its website semi-operating as a “hub for resources and referrals.”³

History

Stephanie Brill, an activist involved with support groups for transgender children in Oakland, California, conducted trainings and talks on transgender ideology within the local community starting in 2002. In 2007, Brill incorporated Gender Spectrum and collaborated with transgender activist Aiden Key to host the organization’s first family conference. ⁴ The following year, Brill co-authored a parents’ handbook entitled The Transgender Child in association with LGBT therapist Rachel Pepper. ⁵

In 2016, Lisa Kenney joined Gender Spectrum as executive director and collaborated with Brill to write a sequel to The Transgender Child entitled Transgender Teen. ^{6 7} Kenney departed the organization in 2020 to form its sister organization, Reimagine Gender, and Liam Day stepped into the role of interim executive director. ^{8 9} As of July 2022, Gender Spectrum was advertising for a permanent executive director. ¹⁰

On August 28, 2023, Gender Spectrum announced a series of layoffs for three of its employees with little warning, with the remaining seven staff members informed of being laid off with a 4-day notice. ¹¹ In September 2023, the Gender Spectrum website posted an announcement stating they would cease all operations and service programming starting September 27, 2023, while leaving the website up as a, “hub for resources and referrals.” ¹² A GoFundMe page posted around the same time claimed that the layoffs may have been due to “economic challenges.” ¹³ The website also listed several organizations with a similar background for those seeking family support groups or professional development: these included Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), TransFamily Support Services, Stand With Trans, Trans Youth Equality, TransParentUSA, Trans Families, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Welcoming Schools, and The National SOGIE Center. As of November 2023, the organization appears to be defunct except for its web-based resources. ¹⁴

Events

Annual professional symposium

Gender Spectrum’s 2022 professional symposium attracted 134 attendees from a variety of professions, with many teachers in attendance. ¹⁵ Its program included a wide variety of speakers, notably keynote speaker Chase Strangio, who works for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the deputy director of its LGBTQ and HIV project. Strangio previously worked as counsel in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that struck down state and federal laws prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriages, and litigates other cases which promote LGBT ideology. The title of Strangio’s keynote presentation for Gender Spectrum’s symposium was “Knowing Our History, Claiming Our Future: Fighting for Transgender and Nonbinary Youth.” ¹⁶

Another notable speaker was Tandy Aye, a pediatric endocrinologist who directs the Stanford Children’s Health Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Clinic. ¹⁷ Her 2022 presentation was entitled, “Multidisciplinary Lessons Learned from the Care of Transgender and Gender Expansive AAPI Youth and Adolescents.” In a 2019 TedX talk, Aye advocated for lowering the age of consent for gender-transition surgery to below 18 years. Aye argued that a child might as well have his genitalia permanently altered if, after taking cross-sex hormones in prepubescence, his testes were non-functioning: “[I]n medicine, don’t we often recommend the removal of non-functioning organs, like an appendix?” ¹⁸

Sponsors for Gender Spectrum’s 2022 professional symposium include the left-of-center Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which is involved in political action related to LGBT causes. ^{19 20} The Oakland, California branch of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), which opposes religious exemptions to LGBT-friendly laws, also sponsored the symposium. ^{21 22}

Annual Family Conference

Gender Spectrum’s annual family conference, first held in 2007, was touted as the “longest running conference of its kind.” Its 2022 session from October 1-2 was primarily focused on assisting “parents, guardians, and other caregivers” who are responsible for children experiencing gender dysphoria. ²³

In previous years, talks were offered on topics such as what to expect when children take opposite-sex hormones, contextualizing Christianity to fit transgender ideology, and the correlation between autism and gender dysphoria in children. ²⁴  Sponsors for 2018 included national coffee chain Starbucks and the Stonewall National Museum and Archives. ²⁵

Year-round events

In addition to its annual family conference and professional symposium, Gender Spectrum offered a wide variety of specialized events during the year. Events organized in 2022 included presentations on “top surgery” and vaginoplasty, detailing what adolescents and their families should expect from such procedures and giving advice to assist them in procuring these surgeries. ²⁶

Media

Gender Spectrum previously published multiple guides on transgender topics such as school bathrooms and sex education that were endorsed by national organizations such as the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and national public-school associations. ²⁷ Its website originally featured a 2018 short film entitled “Creating Gender Inclusive Schools,” which detailed how one Oakland, California school taught transgender ideology to elementary-school students. The film was a finalist for the left-progressive Social Impact Media Awards and was entered in the Seattle transgender film festival TRANSlations. ²⁸

Partnerships

Gender Spectrum formed partnerships with organizations which sponsored its events, as well as a list of clients and partners on an organizational level.

Partner Organizations

Gender Spectrum formed partnerships with organizations to provide different programs for children experiencing gender dysphoria. Its partnership organizations included:

• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBS), which worked with Gender Spectrum and similar organizations to compile a “best practices” guide for parents and professionals dealing with children experiencing gender dysphori ²⁹ BBBS is a child mentorship organization founded in 1904 to keep children out of trouble with the law. ³⁰
• Abortion advocate and provider Planned Parenthood, which assisted Gender Spectrum in creating six “Principles for Gender Inclusive Puberty and Health Education” to teach children about sex and sexual orientation. ³¹
• The Biden Foundation, which partnered with Gender Spectrum and the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) in the national “Advancing Acceptance Campaign” which encouraged family acceptance of transgender ideology as a supposed remedy to children’s gender dysphoria. ³² The Biden Foundation was a nonprofit founded in 2017 by then-former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, to support left-of-center causes such as LGBT youth advocacy. ^{33 34} The foundation ceased operations in 2019 as Biden began his 2020 presidential campaign. ³⁵
• The National Parent Teachers Association (PTA), which featured Gender Spectrum on its “back-to-school” page as a resource to encourage discussions of gender with children. ³⁶
• The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), which sponsored Gender Spectrum’s 2020 professional symposium. ³⁷ NASSP is an educator network which provides professional training, research, and other tools to secondary school principals. ³⁸

Other Partners

Other groups that Gender Spectrum has collaborated include AASA, the School Superintendent Association, which provides support for educators while advancing left-of-center policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion; ³⁹ the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which advocates for left-of-center causes relating to legalized abortion and ending capital punishment; ^{40 41} and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), a U.S. government agency which provides legal immigration services. ^{42 43}

Reimagine Gender

Reimagine Gender is a Gender Spectrum sister organization whose mission is to collaborate with “corporations, NGOs, legislators and policy makers” to advance transgender ideology in the workplace. ⁴⁴ The organization works to convince participants to view all aspects of their company through a “gender lens” that highlights alleged “bias and inequity.” It offers an option for clients to receive resources without publicizing their connection to Reimagine Gender. ⁴⁵ Stephanie Brill co-founded Reimagine Gender and acts as its board chair, while Lisa Kenney serves as its CEO. ^{46 47} As of September 2023, the organization appears to remain functioning after Gender Spectrum’ shut down. ^{48 49}

Leadership

Founder

Stephanie Brill is the founder of Gender Spectrum and chaired its board of directors. In 2008, Brill partnered with LGBT therapist Rachel Pepper to create a book for professionals and parents of children experiencing gender dysphoria entitled The Transgender Child and collaborated with Lisa Kenney in 2016 to create a sequel entitled Transgender Teen. Brill is also the author of the New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, & Birth, and The Queer Parent’s Primer: A Lesbian and Gay Families’ Guide to Navigating Through a Straight World.

Executive Director

Lisa Kenney previously worked as Gender Spectrum’s executive director and is the CEO of Reimagine Gender as of September 2023. ⁵⁰ She previously worked in a variety of high-level roles for pharmaceutical and software companies. ⁵¹ As CEO of Reimagine Gender, Kenney was invited to present talks for many LGBT events, including at financial provider Synchrony’s annual staff “Global Diversity Experience.” ⁵² Kenney authored numerous articles on transgender topics that have appeared in national publications, including an article for the Harvard Business Review which gave an outline of how companies could align themselves further with transgender ideology. ⁵³ She collaborated with Stephanie Brill to produce Transgender Teen, a sequel to Brill’s 2008 book, The Transgender Child. ⁵⁴

Liam Day was Gender Spectrum’s interim executive director following Kenney’s departure in 2020. Day began his career in 2002 as a political campaign manager and worked in a variety of high-level academic roles before joining the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research in 2006 as its director of communications and partnerships. He worked for Massachusetts-based charity Upham’s Corner Main Street as the vice president of the board of directors. In 2013 he joined the Boston Public Health Commission as acting director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Health before joining Gender Spectrum in 2020. ⁵⁵ In February 2023 he stepped away from interim executive director and served as a consulting administrator for the organization until its shutdown in September 2023. ^{56 57}

Senior Staff

Joel Baum served as Gender Spectrum’s senior director of professional development from 2008 until July 2022. Previously, Baum worked from 2001-2014 at California State University’s East Bay campus as a professor in its Department of Educational Leadership. He also served between 2005-2008 as the manager of leadership development for the Oakland School District, where he taught a class to elementary students on supposedly gender-nonconforming animals in 2011. ^{58 59} Baum correlated to the non-biological concept of “gender diversity” in humans with biologically intersex clownfish which can develop from male to female during their life cycle, saying that “there are more than two options” for humans to choose from when it comes to gender. ⁶⁰ Since October 2022, following his departure from Gender Sepctrum, Baum has worked as director of Learning Design for Safe Passages, a community philanthropic organization based in Oakland, CA. ^{61 62}

Financials

The Gender Spectrum Charitable Fund had revenues of nearly $1.4 million in 2020. The organization’s expenses were $1.9 million, and it reported assets of $553,651. ⁶³ It contributed $732,400 to Reimagine Gender in 2020. ⁶⁴

The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund (JCFEF), a donor-advised fund provider, provided $1.07 million of Gender Spectrum’s $1.3 million budget in 2018. Who provided the funds to JCFEF was not publicly disclosed. ⁶⁵

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