A trans-identified male associated with the world’s leading transgender health lobby group is drawing attention for speculating about experimental “artistic and creative” genital surgeries. Laura A. Jacobs, a New York-based psychotherapist who influenced the development of transgender health guidelines regarding “gender dysphoria” in adolescents, previously contributed a chapter to an anthology in which he promotes BDSM practices, including “age play” and “genital torture.”
Video footage of a TedX talk given three years ago by Jacobs began circulating on social media this week, drawing criticism for Jacobs’ bizarre statements about “gender affirming” surgeries.
In the clip, which was shared by Gays Against Groomers and Helen Joyce, Jacobs states: “Medical interventions allow some of us to change our primary and secondary sex characteristics… but it’s clear that cisgender bodies are still the reference point. Will technology give us options that are artistic and creative? Do we have to stick to penis and vagina norms? Can we have genitalia that look like flowers or abstract sculpture? Can we have multiple? Can they be interchangeable?”
But while Jacobs was presented as being a certified member of WPATH, his influence in the organization goes far deeper, and he served as an influential member of the committee which established the most recent Standards of Care.
Jacobs, who counsels troubled pre-teens, has described himself as a “kinky, BDSM sexworker” and says he works with “adolescents to the elderly.” He also wrote an essay for the 2020 book Sex, Sexuality, and Trans Identities in which he connects BDSM fetish practices to those who claim a transgender status.
In “Hormones and Handcuffs: The Intersection of Transgender Identities, BDSM, and Polyamory,” Jacobs notes that those who identify as transgender “seem almost predisposed” to participate in sadomasochistic fetish subcultures. He explains this by placing blame on “sexual hostility” towards trans-identified individuals, stating that in his view, “our bodies are often devalued.”
He explains: “Our unconventional bodies, which may limit us in mainstream settings, are often accepted and constructively fetishized in BDSM and non-monogamy communities.”
BDSM activities, he continues, allow participants to “turn oppression into joy” while resolving the issue of “lack of access” to sexual partners.
“The negotiation required in these subcultures improves our ability to express ourselves, to replace guardedness with autonomy, to attempt new acts, to perform new identities, to live our fantasies, and to engage with the many and varied loves and lovers previously inaccessible due to rejection, stigma, social awkwardness, or lack of access to partners… Where previously we had been isolated, we might now have a sense of community.”
Jacobs assures readers that “BDSM is a realm in which consenting adults perform socially transgressive acts in environments of risk awareness, trust, empowerment, and collective pleasure,” before going on to explain terminology related to sexualized strangulation, genital torture, and role-playing in a medical setting, or as a child, during sex.
According to Jacobs, genital torture involves “allowing the Dominant” to “inflict whatever sadistic torment has been previously negotiated,” adding that “some trans and gender non-conforming people may seek such acts as expressions of revulsion toward their genitals or as a tool for cathartic relief through them, while others with less dysphoria might engage in these activities simply for pleasure.”
Another sexual activity endorsed by Jacobs, ‘medical play,’ entails participants role-playing in a doctor and patient relationship.
“While for some this type of play may be disturbing, others may replay this objectification… in medical suite simulations complete with examination tables, paper gowns, and surgical gloves forming a stage on which the trans person and a partner might reframe the encounter as one of mutual sexual fulfillment and empowerment,” Jacobs says.
“Breath play,” also known as erotic asphyxiation, Jacobs writes, carries a “risk of serious harm or even death, this may be performed through choking with the hands, a plastic bag over the head, or otherwise restricting oxygen to generate hypoxic euphoria.”
Age play, Jacobs explains, “involves fetishization of an age differential through ‘mommy/child,’ ‘daddy/son,’ or ‘teacher/student’ personae.” Suggested accessories for the sexual re-enactment of “traumatic experiences that occurred during one’s youth” are cribs for infants, diapers, and crayons.
The self-described “kink therapist” also describes forced feminization, a sadomasochistic fetish “for many trans women prior to coming out.” Depictions of this activity “are easily found on the internet,” Jacobs advises, and among them are men “remade through manipulation, cruelty, or devotion into compliant fetish objects” in an exaggerated semblance of a woman, “adorned in stockings and stilettos, with disproportionately large breasts, corseted waists, elegant hair, and sexually suggestive mannerisms.”
Other examples of forced feminization pornography, Jacobs notes, involve depictions of anal rape. This, he says, is “a fantasy removal of masculinity and diminishment of social status: the trans woman has now become a sexual object—receptive rather than assertive.”
“Emasculation is often incorporated. Chastity devices restrict access and pleasure while simultaneously inhibiting erection and the ability to sexually perform as male. They also act as an elimination of the trans woman’s masculinity, making forced feminization both a constriction of male sexuality and a liberation from the genitalia that have been a source of distress. The penis is both highlighted and symbolically eradicated.”
Jacobs is listed as a member of the editorial board for the International Journal of Transgender Health, published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). According to the WPATH website, Jacobs was involved in the process of revising the most recent Standards of Care (SOC8) in the category Assessment, Support, and Therapeutic Approaches of Adolescents with Gender Diversity / Dysphoria, having been appointed to the revision committee in 2018.
As Reduxx previously revealed, the SOC8 was also influenced by academics involved in a castration fetish forum, the members of which produced horrifying written erotica about the genital torture and sexual abuse of children.
Of the nearly 10,000 graphic stories hosted on the Eunuch Archive’s fiction section, nearly 4,000 were tagged with the term ‘minor,’ and depicted children, most often boys, being forcibly castrated to become sexual ‘slaves’ for a dominant ‘master.’
Jacobs maintains an account on the BDSM hookup site FetLife, where he has placed a personals ad under the heading “Queer Lesbian Slave” seeking a “female master.”
Among his listed fetishes are body modification, pet play, rubber, chastity, consensual nonconsent play, sadism, and sex in public.
“I’m equally comfortable at Sesame Street the Musical, a Dita von Teese burlesque, the Met Museum rooftop, or the Master/slave Conference. Accomplished and awarded in my helping-profession career; I’m also a multi-published author (recent book out September 2023!!) who lectures at medical, mental health, sexuality, and LGBTQIA+ conferences,” reads Jacobs’ FetLife profile. “Scheduled to attend the MTTA Slave Training Academy in March 2024.”
On his social media profiles, Jacobs promotes the medical transitioning of children. One image shared to his Facebook account in 2023 reads simply, “Love Trans Kids.”
Another prominent trans-identified male and psychologist selected by the executive board of the WPATH to contribute to the Standards of Care Version 8 (SoC v8) revision has also promoted ‘age play,’ as well as furrydom and sissification as “further sexualities.”
Dr. Christina Richards, the Lead Psychologist and Head of Psychology at the London Gender Identity Clinic and Board-Member-at-Large of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), co-authored a professional guide on sexuality and gender wherein he introduces age play, which involves “an adult identifying as a baby or young child, and is also known as adult baby/diaper lover (ABDL) or infantilism. There may be a sexual aspect… associated with humiliation.”
Right: Image shared to Jacobs’ Facebook profile.
Richards goes on to describe how adults who engage in ‘age play’ accumulate various objects and apparel associated with childhood, including children’s clothing. Often one adult will roleplay as being any age from infancy to teenage years, while another adult participates in a dominant sexual role.
“Terms which may be encountered here include daddy’s little girl (DLG) in which an older male top treats a younger female bottom as a nurtured child,” Richard elaborates.
“The term ‘sissification’ intersects with age play as it is where an adult male is consensually ‘forced’ to don the clothes of, and behave as, a young girl as part of a BDSM scene. The humiliation the adult male feels at being dressed as a young female is the source of the eroticization.”