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Dossier: Dr. Kenneth Zucker

Zucker is a Canadian sexologist and psychologist who operates in Canada. He lead the Gender Identity Service at CAMH in Toronto up until 2015. He chaired the committee responsible for curating the definition of gender dysphoria under the DSM-5, and he is most widely known for his support for and participation in conversion torture on transgender children. Zucker is one of a small circle of psychologists with a fixation on sexology and an apparent obsession with pathologising femininity in boys.

Abuse allegations

Trans musician Devi McCallion has put forward abuse allegations against Zucker both on social media and in a formal setting. She claims that Zucker inappropriately touched her when she was a child. Zucker allegedly told McCallion that she would receive hormone therapy in exchange for compliance with his advances, although Zucker did not prescribe her anything after the encounter.

Zucker's dubious research and methodology

In a 1993 study, Zucker photographed naked transgender children and invited university students to rate their attractiveness. Zucker carried this study out on AMAB and AFAB children. The mean age of these children was 8. It is likely that there were children far below this age who were photographed.

Zucker is the man behind a study often cited by transphobes as 'evidence' that the vast majority of transgender people 'desist' from their gender by the time their natural puberty has taken its full course. Zucker used a number of tactics to ensure that he achieved his desired result, such as including those who did not answer his follow-up phone calls as 'desisters'. Zucker's counselling techniques would seem to mirror the tactics used by police interrogators to extract false confessions, which helps to bolster his 'desistance' numbers.