A Philosophy Professor Is the Only Known Author of Trump's Big Trans Health Care Report. Why?
Alex Byrne has been an MIT philosophy professor since 1995. But his focus on gender only started in 2018.
In a family friend’s front yard at around 11 years old, Elle Setiya remembers listening in on her dad’s conversation with Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at MIT. She recalls Byrne airing his grievances to her dad—who heads up the philosophy department—about the growing trans rights movement.
“Can someone really just say they’re a woman and that’s it? Whatever happened to biological sex?” she remembers Byrne saying.
“I felt it personally in a way that I wasn’t expecting to, because it brought up the feelings of discomfort around my presentation,” Setiya, now 18, told Uncloseted Media. “It did make [transitioning] a little bit harder.”
At the time, Setiya, who would come out to her parents at 14 years old, had no idea that Byrne would go on to apply his perspective in his work with the Trump administration.
In May, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services released a 409-page report titled “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” which criticizes gender-affirming care for minors and argues for the benefits of Gender-Exploratory Therapy, a model which many experts have compared to conversion therapy because the practice encourages patients to attribute feelings of gender dysphoria to other causes. The report suggests that gender dysphoria could be the result of undiagnosed autism, borderline personality disorder or childhood trauma.
The report, prompted by an executive order that cracks down on gender-affirming care for minors, was fast-tracked to the public before it finished peer review and kept its nine authors anonymous “to protect them from intimidation tactics and undue pressure campaigns.” After its release, it was criticized by numerous leading medical organizations.
After the report was published, bioethicist and University of Alberta law professor Florence Ashley posted a thread noting that names matching those of Byrne and two consultants employed by the consulting firm Guidehouse appeared in the report files’ metadata.
While Byrne initially declined to comment about his role in the report, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post last month in which he identifies himself as one of the authors and accuses critics of the report of “shaming [and] ostracizing.”
“We all stand to benefit from free and open inquiry, in medicine. … That does not mean elevating crackpots or taking wild conspiracy theories seriously. It means that objections should be made using arguments and data,” Byrne wrote.
Since Byrne’s name first appeared, students and colleagues at MIT have expressed concern that Byrne, who claims to support the right of “transgender people to live free from discrimination,” would work with an administration that opposes trans rights.
But beyond that, Ashley told Uncloseted Media that “the fact that Alex Byrne is not somebody who has relevant expertise is certainly concerning” when it comes to the report’s legitimacy.
Who Is Alex Byrne?
Byrne has worked as a professor in MIT’s philosophy department since 1995 and specializes in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. He wouldn’t take up the philosophy of gender until a 2018 article where he argues that sex should be understood as binary.
From there, Byrne’s focus on gender would increase. In 2023, he published “Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions.” The book was rejected by Oxford University Press because peer reviewers felt it did not cover its subject in “a sufficiently serious and respectful way.”
Despite this, Byrne often spoke in support of trans rights. A philosopher of gender—who spoke with Uncloseted Media on background—doesn’t think Byrne is “out to get anyone.” They say, “[This] is why it’s so sad. … I do think that he’s trying to speak the truth, but his perspective on the truth is somewhat limited,” adding that Byrne’s initial work was not well-informed, though this would improve over time.
While Byrne’s knowledge may be lacking, his work has had impact. His 2019 critique of gender identity was referenced in an amicus brief supporting Florida’s ban on trans health care for minors. An expert witness for the Women’s Liberation Front referenced Byrne at the end of a declaration attempting to force trans women into men’s prisons. And Byrne has given talks at conferences held by Genspect, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
While many wonder why a philosopher would contribute to a report on trans health care, Byrne has argued that “philosophy overlaps with medical ethics.”
Despite this, Ashley says there’s still a problem: Byrne is not an ethicist.
“While it is true that philosophy plays a really central role in bioethics, that is only relevant insofar as the philosopher in question has the relevant expertise and background,” they say. “Philosophical expertise is not just randomly interchangeable, as much as a lot of philosophers would like to think so.”
Since Byrne’s focus pivoted to gender, Setiya remembers hearing him talk about trans issues at family dinners.
“He liked to do this thing where he would say … ‘I want to speak more about it in terms of theory and ideas rather than more controversial political areas,’” she says.
Setiya remembers reading excerpts of Byrne’s book and one line standing out because it went against his “apolitical” rhetoric: “Revolutions devour their own children, and the gender revolution is no exception.”
"It was hurtful, because it felt like it was being done from a very detached perspective,” she says. “The ideas were being presented in a way that implied that it wasn't impacting people's everyday lives and was just an abstract theory. Even as somebody who did not fully know at the time who [I] was or hadn't fully come to terms with it yet, that rhetoric definitely had a negative effect on how I viewed myself."
Critics of the Report
Byrne has said that “the hostile response to the review by medical groups and practitioners underscores why it was necessary.”
But experts say their key concerns aren’t political but rather methodological. Ashley says that the report’s public release without the completion of peer review, its anonymous authors and its five-month turnaround are all unusual.
By comparison, the similarly controversial Cass Review took four years to be published, and it identified its primary author from the beginning.
“It takes way longer than that to do a systematic review of evidence,” says Ashley. “This indicates that it was probably rushed quite a bit.”
Beyond the methodological flaws, there are political biases. While the report claims not to be a policy recommendation, it was commissioned by Trump—who has railed against the trans community—in an effort to ban gender-affirming care for minors nationwide.
Even though Byrne has said he’s not a fan of the Trump administration, the philosopher of gender says it’s unwise to work with them in good faith.
“Being able to [work with people on the other side of the aisle] is, in principle, okay, but in this particular case, when it comes to Trump, it just goes into the misinformation sphere, and it’s not clear how any of it is going to be used,” they say.
The report’s citations include publications by a number of researchers involved with anti-LGBTQ hate groups who are trying to dismantle gay and trans rights in the U.S. and abroad, including Alliance Defending Freedom-funded psychiatrist James Cantor and Dr. Quentin Van Meter, former president of the American College of Pediatricians.
Student Pushback at MIT
.JPG){kind=link}
All of this prompted a group of MIT Philosophy students to write an open letter titled “Dear Professor Byrne,” where they condemned him for working with the Trump administration. The letter had over 200 signatures, including professors and students from MIT and other universities.
“We have been making an effort … to be a place where trans-inclusive thought can flourish,” says Katie Zhou, a graduate student at MIT Philosophy who signed the letter. “It is disappointing to see this be overshadowed by this one guy.”
“MIT cannot claim to be accepting or friendly to LGBT people while letting its professors collaborate with the Trump administration to kill LGBT kids,” another MIT grad student told Uncloseted Media.
In an email, MIT wrote that they respect “that there is a range of views across our community … and as a general practice, [they] do not comment on the individually held and freely expressed views of any particular community member.”
In a written response, Byrne called the letter “inimical to the mission of the university” and accused it of attempting to chill dissent against gender-affirming care.
But multiple people at MIT Philosophy say that Byrne has had opportunities to engage in dialogue about gender. Zhou says Byrne attended numerous open forums about gender identity, including a 2024 workshop which brought together activists and scholars, though she says he didn’t speak. He also attended a queer and trans theory reading group run by Zhou, where he “mostly just sat there quietly,” occasionally asking a question.
“I’m worried that he could try to push a narrative where we in the department are silencing him, and I just wanted to say for the record that we’ve worked very hard to have spaces where these issues can be discussed openly,” says Zhou.
A grad student at MIT told Uncloseted Media that they felt frustrated with the disconnect between Byrne’s interactions with trans students on campus and his online rhetoric.
“He’ll go online and post this rant about trans people and trans philosophy, and the next day he’ll walk past me in the hallway like nothing happened.”
Setiya says she never felt comfortable broaching the subject of gender with Byrne. “I think that if I did try and get into a conversation with him, he would intellectualize things and he would maneuver the conversation in a way that would make me sound uneducated or not fully prepared,” she says. “He has a very sarcastic and sardonic way of approaching things … and if [he] gets a response, [he] can just use that moment to be like, ‘Wow, look at how unhinged these trans activists are.’”
Another MIT student added that keeping up with people like Byrne who pontificate on theories about trans people’s existence is exhausting.
“We don’t have time to go through every poorly conducted study and rebut the pseudoscience point-by-point,” they told Uncloseted Media. “He has the time to generate these bad arguments, and there’s no stakes in it for him, there’s no emotional toll, there’s no consequences if he’s wrong.”
Byrne declined to be interviewed for this story and did not respond to a request for comment.
Moving Forward
The report’s findings are already having impact. The anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom has begun citing the report to promote their numerous lawsuits supporting anti-trans legislation. The group’s president, Kristen Waggoner, stated that the report “should lead to the closure of every gender clinic in America” and that “doctors who perpetrate these experiments on children should lose their medical licenses and be sued.”
Ashley says the report’s publication helps legitimize the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on gender-affirming care under the veneer of science.
“They’re not so much seeking to convince people who already disagree with them, as much as try[ing] to make the people that already agree with them feel heard and validated, and they’re telling the moderates who low-key dislike trans people but are having trouble justifying it to themselves, ‘I hear you, and you are correct.’”
The philosopher of gender, who admired Byrne’s work prior to his shift to gender politics, expressed disappointment that he had taken this path.
“Alex is someone who is a very committed person and wants to think hard about hard questions,” they say. “More than angry, I just feel really sad. … Why did he go down this road? What’s at stake for him? I just don’t understand.”
Elle Setiya, who has known Byrne since she was young, says the report has increased her own fear as a young trans woman and her fear for trans and queer youth in the U.S.
“To feel like their government doesn’t value them and is actively working against them. It just takes a toll on you, I think.”
If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:
Byrne, like most professional transphobes, is an authoritarian bully. He fits a now well-observed personality type, from Kenneth Zucker to Ray Blanchard, Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull to JK Rowling, and a garden variety abuser at that.
They aren't genuinely interested in a "discourse" about the possible "existence" of transgender identities, they just want gender to be a prison with them as the warders with only two cells and everyone is sentenced to life in one or the other, or sentenced to death. For cisgender authoritarians, this intellectually bankrupt zero sum exercise seems perfectly reasonable as long as one ignores the absolute destruction of our shared humanity in the process.