Talk:Genspect

Currently in the Reception section in the page, we cover reactions from news organizations and the medical community. However, we leave out the criticism from organizations such as Trans Safety Network, Health Liberation Now, and tranzycja.pl (a polish trans rights organization). Ignoring the criticism from multiple trans organizations seems ridiculous.

Health Liberation Now and Trans Safety Network are regularly cited by articles which we do already cite. However, the original sources give much more in-depth accounts.

For example, HLN's article [https://healthliberationnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/A-New-Era-Key-Actors-Behind-Anti-Trans-Conversion-Therapy.pdf A New Era] follows the format of a standard scientific/sociological paper and all results therein are easily verified and corroborated.

: {{tq|Early links between Genspect and members of IFTCC and ACPeds were identified by Trans Safety Network, where researchers unveiled public promotions by Genspect of the documentary Trans Mission that featured Andre van Mol, Quentin Van Meter, and Paul Hruz.}}

: {{tq|Speaking on "gender issues" alongside James Esses of Thoughtful Therapists, on May 21st, 2022 O'Malley appeared as a workshop speaker at the FET Annual Conference in the UK.[81] An evangelical Christian group, FET has repeatedly lobbied against women's, children's and LGBTQ+ welfare, as well as having connections to the anti-gender movement through their appearance at the May 2017 World Congress of Families in Budapest, Hungary.[82] The 2017 World Congress of Families has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "who’s who on the anti-LGBT and anti-choice Christian Right"[83] encompassing a mixture of legislators and religious activists, with several prominent members playing key roles in funding the push against reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights in Europe.[84]}}

: {{tq|FET's trustees include Julie Maxwell, who was also previously part of SEGM alongside O'Malley during its early inception.[72] Maxwell has a lengthy track record of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion activism as part of her work with Christian charity LoveWise,[52] plus being featured in an anti-trans DVD produced by UK Christian Creationist group Truth in Science.[91] FET, meanwhile, has previously lobbied against proposed conversion therapy bans in the UK[92(pp. 1–2)] with religious freedom as a heavy focus point. This demonstrates that high ranking members of Genspect’s team are going beyond public promotion of material from SOCIGE advocacy leaders by having a working relationship with them.}}

: {{tq|O’Malley’s workshop at the FET Annual Conference is not the first of such collaborations, nor will it be the last. On November 21st, 2021, the day after Genspect's ROGD Conference, O'Malley appeared with Bob McCoskrie of Family First NZ.[93] Another Christian-led lobby group with significant international connections pushing conversion practices under the guise of "therapeutic choice", Family First NZ was also represented at the World Congress of Families in 2017.[85] The 2021 panel of O'Malley and McCoskrie was promoted onto Genspect's Twitter, tying her collaborations with them into Genspect's formal operations.[94] Yet this was not the first time she had worked with them. Previously she joined Family First NZ’s push against Aotearoa’s pending conversion therapy ban under the banner of their ex-LGBTQ+ project Free to Live NZ (Figure 10).[95] Alongside her stood the forces of Laura Haynes, representing the IFTCC;[96] Erin Brewer, then representing Partners for Ethical Care (PEC) "on behalf of New Zealand children, primarily, who are suffering from gender dysphoria";[97] and Family First NZ’s own testimony}}

: {{tq|In addition to their direct collaborations, Genspect has promoted or directed their members to parent resources from anti-trans conversion practice advocacy groups, of both secular and conservative Christian varieties. Archive records show that both PEC and Advocates Protecting Children (APC), a project spin-off also co-founded by Erin Brewer, have been listed on Genspect’s resource list as “helpful groups”,[106] though APC has since been removed from the list.}}

: {{tq|In their “helpful groups” list Genspect also promotes Child & Parental Rights Campaign (CPR-C), a conservative Christian firm whose co-founding member Mary E. McAlister has worked as part of evangelical group Liberty Counsel to target conversion therapy bans on behalf of Christian conversion therapists Joseph Nicolosi, David Pickup, and Christopher Rosik.[67] Representing CPR-C, McAlister has also been featured in the supposedly-investigative Christian documentary "The Mind Polluters", which posits that powerful LGBTQ+ organizations are infiltrating school systems to groom children with pornography.[110] }}

In short, just this source outlines direct ties between Genspect and the International Federation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice, as well two organizations present at the World Congress of Families: Family First New Zealand and the Family Education Trust. To ignore the ties between Genspect and religious conversion therapy organizations does a huge disservice to our readers, and the information is all easily verifiable. Per WP:NPOV, we have to give a neutral account. To ignore trans people pointing out the connections between Genspect and christian conversion therapy groups is miles removed from neutral and only serves to help Genspect continue to harm people. Per WP:VERIFY, all claims in these sources are backed up by extensive citations and even those who don't want to include them can't say the simple facts stated aren't verifiable or true. Per WP:NOR, the sources for these claims do exist and aren't original research on my part.

If we can't use the sources directly, we should at least be able to note what they've said, especially considering their citation in more mainstream outlets already used. Considering that, I propose we either use them directly for strictly fact based claims, or create a subsection in reception noting what they've pointed out. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 02:20, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I saw some IP vandalism this morning and decided to check for new RS that can be used to improve the article. I'll leave a list here for other editors to do with as they will:

• [https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/10/anti-trans-disinformation-australia-transphobia/ Crikey] discusses Genspect, overlapping activist groups, and their campaigning/disinformation (particularly in the context of Australia but also worldwide)
• [https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/gender-exploratory-therapy-trans-kids-what-is-it.html Slate] discusses Genspect's overlap with the "Gender Exploratory Therapy Network" and generally current thought about "Gender Exploratory Therapy"
• [https://www.dailydot.com/debug/genspect/ The Daily Dot] discusses Genspect's activism and leaked chats from Genspect's discord server where 1) parents discuss how to put their kids through conversion therapy and convince even their adult children they aren't trans 2) Genspect's Vice Director clarified they don't think anyone should transition and just focus on those under 25 for political expediency 3) members spread the grooming conspiracy theory and express admiration of groups like Gays Against Groomers and 4) Genspect's staff repeatedly requested parent testimony to support banning transgender healthcare in the U.S.
• [https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/clash-of-the-transgender-conferences-killarney-to-host-simultaneous-meetings-with-contrasting-opinions-on-care/42381833.html The Irish Independent] and the [https://www.offalyexpress.ie/news/midland-tribune/1172404/birr-woman-s-company-hosts-major-conference-highlighting-dangers-of-transgender-movement.html Offaly Express] discuss Genspect's latest conference, notable speakers and quotes, and the state of trans healthcare in Ireland.

Best regards, Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 20:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi, @Audrey Bacques added a template for biased sources saying "since this article seems to offer sources from only one point of view"

@Aquillion moved this template to one section, and then deleted a few sentences using Genspect as a primary source according to WP:ABOUTSELF. @Aquillion cites the essay not policy WP:MISSIONSTATEMENT.

@Audrey Bacques please can you elaborate your concerns?

In the mean time I am reverting the removal of those sentences. The article uses about 80 references and 4 of them are to the Genspect site. That doesn't seem excessive to me. AndyGordon (talk) 11:24, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

:I hold no strong opinion on including or excluding this chunk of content but, if we are to keep it, I do think that it needs some work.

:We must not use the phrase "gender identity ideology" in anything that could be interpreted as wikivoice. To do so risks granting credibility an entity that only exists in the minds of conspiracy theorists. That link is also dubious. We have already linked gender identity elsewhere in the article and Gender identity ideology (which redirects to Anti-gender movement) seems to be the more correct link to use here, if we are to link it at all. I did wonder if adding a caveat like "what they refer to as", or just putting it in quote marks, would work but that is hard to do in a truly neutral way.

:Then there is our use of "harm". Again is it not clear whether that comes from the paraphrase or whether we, as Wikipedia, are accepting this alleged harm as real. There is the same ambiguity over where wikivoice starts and ends.

:I know that we are paraphrasing O'Mally and Pluckrose here, and that they do use the phrase "gender identity ideology" (once) in the reference, but I think that we can only resolve the ambiguity of wikivoice if we make this bit into actual explicit quotations rather than a paraphrase where it is unclear what is them speaking and what is us. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:40, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

• The issue is that we have an entire section devoted solely to citations to Genspect itself, which obviously violates WP:NPOV and WP:BALANCE; the fact that it's confined to one section doesn't resolve the issue. Additionally, many things in that section are {{tq|unduly self-serving}}, which isn't an appropriate use of an WP:ABOUTSELF source. Statements such as their claims that their goal is to {{tq|"advocate for an evidence-based approach to gender-related distress}}, or that they are an {{tq|"non-partisan, independent organization"}}, or that it {{tq|it was formed to combat harms done by gender identity ideology}} or that it seeks to be {{tq|driven by evidence, and guard against being biased by other ideologies}} are all extremely self-serving statements that absolutely require an independent secondary sources. (Any discussion about "the harms of gender ideology" also obviously violates the WP:ABOUTSELF restriction on {{tq|claims about third parties}}, though it's already so glaringly self-serving that pointing that out is hardly necessary.) WP:MISSIONSTATEMENT is an essay, but the basis for it is the policy restrictions on ABOUTSELF sourcing, which many people accidentally overlook when citing self-serving mission statements like these. The quotes in this section are all also inappropriate; they clearly violate the warning on WP:QUOTE that {{tq|Quotations that present rhetorical language in place of the neutral, dispassionate tone preferred for encyclopedias can be an underhanded method of inserting a non-neutral treatment of a controversial subject into Wikipedia articles}}. This subject has massive amounts of coverage from a wide variety of sources across a broad range of viewpoints (the rest of the article, unlike this section, cites everything from more right-wing press like the Telegraph to academic papers to LGBT press); with so many independent sources to draw on, there is no reason why we would devote an entire section to quotes from Genspect with no secondary coverage that serve only to present unduly self-serving rhetorical flourishes like the ones above. If this is a significant part of the subject, independent secondary sources will have covered it. ABOUTSELF is for raw, neutral, uncontroversial facts like the date an organization was founded, its membership, or where it is based; it's not intended to allow organizations to define how they are covered, and certainly not intended to be used to put chest-beating polemic statements like these in the article with only a non-independent non-RS source. --Aquillion (talk) 16:42, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
• :++, remove the whole section as puffery and a blatant violation of NPOV. The fact it was originally positioned in front of what actual RS say is and was worded even less neutrally is frankly concerning and bordering on WP:PROFRINGE. Aquillion's fixes and move were an improvement, but are fundamentally trying to treat a gangrenous section with a bandaid. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 22:32, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

At the moment this article states in wikivoice "the Cass review ... recommends exploratory therapy rather than affirmative care". This is an extraordinary claim that would need serious Medrs to back it up. At the moment this is sourced to the economist (which makes lots of unbacked Medrs claims). I think the most Wikipedia can say from this source is that "O'Malley believes the Cass review promotes exploratory therapy and that a conversion therapy ban could prevent this".

For the moment I'm going to be bold and change it. LunaHasArrived (talk) 14:52, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

:"The role of psychological therapies in

:supporting children and young people with

:gender incongruence or distress has been

:overshadowed by an unhelpfully polarised

:debate around conversion practices. Terms

:such as ‘affirmative’ and ‘exploratory’

:approaches have been weaponised to the

:extent that it is difficult to find any neutral

:terminology. This has given the impression that

:a young person can have either therapeutic

:interventions or a medical pathway." - from the final Cass report page 150; section 11.4 Adawitch1981 (talk) 09:50, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

There is a paragraph on this page that pertains to an article written by a psychologist that O Malley "co authored" - O Malley did not co author, she added her name to the article along with one other person. Crucially though the article has nothing to do with Genspect so I would like to see it removed as this page is about Genspect. This is the text -

On 9 August 2021, O'Malley co-authored an opinion letter titled "Bill to ban conversion therapy poses problems for therapists" alongside psychologist Jacky Grainer and GP Madeleine Ní Dhailigh for The Irish Times in reference to the Prohibition of Conversion Therapies Bill 2018. In the letter, she criticized the inclusion of "suppression of gender identity" in the bill's definition of conversion therapy. The Union of Students in Ireland subsequently announced that it was boycotting The Irish Times until it apologised for the article. The Trans Writers Union, with 1,400 signatories, and Trinity News also announced a boycott of the paper due to what they characterized as advocating conversion therapy and a pattern of transphobic behavior.

I edited this to remove the piece but am very new to editing so could someone tell me what if anything I would need to do/provide to remove it?.. (other than just, delete it?) TIA Adawitch1981 (talk) 13:31, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

:See the source here: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/bill-to-ban-conversion-therapy-poses-problems-for-therapists-1.4642164.

:She is listed as an author. HenrikHolen (talk) 15:01, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

::Hi, thanks. She is 'listed as an author' yes, but she put her name to it, did not author it, and the other person Madeline did the same, which is often the case in opinion pieces. However the bigger issue here is that this does not pertain to Genspect, the two other people listed are nothing to do with Genspect and O' Malley did not put her name to this as the founder of Genspect (which didn't exist at that stage). It does not belong on this page (it exists on her own personal page which is correct) as it is not about and has nothing to do with Genspect. is there somewhere I need to 'make a case' for this or is here the right way to do it? (again I'm new to this so appreciate any help/direction). Adawitch1981 (talk) 08:27, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

:::If somebody is listed as the author of something, on that something, then we assume that it is true unless there are Reliable Sources explicitly disputing it. If there was any evidence that she was being framed then, of course, we would consider that but there isn't. All we need to make it relevant to the topic here is for a Reliable Source to have made the connection. Yes, it belongs primarily in the article about her but it seems perfectly on topic to mention here too. I think it is time to drop the stick on this one. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:11, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

::::Hi, drop the stick? I've made one reply on this question (this being my 2nd.) There's no suggestion of her being framed, this is nothing to do with defending O Malley, quite the opposite. The other 2 people have no wish to be associated with her whatsoever. It is on her own page and nothing can be done about that. Imo it does not belong here as this page is about the organisation Genspect, which has zero to do with the article and its implications thereafter in Ireland. Genspect is an international org with all sorts of ties to right wing groups and funded from the US primarily, nothing to do with Ireland. It's out of context. So two Q's.

::::1) Who has to agree to this if it were to be removed

::::2) There are reliable sources disputing it, is it just a case of then making an edit and referencing the source (if the whole piece is not just removed obviously..) Thanks. Adawitch1981 (talk) 15:57, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

:::::OK. I'll bite. What is the Reliable Source which disputes or repudiates O'Malley's co-authorship? What are we actually talking about here? --DanielRigal (talk) 17:05, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

::::::Hi, the person who authored it has proof. Is there any way to provide this here? Also can you speak to the 2nd part of my query, that the whole thing has nothing to do with Genspect? Adawitch1981 (talk) 12:23, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

:::::::Am I correct in understanding that you have access to unpublished information which you think proves your point? Are you speaking to the people involved directly? If so, what is your connection to them? This could be a problem covering both Original Research and Conflict of Interests. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:04, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

::::::::Hi, yes you are correct, I do have access to unpublished information. However, this article was written before Genspect was even founded, has nothing to do with the organisation, and is not signed by Genspect, that is the bigger point. After looking at both, this is neither an 'original research' or a 'conflict of interests' issue.. Can this paragraph then be deleted from the page? Adawitch1981 (talk) 19:32, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

:::::::::The article was published in August 2021, a couple of months after this organisation was founded, it does have something to do with the organisation (the recent founder signed it and it's directly in their area) and it's signed by genspects founder.

:::::::::The reference to OR could be that editing Wikipedia based off of your unpublished sources would lead to original research (I more think there would be a verifiable issue as how would anyone else verify your information).

:::::::::The reference to COI would be if for example you worked for genspect, it would explain why you had access to unpublished information but (as the above linked policy explains) you would be under restrictions because of said COI (obviously there's other reasons why you might have access to unpublished information as well) LunaHasArrived (talk) 17:05, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

::::::::::I do not work for them and have not ever done so. Not a fan at all to put it very mildly. Unpublished information is nothing to do with my suggested edit, point is that this information is not relevant, this article was not written on behalf of Genspect nor signed by SOM in her capacity as founder of same. Adawitch1981 (talk) 21:20, 8 May 2025 (UTC)