The Anti-Trans DocuDrama Funded By a Far-Right Cult SCRIPT (Patreon)

Hey there Patrons <3 So here’s the script for my upcoming video that is overtly about the anti-trans propaganda film Gender Transformations that was being advertised all over YouTube. However, the video ended up being a much larger deep dive into how anti-trans and TERF  narratives not only intersect with right-wing attacks on education and more, but also how they intersect with far-right conspiracies, anti-semitism, racism, and ultimately, fascism and its eugenic underpinnings. It features a ton of interviews, some of which I already shared on Patreon here, with some wonderful people like Zoe Bee, Calean Conrad, Elliot Sang, Ladyknighthebrave, and more. It's gonna be a really big one, hence why I’m sharing it with you all here. It's gonna take me a while to film and edit this one, so I wanted to give you all a look at it as I work on it over the next couple of months as IDENTITEAZE also films at the end of October. I do apologize that, as a result of filming IDENTITEAZE, I might have a bit of a slower schedule in terms of getting a new video out this month/next, but I promise I got some big stuff coming, even beyond this script. And thank you for helping support me while doing so <3 I couldn't do all this without you.

Speaking of, I also wanted to share this script because I wanted to get your thoughts on it as I go into filming it. If there’s anything you see that I missed, or you think I should touch upon, or is redundant, or I got wrong, let me know, because I would love feedback, especially on something so... difficult. It helps to have extra eyes on this stuff.8 <3. Anyways, I hate to say “I hope you enjoy this script” as this is a difficult topic, but I at least hope you find it helpful and interesting. I wrote in hopes of educating those who still don’t see how anti-trans hate is the basis for so much more bigotry in our society today.

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You might have gotten this strange movie trailer ad if you clicked on one of my videos or even larger trans-focused channels like One Topic at a Time or Trixie Mattel within the last few months. For the first 30 seconds, the amount of time a YouTube audience would watch before hitting the skip ad button to spend more productively watching me being a weirdo, the trailer appears to be an over-acted yet transgender-supportive docudrama. And an ad like that playing on my channel would make sense given my, well… everything.

But suppose you were to watch longer than 30 seconds. In that case, the ad soon takes a hard right turn as it begins to talk about how parents have become “enemy number one” in a fight against governments, corporations, teachers, and politicians who are trying to push “gender ideology” on kids, causing irreversible damages to poor children, especially young “girls,” with the trailer ending on a few shots of not only on one of the worst wigs in film history which must be in and of itself some form of child endangerment but asking “why are they all doing this,” a vague ‘they’ left in the air meant to get you to ask… who are ‘they’ and why are they trying to trans my children into wearing bad wigs?

This trailer was for the feature film Gender Transformations: The Untold Realities, a docudrama made by Epoch Times, a far-right newspaper that gained notoriety in recent years for promoting QAnon and anti-vaccine misinformation and distributed on EpochTV, their streaming service platform that features other Epoch Originals films like The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told, or Gotaways: The Hidden Border Crisis, or The Real Story of January 6th - all films trying to sell themselves as the true stories that the mainstream doesn’t want you to hear. Also, The Stray Story: A Dogumentary… which… um… I'm not sure what's going on with that one. On its face, Gender Transformations fits in with the rest of this content - a film consolidating the ongoing culture war narratives against trans people of the LGBTQ groomer agenda scaremongering to get you to buy their merch, only differentiating itself by featuring a fictionalized dramatization of an actual trans person's supposed life. Hence, the terrible wigs.

However, as I researched the film, what I assumed would be a water-down version of Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire’s similar anti-trans film What is a Woman? It turned into something insidious on its own terms. Unlike Walsh’s more direct personality-driven film, Gender Transformations provides a very different entry point into the broader portrait that anti-trans narratives are ultimately just a small piece of. It takes the viewers along until we hit dog whistles playing so loudly that they may as well be loudly singing the tune like a Broadway musical number. Not too far beneath the surface lies a world of international cults, a decades-old propaganda campaign, fascist conspiracy theories, a Karl Marx Tsunami stopped by a supposed messiah; yeah, I'm not kidding about that, and of course - [guy saying aliens]. … sadly, not the fun Star Trek-style aliens with weird tattoos… So we will look at Gender Transformations, who created it, debunk its claims, and yet most importantly, how it sells its narrative to its audience to lead them into a silo of far-right conspiracy theories and communities.

==============FRAMING===============

Before we get to Gender Transformations itself, or even The Epoch Times, I want to talk about how the film presents itself to its audience sans any context so we can understand how the film hooks in a potential viewer who isn’t aware of the more extensive apparatus they have encountered when first seeing the film. At first glance, The Epoch Times seems to be marketing and positing Gender Transformations in a similar way to how other right-wing streaming services over the past few years, like Daily Wire Plus, have positioned their documentaries discussing the “transgender agenda” - selling themselves as the “real” story that “they” don’t want you to see that you can only watch if you SUBSCRIBE NOW to our platform.

Most infamously, Dairy Wire host and a man who puts a banjo I guarantee you he doesn’t know how to play in the background of his videos, Matt Walsh, infamously used this strategy last year with his anti-trans disinformation propaganda film “What is a Woman?” which I did a whole video on already. The plan there was clear - “What is a Woman?” consolidated numerous anti-trans narratives into a single film; the Daily Wire released it during LGBTQ Pride month, and heavily advertised on social media, including trans-supportive sites and YouTube channels, to potentially grab any audience members who came to these spaces to learn more about trans people BEFORE they engaged with the trans supportive content as well as create a culture war backlash from queer audiences so the Daily Wire could generate a cancel culture narrative that us queers are trying to SILENCE poor creepy baby doll maker Matt Walsh thus “proving” the “they don’t want you to see it” aspect of their marketing campaign.  EpochTV generally seems to be doing this even more blatantly, with many of the films on their platform directly in their titles, selling themselves as the “untold, hidden, unseen” stories. EpochTV’s pitch states, “Our original shows and award-winning documentaries dig deep into critical issues that are often ignored or even censored by mainstream media or big tech companies.”

Yet, while the end goal of the strategies is ultimately the same, the framing and emotions engaged with Gender Transformations are entirely different.  “What is a Woman?” and all of Matt Walsh/The Daily Wire’s content is sold on the bravado of its central figures. Walsh is a provocateur, building on the individualistic strongman-esque energy of being the toughest, most masculine person often championed by far-right neo-fascist style organizations like the Proud Boys. His content is meant to be bullying and abrasive, building his brand and cult of personality, which is quite evident even in “What is a Woman" trailers.” The film is dripping with cynicism, irony, bravado, and intentionally incendiary stunts to garner a quick negative emotional reaction. Nothing he does is entirely sincere, engaging his audience's sports-fan-like energy of seeing their guy own the LIBS to be the winner rather than a much more interesting, curious exploration of the concept of womanhood that his “documentary” purports to be. As I mentioned in my analysis of the film, its climax tries to provoke a viewer into quick, violent action against the trans community based on broad inflamed emotions that deny introspection. None of it feels earnest, but that’s kind of the point.

Gender Transformations makes an entirely different emotional appeal, trying to give itself a sense of heartfelt concern and authority. The first point of engagement with a potential viewer is its marketing trailer, which plays an overly melancholic song made for middle school Jessie and her depressive alt-indie phase, with lyrics like “It's so quiet here | And I feel so cold | This house no longer | Feels like home” that play as sound bites vaguely hint at the dangers of transgender ideology. The trailer then leads you to the film’s landing page on EpochTV, which highlights its accolades and features each of its interviewees as if they exude expertise. We’ll get to the actual credentials of all these folks later on, but the important part is they appear authoritative. My favorite part, however, is the reviews, which are all glowing… and made by the people APPEARING in the “documentary” itself. That’s how you know it’s good. The film is trying to lend itself much more authorial credibility in the absence of a central individual figure like Walsh, who himself often actively shows open disdain for science and institutional intellectualism more in keeping with far-right thought. [clip] Instead, it aims to grab a more capital L Liberal audience with more built-in trust in institutions and expertise.

This feeling extends to the film itself, a docudrama that cuts between traditional talking head interviews with “experts” and a fictionalized dramatization of the story of Abigail Martinez, the mother of a trans man, Andrew Martinez, who came out while in middle school. The story follows Abigail’s accounting of events, not her child that the narrative is mainly centered on for reasons we’ll discuss later. And let me be clear: this drama is… not good. The acting and writing are atrocious, featuring some of the most on-the-nose dialogue I’ve ever heard. [clip] OH YES, KIDS, WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, TIME TO TALK ABOUT GENDER. And let's not forget the wig. But while I have been making, and let's face it, will continue to make fun of this film’s production value, that is part of the intention. In the context of the supposed concern the talking heads sections are expressing, the low budget makes it feel like someone is just trying to impart an essential message as best they can. Supposedly, the choice of dramatizing Abigail’s story was made after the director and crew had interviewed her for the film and found her story so moving that they wished to feature it as the throughline for the film. [clip from an interview with director]  It frames the movie as earnest in its attempt to tell a “real story,” a story given credence by its supposed experts.  It’s overacting, and bad writing is meant to feel endearing to its intended audience. Never mind that the film and its narrative were chosen before the director came to the project [clip from interview].

Speaking of, the final essential thing to understand about the framing for this film is its intended audience. The film's marketing states that it's “An award-winning Epoch Original docudrama EVERY PARENT needs to watch,” making clear its intended audience is parents, not trans people. More subtly yet specifically, the film seems less interested in parents than it is in mothers. Not a single father appears in the film, not even in Abigail Martinez’ story, who is a single mother. Of the 14 interviewees, only four are men - 3 are detransitioners framed as victims of the transgender agenda, and the final is an endocrinologist. The rest are all women, most interviewed in the capacity of mother or teacher despite their lower thirds saying their job title.

All of this presents a clear picture of who this film was intended for and who it’s attempting to draw into its narrative: parents supposedly “concerned” about their children being transgender. This is largely why the film is advertised on trans-supportive channels like mine. These ads are meant to hit parents of kids who might have sent their family member a video by a trans person to try to gauge their reaction to it, try to inform them about how they’re feeling, or just to try to present them with educational or positive material about trans people through YouTube, with this ad instead catching those folks before they even engage with an actual trans person. The film actively wants to try to deny its audience any access to hearing from an actual trans person, instead wishing their only point of engagement with the trans community to be through their lens. Because, let's be clear, not a single trans person appears in this documentary despite it being supposedly about trans people. The reason could not be more apparent - they want these parents only to hear a narrative about their potential trans child, not from anyone involved with the trans community, but from them, to limit access to any other avenues of information so they can be funneled into a single narrative as soon as possible.

This dovetails quite heavily with the recruitment tactics of gender-critical feminists, which was explained and investigated heavily by my fellow creator, Caelan Conrad, in their series on gender-critical feminists whom I interviewed for this video.

[CAELAN CONRAD INTERVIEW]  I made a fake Facebook account. Carol Marinara, a lovely Italian woman from Toronto, and I entered the groups specifically as a concerned parent. And I looked into it specifically from the parent side, because that was the scariest part to me.

Jessie - Yeah. When I came out in my 20s, my stepmother expressed her worry about all the hardships that I would face being trans and how that scared her a lot. And I could easily see that concern, if I had been younger, turn into “How do I prove that this isn't real so that my child doesn't have to face this?”  And, to my mind, the goal of works and space like this is to stop these folks from encountering well-considered trans content and watch this instead. Then they're in that pipeline now, as opposed to having found more thoughtful trans material. Then it legitimizes their fear in the opposite direction by saying “your kid is facing a manipulation machine that is coming after them” building from that same initial fear that society is going to harm my child.

Caelan - Oh yeah, they want people to go into every single time they hear a trans person speaking about their own experiences with this is a lie. They are after your children. A lot of the people that enter into the gender-critical groups are like, I was in this other group, and they were getting mad at me for misgendering or voicing my concerns. They kept saying that the things that I was saying were conspiracy theories. So I'm just really glad to be in a group where people tell the truth. There are some concerned parents who are legitimately concerned about how to best protect their child and also support their child…. The problem is, once they're in the group, they lose that. That's no longer there. Yeah, that's not their goal anymore. Because they are so thoroughly convinced by everyone else in the group that what “they're” doing is harmful using misinformation pieces like this documentary, the [JK Rowling] podcast [that] is constantly promoted, and there is Irreversible Damages by Abigail Shrier, Helen Joyce's book, especially Maria Cutler’s book. They're looking for someone to tell them that this feeling that they have that this transness is not their real kid… That this is a social contagion or this is a liberal indoctrination. All of that is very present. Unfortunately, most of the people in these gender-critical groups did not come in with good intentions. I mean, they probably think they have good intentions. But there they are.

This is not an uncommon type of experience with these types of spaces. Ky Schever, a detransitioner who identified as a gender-critical feminist and worked for these groups who later came back out as a trans woman, often spoke about how they would filter people into different groups based on their level of acceptance of anti-trans ideologies.

People used to contact me about online support groups for female-assigned people who were detransitioning, looking for “alternative treatments for gender dysphoria” and/or seeking to “reconcile with being female”. There were two Facebook groups that I knew of, though I never belonged to either since I don’t have a Facebook account. One was supposed to be apolitical and presented itself as trans-friendly but had radical feminist undertones. The other was explicitly radical feminist/gender critical. I knew one of the women who administered the groups and I would pass people interested in joining onto her. She would then vet them and decide which group(s) to admit them to. I believe a lot of people in the first group didn’t even know the second one existed. I think back on this now and worry that I directed people looking for support to online communities that ended up radicalizing them.

So now that we understand the funnel the film is trying to start with let's see how it moves one through the funnel with its emotional and pseudoscientific appeals and where it ultimately intends to lead them. Again [aliens clip]. I’m not kidding. I wish I were.

=========THE FILM========= [ PLAY THE OPENING OF THE FILM]

After the opening sequence that acts as a primer framing the entire film as one leading to a sinister ending, Gender Transformations opens up on Abigail Martinez, connecting her story and voice-over visually to the dramatic reenactment that weaves throughout the film. Abigail begins talking about how her real-life child, a trans man who went by the name of  Andrew and used he/him pronouns, which we will use throughout this video despite the film deadnaming and misgendering him throughout. From her perspective, Andrew’s mother, Abigail, states that Andrew grew up a beautiful, happy, girly girl, emphasizing “inherent” femininity. As we hear Abigail's words, we are introduced to a fictionalized version of their family, as the fictional Abigail and her other son enjoy a peaceful violin concert from the fictionalized Andrew, who eventually goes by Evan within the film’s narrative. Fictional Evan plays a concert to golden light in a feminine floral dress, underscoring his femininity. All this is the film presenting and emphasizing an untainted, peaceful time before the transgender agenda “corrupted” this small family.

Starting here reveals the film’s core intention. While the movie presents itself as a talking head documentary intercut with a reenactment, the reenactment is the entire point. The talking heads are here to give a sense of credence to the drama, a feeling that all this is real because “experts” who we will see are anything but explain that what you see “actually happens.” The film is not worried about using actual expertise to be persuasive but uses its aesthetic to buttress its emotional argument underscored by drama.

This is extremely important to remember as we talk about this film.  I’m going to highlight and debunk the film’s intentional disinformation. What it reveals about the film’s biases/intentions, but ultimately, my efforts to debunk the film’s disinformation, will not disprove the film’s narrative to someone who has bought in entirely on its emotional appeal because the facts here don’t matter to the filmmakers. The film's emotional pathway is the more critical narrative we have to track. It leads its audience through the facts the interview segments justify as truth.

So, starting at this idyllic opening, the film plays into the fears and anxieties that its audience was already primed to expect. Many parents who are terrified of their children being trans are looking for information, any information, about something that they don’t understand in their child’s life. They feel as if they knew their child that everything was perfect, and suddenly, something so radical changed their perspective. They think that they can’t have missed something so important about their child, that it must be something external that came in instead of an earnest feeling by their child. This opening, then frames it that way too, that things were perfect… and tells a narrative of a dark force coming in acting upon their child, allowing the parents to dissuade their sense of failure that they “don’t truly understand their child,” instead allowing them to feel that they are the ones who know the truth, the beautiful perfect world that they are trying to preserve that existed before their child left their supposed safety.

After the idyllic opening, the film presents us with its first argument through its experts - that trans people, especially nonbinary and gender-fluid kids, are something brand new. [clip] This information is provided flippantly without any actual factual basis.

In truth, trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid folks are by no means new. Throughout history, societies have recognized folks outside a rigid modern-day Western cultural biological and social view of gender, especially in pre-colonial cultures. Take the Hijra of India, the Scythians honoring gender-variant people, mythological gender-bending characters like Loki, the mahu of Hawaii and Tahiti, or 'The Talmud,' a primary source of Jewish Theology and Religious law, recognizing somewhere between 6 to 8 genders or sexes' as but a few examples. It’s essential to realize that none of these perfectly match the current cultural conceptualization of gender identity and biological sex in the same way we think about trans people today, but simply evidence of the numerous ways different cultures conceptualized how biology, gender, and self-expression interacted.

After many of these cultures were colonized by European countries, the rigid gender binary was often enforced in these cultures to force them to conform to Western culture’s views of gender, usually to dehumanize those the colonizing countries wished to frame their new subjects as less human beasts whose gender did not match up to “real human, i.e., European standards.” For example, for many indigenous women, European cultures imposed ideas that women’s subordination was essential to a gender dichotomy when many indigenous tribes had matriarchal cultures or what Chiara Bottici framed as low-intensity patriarchy that further allowed women’s participation. When attempting to colonize these societies, Europeans framed indigenous women as hyper-sexual and sinful compared to the purity and weakness of European colonial women to conceptualize indigenous women as lesser beings than “real” women. We will return to this later, but I’d recommend these excellent videos by Lily Alexandre and Foreign Man in a Foreign Land or my video on civility politics that goes much deeper into that specific colonialist history for more specifics. [clip] However, many of these broader or different understandings of gender still exist today, such as the wide variety of gender roles often placed under the umbrella term two-spirit in other indigenous groups.

Ultimately, all this doesn’t matter to the film because of the idea that this is new FELT correct to a right-wing audience that this idea had continually primed that transgender people are new - a fad that is increasing to seemingly epidemic levels, invading our culture. Yet this only seems the case due to the suppression of queer, trans, and gender-diverse history from the mainstream due to its erasure by centuries of colonialist work.  The film even makes wild claims such as this [CLIP: I HEARD FROM A MOTHER ONLY TWO STUDENTS IDENTIFIED AS HETEROSEXUAL IN CLASS OF 35] Wow, fuck that’s wild, right, to go from almost no queer students to suddenly EVERYONE IS GAY. Obviously, this is incredibly anecdotal.  I heard there was even a kid who identified as a cat in one school, and the school put out litter boxes for them. WILD RIGHT? Sadly, as most of us probably know by now, that one was an actual rumor that got mainstream right-wing attention [clip] and ultimately had no basis in fact.  This is something the film will do repeatedly, making claims, often wild anecdotal claims, that have no factual basis.  In truth, it's estimated that only 300,000, or 1.4%, of teens identify as trans in the US.

Similarly, only 1 in 4 high school students identify as LGBTQ in some way, according to the CDC, not 33 in 35, as the film anecdotally makes it seem. These numbers ARE higher than in the past few decades. Still, most experts put that up to the increased availability and accessibility to LGBTQ education, meaning more students have the words to articulate what many have been feeling regardless. Yet, none of this matters over the feeling the “documentary” is positioning as fact. It is centered on anxieties and fears parents will have over their children, believing their child must have just encountered some new external fad that made them suddenly run against what their parents thought of them.

Further, the film, and many anti-trans narratives, never address the fact that LGBTQ describes a vast number of distinct identities. It creates a false dichotomy of “LGBTQ or straight” (in their mind, not normal or normal) without acknowledging that straightness describes one identity while the queer community encompasses numerous. And this, of course, allows a false binary us versus them dichotomy to be created.

Speaking of that narrative framing, this narrative of young people “suddenly becoming trans” raises the question the film quickly answers: “Where do kids get these ideas?”. And the answer is TEACHERS! [clip]. THOSE EVIL TEACHERS. We even get this dramatization I showed you before of Evan’s teacher starting the semester just talking about John Money [clip]. Maybe none of you find this as funny as I do, but I can’t tell you how much I laughed watching that the first time. HEY MIDDLE SCHOOLERS, WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST CLASS; LET'S TALK ABOUT JOHN MONEY!

I spoke to an education worker who works in a progressive school district in the United States to talk about their experiences with how parents, even in more Liberal areas, fell into this concern surrounding trans people. For their safety, I am not sharing their name; an actor is recording their words, and you’ll hear their comments a few times throughout this video.

The twisting of what is taught also surprised me. For example, explaining to kids that there are some people in the world and in our community who don’t identify as a girl or a boy, that you don’t have to be a boy to be an Air Force pilot or a girl to be a nurse… was twisted into: you want my boy to become a girl, teacher want them to have surgery and change their names. And let’s be honest: they sincerely believe it is what is happening, and it's terrifying. It comes from a genuine fear bred by the same fearmongers on YouTube or TV, and when people are scared, you can’t reason with them. Again, it's very few people, but they are so loud that they give you the impression that they are the only ones existing. Nobody ever sends praises anymore, so it's easy to forget that many people are happy with our work.  -TEACHER

Again, parental propagandized fears, not actual kids' school experiences, are being presented. The goal of this drama is NOT to build empathy for trans people's authentic lived experience as it claims but to dramatize the projected fears of parents surrounding their children exploring a potential trans identity that right-wing narratives prey upon.

Speaking of, the film presents the history of John Money through Mariam Grossman. [clip] John Money here is being shown as the creator of modern-day gender ideology, playing again to this idea that not only is being trans new but something explicitly being pushed by an external malicious force. The drama section of the film even states - [clip: FIRST TO OPEN A GENDER CLINIC]

First and foremost, Money didn’t create gender identity, nor was his clinic the first to provide gender-affirming care. While he did found one of the first institutional gender identity clinics in the US at Johns Hopkins University in 1966, numerous other academic centers had been discussed since the early 1960s to research and provide care to transgender patients who had been studied even as far back as the 1910s when a trans man and doctor Alan Hart underwent a hysterectomy in 1910. John Hopkins University was one of numerous that sprang up around this time, leading to the foundation of much of the research on trans people we have today.

We already spoke about societies that have had multiple gender roles for centuries. However, beyond that, you can still find numerous evidence of gender nonconforming and nonbinary folks throughout US history, especially in underserved and stigmatized communities who often felt less overt pressure to conform to a rigid gender binary in a country that already ostracized them.  Still, even in a European context, there was Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the Institute of Sex Research in 1919, Germany which studied trans people and homosexuality, mirroring Weimar Germany’s institutional, if nominal, acceptance of trans identities, even allowing some citizens to change gender markers on government documents. Hirschfeld even coined the term transsexualism, which, over the decades, led to the word transgender. However, much of his work was destroyed when the Nazis burned his clinic in the 1930s as they rose to power, arguing that the Jewish Hirschfeld was trying to corrupt Aryan bloodlines by turning “fertile Aryans” gay and trans, one of many standard anti-Semitic narratives by the Nazis used to uphold their authoritarian and fascism justifying eugenic ideals of a superior race that could be bred that was being intentionally diluted by the inhuman Jews. Keep that narrative in mind, by the way; we’ll… sadly be returning to it. But for now, it goes to that idea of how gender-variant history was repeatedly attacked and erased, thus allowing further neoliberalism and colonialist societies to claim that gender variance is new despite it existing as long as humans have existed.

Returning to John Money, he was a sexologist most famous for his case with David Remer, which Grossman centers upon. As a baby in 1966, David Reimer suffered a botched circumcision, so Money convinced Reimer's parents to surgically alter Reimer and raise him as a girl. Money praised the experiment as a success. But Reimer eventually identified as a boy and detransitioned by undergoing surgery to reverse the one performed on him as a kid without his consent. The media sensationalized his story, yet David died by suicide at age 38 due to severe depression. So yeah, fuck Money.

Reimer's case is helpful to the film's narrative as it plays into the idea of gender as genetically innate and being manipulated by institutional science and its practitioners like Money through educational centers, eventually funneled down to teachers selling that narrative. David, so the description likes to tell, knew deep down he was a boy because of his biology, no matter what surgeries or hormones a sinister man tried to do to him for his perverted ends.

Yet, in actuality, Reimer’s case showcases deeper issues. David’s social gender and biological sex characteristics were assigned against his will. His abuse at the hands of Money and his parent's decisions, which is similar to how numerous intersex folks are often forced to undergo surgeries before they are old enough to consent, underscores how forcing children to identify against their will, both in their biology and in the way they wish to present their gender, ultimately causes profound mental and physical harm. This idea has been proven over and over and over and over again [new study on-screen with each use of the word “over”], and more scientifically and ethically than John Money ever did. David’s story also emphasizes how gender, sexuality, and self-expression are part of a complicated interplay of biological, social, and environmental factors rather than biological or social factors being the sole distinguishers alone. It’s why it’s proven that helping people who identify as trans figure out how they wish to present and exist within the world, physically and socially, in their unique way instead of trying to force them down a predetermined path, regardless of if it's through medical, social, or biological means, has proven to increase the quality of life, reduce suicidal ideation, and save lives.

All of this highlights how the film attempts to frame a Western cultural conception of binary genders as both natural and long-running while transgender issues and an understanding of genders outside of binary perspective as abnormal, recent, and manufactured by a medical system when in reality it was the exact opposite - trans, nonbinary and intersex folks whose biological sex did not align with a binary conception have always existed, though in different forms based on their cultural context. It was a Western culture and colonization that attempted to codify gender as something inflexible and innate based on your genetic code.

We cut back to Abigail Martinez telling the story of the real-life Andrew, stating that he suffered from depression due to bullying, something we see occur in the dramatization. Further, we constantly see Evan on his phone, learning about being trans from it or playing with gender identity through it. This leads us to see Evan, representing Andrew, attend a counselor session where this occurs. [CLIP] HOT FUCKING DAMN. Let me just say this: If this were an actual therapy session… we all should call for that therapist's credentials revoked. Here, we see this therapist leading Evan to a specific outcome, and in a pretty overt and comical way, instead of letting the client lead the session. It’s clear that in the scene present, Evan is just discussing the general ways that he sees the sexist distinctions in society, which the therapist then manipulates into Evan questioning his gender. It’s simple yet effective.

First and foremost, this is rarely how young folks encounter the idea that they may be trans. Most studies find that students generally have started questioning their gender identity before going to teachers, therapists, health care professionals, or other adults in authority around them. Secondly, this falls well outside the recommendations for healthcare professionals' treatment, as it is potentially leading the patient to a specific gender identity. The most recent edition of the WPATH Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, which are the generally accepted guidelines for medical professionals in the US around transgender care, clearly states

“Statement 6.2 We recommend health care professionals working with gender diverse adolescents facilitate the exploration and expression of gender openly and respectfully so that no one particular identity is favored… HCPs working with adolescents should promote supportive environments that simultaneously respect an adolescent’s affirmed gender identity and also allows the adolescent to openly explore gender needs…should they change or evolve over time…. there is no one particular pace, process, or outcome that can be predicted for an individual adolescent seeking gender-affirming care.”

Essentially, it states that while a Health Care Profession should respect a child’s stated gender identity, their goal should be to allow as safe an environment as possible for THEM to explore their gender safely without judgment nor a stated end goal or direction for them to move in as adolescents have differing ways and paces they explore their gender identity. The goal of a healthcare professional should be to let them guide the path, not the way this therapist leads Evan. All this is why we need to educate therapists and teachers with MORE trans-affirming education, not less, as the documentary and many anti-trans arguments argue.

I had to care for a trans student before even being educated enough about what they were going through then. They still like me, so I guess I did ok! My guiding principle is kindness - I didn’t walk the path myself, and I won’t feel all the pain nor all the joy, but I can be here holding hands, and I’ll be here to celebrate. I will give the light I have to see the obstacles coming - sometimes, it may not be enough! I think it’s like caring for anybody: do not assume, listen, learn (read read read read - ask ask ask ask - find knowledgeable people), and be there. Be a voice: I know how tiring it can be not to be heard. And I try to be here emotionally but also practically: do you need a place that is not a shared locker room to adjust a binder after PE? I'll find you a spot… I'll make sure nobody barges in on you. You don’t know how to talk to the new nurse? I got you. You are uneasy about the cabin arrangement at the camp? I’ll find a solution. I let their concerns guide me, not the other way around. Unfortunately, most facilities are still not friendly to trans kids, and it took me some time to realize this, so I do my best to find solutions and push for better long-term solutions. In a broader context, I hope it prompts acceptance in the community by modeling positivity and dismantling misconceptions. I am not afraid, so why are you? See - everything is fine. -TEACHER

Later, the only study briefly name-dropped by the film occurs.  [clip]. This is, OF COURSE, because it ALWAYS IS, referring to Lisa Litman’s study on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. This junk science theory argues that culture, trans influencers online, or their peers are making children spontaneously turn transgender as a fad influenced by social media and peer pressure. Hence, the bullying and social media influence we see the fictional Evan using throughout the film gives credence to this idea of a social contagion influencing trans kids. The theory is bunk, as it was created by a research paper in 2017 by Lisa Litman, which concluded that ROGD was confirmed based on surveying only blogs run by parents worried their children were turning transgender. So… begging the question much. It should be mentioned that these blogs are frequented by many of the styles of parents that Gender Transformation is positioned to.  Many organizations widely criticized the paper, and numerous other studies with better-run methodology even came to opposite conclusions. Despite this, it’s continually often cited by anti-trans organizations from PragurU to Daily Wire to pick any as evidence of a cultural contamination of transgender influence. This leads to the film generating the false anxiety that kids are being manipulated into identifying as trans due to social media, cultural pressures, teachers, and therapists.

FINN INTERVIEW There's this weird narrative that trans people are convincing themselves that they're trans or their friends, convincing them that they're trans. Most of us, certainly every single trans person I have talked to went through this phase of intense denial of like, No, that's not me. Like, I can't be trans. I'm just cis and and confused. I'm just confused. That's what this is what we want because we don't want to deal with all the bullshit that goes along with being a trans person. But of course, here we are. Yeah. I realized that like, yes, I did want to pursue care. And what that looked like was a six month waiting period with appointments with a doctor who specializes in trans care even at 28.

This disinformation narrative is given supposed credence by the film’s next guests, the several young DETRANSITIONERS the film introduces us to - Chloe Cole, Abel Garcia, Cat Cattinson, and David Bacon. All four present the idea that they were pushed and guided into identifying as trans by a teacher, social media, a therapist, or somewhere else. [clips] These detransitioner's stories will be continually referred to throughout the film, echoing Abigail/Evan’s fictional narrative about the real-life Andrew, arguing they were pushed into transition but later regretted it and suffered lifelong mental and physical harm. But here’s where we must pause to consider who these detransitioners are and why they’re here.

Narratives that transgender affirming care is harmful to children lean on this statement or implication of widespread, with even claims thousands of transgender youth are regretting transition, up to 80 to 90% of the trans community; with this number cited on Fox News, Seven News in Australia and even Monta’s legislative hearings. These wild claims often prove to be intentionally overblown or anecdotal. When Florida attempted to pass anti-gender affirming care laws arguing for the wave of detransitioners, the state could not find a single detransitioner to support the claim despite Florida having an estimated 90,000 transgender populace. Jamie Reed, an employee at a Missouri Gender clinic, claimed to be a whistle-blower keeping a list of detransitioners treated. Still, the list contained only 16 names out of 1,200 treated at the clinic, or only 1%. Of those 16, only two were substantiated by the New York Times. Many, including 60 Minutes, try to cite the r/detrans subreddit, which has 50,000 subscribers, but a poll on the subreddit hints that most in the group are probably just curious about the subject. Turning to more trusted sources, a 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality found only .4% of respondents detransitioned because they thought the transition wasn’t right for them. A 50-year Swedish study published in 2010 found that only 2% of folks regretted transitioning. This is compared to the 17% percent of people who get cosmetic plastic surgery and regret it, a fact that does not lead to an outlawing of cosmetic surgery. So, in the end, the detransitioner issue, compared to the 1.6 million transgender people in the United States, seems relatively small. Despite this, Gender Transformations offers up four young detranstioners and never interviews the predominate amount of transgender people who end up having happier and healthier outcomes due to trans-affirming care, displaying what most anti-trans narratives do, over-emphasizing detranstioners stories as a larger-scale problem.

This is not me arguing that detranstioners stories are not important, not in the slightest. Still, their stories are not arguments for less transgender-affirming health care as they are so often propped up to argue for, but for more and better. Let’s take Abel’s story [clip]. Abel states he had a letter for hormone replacement therapy to go on estrogen from his therapist after his first session. If we are to take him at his word, his medical professional was not educated on handling trans-affirming care properly. According to the WPATH, to seek medical intervention, the child must be the one to request, which Abel seems to imply he did not, as he states he was only questioning at the time.

Additionally, the WPATH recommends that the child be given a complete biopsychosocial assessment in a supportive environment before getting care; their gender incongruence should be marked, clear, and sustained over a period of time, and be officially diagnosed as per the ICD-11, along with numerous other factors if Abel’s therapist HAD been ended up undergoing a transition he later regretted. All of the detranstioners share similar stories with medical professionals who did not follow recommended guidelines for trans-affirming care, proving the need for more, NOT less, access to transgender care and education for health care professionals. Believe me; it’s important NOT to ignore the stories of detranstioners, but to pay attention to them to learn how to understand better how to treat transgender people best and guide everyone, trans or not, to happy and healthy outcomes.

Another thing that the detransitioners bring up in conjunction with the film's ongoing narrative is the implication that their desire to transition did NOT come from being trans but due to external factors. Able and Chloe Cole argue that being autistic caused them to think they were trans. [clip]. Cat Cattinson argues that her eating disorder was ignored in favor of just saying she was trans [clip]. Walt Heyer, an older detranstioner, tells a story of how he was sexually assaulted, leading him to desire to transition to gain a sense of control over his body [clip].

First and foremost, none of those things PRECLUDE someone also being trans. Secondly, if the health care professionals of these detranstioners followed current trans health care standards, these things would have been discussed in CONJUNCTION with their potential gender identities. The WPATH expressly recommends that all healthcare professionals receive training and develop expertise in common mental health issues that children face, including autism spectrum disorders, AND that all gender-diverse adolescents have a comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment before any medical or surgical intervention. So again, this is an argument for better trans health care.

But what’s more apparent is that these statements point to familiar narratives often wielded to delegitimize transgender identities. Let’s start with the most evident - sexual assault causes transness. Walt Heyer’s description of his childhood is horrific, and perhaps his narrative that he tried to transition to escape his childhood trauma is his truth. Yet, framing this as a typical occurrence is inaccurate and downright harmful. While studies show that transgender people, especially trans women of color, are often more likely to be the victims of sexual violence because they are trans, numerous other studies show sexual abuse does not have a link to someone coming out as trans later in life. This is just a regurgitation of a longstanding homophobic narrative that queer people recruit new children to homosexuality through child abuse, epitomized in the 1970s by anti-gay political campaigner Anita Bryant and her statement, "for since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks." Contemporary, ex-gay movements propped up by far-right Catholic groups in the 1970s with ex-gays arguing they had been groomed into being trans, claiming they had been turned gay due to “feelings of being an outsider among one's peers during childhood and adolescence, and instances of sexual abuse,” echoing the rhetoric of modern-day detransitioners like Walt Heyer or the narrative of a social fad and contagion amongst youth that films like Gender Transformation argue is happening.

As for Cat’s argument about her eating disorder being her main problem, again, this doesn’t preclude her being trans. Studies have shown that transgender people are MORE likely to face a greater risk of developing an eating disorder, up to four times more likely, often stemming from body dysphoria.

This brings us finally back to the autism claim. This one is hinted at and emphasized SEVERAL times throughout the documentary, not unsurprisingly, given that the idea that autism might be a cause of being trans often crops up arguments that trans people aren’t trans, such as in Abigail Shrir’s “IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE” book.

Many of the parents I spoke to told me their [trans masculine identify children] had some version of “high-functioning autism”... In the course of researching this book, I learned two disturbing facts about autism and its treatment. Like gender dysphoria, the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder has skyrocketed in the last decade. And many clinicians specializing in autism are actively encouraging gender exploration in their autism patients [citation needed].... They may all be right, but I couldn’t help wondering whether the process of diagnosis wasn’t itself altering the outcome, helping to convince suggestible daughters that there really was something wrong with them. - ABIGAIL SHRINE

This fear is linked to a few things. First, studies have found that 14% of trans people are diagnosed as autistic versus only 1% of the general population. However, there have been no definitive findings about why this might be the case. As a result, those arguing against gender-critical folks argue that being trans is just (often intentionally done)  misdiagnosed autism.

“I think people who have black-and-white thinking and cling to rigid social rules are more likely to be hoodwinked by people who want to do them harm. Does not not bother you. People who cling to rules are more likely to buy into ideologies that enforce them. Gender is one example of this. It reinforces gender norms.” - GCF ON TWITTER.

They also argue that autistic children who experience sensory process issues are more likely to experience discomfort with their changing bodies during puberty and might wrongfully conflate this with being trans.  Now, all of this was debunked by several studies, including this one, which highlights that there is a higher number of out nonbinary identifying autistic trans people than nonbinary allistic folks, which disproves the argument that autistic people like to conform to gender expectations. Secondly, there was a lower rate of autistic transgender folks who experience sensory aversions than cisgender autistic people, disproving the idea that discomfort with bodily perception during puberty is a cause of more autistic trans folks. There may be many reasons for a higher rate of transgender autistic folks than allistic folks that are better explained through a correlation of these traits, not assumed causation. For example,  autism diagnosis in children had increased in the past decade, especially in those seen as girls, due to a more significant study of autism as it presents outside of cisgender boys, who were the primary folks studied for decades until recently when it came to autism. Secondly, there have been studies that have found that autistic people are more likely to be more self-aware of how they do not fit in gendered expectations placed upon them and LESS likely to conform but instead be themselves, thus allowing them to be more ready and faster able to understand they are trans before their allistic peers, meaning there are no more transgender autistic folks, just more autistic folks who realize they are trans. And I’d recommend this WONDERFUL video by Ponderful or this book by Laura Kate Dale for more info.

Despite this clear showcase that autism does not delegitimize a trans identity, the reason both in the “documentary” and elsewhere that autism is brought up is quite apparent - an ableist infantilization that autistic trans people are not really trans and also not able to make determinations about their self and body. This stigma - that autistic people, especially children, are incapable of having bodily autonomy and their parents should have complete control over their child's choices - is a common one that autistic and neurodivergent folks face. It is a denial of being seen as a whole human being.

FINN INTERVIEW - There's numerous things we could talk about with autism intersecting with trans but it's always brought up in a way to remove agency from the person who is coming out. And it's like, why is this relevant? The only way it's relevant is to infantilize the person, take away this person's ability to either be seen as a person. They can't make choices for themselves. They can't really understand. They can't ever give informed consent. So that infantialization comes hand in hand often with misogyny and viewing trans men and cisgender women as objects versus men and trans women as violent aggressors that need to be fought back against.  So they specifically go after these autistic girls because they can combine this erasure of having autistic people with the misogyny of “these poor confused girls who are being lost to this like, transgender craze so that they can't be like brood mares for society anymore. Sorry, scratch that last part.” Like the way it converges with this weird misogyny that they express. It's this almost like validation, where they act like these teenage girls want to be boys because their life would be easier. So are you saying that if they transitioned, then yes, they are boys and like, are you recognizing that that is exactly what is happening and then their lives improve because then they'll say like, no, you'll never be. You'll never be a boy. You'll never be a man. You're definitely still biologically female. And that's how your life is going to be forever. It's like, can you guys make up your mind? Can you pick one? I've tried to wrap my head around it many, many, many times when dealing with TERFs.

This ableism and infantilization ultimately point towards the more prominent anxiety of the film and this anti-trans narrative around transgender kids being expressed. All of these things, sexual abuse, eating disorders, autism, depression, mental health challenges, and more, are often things that we see in conjunction in the trans community, often in correlation or even BECAUSE someone is trans, rather than how the film tries to frame it - them causing transness. This is usually a goal of anti-trans groups. Take, for example, this handy table created by the anti-trans advocacy group Parents of ROGD kids, which looks scientific, with it being a circle and all, that shows the causes of Gender Dysphoria… with actually being transgender just this liiiiitttle tiny circle over there. All of the information in this graph is, of course, citation needed.

Yet, this is the film and anti-trans narratives generally attempting to manipulate a parent’s perspective. They may have noticed abuse, depression, autistic tendencies, or other aspects BEFORE their child came out to them as transgender. Thus, parents believe one caused the other. However, a child may have experienced feelings of being trans their WHOLE life but not expressed them to their parents for numerous reasons - such as fear or not understanding how to articulate their feelings due to lack of education.

Further, the movie has begun to shift to focus on parents' anxiety over losing control of their children’s autonomy. As stated earlier, the fictional Evan’s story is not about him but about expressing his mother’s fears over her child and the fear that he is expressing his sense of identity beyond his mother. Earlier in the film, we get hints of how much Evan’s fictional mother controls his access to social media or friend groups [clip]. This is seen as a good thing, as social media and friends that Evan makes through groups like the LGBTQ group she joins are seen as detrimental corrupting influences that actively vilify a parent/child relationship [clip]. This line makes no sense coming from this character, who is a transmasculine friend that Evan met in his queer group, as we see Evan’s friend have a loving home life with his parents. Thus, we know how this friend is seen as sinister and actively trying to turn Evan away from his mother rather than being an earnest kid. Any unapproved or outside force in Evan’s life is seen as actively malicious and trying to sever a child from a connection with a parent; thus, it needs to be limited in the eyes of the film. Evan should not exist outside of his relationship with his mother. [clip from film].  As a result of framing Evan’s story this way, it communicates the real-life Andrew this way as well - Andrew’s life story, as told by Abigail, becomes about Abigail’s anxieties rather than Andrew having agency and personhood unto himself.

[CALEAN CONRAD INTERVIEW ] The language that they use is of parental alienation. Like their child goes to university and the child says, well, you don't call me by my name, then don't call me. And the parents are like, This is abuse. I'm being abused by my child because my child who I gave birth to and therefore own is not doing the things that I require them to do that I need them to do. What about my grandbabies? I want grandbabies. And it's like, well, number one, trans people can have children. But also who your child has sex with or who your child reproduces with, or even if they do, is not your neither. It's neither your concern, but it's also not your choice…. It's all about the parents. All the posts are about the parents. There are so many posts like I'm not going to have any photos of my daughter looking beautiful at prom because she cut off all of her hair and she's wearing a suit and it's like, Why is your daughter's prom about you? Their concerns are about things like prom or family photos or how people are going to look at them when they're in the grocery store. Their complaints are so trivial compared to the children. They'll voice that their child is dealing with suicidal ideation and depression and then they'll turn around and say, but she doesn't think about how hard this is on me. Well, she's 14. So it's constantly very difficult to pin down how to talk about all of this in concrete terms because it contradicts itself so wildly often.

The film showcases Evan visiting an LGBTQ group, a concept that an expert introduces in this way [clip]. Notice how she frames the group - as if it’s a secret, dark, clandestine group kept from the parents, feeding into that anxiety of losing parental control.

Yet, in actuality, this is not how any LGBTQ group operates. Most LGBTQ groups are student-run safe spaces where queer kids can socialize and find support with peers. Studies also show that these groups can lead to improved mental health for queer students AS WELL as lead to a reduction of bullying and harassment generally, not just towards queer people, in schools. as they normalize the idea that people can be different, and that's ok.  These rights of students have been under constant attack by the right wing. Bills in Ohio, California, Florida, Arizona, and numerous other states have been introduced or passed that would force teachers to notify parents whose students are transgender, allowing parents to sue school districts if teachers don’t comply. It has also reached places like Canada, with schools in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan legally forced to inform parents if their kids want to use different names or pronouns, even requiring parental consent. This is incredibly dangerous as it might cause trans and queer students to be outed to parents who might abuse or mistreat them for being out. Yet, these bills deemphasize children's humanity in favor of parents' ability to know and control every aspect of a child’s life.

The reason many LGBTQ groups are sometimes kept from parents is that many queer kids either face overt bigotry from their parents, or are worried that they might, or are just not ready to come out as they don’t know their identity and are just exploring in a non-judgemental, low-risk space, as numerous LGBTQ supportive guidelines emphasize healthy as long as no specific identity is given more significant emphasis in that exploration. This is something that every open queer group I have been to, both as an adult and when I was younger, takes pains to emphasize - that they are welcoming to everyone, even those questioning their identity, and that it's ok if they end up not being queer.

However, the fictional meeting plays out very differently. Sinister music plays as the teacher presents and pushes kids toward queer identities [clip]. Again, the film highlights fears of corrupting influence beyond a parent's oversight in a very overt fashion. This goes down to the movie, including the Genderbread person, a visual tool used by some sex education curricula to teach concepts of gender and sexuality that right-wing groups have consistently demonized since its creation in 2011. Yet, the gingerbread person has been so demonized because it is seen as hypersexual in nature, showing how transness and queer attraction is often conflated with sex and being a fetish, which neither is. Everything related to trans and queerness is sexualized. For example, this adorable genderless alien mascot who used nonbinary pronouns was created for Hertfordshire’s UK library system. Almost immediately, gender-critical anti-trans activists like Maya Forstater said the alien was attempting to sexualize children… and she started talking about a child’s cartoon's ability to reproduce and its supposed genitals… I mean… it doesn’t have any genitals… It's not real. It's a children’s cartoon. Who is sexualizing what here? But it speaks to the projection- how anything to do with queerness and transgender issues is instantly framed as sexual when it's not.

But this leads into how the film frames what queer groups do to children, with the fictional Evan being presented with images of genital surgery, which seems to excite him as affirming. [clip] This focus on genitalia is then emphasized by Chloe Cole to make it seem like a representation of reality [clip]. This brings us to something else we need to note, how this film only focuses on trans men, not young trans women, seeing young trans men, who are often framed as confused young girls, as prey for the predator for the queer and institutional manipulations. This ultimately plays into the infantilization and dehumanization of young trans men, often seen as girls by anti-trans narratives, who need protection. It’s important to note that trans women are never discussed, something we’ll get to later. Yet, trans men and cisgender girls' bodies are often policed in schools, like with student dress codes, saying that their bodies are inherently seen as sexual and need to be covered up or protected to prevent them from being prey by sexual predators, dovetailing with this desire for parents to control their bodies.

[CAELAN CONRAD] What about my grandbabies? I want grandbabies. And it's like, well, number one, trans people can have children. But also who your child has sex with or who your child reproduces with, or even if they do, is not your neither. It's neither your concern, but it's also not your choice…. It's all about the parents. All the posts are about the parents. 02;12;01;26 - 02;12;32;05 Oh, yeah, like a really disgusting degree of like, I won't give you health care if you've adult children. Yeah, adult childrenIt's such a it sounds like an oxymoron, but like these people, when they talk about being concerned parents of trans and non-binary youth, sometimes they mean early twenties, like there is one. There was one mother who is a very frequent poster who talks about her trans womanchild who is in medical school, doing very well, was autistic, and the mother was considering cutting her off from her education because she was going through hormone replacement therapy and all of the comments were like, “If your child is not going to respect your decision, that he is not allowed to go on hormone replacement therapy, then you don't need to support your child… You should try and get a conservatorship. Like complete control over medical care, and financial decisions. Oh, your child's autistic? You should be able to do this.”

The idea here is that LGBTQ students are quickly pushed into sexualized imagery meant to push them towards a desire for surgery or medical intervention, which the film then turns to vilify as quickly given and extremely dangerous. The film shifts to “experts” Dr. Micheal Laidlaw and Dr. Katherine Welch, who begin to condemn puberty blockers as a medication, framing it as a dangerous, irreversible drug, especially for kids with autism or suffering from depression, again something detransitioners like Chloe Cole give anecdotal experiences with [clips].

None of these claims are accurate. Research has shown that puberty blockers, which essentially put a pause on puberty, are temporary and fully reversible, especially if only taken for a few years, which is always the case when given to trans youth as it means just give them more time to make a more informed choice about if they wish to have natal puberty or start hormones or other gender-affirming health care options. The one significant side effect of puberty blockers is a loss of bone density, which the film brings up. However, this is EASILY addressed with calcium and vitamin D supplements, with most cisgender youth who go off blockers eventually having normal fertility and reproductive functions. It's so safe that the FDA has used puberty blockers for youth who have precocious puberty since the early 1990s, over 30 years. They also have been shown to reduce suicidality in trans youth by 70%. Every major medical and mental health organization, including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Psychological Association, supports the use of puberty blockers as long as it's used in age-appropriate, evidence-based ways. Speaking of which, if we go back to our old friend the WPATH Guidelines, we find that puberty blockers are only recommended when a child has already started the first signs of puberty, which is different for everyone, and only for a few years until they can decide what they wish to do next.

The factual inaccuracies of this disinformation are underscored by the people giving the information. Let’s take Dr. Michael Laidlaw, for example. Right-wing media regularly platforms Dr. Michael Laidlaw, and, within those appearances, he has commonly misrepresented science around trans health care. For instance, he commonly exaggerates figures of transgender detransitions, even stating in his review of Jazz Jennings's book that as many as 90% of trans women detransition. He also directly misrepresented the findings of a study on gender dysphoria in twins, stating the study found evidence against a genetic component to trans identity to argue that it was all a social contagion when the study found heavy indications OF there being a significant genetic component to trans identity. He also misrepresented the guidelines for timing protocols on puberty blockers in a disinformation article.

Yet again, the film is not interested in the facts but only in the facade, which Dr. Laidlaw is happy to give his supposed expertise to give credence to. The drama also emphasizes this, playing into fear rather than facts, as seen in this scene [clip]. Evan’s peers are not acting as real children but as mouthpieces for parental worries. The connection to the drugs also being used to castrate pedophiles is a typical right-wing tactic, with folks like Matt Walsh selling this exact narrative to make these drugs seem scary by connecting them to pedophilia. Still, this narrative falls on its face if you think about it for more than one second, which you're not supposed to do for fear-mongering tactics to work. These drugs are used for multiple reasons that have nothing to do with each other. The same drugs are also used in tumor treatments, for example. Yet, the disinformation pipeline for puberty blockers playing into fears of lost children endlessly gets cycled. Take, for example, how The Daily Wire posted a story in late August 2022 that reported on FDA findings that linked puberty-blocking drug Lupron to thousands of deaths, 6300 to be exact. The article presented this information in a way that made it sound like puberty-blocking drugs were killing thousands of trans kids - except, if you look into it, the drug is also given to terminally ill cancer patients fighting hormone-sensitive cancers like prostate cancer. It was reported that “over 6000” of those in the study died from cancer while also using the drug. So the 6300 thousands of deaths are likely them, not trans youth, a fact that the Daily Wire story deliberately leaves out.

At this point, the film, both in the drama and talking head segments, focuses on how trans youth have become thoroughly indoctrinated by the trans agenda [clip]. This is where the film spends the most amount of time, which is understandable, given the entire crux of the film hinges upon parents' fears of losing their child. Emphasis is consistently placed upon how a parent sees the real, genuine child - their perfect body and soul. [clip]. This narrative is a common one seen throughout anti-trans media. Take the recently released gender-critical book “WHEN KIDS SAY THEY’RE TRANS,” which features this fictional exchange.

This exchange places the parent as the true arbiter of knowledge yet on the back foot, just trying their best to be empathetic and a kid unwilling to listen or have a conversation. In actuality, most kids coming out as trans are not so confident in their identity, often coming out of fear and trying to express themselves as best they can. Also, lines like “your name is one of the most precious words in my life” underscore so much of the way these books frame parenthood - that they get to dictate a child’s identity and that identity is sacred and unassailable, even if the child themself wish to choose their own identity for themselves. The book plays to a parent's belief that THEY are under attack and know best about their gut instinct with a child’s gender, not the child.

All of these are subtle calls to bio essentialism, the idea again that genetics tells all determines one's destiny, that a parent's gut and biological bond is more vital than a child’s bodily autonomy, and that any desire expressed by the child must be due to an outside corrupting influence, not their earnest desire or self-expression. The film reinforces that a child’s depression must be coming from their transition… [clip] when often this is due to the reverse, the fact that parents are continually encouraged to control their child’s autonomy more and more and more.

[CEALAN CONRAD] The main line is to trust your gut. There's something inside you that is uneasy or scared or confused or disgusted when your child comes out, and that's your parental instincts, which are infallible because parents know their children better than their children know themselves. This is stated over and over and over. They will not shut up about that, which is bonkers to me because I do not know a single person, especially growing up, we did not tell our parents anything, the things we got up to and did. But in these groups, that's not the case. It is very intentionally deceptive and the relationships are so strained because the parents are saying, you don't know yourself. I know you, and I need to trust my instincts on this.

The film also attempts to mask the actual harm parents can do. At one point, Evan’s parents take him to a therapist, where they try to deny Evan’s identity, to which Evan, who is framed as indoctrinated and ridiculous, calls it conversion therapy. The mother is seen as trying to help her poor child… yet this is precisely as Evan calls it. Studies have shown that attempts to change or direct a child’s sexual orientation occur first from parents, therapists, and religious leaders. Often, too, these efforts are bolstered by right-wing attempts to sell conversation therapy style kits for money, such as the American College of Pediatrics, which attempts to make itself sound like a ligament medical organization but which is funded by far-right groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and is itself qualified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The ACP sent “educational Resources” to physicians and med school students that instructed them to teach them that same-sex marriage was aberrant and sells $60 kits to parents full of “games” parents can play to teach children about sexual purity. On top of all this, one of the mothers interviewed in the film mentions how they keep their conversion therapists secret lest they be attacked, seemingly having no self-awareness that this is precisely what they claim LGBTQ groups are doing to children. It's also ironic, considering that studies find that trans and queer children have a more challenging time finding the mental health services that affirm them, either because they are more expensive or just inaccessible where they live. The 2015 US Trans Survey found that 77% of trans people wanted to talk to therapists, but only 58% had received ANY at any point in their life.

[CEALAN CONRAD] I see posts like this sometimes where the parents are like, this isn't working, like what I'm doing right now isn't helping. My child is not desisting, my child is not is is not focusing on the things that I want them to focus on. I took them out of the Gay-Straight Alliance. I cut them off from their trans friends. I took them out of school. I cut off their Internet access. I don't allow them to see affirming family members. And nothing has changed except for now my child hates me and now my child is more depressed and more despondent than ever. What should I do? And the answer is trust your gut. That initial instinct. That's what you have to keep following. And if you read through what happens to children that go through this, there are suicide notes that have been written, that name every single one of those things.

This is also based on the inherent medicalization and pathologization of transgender identities. Like homosexuality was seen for decades, transgender identities have been viewed as a mental health issue stemming from things like gender dysphoria, which, it is argued, must be treated by surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers. The World Health Organization listed it as a mental disorder until 2019, and while it has since been removed, the stigma of pathologization remains. In actuality, being trans itself is not an inherently medical issue. Still, due to our society's rigidly regimented gender norms, trans people are seen as abnormal and thus assumed to have something wrong with us when we are a completely normal part of human expression and diversity going back to the beginning of human society. Gender dysphoria, while real, often stems from the incongruence between how one wishes to be treated or exist within the world and how the Western world tells them they are supposed to be. Medical treatments like hormones, surgeries, and blockers are tools we have to help make someone's biological characteristics match how one wishes to exist. It is proven that those who get these surgeries often have happier outcomes. Still, many trans people do not require them or need them, instead just wishing to socially transition, wear the clothing they want to, or more… Ultimately, all of these are vilified because they are viewed as other and different by a society that demands conformity. Western culture is framed as normal and correct, built on years of erasure of other cultures' history and diversity.

This fear of other cultures can be seen in the subtle choices made in the film's mise-en-scene. Evan’s mom is constantly dressed in gray pant-suits and traditional clothing, alongside Catholic imagery around her house, emphasizing her desexualization, willingness to fit into a more conservative fashion, and subtle Catholic background, even though religion is never overtly mentioned. Because being a good catholic means COLORS are bad! Meanwhile, Evan and his friends are framed constantly with hypersexualized colorful imagery, often connected with social media or entertainment, as well as new-age non-Catholic religious backgrounds, communicating all of it as corrupting forces driving a wedge between Evan and his mother. While it's never overtly stated, the implications of who and what is transing the youth is clear - an evident fear of the other outside of the hegemonic American Catholic culture corrupting the youth. Not only that; we see children being stolen from their parents and given a “new family,” that queer supportive folks are stealing the children from good Christian mothers… [clip] If that narrative sounds familiar to you, keep it in mind for this next part. HINT: IT RHYMES WITH FLOOD BIBLE!

This fear climaxes in the narrative’s structure, with Evan, the fictional character, being taken away from his mother by social services. This is framed as Abigail's parental rights are being taken away by a system that worked to drive a wedge between her and her child. Evan seems to be living in 1984 - wearing gray outfits despite having worn colorful outfits before, given drugs to make him dead inside, and his family pushed away from him by his queer friend and new family.

This is mirrored by the real-life story of Andrew Martinez, who was taken from his mother, Abigail, and placed into the foster care system in Los Angeles by the Department of Children and Family Services. However, there are a few critical differences in the narrative here. Abigail argues that the state took Andrew from her because she refused to accept his identity as a trans man. Yet, what's interesting is that denial of a child’s affirmed identity was NOT, at the time, a metric for determining if a child should be put into foster care, with California Bill AB 957, which would require courts to interpret a child’s health and safety to include a parents affirmation of their child’s identity, only being introduced in 2023. So, this narrative is dubious. I could not find publicly available information about why Andrew was taken from Abigail. There is no confirmed information. However, sources that share more details of Abigail’s version of events (even deadnaming Andrew in the post) give further info on her side of why Andrew ended up in foster care. Supposedly, Andrew was depressed and tried to die by suicide, overdosing on allergy medication, causing CPS to make regular visits. So, if this is to be believed, Andrew being taken away by social services was not out of the blue or without an inciting incident, as the film showcases. Afterward, Andrew legally changed his name and pronouns. As the movie dramatizes, Andrew’s friend supposedly convinced him to go to court to ask to be placed in foster care. This I could not confirm. However, we can glean more specifics from Abigail herself. Abigail states she took Andrew to conversion therapists, and only after he was taken away by foster care did she choose to use his name and pronouns, motivated to get him back home rather than to accept his identity earnestly. All of this speaks to a potentially controlling home environment for Andrew, which was already being investigated by the CPS when Andrew supposedly asked to be placed into foster care. Ultimately, the film frames the story to vilify currently under attack bills like AB 957 and remove Abigail and, vicariously, other parents from potential culpability in their child’s depression and mental health, despite it being clear that denial of Andrew’s identity was not legally the reason he was removed from Abigail’s care. Conversely, more legislation has been passed to take kids away from parents if THEY DO affirm their child's gender, labeling them child abusers, such as in Texas or Florida, despite clear medical research showing that they are seeking the best care for their child.

[CAELAN CONRAD] What they're doing to the parents is sick at the same time because the people running this group, they know the stats. There's a reason why they delete any comment that talks about suicidality in trans youth or the possibility that it could even happen. They outright lie and say that all of those statistics are made up, that, you know, like, you know, something that's just like this rhetoric, like the laughter and like trans spaces where we're like, oh, that doesn't happen when people are like, oh, they're kidnaping children and making them go through surgeries or whatever. Like, that doesn't happen.

Further, Evan in the film is depicted as being quickly given trans surgeries, but in contrast, there is no evidence of that happening for Andrew. This plays into the myth that these surgeries are given rapidly, when in actuality, trans patients seeking to get any surgeries, according to WPATH guidelines, should only be able to do so after working for a long time with guardians, therapists, and doctors to determine if it's first of the right choice for them and secondly safe for them. On top of that, most trans patients have difficulty accessing these surgeries due to them being often prohibitively expensive, denied by insurance, which is itself expensive, have huge bureaucratic barriers like the need for several therapists' approvals, and even then having long waiting times one they are finally able to go through all this rigamarole. Yet this all leads to a scene where Evan is taken in for top surgery in an EMERGENCY ROOM.

[FINN INTERVIEW] During her son's top surgery, that was the weirdest thing I have ever seen in my life. That was, like, that was so bizarre because [Evan’s mom] is just in the operating room for some reason, which is not a thing that happens. You cannot be in the operating room. And I think they say to get out of the E.R. So I guess it's an emergency response top surgery, which I've never heard of before. It goes to the idea that you can get these things really quickly and easily. You walk into an E.R. and get a mastectomy any day. Just look how quickly they're trying to trans children. They're just really shoving them through. So that's like what that is like hinting at. And then the other thing that was fascinating to me was the way the doctors talked about Evan while he was still conscious on the operating table. They were very much objectifying his body as he listened, which is like no way I've ever heard a doctor talk to a patient, at least in my experience. There is an element of my body being objectified when I'm talking with the doctor beforehand, but they talk to us as human beings, understanding what they will do to my body. And then when I'm in the operating room, they are like, “Are you okay? What music do you want to be played as we give you the anesthetic? But the way that documentary plays, that is like they're objectifying him as he's going under and just like playing to this idea of they just they're trying to manipulate your “young girls” and ultimately revealing how gender critical folks view “young girls” as infantilized objects being manipulated.

The film then cuts to the detransitioners, who explain how hormones and surgery irreparably harmed their bodies. Some of them remain vague, like Chloe Chole [clip]. For men like Abel, their health is emphasized, like the fact that he has shakes from his surgery that don’t stop. Here again, the film places greater emphasis on one outcome over others. All surgeries come with risks, and it’s possible that Abel suffered from such a complication. However, all medical doctors are required to explain this beforehand.

Similarly, most gender-affirming trans health care comes with low risks of complications, often less than cosmetic plastic surgeries, and results in favorable long-term outcomes for patients with a regret rate of about 1%. Some studies find depression immediately after surgeries for patients, but that mostly comes from the fact that it takes time, often up to a year, to recover from surgeries to see full results. This is not to say that we shouldn’t care for patients who suffer complications; we should ensure high standards for these surgeries to prevent them. But Abel’s story is not typical.

It should also be noted that frequently, if you look into their stories, the actual root causes of the health complications and the situations these detranstioners face, nor the reason they may have detranstioned, is not directly due to their experiences within transgender health care. David Bacon, for example, states in the documentary that he had almost two weeks to live due to hormone therapy, a shocking claim. [clip]

Yet the documentary fails to mention that David suffers from pulmonary atresia, where the valve that controls blood flow between the heart and lungs doesn’t form, making blood flow to the lungs difficult. He has had nine open-heart surgeries in his lifetime since he was a child. These, and everything I discuss, are details David has shared elsewhere, in case anyone was worried that I dug up his medical history. Despite the film narrative implying he began transitioning as a child, he began taking hormone replacement therapy at age 23. After coming out, David moved to Seattle, where he ended up homeless, which is a sadly all too common story for trans women who are mistreated and discriminated against in society. Eventually, at 25, he moved back into his parent's home… where he stated he began to doubt transitioning once back in his parent's care. Then, at the age of 27, David experienced further health complications related to his heart, eventually leading to the story he mentions in the documentary, with a doctor telling him he would die in two weeks if he didn’t stop taking hormone replacement therapy.

So here, we can CLEARLY see a LOT of important context in David’s story left out. He was on hormones for around four years before a situation occurred. He also probably could not afford good health care while homeless, leading to further health complications. And he had a preexisting condition that created a complicated factor for his hormone replacement therapy, requiring consistent doctor oversight. This is why we need to fund MORE health care and make health care, both trans-specific and generally, more accessible, NOT LESS. It also showcases how the proven systemic discrimination against trans women in housing, health care, and employment compounds ALL these issues. On top of this, I am by no means aiming to delegitimize David’s current identity; it does make me wonder why David only considered detransitioning after experiencing so much hardship as a trans woman AND also going back into his parent's care, whom he admits actively encourage him seeking trans-affirming care due to her religious beliefs in his youth, despite him admitting to having expressed such feelings since he was 10.

This type of IMPORTANT context is often left out of these discussions surrounding detransitioning health care complications, instead making it seem solely the trans-related health care caused their health concerns. Lee Leveille, a Jewish former detransition who worked for a detransitioner advocacy group that was often connected with right-wing organizations, also spoke about how she experienced vision loss while on hormones that the organization used to vilify trans-related care but was actually caused by genetic reasons.

Trans people experiencing distress in relation to transition, whether medical or due to societal or familial pressure, are pressured to frame that distress in very particular ways. Often times, the people doing the pressuring think they’re helping. Shower you with sympathies. Dissuade from further efforts. Reduce the pressure by changing yourself. The world won’t or doesn’t need to change. Rid yourself of the delusion and you’ll feel better, promise. I never did feel better. In many ways, I felt worse. I drank, quit my job, moved out of state, and got involved in organizing that depended on these ideas (again, under the guise of helping people like me). I became steeped in it, in the midst of a medical crisis, and it was killing me… As my vision got worse, and with it my isolation, I eventually tracked down an event the NFB was holding called Ask A Blind Person… Its members were eager to help me find the resources I needed, not based on some expectation of what my experience should be but based on what I thought was going to be helpful. This turned out to be what I needed the entire time. That connection meant giving me suggestions on assistive technology to install, some of which I use for work now, or what features to enable to reduce some of my discomfort. They gave me the aforementioned referral. But most importantly, they gave me complete, unconditional acceptance and support. It didn’t matter how I got there, just that I was there and in the same position many of them had been themselves. Sure, I had a whole story surrounding my vision loss like many others there did, but there wasn’t any expectation of me telling it or doing anything with it if I didn’t want to. And no one asked. And so then I find myself sitting in front of this eye doctor, telling him my story, and he picks up on a clue that had been missed by the others: my progressive night blindness. He then began to describe the rods and cones in my eyes, the cells that process light and send the signals to the optic nerve for the brain to interpret. And he talked about how, in some instances, they begin to malfunction. Retinitis pigmentosa. A collection of conditions where the rods and cones deteriorate over time until they eventually die. They’re genetic and have no cure.

Yet, despite all these, in most cases, the most significant emphasis is on the loss of reproductive health, especially for girls/trans men [clips]. The fear here is not life opportunities but these kids, especially the young girls', abilities to reproduce. There are several things with this… while trans women like myself can become infertile while on hormones and definitely after surgery, most trans men don’t lose the ability to reproduce unless they’ve had surgeries like a hysterectomy. Like the ones Evan is shown getting, top surgery will NOT prevent that. Secondly, potential loss of reproductive health is communicated to trans people at every point of a transition where it may be relevant, so it’s not a shock. However, the emphasis and concern from these narratives are ALWAYS placed on the loss of reproduction ability.

The other fear expressed is the loss of their sexually attractive traits to heterosexual men. The loss of their breasts or how they will ever find a man with a deep voices. Their “fuckability” for lack of a better word, which is… fucking gross. [clips] Repeatedly in not only Gender Transformations but across the anti-trans discussion surrounding children, it all goes to emphasize the objectification of specifically white trans men/cisgender girls. They are infantilized, lied about, placed as victims, and only discussed for their ability to reproduce and how sexually appealing they are.

==============THE CLIMAX===============

This ties in with the film’s next segment, where the film offers up a WHY this is happening. The film turns to discuss how these surgeries are making tons of money, a common anti-trans talking point. The argument is that trans-surgeries are only done for profit, so they must be stopped. We see this constantly crop up in anti-trans narratives, that the for-profit medical industry is proof that being transgender is pushed on children so big pharma can make money.

Again, this is based on fear because if you think about it briefly, you realize why it makes no sense. Insulin needed for diabetics, for example, continues to rise as the drugs are controlled by pharmaceutical companies who benefit from lax regulations around drug prices, leading to a black market of drugs and rationing of insulin by patients. Yet this doesn’t mean insulin and diabetic care should be outlawed, but that medicine should not be a for-profit industry. It is anti-trans folks doing the meme, “Oh, you participate in capitalism; why do you hate capitalism so much?” just in reverse.

Yet, this profit motive for trans surgeries is quickly shifted to Jennifer Bilek, a known gender-critical feminist, who often writes about the supposed Powerful Billionaires behind the sinister LGBTQ movement trying to convert your daughters, which she does here. [clip] She continually states that everyone from banks to the government, including President Joe Biden, are influenced by this secret agenda… and then she names names [clip]. And… yup, what a surprise… It’s all JEWISH Billionaires such as Jennifer Pritzker, a trans woman Bilek constantly calls a man. In her other work, she often mentions holocaust survivor George Soros or Martine Rothblatt, whom Bilek calls by her dead name. This is not a seeming coincidence, as Bilek claims, as Bilek has continually named Jewish people in her work, even having blogs like “Transhumanism and Judaism.”

“I’ve often wondered why so many of the men involved in the transgender transhumanist agenda are Jewish, and of course I've been accused more than once of promoting a Jewish conspiracy theory. I just report on who the men are. I don't single them out for being Jewish, and I've never really speculated about why so many are.  Quite some time ago, I came across Keith Woods’ video on his theory of why this might be. I revisited this today because someone wrote and asked about the Jewish aspect of the men involved in this agenda, and I found it equally as fascinating as I did the first time. I wonder how others might feel about this.” - Helen Joyce

As the wonderful YouTuber Shuan pointed out in his recent video, Bilek likes to claim that she’s just asking questions and not at all pointing out these billionaires' Jewishness; she often links to known anti-semetic far-right nationalists like Keith Woods in her work. Woods continually post anti-semitic, racist, and anti-trans memes, repeatedly targets Jews, and calls Jews parasites in his works, complaining about the Jew-run media. It’s all very open anti-semitism.

This reveals Bilek's goal of naming a few billionaires who “happen to be Jewish.” She leaves the implication in the air without directly stating it but leading her followers to a more direct pipeline of anti-semitic hate if they so wish to continue down the funnel further in that path…

LADYKNIGHTHEBRAVE INTERVIEW: I think in general, there's a tone to it that feels very similar to old blood libel shit, like the stuff that's been around since the medieval times where, yeah, they're just like worried about defacing bodies, defacing good Christian bodies and using blood. Just that. It it feels very much like it's being repurposed now in like sort of the trans moral panic that they're doing. Just creating the suspicion about the evil trans people and what are they doing. Cause sometimes it's not even that it's Jewish people. It's that trans people are secretly controlling like and it's just very similar to a lot of like anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, but also a lot of like very old blood libel stuff just being repurposed.

JESSIE - And it's interesting because I remember we were talking in person one time about the connections and one thing that you brought up was just how it's very similar to Nazi shit, but f the emphasis is reversed, whereas Nazis were very much like, we hate the Jews, the Jews are inhuman monsters trying to control everybody. And they're making people gay and trans from very good Aryan bloodlines. Whereas now that narrative still exists. But the emphasis is more on trans people are coming out. It's a social fad. The emphasis is there rather than on people ruining bloodline stuff and secretly whisper, whisper Jews doing stuff. I do also think there is an element where the reason I think a lot of people want to keep antisemitism veiled is because there is a general attitude, even among right-wingers.

The “documentary” does this by having Bilek present in the film. Here, she never even mentions Judaism directly, just the billionaires, sanding off her more far-right edges further to appear neutral. Yet this all ties together with the entire narrative this film has been selling, as this is all Nazi rhetoric. As I’ve said before, Nazi rhetoric viewed Jewish people as inhuman monsters who were intentionally trying to dilute an Aryan bloodline, with gay and trans people being one way in which Jewish men such as Magnus Hirschfeld were trying to prevent Aryans from being able to reproduce and had infiltrated government to do so. Fascism today is much the same, pointing at the wealthy billionaires funding the trans agenda and trying to ruin the reproductive health of your daughters so they can destroy the Anglo-Saxton race, something that folks like Matt Walsh like to talk about [clip]. Or you can take the Buffalo shooter who on May 14, 2022, murdered ten people and injured three more in Buffalo, New York. He traveled to the predominantly Black neighborhood to kill Black victims. He often spoke about a Jewish order using Black people to enact a white genocide as part of a great replacement.

Further, he argued and pointed out how he believed trans people were primarily white and thought Jews were trying to make them infertile or kill themselves. “Hehe, yes white goyim [non-Jewish person], give your children to me and I'll make them think they're girls. Hehe, thus they'll all either kill themselves or become genetic dead ends. Oy vey, goyim... it's just too easy.” All this is very similar to Blood Libel stories that incited violence against Jewish people who were supposedly trying to steal children for rituals or replace them with an inhuman monster, identical to the narrative of how trans-affirming doctors and trans advocates are trying to replace, steal, or make infertile your children.  This is isolated to violent shooters and a lot of far-right rhetoric. It also showcases how anti-trans hate and antisemitism is not isolated pillars but often come alongside anti-Black rhetoric and racistly targeted violence.

This turns us back toward the film's entire narrative and the emphasis on girls' loss of reproductive health and how this ties directly to the constant fears and anxieties expressed by anti-trans advocates like Matt Walsh or Tucker Carlson of a white replacement. The goal of trans-affirming care is a plan to destroy the white Anglo-Saxon race by trying to make your children infertile. Your goal should be constantly focused on protecting your child’s fertility so they can make more children, create the nuclear, often Catholic family structure where women are only viewed as baby-making factories, and men and women become functions of a state where they must constantly work for the larger project of nationalistic, authoritarian control and have no life outside of those reproduction and labor abilities. All this ties into Gender Transformation’s rhetoric of trying to steal your children from you, turn them infertile, and take them away from your parents.

Yet, the film, and more forward-facing anti-trans narratives, stop short of going because it knows that going that far would be too far. Hence, it walks you right up to Jennifer Bilek’s vaguely pointing at Jewish billionaires and leaves you to do the research further if you wish or make the implications you want. It ties into the constant fear of others throughout the film, the themes of worrying about trans men’s reproduction, and the fear of children being mind-controlled and manipulated and taken from parents. A fear that funnels right into anti-semitic conspiracy theories and far-right violent rhetoric tying into Eugenics and Nazi propaganda.

Yet, the film turns away from this at the end to focus on its’ final emotional manipulation. We cut to Evan, terrified of his own body and, upon entering a bathroom, fear of the men around him. He is seen as a victim, as the detransitioners and Abigail talk about how trans people will never really be their gender identity but a deformed, inhuman monster, turned by the sinister trans agenda. Ultimately, we see Evan… standing in front of a train… dying by suicide.

In reality, Andrew Martinez died by suicide on September 4th, 2019, at 19 years old. He had been in foster care for the previous few years and had been admitted to the hospital for a drug overdose several months earlier, hinting at a more significant drug problem. According to Abigail, he was denied mental health treatment while in foster care. All of this speaks to the truth that the foster care system in the United States ultimately does not support LGBTQ children in its care. Despite propaganda arguing that children are taken and turned trans by a scenario, the truth is trans kids are too often left without support, even as they are taken from family without help. It is gross and vile that this documentary takes Andrew’s actual mistreatment that led to his death… and manipulates it for violence against people like Andrew.

Further, these narratives underscore the eugenics theming. For a potential white girl to lose her ability to reproduce means she has no reason left to live, at least in a fascistic ideal that only views women as able to produce more of the chosen race. This is the film’s final emotional appeal… fulfilling that narrative of Blood Libel - that your children will be taken from you and murdered by a Jewish conspiracy, while never stating so directly. Just preying upon fears while infantilizing Andrew, treating Andrew as an object to be used while creating a narrative that vilifies the things that could have saved his life, and using that narrative to incite further violence against those like Andrew and even beyond. It is ghoulish and a desecration of Andrew’s life and memory.

================THE NARRATIVE========================

Now that we know the emotional reality based on the fear that Gender Transformation creates… we have to ask ourselves why it creates that narrative. What's the goal here? What is it in service of?

Gender Transformations was created and funded by The Epoch Times for its streaming service EpochTV. Epoch Times is a far-right international news media company that operates in over 35 countries but is blocked by China. This is because Epoch Times was founded by John Tang and other Chinese Americans affiliated with the Falun Gong movement. Falun Gong is a cult that emerged in China in the 1990s led by Li Hongzhi, who encouraged his followers to abandon lust, greed and other worldly attachments through meditation and dance. However, Li also began to argue that Falun Gong could give his supporters super-human powers, including levitating.  He also preaches anti-evolution, anti-science, and anti-gay beliefs, believing that science and queerness are manipulations by aliens who are trying to replace human beings with clones to stop humans from being able to reproduce with each other so that, ultimately, aliens can replace us.

“The aliens…  started by teaching mankind about modern science, so people believe more and more science, and spiritually, they are controlled. Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens. In terms of culture and spirit, they already control man. Mankind cannot live without science. The ultimate purpose is to replace humans. If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans…. The aliens will take that opportunity to replace the human soul and by doing so they will enter earth and become earthlings. When such people grow up, they will help replace humans with aliens. They will produce more and more clones. There will no longer be humans reproduced by humans. They will act like humans, but they will introduce legislation to stop human reproduction.”

Immediately, we can see how this dovetails with far-right conspiracy theory narratives about the anti-trans agenda and Jewish people controlling them. I mean, replace aliens with Jews, and it's the same exact thing.  Li relocated to a rural hamlet and created a 400-acre compound north of New York City, a city with a sizeable Jewish population, after the Chinese government began persecuting the cult, leading ten thousand people, including Falun Gong practitioners, surround a CCP compound in Beijing, which catalyzed the CCP to target Falun Gong further with state violence, including supposed forced labor, internment, torture, and placing them in programs to harvest their organs for organ transplants against their will if they die in captivity. However, the reports of this are unclear, and the Falon Gong often exaggerates the numbers and specific targeting of the Falon Gong to elicit sympathy.

Due to their persecution by the Chinese government, much of their focus has been anti-China and anti-Communist propaganda. They were at first most known for the Shen Yun dance troupe that features a traveling show, which claims to be a mix of traditional Chinese dance and Falon Gong practices but ends up featuring scenes of Gong members being tortured and a Karl Marx and Xi Jinping Tsunami stopped by Li himself. Yup, he makes himself the Messiah who quells a Communist flood. I told you we’d get to aliens and a Karl Marx Tsunami. These performances aimed to convert more into the cult by enticing them with entertainment and targeting affluent communities to perform within to bring in more money.

This connects with the efforts of Epoch Times, which, when it began in 2000, mainly featured anti-Community and anti-China stories alongside its more standard news fair. This, along with its conspiracy theory beliefs that dovetailed with far-right beliefs, led to it finding some purchase in far-right and right-wing groups. However, the paper didn’t gain much mainstream attention until Donald Trump rose to prominence in the 2016 election, as Falun Gong saw his Chinese hawkishness as an opportunity, ending up spending more money on ads for Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections than any other group outside of Trump himself. Yet, it found its’ most significant influx of readings after it began to full-throated support Donald Trump's anti-Chinese rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, building its brand off of COVID-19 conspiracy theories that underscored Falon Gong’s anti-Chinese and anti-medicine viewpoint. They promoted the lab-lead idea without evidence and echoed Trump's continual calls description of COVID-19 as “the China virus.” This led to anti-Chinese government sentiments and direct hatred and violence against Chinese Americans and other Asian folks in the US. Epoch Times also saw huge numbers and spikes in its YouTube videos as it spread COVID-19 disinformation, funneling more and more viewers into its viewership. Research eventually found that by the end of 2020, Epoch Times' pro-Trump content had helped to make it near ubiquitous in QAnon and other conspiracy theory groups, eventually leading it to prominence in other countries outside of the US, like Germany and Italy by galvanizing those communities anti-vaccine groups.

From there, they created their streaming service, EpochTV, which funds such wonderful films as Gender Transformations and worked with directors like Tobias Elvhage, who was asked by Epoch Times to create the movie. Elvhage had previously worked on propaganda pieces such as the series Divine Messengers and Red Lotus: A Forbidden Diary, a film that propagandized a torture porn version of Fulan Gong follower's mistreatment by the CCP. Further, Epoch Times regularly employed Falun Gong practitioners who, it was discovered, were barely paid, receiving a salary of $20,000 a year and “virtue,” a supposed “white substance in another dimension that you gain when you do good things…” [pause]. Ok…

Now, I share all of this not for me to point at Epoch Times and say… OH, LOOK AT THE COOKY CULT THAT FUNDED THIS ANTI-TRANS FILM, ISN’T THAT WILD? I share it to point out what films like Gender Transformations intentionally funnel their viewers towards and how all these things interact. We like to talk about anti-trans rhetoric as if it exists in isolation from all the other bigotries. Still, they all ultimately collide and butrice each other, bringing people in from different places but landing them all in the same ecosystem. Someone may come down a rabbit hole of COVID conspiracy videos or attend what they think is a culturally enriching Chinese dance show but suddenly find themselves a pipeline of anti-trans beliefs, antisemitic propaganda, racist conspiracy theories, and more. These groups only view the people who work for them, the transgender kids, detranstioners, parents, or even employees, as simply functions for their machine.

We can see this clearly in that Epoch Times advertised its film alongside trans-supportive content, trying to funnel concerned parents who are only worried about trans issues into a darker web. The site even gives you 10 minutes of the film free, but once you’ve watched it, it hopes to hook you in deeper and deeper. Eventually, you pay for EpochTV, then you’re on a site where you’re continually fed a diet of further conspiracy-filled content. The Epoch Times and Shen Yun are best understood as spiritual proposition that promises to save your soul if you buy their product.

When the pandemic happened, everybody was rightfully worried and scared. We didn’t know what was happening and had to rely on the internet to find new recommendations and updates. It was easy to go from a legitimate source of info to a more shady one and then to total misinformation and conspiracy theories. Once you click on these videos, you keep being recommended more. I think many people everywhere were looking for a reason, a why, and from there, for someone to blame, for a scapegoat. Fearmongers on YouTube were propagating health misinformation and racist theories; from there, it’s the rabbit hole…. I think it was just a gateway to scare people more and more. Parents are always concerned for their kids. It’s normal. They also want to be involved in their education. And sometimes, they also worry when their kids are learning concepts that they are unfamiliar with. Most families in liberal spaces welcome diverse conversations and want their children to learn about the world around them. However, there’s been more and more of a new type of interaction where people (maybe 0.5% of the parent population, but ooooh, are they loud) just skip questions and worries and go directly to accusations and threats. There’s deep mistrust in some people that came out of nowhere recently for me. I’ve been a teacher for a long time, and not until now have I been accused of trying to brainwash children or having a secret agenda. I am not equipped to answer emails where this conspiracist vocabulary is so prevalent. -TEACHER

This brings us to how the film is aimed at a white audience and their perspectives. At one point, Evan is called Karen by a bully in the class [clip]. For Evan to be insulted as Karen underscores the root perspective of the film.  This is not the way kids insult each other. As someone who was called… many… many things in my youth, I can tell you that kids are much more creative. While the drama is narratively about a young trans man’s journey, the fears the story is centered upon are not ones he would face, but instead, his mothers and, vicariously, the parents the film is catered towards centering. Ultimately, Evan and all the kids present in this film, real or fictional, become objects for the film’s intended audience of concerned upper-class white mothers to project their fears and agency upon, so much so that even the lower-middle-class trans child of ambiguous racial background child the fictional narrative supposedly centers is attacked with insults wielded against middle-aged upper-middle-to-upper-class white women. Thus, the film is used to instigate this fight while simultaneously ignoring racial aspects.

Karen is a pejorative term that originated within the Black community to describe a white woman asserting her power as an upper-class white woman to get what she wants in a situation, often wielding her ability to be viewed as a victim, typically through explicit or subconscious white woman tears, playing off of ingrained assumptions of where BIPOC folks, especially Black men, n as inherently violent and dangerous, to wield institution power and violence against them. Think of your dog walking Karen, who called the cops claiming to be in danger from photographer and Star Trek comic book writer Christian Cooper, who was simply bird-watching in the park. The word Karen describes women who actively wield their white femininity through perceived victimhood to weaponize existing hierarchical power structures over racialized groups. While the term has been partially co-opted and diluted by the dominant culture, as many things created by the Black community often are, to just mean white woman complaining and often used by white men to enforce patriarchal control over white women, its primary usage is still rooted in identifying invisible systems of white supremacy in how it interacts with white womanhood to uphold itself.

As a result, “Karen” has been framed as a “sexist, classist, ageist slur” by not only upper-class conservative women but increasingly by “gender critical” women, such as Julie Bindel, which underscores the connection in anxieties surrounding the use of the term and often upper-class white womanhood framing of the gender critical movement against transgender people, and their often inability to recognize that while they face sexism as women, they are also privileged in numerous other aspects through being white. Instead, they frame their experience of womanhood, one often intersecting with multiple economic and social advantages, as the only valid experience of womanhood and not understanding how that womanhood upholds a patriarchal system when wielded against BIPOC folks.

So here, too, we come to an essential understanding of how narratives like this thrive.  It’s the same reason these folks also call “cis a slur, white feminism a slur, TERF a slur,” despite the words being often used to describe a power hierarchical dynamic that they don’t wish to recognize. By the way, I’d recommend this excellent video by The Leftist Cooks or the book “Elite Capture,” which goes into greater detail about how understandings of intersections of identity have been segmented and cast against each other.

“Especially in recent history, more often than not, one form of oppression has been replaced with another, different form that is similar or even more unjust than the one that preceded it. But maybe we want more than to play Whack-A-Mole with injustice. If we want to do more than alter the color of our children's chains, we will have to successfully oppose more than isolated instances of oppression.” - ELITE CAPTURE.

To understand where this white feminist attitude in gender critical “feminism” comes from and how it gets weaponized by movements seeking to uphold a hierarchical status quo, we need to briefly explore the root of how feminism was conceptualized within the United States. Many white suffragists often framed women’s rights in direct contention with black folks right to vote,  with Anna Howard Shaw, the National Woman's Suffrage Association president, stating after the ratification of the 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote, not any women,

“You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses.”

Black men were continually framed as a danger to white women’s purity, as we see in films like Birth of the Nation, building off of slavery-justify narratives that had existed since colonization began. This framing of blackness as a threat to white women caused white suffragists to start fighting for the rights of white women to vote over the voting rights of black, Native  American, and Asian women. Many white supremacists realized that this framing of white women versus Black women worked in their favor, even helping to fund them. George Francis Train, a white supremacist who supported a return to slavery, founded the women’s rights newspaper Revolution to instigate this dichotomy to uphold white supremacy.

This thinking laid the groundwork well into modern white American feminist movements. Take Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, a foundational text establishing the idea of a white woman as “the '' woman and subject of feminism, as writer Rafia Zakaria points out in her book “Against White Feminism.”

“In comparing “woman” to “others,” who include Blacks and Jews, de Beauvoir reveals herself to be thinking of “woman” as only white women. From the very introductory pages of The Second Sex, de Beauvoir identifies “otherness” as the fundamental category and woman as the ultimate “other” in a way similar to how the ‘the natives of a country see inhabitants of other countries as foreigners, Jews as the others for anti-Semites, blacks as racist Americans, indigenous peoples for colonists, proletarians for the propertied classes. In de Beauvoir’s view, then, the justifications for inferior contradictions of race, class, and caste are not just comparable but rather the same… in this way, she sheets each of these as discrete systems of oppression that could be compared but did not overlap… In every comparison that de Beauvoir makes between women and Blacks, however, the Blacks are assumed to be American and male, and the women are assumed to be white.”.

This willful blindness is intentionally incentivized by the system, playing upon white women’s understanding of how they exist within a generated hierarchical dichotomy of men versus women, yet insulates them from understanding an underclass that is generated through intersecting economic, racial, religious, and other generative hierarchies that themselves were framed against white womanhood, instead then existing separate from it. As a result, it allows them to play into a binary fight against “the patriarchy” while simultaneously pushing down others who speak on the necessary intersectionality required to accurately deconstruct the systems of white supremacy that those standards of white women were built upon.

[CAELAN CONRAD CLIP] Whenever any feminist in the group who was a woman of color would bring up the fact that these groups were mostly white feminism or that the ideology rampant in the groups was very surface-level white feminism, they would get flamed.  I've never seen so many women turn out to have a conversation in these groups. Like a few weeks ago, a gender-critical woman who was Indian commented and said “Can we stop talking about how these trans women have hairy arms? Because the hair on my arms is dark too. And that doesn't make me a man.” And so many of the comments were “Shut up. This isn't about you. And why are you calling our feminism ‘white feminism’? You're trying to divide the movement.” It's very “You shut up. Shut up, person of color. The real feminists are talking.”

This centering of womanhood and its battle against patriarchy is often something you’ll see conflated in gender-critical narratives,  with anti-trans narratives arguing that young girls try to escape the pressures of womanhood placed on them by a patriarchal society by thinking they are trans. We even see this idea dramatized in Evan’s story when he expresses seeing his brother have an easier life [clip]. This falls into a common anti-trans anxiety and narrative that trans men are just women who know the sexism in our society and hate being women. For example, this anxiety was expressed by JK Rowling in her anti-trans manifesto.

“The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.” - JK ROWLING

FINN INTERVIEW - You're discussing the ways women can be framed in that hierarchical assumption. People sort of go that's what I've identified so heavily with. I identified with like having to fight for seeing my my womanhood is something as a place of strength. They don't recognize that we're like trying to break down that, that bullshit that women are inherently some weaker in some way. And because they have so identified with that sense of like, Oh, this is how I need, this is where I need to fight from that sense of like being placed in that hierarchy, that's when you have the cognitive dissonance and they don't really recognize it as breaking down a hierarchy because they, they have so internalized this as part of their identity that, oh, this whole system functions upon the yes, that Terfs terms accuse us of invalidating their fight because of the steps we are taking to create a world where they don't have to fight in the first place. It's like they have so identified with being with “them” in the patriarchal system that to loose that makes them feel scared. It's a hard place to be in but it is a place the only place that they know and it feels comfortable to be there in the sense that like they recognize it and to do something new would be scary. The thing that buttresses up is all of the anger towards marginalized people. Fascists do it openly and willingly, knowingly. But the often more insidious one is the the problem of trying to get people to recognize that like we are going to have to fight this, things are going to have to change. And that is scary. And it's going to mean a reframing of how you place yourself and identify with the world. And that will often maybe mean that this weird axis of privilege and yet marginalization that you sit within will go away, which means you will lose the privilege. But it also hopefully mean that we can create a more egalitarian society… .I think in a kind of weird way, they're sort of existing in that same space that I was existing in and that many trans men exist in before we transition, where we're like, I can't I can't betray womanhood, I can't betray this movement. I can't betray all this work that I've done.

Now, we need to discuss how race is discussed, or more importantly, not discussed within teh film and larger anti-trans narratives. One interesting thing to note is that Gender Transformations is centered not around a white child that most detranstion narratives center upon, but the story of a real-life Latino child played by a racially ambiguous family in the drama sections, demonstrating how the film is attempting to give the aesthetic of diversity, the veneer that it is showcasing a holistic experience of American life, without actual speaking to the material realities that Abigail Martinez, a single hispanic mother, and Andrew Martinetz, a trans man, would face.

[FINN & JESSIE CONVERSATION 00;49;41;00 - 00;53;21;28]  What stood out to me is different from the usual propaganda is that it tells the story of a Latino trans man….The same thing is being done here by utilizing a Latino story to obfuscate that this is upholding a white supremacist worldview. We can appropriate this to this group in order to seem to have the veneer that we are being more inclusive…  It's not lost on me at all that black trans men and indigenous trans men especially get very little representation…. Yet they're willing to dabble in Latino trans-man representation or Asian representation. And that's not me saying that the racism that those two groups of people face isn't also a massive problem. But it's very interesting to me and very telling that the two groups of people who are very, very, very, very much directly harmed systemically by white supremacy and colonialism and the ongoing forces of play within that, they're not willing to look at them. They're not willing to prop them up. They're not willing to even acknowledge that those people exist…  Abigail Martinez is very clearly a single mother dealing with all of this shit on her own, which can talk to numerous different things within her experience as a Latino person and a Latino mother dealing with all of this bullshit that never gets brought up in any way, shape or form that differs from this being a narrative you could have given to an upper-class white girl, you know? And so it's just like there's no recognition of the specificity of her story as a Latino person. It's like we're going to use the aesthetic of a Latino person's story and then only talk about it in relationship to how it fits within a white narrative.

ELLIOT SANG INTERVIEW -It's like a subtle and trick, right? It's a wink and a nod because it shows you the film doesn't necessarily try to hide the fact that this is a Latin family, but it's also completely avoiding any kind of discussion of that. And one might think that there's some ways that right wingers will address issues of racism, but usually it comes down to these sort of stereotypical individualized ideas of like, “Oh, this person went to the grocery store and got called a mean name.” That's about as far as they'll acknowledge anything, because it's trying to centralize the idea that it's an individual issue. Certain people are just bad people and they're immoral. And because of them, you know that this issue exists. And if we could just, you know, do something to the bad people, they'll go away rather than an idea that a person's entire situation is made up of a ton of different decisions that are completely out of their control, that shape how even the way that they look affects how they live, how they're treated, what they get to have…. I think part of, let's say, right-wing messaging, which is ultimately the proposed propagation of a narrative that suggests a neutrality of a human experience that is essentially natural, is based in, and is based in nature, which brings this back to transphobia. The way that the world works is not because of different things happening that make it so that the world works that way, but the world works a certain way because that's how it should be or that's how it is, that's how it's always been…

Usually the suggestion is one of if you speak about what differences are with culture and race, then that's what makes you the outsider because you are questioning the norm. But again, like, you know, if we're talking we're talking about conservatism and right wing ideology and we're talking about capital also. So what we're talking about is pushing a narrative that there is a norm and that if you simply follow the norm, you'll be okay. And the people who are the problem are the people who at all question the norm or who at all work towards changing the norm. And so it's very easy to proposition the character of a therapist, even discussing gender as being equivalents to a manipulator who is subtly using words and and and nods to indicate to a person that they are actually not who they actually are. It's this way of saying that there is a path and we are, you know, a good a good person follows the straight and narrow path to, you know, success and success in society. And then there are all these distractions and they're all all these sort of caricatures, the villains along the way that are going to try to pull you off of that and make you think about gender and race.

All of this showcases how the Western right wing is happy to utilize radicalized marginalized voices to further its propaganda but not acknowledge the aspects that those people face in a country that often racializes so many because to do so would underscore the lies at the heart of the system. It would reveal why Andrew Martinez perhaps faced more challenges as a Latino trans man than a white trans man. Ultimately, to talk about race in any way beyond an individualized statement is dangerous for those who use it because it would mean acknowledging the United States' racist underpinnings. So, everything must be framed as neutral.

This idea of neutrality of experience under the hegemonic system underpins a fascist ideal. It frames marginalized communities and the struggles of folks who sit higher in a hierarchy as similar struggles. This is not just in racialized contexts; we see it in gender issues and how these gendered identities are pitted against each other. We see this in gender-critical anti-trans narratives that get platformed on the basis that we just “need to hear the other side.” This is precisely what happened with Gender transformations, by the way. The film was screened at the Manhattan Film Festival despite calls for removal for its hateful content. Yet the Manhattan Film Festival let it air because they “wanted to show both sides.” Here’s an interview with the film’s direct say as such.

[CLIP]

This is why the concept of neutrality on issues of marginalized identities, viewing discrimination as an individual issue rather than reflecting intersecting hierarchical structures under an oppressive system, is ultimately used to propagate the hierarchies further. Speaking of discussing intersections of identities and how they are differently racialized or oppressed, we should discuss why this film is about a Latino family, and not say a Black or Idengous family, which is a critical issue to discuss.

ELLIOT INTERVIEW - There is a question of buy-in basically that I think is very relevant for particularly like Latin American and Asian-American audiences and ethnic groups in America and conservative ideology…. one of the central parts of that is that these groups are entirely descended from immigrant groups which have immigrated to the U.S. either in the past 50 years, past century, even a little bit farther than that… And what immigration entails ideologically is often a sense of we are going to this country because it will be better for us… We came to the U.S. to have a better life. Things are better here, Things are safer here. There's very much a material you can say issue in the balance of survival and of thriving somewhere. And when you put that kind of pressure on a person, then it also sort of motivates them to not only make this decision to move but also to fully buy in to this move as something that will be, you know, revolutionary for their life, something that will change sort of their conditions of living in such a dramatic way so as to get rid of the issues they were facing before that won't follow them into the United States. And also to power them through all these stages so that they can eventually reach that American dream, that success story. It's like this idea, whether you doubt something or you don't doubt something, if you have doubt on your way to accomplishing a task, it often hold you back. But if you have no doubt in your head, then you can make it. And so the immigrant family is is is conditioned by American propaganda to believe, you know, if you just put your head down, you work hard, you don't question anything, you're going to move up the ladder, and you're going to have the American dream and your family will have all that it needs and more. And you won't have to deal with any of the the negative and the darkness and the evil that was from your past. And because of this, you see a you know, this is this is sort of what fuels a lot of the right wing political affiliations of a lot of immigrant families from Latin America and Asian America and the United States. Is this sense of, you know, well, we want to have a better life, We want to work hard. This country is way better than the country that I was from. I think that that makes a lot of sense as to why race is not mentioned in a film like this, but utilized in this kind of way is because it's accepting sort of the Latin family as being a part of the American fabric. So long as the Latin family simply doesn't question anything and is trying to be good and honest Americans. And then here you have this child who is going through this crisis, who is transitioning, and you can easily say, well, this family was torn apart by somebody who took the American dream away from them. And for instance, with black Americans, right. You have people who descend from generations of slavery in the United States who have developed, for one, a very a very strong intellectual tradition that is very much that they're acculturated into from a young age that has a counter hegemonic almost approach to the world in a sense, even though many people are not radicalized despite being black, despite being of indigenous ancestry, there is such a history with them in the United States, of them being oppressed, being marginalized, being killed, and from those histories such, you know, visible, undeniable movements, outspoken about that, obviously the civil rights movement stands out in the United States as part of that, that their sort of cultural approach to something even like the American dream, has to be essentially put in a different film.

Further, this goes to another discussion the film leaves out: Black and Indigenous trans women are often the most vilified and at risk for violence in the United States. The film aesthetically likes to showcase an appearance of diversity but does not talk about how being trans intersects with how America has so racialized specific identities. All of this goes to how the United States ultimately wields racial identities against each other.

Take Epoch Times itself. While there have been investigations into Epoch Times and Falon Gong’s funding, it has never been entirely clear. However, there are connections to right-wing funders like Breitbart benefactor Robert Mercer. Yet, while those connections have not been solidly confirmed, Epoch Times is a far-right Chinese-American organization wielded by the far-right to spread disinformation about Communism and hatred towards China through COVID conspiracy theories. You can also see how right-wing groups argued that Affirmative Action hurt Asian Americans in the US Supreme Court in 2023, using one racialized identity to try to remove systems put in place to help another.  Here we have how Latin and Asian Americans are often wielded against Black and Indigenous Americans in culture war narratives for the right wing to give the appearance of progressiveness, attempting to erode solidarity between communities. The same can also be seen in anti-trans discussions, with trans issues framed as against “women’s issues” despite trans and women’s issues often intertwining due to both being identities marginalized by neoliberalist practices.

This welding and justifying working with racialized communities to prop up a hegemonic structure, despite being antithetical to the stated hierarchical ideology, has historical precedent within fascistic and far-right narratives. While Fascism likes to frame itself as a party of ideological and, more importantly, ethnic purity, it is often willing to grant informal honorary status to those whom their express rhetoric would overtly vilify or dehumanize. Hitler, for example, declared the Japanese people “honorary Aryans” to justify working with what would typically have been seen in NAzi ideology as a lesser race, as they needed to create an alliance with Japan. However, it is often done to uphold a fascistic viewpoint. Hitler, for example, did not view the Japanese people as equals but stated argued-

“The foundations of actual life in Japan today are not those of the native Japanese culture, although this characterizes the external features of the country, which features strike the eye of European observers on account of their fundamental difference from us; but the real foundations of contemporary Japanese life are the enormous scientific and technical achievements of Europe and America, that is to say, of Aryan peoples. Only by adopting these achievements as the foundations of their own progress can the various nations of the Orient take a place in contemporary world progress. The scientific and technical achievements of Europe and America provide the basis on which the struggle for daily livelihood is carried on in the Orient….If, from to-day onwards, the Aryan influence on Japan would cease--and if we suppose that Europe and America would collapse--then the present progress of Japan in science and technique might still last for a short duration; but within a few decades the inspiration would dry up, and native Japanese character would triumph, while the present civilization would become fossilized and fall back into the sleep from which it was aroused about seventy years ago by the impact of Aryan culture.” - Mein Kampf

Thus, his argument was that the Japanese people could only grow to be a superpower worthy of his allyship because Aryans had influenced them. All of this shows how fascism is not a consistent ideology but just one used to justify decisions after the fact. Hitler and the Nazis needed to ally with Japan and Middle Eastern countries, and so did so, then justified through whatever means necessary.  Here, we see a similar parallel to how Asian and Hispanic people are used today by right-wing groups, exemplified by works like Gender Transformations that these rhetorics are willing to USE the aesthetic of non-American or Western-European cultures to increase their appeal and allyship but not willing to engage in viewing said cultures as equal. It’s all lies made after the fact used to justify decisions to protect one’s power.

ELLITO INTERVIEW - People are constantly seeing new things; we're constantly seeing new truths as human beings that because we're continually feeling alienated and isolated, it's not natural when you live like this. And so every time one of these new things pops up, Capitol scrambles to do something about it. It will subvert it, it will subvert elements of it and to being actually a part of the hegemony - like what it'll do with music genres, what it will do with certain trends, what it will do with certain figures from different ethnic backgrounds, and then it will simultaneously launch these more violent offenses backed by ideological convenience to say “well, these are the parts that just had to get stomped out, Right?” It's this this is what's what I think is has brought these, you know, critical race, critical theory debates. Wokeism like, there's just it's just whatever works in the time. It's like when you had to lie to your mom and you had to come up with like, oh, well, you know, actually I was in class, right? It’s just whatever worked that year.

All this is also by no means surprising that it crosses with ableism that we see within anti-trans spaces, going back to the autism discussion from earlier, with fascist groups often arguing for the sterilization of those deemed “feebleminded.” Lest this just be put on European countries, America also used these same arguments to create forced sterilization bills in Indiana, Washington, California, and Connecticut in the early 20th century. Further, social mobility indicated one’s genetic fitness in the United States, reaffirming class and racial hierarchies in the United States, with the US’s history of limited access to financial capital to non-white people, particularly Black folks. This then led to eugenicists between the 1900s and 1960s to try to appeal to white middle-class women to become more “family-minded” to help better the race, thus denying birth control to women, leading to the current mindset of anti-abortion attitudes in the United States, which is underscored in the modern trans movement as any anti-abortion groups like the Heritage Foundation also support anti-trans medical care. Black and indigenous women and lower-class women forced into prostitution were also deemed “lesser-women” and thus argued to be sterilized. It was so horrific that an estimated 70,000 indigenous women were sterilized in the 1970s, 20,000 Mexican and Mexican-American women in California alone, and 31.6% of African-American women without a high school diploma were reportedly sterilized in states like North Carolina. Much of America’s eugenics movements went on to influence, and be influenced by, the Nazis, with the Nazis themselves looking to California for a model, despite post-WWII US historians attempting to portray the two eugenics movements as distinct. All this shows that it is not white upper-class women who have faced sterilization efforts steaming from children trying to be themselves, but racialized minority groups being targeted by fascistic, eugenicist, and racist movements buttressed by US history of colonial and slavery history. It also shows how denying access to seeing someone as a complete woman justifies hatred, bigotry, and state-sponsored violence, as we see also being wielded at trans people.

Further, this connects to the anti-trans narratives that focus on Jewish influences on young girls' fertility, as the anti-trans narratives often hyperfocus on the blood libel and the transgender agenda on trans men's ability to reproduce. It ties into this constant idea that often stems from bloodlines: the only ones to continue are constantly looking to threats to these bloodlines. These connections are not incidental but interlinked. For example, take Elon Musk's obsession with having as many children as possible and his concerns about the collapsing birth rate.

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

By civilization, Musk means Western civilization. This ties into Musk's views of LONGTERMISM, a fear of the end of civilization and thus must reproduce as much as possible, leading Musk to have had nine children across several relationships. Side note: I would recommend this video by Some More News for more on that ideology. However, one of Musk’s children came out as trans, Vivian Jenna Wilson, expressed her desire in court to no longer be related to Musk as a father. Musk constantly speaks about Vivian as if he “lost her,” framing her as his possession, and became actively anti-trans online, his parental desire for control eventually isolating him from his then partner at the time, Grimes, who reported left him in part due to his anti-trans stances. From there, Musk has also simultaneously platformed anti-trans works like “What is a Woman?” which also make the connection to “secret organizations” controlling the anti-trans health care propaganda, and publicly discussed his view that “big pharma” was influencing the rise of transgender awareness.

Further, Musk has blamed Jews for their harassment, and for the 60% sales decline of X. Connecting to this, more overtly, Musk has recently begun targeting the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group aimed at fighting anti-semitism. Further, Musk has platformed far-right and anti-trans groups on his site repeatedly and enabled hate speech while allegedly causing accounts discussing transgender issues to either be banned or deprioritized, thus marginalizing numerous trans voices.  These viewpoints often come intertwined, with the powerful like Musk worrying more about continuing their status quo and bloodline, controlling every aspect of the world and people around them, including their children, eventually leading them to more overt bigotries leaning into fascistic narratives. All of it built an anxiety of being at the top of the hierarchy… fear of losing that position, and finding reasons to explain why. Be it a parent fearing loss of control over their child or a billionaire fearing the loss of control of his company. It’s all the same anxiety funneled into fascistic narratives. Musk is but one of the most high-profile examples.

LADYKNIGHTHEBRAVE - I literally got a comment the other day that said, I think word for what word they're trying to make White the new Jew. It sounded like a bizarre white replacement thing. And then immediately period, I'm not a white supremacist. Okay? You like Oh, wow. But it's a lot of people don't want to think that about themselves. I’m not a Nazi…. I'm not that bad because there's still enough media everybody likes Indiana Jones. And Indiana Jones says, I hate Nazis. So there's still up to a point up till you get to like, fucking Proud Boys. There are a lot of people I think want that plausible deniability of like, Well, we're not like that.

JESSIE - Yeah, the work of America post-WWII worked to hide it’s connections to things like Eugenics, neo-nazi movements and institutional racism that Nazi’s themselves directly were influenced by, partially due to America entering the war against the Nazi. So people will create a cognative disonnence in their head to say… well, I’m not in fascism.

It’s worth looking at who appears in Gender Transformations as a specific example of how anti-trans narratives function in conjunction with other right-wing efforts, as Musk himself, as a billionaire, underscores how these views align with privatized financial interests. Pamela Garfield, for example, is simply presented as a former teacher and social worker. However, if you look into her, she used to work at Sutter Health and lost her job after she attempted to spread anti-vaccine information. Kali Fontanilla is only presented in the film as a “former teacher,” but she is also the Founder of the Exodus Institute. This online homeschooling program claims to give parents a way to teach “Christian values without political agenda or woke indoctrination” with affordable tuition. Teaching such non-political content as “AMERICAN VALUES” and “BEST CONSERVATIVE COLLEGES TO ATTEND” or “COUNTER CRT PROGRAMING”. It’s clear she has a vested financial interest in vilifying public education that films like Gender Transformations do implicitly to funnel people to her course, which then spews back at them further right-wing talking points. I contacted my wonderful YouTube colleague Zoe Bee, whose content focuses on right-wing war education, to discuss how this right-wing vilification of public education works.

ZOE BEE INTERVIEW- So charter schools take public money and many private schools do as well through what's called school vouchers. And that is where if you see this being said by right-wing figures, they often say fund students, not systems, which sounds excellent.. Yeah. Humanize students.[Yet] what it means is that all of the taxes that you pay for public education should not go to the school, but should be tied to individual students. And if those individual students decide to go to a private school instead of a public school, that funding should stay with them. And so they should get a voucher to be able to go to a private school instead of a public one… If you look at the Exodus Institute website, that is something that they say is if you want to use this fully accredited K-12 program, contact us, see if we can get you a voucher or depending on where you're at. But how do I even talk about this without getting into tax law? It's so boring.

JESSIE- It's boring intentionally, though, right?

ZOE - Yeah. Like, yeah, for sure. [CLIP FROM EARLIER] One of the reasons that it hasn't been successful is because people like just the normal public of the United States isn't supportive of getting rid of public education. People tend to like schools and think that they're a good thing. And this is a platform worth electing someone on. And so what I see as the angle for this whole like culture war stuff in education that's going on right now is that that is their way of hooking people into getting rid of public education. [CUT BACK] So basically there are companies whose whole purpose is to funnel money from public coffers into private institutions. And when those private companies or nonprofits do that in several states, they can get a dollar for dollar tax refund from or tax reimbursement from the state. And it's a write off on their federal taxes, which means if you can do math, they get to double dip, which means they can turn a profit on taking money out of a public school like yours. So they pay they take money out of the public system and then pay less in into the public in that in the back end, too. It's decreasing public funding overall in every sense. So the whole thing is just super sketchy, tied up in all of this culture war nonsense and makes a lot of money. Like there are a lot of these kinds of programs that will make millions and millions of dollars a year. And of course, because the people who own these are the kind of people who would do this, they use those millions of dollars to lobby politicians to have lighter regulations on these kinds of institutes so they're allowed to keep doing what they're doing.

As the Exodus Institute and places like PragurU’s recent encroachment on home school and public education curriculum show, the “educational” goals they push uphold an America-First rhetoric. We can also see this in Florida’s assault on public education and the right wing’s denial of education around America’s history of systemic racism, instead arguing for the “regrettable yet beneficial” history of slavery.  Ultimately, this work to vilify the American public education system through culture war narratives of a transgender agenda not only works to uphold an interest in privatized capitalist drives but, even more so, ultimately, the project of creating a mythical version of American nationalism that drives a further fuel into fascistic rhetoric as writer Jason Stanely points out in his book “How Fascism Works.”

“Fascist politics seeks to undermine public discourse by attacking and devaluing education, expertise, and language. Intelligent debate is impossible without an education with access to different perspectives, a respect for expertise when one’s own knowledge gives out, and a rich enough language to precisely describe reality. When education, expertise, and linguistic distinctions are undermined, there remains only power and tribal identity. This does not mean there is no role for universities in fascist politics. In fascist ideology, there is only one legitimate viewpoint, that of the dominant nation. Schools introduce students to the dominant culture and its mythic past. Education, therefore either poses a grave threat to fascism or becomes a pillar of support for the mythical nation.”

Here, this film also funnels people to anti-educational resources through anti-trans discourse. Like how Gender Transformations directs viewers into an EpochTV subscription, all these right-wing narratives continually channel people further into privatized interests that send out the same rhetoric. It does not matter how far down the funnel you go, just that you enter somewhere. You’ll eventually end up in the same spaces that continually vilify anything outside a hegemonic American far-right viewpoint that lays its foundations on eugenics, viewing women as only there for reproduction, anti-semitic beliefs, racist propaganda, anti-queer, and anti-trans hate, and more.

“The politics of deference focuses on the consequences that are likeliest to show up in the rooms where elites do most of their interacting: classrooms, boardrooms, political parties. As a result, we seem to end up with far more, and more specific, practical advice about how to, say, allocate tasks at a committee meeting than how to keep people alive. Deference as a default political orientation can work counter to marginalized groups' interests. We are surrounded by a discourse that locates attentional injustice in the selection of spokespeople and book lists taken to represent the marginalized, rather than focusing on the actions of the corporations and algorithms that much more powerfully distribute attention. This discourse ultimately participates in the weaponization of attention in the service of marginalization. It directs what little attentional power we can control at symbolic sites of power rather than at the root political issues that explain why everything is so fucked up.”

Speaking of corporate interests, we should also mention how much of the anti-trans groups come from the religious Christian right in the United States. While Gender Transformations remains overtly secular in its approach, and many prominent gender-critical feminists such as Helen Joyce are atheists, their work almost always makes illusions to Christianity. The language of bodies being “precious, divine, unassailable” dovetail often with the Catholic rhetoric of bodies being Gods alone to control and define, and the control and pushing of women and trans men into fundamentalist roles of caregiver and mother are shared themes. Further, US Christian right such as US evangelical preacher Scott Lively who wrote a book called The Pink Swastika which argued that Hitler and the Nazi party were gay and that gay men were behind the Holocaust to deny the genocide of gay and trans people, as well as many others who were killed in the Holocaust and vilify the queer community, has traveled worldwide to preach about the dangers of “gender ideology.” The US Christian right has spent nearly 280 million dollars between 2008 and 2019 to attack LGBTQ rights worldwide, honing in on “gender propaganda” in their words in the last few years and helping to lead anti-trans attacks in Uganda and Hungary. The US-based Alliance Defending Freedom has also spent millions in the US and Europe alone and defined laws in 2015 that required sterilizing trans people. Helen Joyce may argue that she is making a secular argument, as she does at the end of her book, and Gender Transformations may not say Christianity, but it’s there all the same. None of this is to mention how forcing specific gender roles and anti-trans legislation denies the right to freedom of religion to many indigenous, Jewish, and other groups who have attempted to argue so in court, often with little success. All this forces us not to see this as an individualized problem caused by specific actors but as a system with different entry points but the same incentives rooted within colonialist, capitalist, and religious fundamentalist goals.

We can see this with Mariam Grossman, as Matt Walsh, an admitted capitalist and fundamentalist Christian, had her appear in his film “What is a Woman?” “,” where she shared the same story about John Money she shares in Gender Transformations. [clip] Her appearance is notable because it highlights how incestuous these seemingly distinct narratives are continually proffering up the same supposed experts and institutions in the face of large amounts of scientific research being gathered over time. We can also see this with the detransitioners who appear in the film. If we look into it, we see that many of these detransitioenrs belong to The Transition Justice Project, including Scott Neugent, who appeared in “What is a Woman?”.These detransitioner-led groups are often funded and funneled by right-wing groups to generate a narrative in media around detransition and create targeted legal rights battles targeting trans health care using detransitioners stories as the argument. Lee Leveille, a founding member of one such group of detransitioners, Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network, spoke about how she saw the group continually manipulated by anti-trans interests and her life only viewed through the lens of her detransitioenr trauma. I’d recommend reading her story linked below, but here is a taste.

“GCCAN officially launches, just in time for fundraising season. And guess where the majority of the donations came from? Parents, gender critical or radical feminists, and shady practitioners such as [Lisa] Marchiano… At least in the beginning, the funding is all grassroots from “concerned citizens.”... While it may change as the groups grow and attract big donors, it’s crucial to understand how they get started because influence starts with swaying the minds of the public. Tug on the the heartstrings enough and they’ll lower their guard and accept shadier deals…  And what do you do when you want to tug on heartstrings? You talk about kids and tragic backstories… My most valuable asset to the group wasn’t my knowledge or skill set in patient rights advocacy, it was my medical trauma as a transmasculine person. While my skills and my public platform were important to the organization’s initial development, essential even, it paled in comparison to the benefits brought by the emotional appeal of my story. Any supports I would have needed in that organization, I would have had to develop myself, as no one else shared the commitment. I also felt that my sense of self as a transmasculine butch wasn’t taken seriously, a feeling that was later confirmed by others who had left connected scenes… [despite my leaving the orgaization], the machine lives on. Grace Lidinsky-Smith, in her new role as President, pursued the connections with[Lisa] Littman I had opposed. She interviewed Littman to promote her new study, even though her past paper was designed to prove a pre-established theory and the detrans people she collaborated with were already firm believers in “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD).... Detrans activist Laura (a.k.a. FlohrFritz) released a “message of hope” aimed at British trans youth now without medical care [after the Bell v Tavistock anti-trans ruling that removed access to puberty blockers], featuring contributions by both Lidinsky-Smith and [board member Carey] Callahan. This despite the fact that both Lidinksy-Smith and Callahan celebrated the ruling in contradiction to previous public and private statements. A new void was created, so of course here they come to the rescue. Marchiano, of course, is making preparations to present at an upcoming conference alongside Jennifer “the Jews- I mean, Soros and the Pritzkers are transing the youth” Bilek, Julie Bindel, and Marcus and Susan Evans (also of SEGM — funny that). And now, WoLF has confessed to coordinating legal efforts to bring the repercussions of the Bell v. Tavistock case to the United States.

It highlights how small a pool these detransitioners are and how manufactured the supposed concern around them is. These detransitioners and the groups they form are often directly linked up, through funding efforts, to larger right-wing organizations or figures now looking for them. The networks are so small that they are easily mapable, with the same names, even ones we’ve been discussing through Gender Transformation, such as Dr. Michael Laidlaw, appearing repeatedly.

Over and over again, different programs and stories claim to be concerned about the thousands of stories of dangers of detransition that need to be heard. Yet, they are continually only able to find the same small pool of people. Chloe Cole, Able Garcia, Cat Cattison, and Scott Newgent repeatedly appear all over the globe to tell the same story, making it seem like a more significant issue. Chloe Cole, for example,  has appeared not only in this Epoch Times documentary but  [DEEP BREATH] on Seven News Australia, The Center for Bioethics and Cultural Networks, Fox News, Matt Walsh’s anti-trans events, appeared with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in Washington, on stage at CPAC, began a lawsuit in her home state of California against health care provider Kaiser Permanente, the same health care provider I use by the way, and given testimony in support of anti-trans affirming care bills in Utah, Tennessee, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Louisiana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Florida to name BUT a few of her numerous appearances. A state lawmaker in Wyoming named his law banning transition care for minors “Chloe’s Law.” Hell, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida told Cole’s story in his 2023 State of the State address, where she received a standing ovation.

Many transitioners tell a story of how, after they decided to detransition, they fell into gender-critical anti-trans groups who accepted them and tried to utilize their stories for their ends, taking advantage of them at a low time of their life.

"I was looking for people who had had similar experiences or had a more complicated transition story… I started looking online and then found some blogs by detrans women [which] were pretty much all written by radical feminists… I had recently quit drugs and I was learning to function in a healthy way as an adult. I was embittered because I’d had a bad experience in a queer house share that went wrong. I think feeling out of sorts in that space and feeling out of place made me easy pickings to be radicalized… What was really compelling was this idea that if I joined in, I could finally get over this pain I’ve been carrying. I could finally get over this trauma and feel better about myself. But like life, it didn’t work like that."

Even further, these detransitioners then are often funneled into being utilized for the campaigns, having their stories propped up and wielded in front of media organizations, with these groups knowingly picking which information to present to a broad audience, as well as isolating themselves from the people around them who love them so only the gender-critical groups can give them support.

When I became a radical feminist I had a kind of conversion experience. It was very powerful and emotionally intense…. I embraced many views that I had previously dismissed or found repellent. I felt that adopting these beliefs had brought me deep healing, though it also turned my world upside down. It was both exciting and disorientating. I was full of passion for my new beliefs and was convinced that they could help other people as well….  Dishonesty was normalized in the radical feminist detrans women’s community. While some of us were more upfront with our views than others, most of us hid what we really thought from many of our friends and acquaintances. We thought they were too steeped in patriarchal culture or taken in by “trans ideology” to understand our views. If people did show any sign of being receptive to our beliefs, we would share what we thought they would find acceptable but hold back anything they would find too extreme or offensive….  I intentionally moderated my views in public in order to reach a larger audience and make my ideas less threatening. At the same time, I wanted to be “challenging”. I was trying to spread the idea that trans identity and transition could be motivated by trauma and internalized misogyny. I did nothing to reassure trans readers that I took their identities seriously and that was intentional. I thought trans identities were already overly reinforced by the dominant culture and I wanted to undermine them. I didn’t directly attack them though and I never came out and said they weren’t real. I was trying to introduce the idea that trans identity could be caused by trauma or sexism, without saying that they all were (though that’s what I believed) and without saying anything about how some people really were trans. - Ky Shivers, detransitioner

These stories of detransition are then used to argue for anti-trans affirming health care bills, with these detransitioners trotted out around the US and UK to tell their emotionally affecting sob stories in front of government officials. Further, they are given funding to create targeted court cases against medical care. Take Bell v Tavistock, a court case in the United Kingdom, where a young detransitioner, Keira Bell, was prescribed puberty blockers and had a double mastectomy and later regretted it, claiming she was left with “no breasts, a deep voice, body hair, a bread and affected sexual function.” Despite acknowledging that these were all things she was warned about before surgeries, she argued that the NHS Gender Identity Development Service should have denied her the care she was allegedly rushed through. This is despite the clear evidence that most transgender youth in the UK have to wait several years to receive such care. Yet, the court case eventually led to a temporary ban on puberty blockers for trans kids in the UK until it was repealed in 2021. However, the fervor surrounding and adjacent to the case has led to continual and further attacks on trans health care in the UK. Right-wing organizations continually platformed Bell’s case, and Bell’s lawyers also had connections to right-wing anti-abortion groups like the Heritage Foundation in the US. The Women’s Liberation Front, a gender-critical group in the United States, has lobbied the Supreme Court against human rights protections for trans people and stated that they care more for attacking trans rights than women’s health care issues like abortion and who regularly work with the Heritage Foundation, have helped to bring similar cases like Bell’s to the United States. Chloe Cole, for example, is currently being funded by right-wing groups in her lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente in California.

Much the same happens to parents looking for affirmations of their fears in gender-critical spaces that films like Gender Transformations prey upon. This is how cults get built. The cult finds an emotional fear or anxiety that people have about the world and presents a narrative that not only validates that anxiety but presents a simple solution and system to resolve this emotional turmoil that not only alleviates the person from introspection but into their already preconceived notion of how the world SHOULD work, often by leaning into pre-existing hierarchies in the world around them that have been eroded by increased availability or economic instability. It's also why getting people to leave cults is tricky, especially when someone has been involved for so long. To pull them out not only would disrupt the way they view the world, but they are also often both emotionally and financially invested. The further they go, the more cults attempt to cut its supporters off from any alternatives to survive without the cult’s support. Every external person or idea is viewed as sinister, a threat, and dangerous and must be denied, eliminated, or controlled in fitting with the cult views of the world.

A study of how conspiratorial ideas also describes the mindsets that lead to them, and it sounds oddly familiar and describes why conspiratorial thinking that these anti-trans narratives build ultimately works brilliantly to move people to more far-right conspiracy theories and anti-semitic beliefs.

The strongest correlates of conspiratorial ideation across the motivational and personological domains pertained to the following tendencies: (a) to perceive threat and danger, (b) to rely on intuition and have odd beliefs and experiences, and (c) to be antagonistic and feel superior… Such research will not only clarify how conspiratorial ideation develops but also whether conspiratorial ideation satisfies the needs that draw people to conspiracy theories in the first place. It is possible (if not likely) that conspiracy theories are less satisfying than they are appealing (see van Prooijen, 2019). Consider anxiety as an example. As already noted, anxiety may spur people to turn to conspiracy theories, as conspiracy theories may, at first blush, provide certainty that people crave. Yet, conspiracy theories are inherently uncertain (after all, they are unproven), and they are, in many ways, anxiety-provoking. If a small group of nefarious individuals has the power to bring down buildings, governments, and societies, then how can people rest until everyone sees the light? Over time, conspiracy theories may increase the discomfort people were originally trying to mitigate (e.g., Liekefett et al., 2023) and even contribute to behaviors that increase a sense of discomfort (e.g., reluctance to engage in preventative medicine; see Bierwiaczonek et al., 2022), potentially yielding a vicious cycle of anxiety and conspiratorial ideation. -The Conspiratorial Mind: A Meta-Analytic Review of Motivational and Personological Correlates “Shauna M. Bowes , Thomas H. Costello, and Arber Tasimi”

Ultimately, the idea of an anti-trans agenda coming for your children will relieve parents' anxiety briefly. Still, when their child continues to be trans or suffers depression, they will look for more conspiracies to help them answer their continued and growing anxieties. Epoch Times, or whichever far-right group has guided them into the funnel, is more than happy to provide the next layer - anti-semitism, racism, or more.

This is the same story we see with Abigail Martinez… a mother whose grief after the loss of her child, which itself was caused in part by her fears being manipulated, pulled her into gender-critical groups who then propped up and used her grief to propagandize hate in films like Gender Transformations to ghoulishly parade her distorted view of her son’s life story. While I have little sympathy for parents like this… what these cult-like spaces do to these parents is ultimately quite sick. And how it pushes children away from what they so often want… just to have their parents see them.

[CAELAN CONRAD CLIP] These young people don't want to cut their parents off. This is something I didn't understand and it came up because I censor the names of the parents and their children in my videos and when I post the screenshots on Twitter to protect the children.. But I got a message from a young person whose actual mother was in one of the screenshots. They sent me the screenshot and they said I have access to my mother's Facebook. I know what she's saying about me. Thank you for censoring it because she's still my mom, which kills me because I wasn't thinking about it like that. These children don't want to cut their parents off. They love their parents, and they just want their parents to love them. That's all it is. They just want to be accepted. They just want to be seen for who they are and not as somebody who's like disabled or diseased or manipulated. And I think that gets lost a lot when we're talking about these parents. Yeah, these children don't want to go to foster care. They don't want to have to run away. They don't want to do any of the things that gender critical people are saying that trans activists are trying to convince their children to do. What they want is for their parents to accept them. And that's it.

Jessie - Yeah, that’s what it was for me too. My biggest fear in coming out was a fear my Dad would be disappointed that I wouldn’t grow into the successful man he wanted me to be, that he always bragged about to his work colleagues because I got Eagle Scout or whatever.  Thankfully, he did see me, but the biggest fear I had was that. Yet, the entire way it's framed in the documentary is the child is the antagonist. He's always pushing the parent away… you're trying conversion therapy. You don't get me. But if you look at the actual story of the actual trans kid who died in real life that they're fictionalizing, it looked like Andrew, even when he was in foster care, tried to have a relationship with his parents, but Abigail was still not there in the way that he needed. And that's what ultimately led to his death by suicide, because he wanted to have that relationship that was not being affirmed and he simultaneously didn’t have the necessary support as a queer kid in foster care either, because the government doesn’t fund queer support needs. So we suffer from a lack of both institutional and familial support, and we die as a result.

CEALAN - Yeah, that is the isolation is what's deathly. Every single time that I've been in a really dark place, it's because I felt alone. Because having a community around you, having people that care about you and tell that and that support you is what makes difficult times survivable. And in these groups, you will constantly see parents say that their children are narcissists or they're manipulating them, that they are trying to use the emotional pleas as a form of emotional blackmail. So, like a child would be like, I just want you to see me as I am. I just want you to love me for who I'm telling you I am. And they're like, That's manipulation. Don't listen to it. I think that's something that gets missed a lot is it's not just that the child wants to be affirmed. It's that they love their parents and they want their parents to love them, not their idea of them, not what they decided that they were going to be before they were even born…. And the quotes to me are like, they're so heartfelt, they're so raw. And it gets immediately dismissed as like a script that they're being told to read by like their discord or something ridiculous.

The reason, from what I can tell, that so many transgender kids suffer or die is because they want and seek love, to be seen as themselves, to be loved as who they are… but are often turned down by those who should see them the most… I can’t be sure, but I would not be surprised if that also led to Andrew Martinez's tragic loss. This objectification and infantilization show how systems continually view human beings as objects to be thrown around, wielded to further their ends… and remove us from loving the people who most need us, who are most vulnerable to being tossed aside by these systems.

But finally, all this showcases how, while the presentation and framing of the film are distinctly different from Matt Walsh’s more strongman appeal, BOTH films ultimately sell the same narrative: one leaning towards fascism.

After WHAT IS A WOMAN came out, gender critical feminists seemingly balked at the film, shocked that the movie ended with Walsh upholding a patriarchal view of womanhood, with men being on top and women in the home. They were also angry that a man like Walsh, who often supports white supremacist beliefs like white replacement theory or that young white girls need to be mainly viewed for their need to reproduce to counteract the spread of non-white cultures was the one who shared their same arguments about trans people. Helen Joyce, a prominent anti-trans figure who wrote the book Trans: Where Ideology Meet Reality, a 300-page regurgitation of the same narratives found within Gender Transformation, even publicly argued with Walsh.

[T]he problem…is that both conservatives like Matt Walsh and the gender ideologies that he’s mocking…both believe that gender stereotypes and gender roles are inherent to what it is to be a woman. One side uses them to define what a woman is, [and] Matt Walsh thinks they’re inseparable. He understands that a man is a male person and a woman is a female person, but he thinks a whole load of things follow from that; about whose in charge, who makes the sandwiches, whose voice gets heard, and all of this sort of thing. Well if you give your average teenage girl the choice between cutting off her breasts, taking testosterone, and having a shot at being seen as the half of humanity that’s regarded as truly human, or accepting that she’s Matt Walsh’s wife in the kitchen making sandwiches and asking him to open the jar…she’ll cut her tits off and take testosterone. So, he’s part of the problem…. If you’ve got some little boy who wants to wear his sister’s tutu and play with her Barbie dolls, there’s a much stronger chance that boy is going to grow up gay than a boy who isn’t doing that. It’s not set in stone, but it’s a stronger chance. Matt Walsh wants that boy buzz-cut and out there shooting. The gender ideologues want his dick chopped off and turned into a girl. I want him to grow up into a happy gay man who marries whoever the fuck he likes.

While Helen Joyce pretends she’s a feminist appalled by Matt Walsh, she fails to recognize that her rhetoric ultimately upholds a fascistic binary dichotomy based on a eugenics ideal, one which places only white cisgender straight non-disabled men and women as legitimate humans who need to propagate the world with men in control.

Their arguments constantly push for the control of women’s bodies and rigidly define what a woman should be, taking denability for assigned woman at birth folks to find themselves, be they trans man, cis woman, nonbinary peron, or something else. At a recent conference, this image leaked where Joyce and others argued for horrific genital inspections of children to know their sex supposedly, forgetting by the way that intersex folks exist. Genitals don’t equal your chromones or biological sex; it is more than just chromones or genitals, forcing sex-based uniforms on children, forcing girls and boys to wear specific clothing.

Helen Joyce remains so fixed on fighting this endless cycle she refuses to see how it ultimately just serves the us versus them narrative that fascism fuels itself upon instead of reaching out to see the vast diversity of humanity around her. I don’t wish to paint her as innocuous or innocent. These folks know the dishonest ways they frame things, as we discussed. It is clear from the way they talk about everyone. Everything, from trans people to people of color, becomes objects for her and other gender-critical feminists to frame as tools for and against her.  All Helen Joyce, gender critical “feminists,” and films like Gender Transformations do is just create a new entry point to the exact funnel that leads to Matt Walsh’s answer… a reinforcement of a hegemonic fascistic culture that attempts to destroy everything unlike itself using any tool it can as it creates its endless doom spiral towards nonexistence.

LADYKNIGHTHEBRAVE INTERVIEW - Jessie -They want the plausible deniability. And it's sometimes hard for talking about these things on my end, where it's just like trying to make that connection because the way that I usually find that people talk about the connection between like anti-trans and gender critical narratives and, you know, fascism, antisemitism is they'll be like, Hey, look, this person is in proximity to a Nazi. And I'm like, No, the whole ideology is propping that up. And it's not just like they're there. It's not just they're they're next to a Nazi, is that they are upholding the same ideals.

LADYKNIGHT -Yeah. And the fact is there are a lot of people who hate Jews who aren't Nazis, like Nazis hate Jews, but unfortunately, they don't own the real estate. Yeah, many, many people don't like Jews and many people like to participate in conspiracy theories. There are a lot of left conspiracy theories about Jews secretly, you know, I think there are people the Jews started coronavirus… it's like the difference between saying someone's a fascist and saying someone's a Nazi. Someone can be a Nazi and a fascist, but sometimes people are just fascists. People love to call Jewish people Nazis, and I would like them to not do that. Since it is a movement that was devoted to murdering us… I don't think every anti trans person is automatically like a Nazi or an anti-Semite because again, as you've discussed, there is a pipeline. So I think there are people at different levels of it… There are people who were all the way fucking bought it, like Alex Jones. Fuck him… But yeah, there are there are people who are at levels of it, like Ben Shapiro. He is Jewish, though. He's also people have said shit about him and he said shit that contributes. And it's so complicated that like there are Jewish people participating in the anti trans movement, right?

JESSIE - People tend to think of the pipeline that ends on anti-Semitism. That's the end of the line. Oh, we're at anti-Semitism. That's very overtly terrible. But the pipeline doesn’t lead directly there. It's a big stew that people sort of sift around in that just tries to buy people in wherever it can. And anti-semitism is in that stew, but it isn’t required in order to support a hierarchy or facism. But it always comes together.

LADYKNIGHT - It's like, okay, we got anti-trans stuff that'll connect to all these other things because a lot of people are single issue. There are some elements of orthodoxy that can be pretty gendered and pretty like women are supposed to do this and men are supposed to do this. And you sit on separate sides of the synagogue like there's a men's side and the women's side and trans people, if you are that type of orthodox, could spark up your whole system. So like it's there's a lot of levels to how a Jewish person could get bought into this stuff, either on the gender stuff or because a lot of right wingers are like, we're super pro-Israel. They're not. But they just want a place to stick all the Jews… It's messy, but a lot of times, I think Jewish people get caught up in it because of being kind of a single-issue voter, as it were.

Its important to recognize that how anti-trans views lead to facism, but to recognize that facism is NOT just having Nazis or anti-semites nearby you. For example, many trying to link gender crtiical feminsim will point to anti-semities coming in support of gender critical feminists to argue that they are facistics, such as how Neo-Nazi in New Zealand came to support Kellie Jay-Keen Minshull, how Jennifer Bilek sends her supporters to a Neo-Nazi in her works, or how JK Rowling supports both Kellie Jay-Keen Minshull but also supported YouTuber Magdaline Burns in her anti trans manifesto, a woman who also spread anti-semetic conspiracy theories before she passed away. Yet, while this is an EXCELLENT way to clearly see how these things are linked, many anti-trans bigots like Rowling, Minshull or Bilek will always try to have plausible deniablity by saying, well we don’t say those things. [MINSHULL CLIP]. Yet, it doesn’t matter, as your rhetoric around trans people is itself facisitic and based in the same ideals of eugenics, control, and capitalism. We just recongize fascism in Neo-Nazis because of how recognizable it is there.

Yet this contradictory messiness is the point. As Jean-Paul Sartre said about antisemitism, it applies equally as well to fascism and anti-trans hate as it is a system that all interconnects:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous and open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

The goal of all of this is to make an emotional appeal, not a factual one; my debunking this whole video will ultimately not convince anyone wrapped up in the story. I’m a trans woman - seen as inherently malicious, mischievous, a liar trying to take children away from you. It does not matter all the proof I can show you that I’m just a weird Trekkie dork who has too much time on my hands making YouTube videos; I’m seen as an inherently malicious corruptive force trying to hurt small children, especially young girls. This mindset infects all of Western culture, even those who are trans-supportive. I can’t tell you the number of times in recent months where, even in spaces where they say they’re trans supportive, I expressly have been framed, even by other trans women, as manipulative, a secret hand behind the scenes either being controlled or controlling people of color for my agendas, when I’m an abusive animal abuser trying to hurt others because of stuff I did as a seven-year-old. Some earnest people believe this and sent me emails telling me they believe me to be malicious… people who are supposedly trans-supportive.

The gender-critical pipeline appeals to those who do not find themselves in a community with diverse groups of people, not just queer folks - It creates a narrative that plays into the fears of the friendly capital L liberal parents who just want to care about queer people and trans people but is scared about all this new terminology that they’ve never heard of and just seems like it’s coming from nowhere trying to press itself upon their child.

Helen Joyce likes to pretend she’s helping and cares about trans people, but she doesn’t. None of this narrative cares about anyone but the system itself, the money it makes, and the hate it continually funnels. It told me that in an interview with the director of Gender Transformations, Tobias Elvhage, he was asked if he saw this film as still caring about trans people, just expressing concerns…  a question he actively avoided answering.

[clip]

This showcases all of the intention. While viewers think this is meant to be a caring documentary, it is not. This is not about concern for the children, and it is not about trying to protect kids. It is about trying to defend one place in a hierarchy. It is why, no matter where you buy it, it's upholding the hierarchical status quo by pretending it's under assault when it's the one doing the assaulting to keep people in line. It is why it always creates the most overt bigots like Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull, who the wonderful YouTube Shaun did a profile on, who overtly calls for the deaths of trans people, or Matt Walsh, who pretends to have plausible deniability as he insights harassment and targeting of transgender people. And people like Helen Joyce like to clutch their pearls and say they aren’t contributing, that that is too far… when it's just the natural extension of what they are contributing to.

All of this is violence. It is hard to recognize that sometimes. We talk about it clinically, digging down into the facts and statements. It becomes cold, even as we speak about how emotions are manipulated. But these narratives have a price.

This ultimately leads to my final point. In these endless fights against anti-trans movements, we often forget three important vital things.

The struggle for trans liberation is not an isolated fight for trans people alone but just one front in a battle against a system that tries to oppress us all. We are not alone… we need to reach for each other in this fight because it's a fight we all face together. A fight for trans liberation must come coupled with solidarity with Jewish, Black, Brown, Asian, Queer and so many other communities. The effect of these narratives is to kill transgender people, but that is not its only goal. It’s an effort to create a fascistic system built off a death cycle that will constantly find the next group to target to fuel its endless thirst for destruction to create a supposedly utopian world that can never exist because human beings are always different from each other. Fascism only seeks to make everyone the same.

That recognition is necessary for the second point - how we individualize the problem. You probably clicked on this video because it sold itself as a takedown of a single film. To this day, my most extensive videos on this channel are on Matt Walsh or JK Rowling because they are figures; it's easy for us to point to say, “Hey, they are the problem.” And while I love the works of Shaun and others, they often focus on anti-trans hate as the product of singular groups or individuals. And that is easy to sell in spaces like ours. I feel it, too; it's why I sold this video about GENDER TRANSFORMATIONS when it’s about so much more. It makes the idea of fighting back feel achievable on our own. If we take these specific people down, then we can beat this anti-trans hate… but it won’t be. They are but products of the system that will continue to make more people like them.

This is also why it’s essential to not just point at Nazis standing nearby gender-critical feminists or anti-trans people to say, “Hey look, anti-trans narratives are fascistic,” as most anti-trans proponents will denounce said Nazis to make themselves look good, like Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull does or Jennifer Bilek does. It’s easy to denounce overt Nazis… but as I hope I showed, it’s a whole damn narrative that is fascistic to its core. It's not just that they associate with Nazis, what they argue for inherently leads to the same ends, whether they know it or not, and more of them know it than they want to admit, and a lot more of them are trying to manipulate others into falling into it with them. It is an intentional machine constantly incentivizing the manipulation of fear-based emotions for their ends that machines on, no matter how many hydra heads you cut off, as more will grow back. And that… is a scary monster to fight.

This video often felt imposing to write. I had a ton of breakdowns, feeling I couldn’t tackle it all… because I can’t. There is too much to talk about, too much to say. I felt like I couldn’t handle it all because whenever I started to write one thing, I realized it was interconnecting with 20 other things I needed to explain. And that’s the purpose of this. It's intentionally made to feel eldritch, byzantine, overwhelming… like you are alone. Which we aren’t…. We have others in solidarity with us… but we must recognize that we must make something new… not continually focus on fighting them on their terms.

Coupled with that is something that I'm constantly learning as a white trans woman - the awareness that to fight anti-trans bigotry, my work has to come alongside trying to point toward other identities that intersect with this fight, as well as talk about whiteness as a construct that we need to try to fight back against, while also understand that I sit within a place that benefits from it. I can never fully encompass or speak to the entirety of this fight because, in many ways, while I am a victim, I am not the primary target. We are all victims of a system that places us at different levels within its ranks and tells us to fight those next to, above, and below us, fearing them constantly instead of seeing solidarity between us. Whiteness, as a construct, is but one way these systems have generated a hierarchy for us to view ourselves as different and or better through, and thus needing to be protected at all costs, both through violence to kill or control those who are not like us and through a eugenics desire to propagate whiteness further. Everyone is then placed into a framing that either justifies their control, views them for breeding, or needs to be eliminated as a threat to whiteness. And working to recognize that is the PRIMARY obstacle in our ability to defeat anti-trans hate.

FINN INTERVIEW: Yeah, it's using how far your voice projects so that you can create a space to shut up promptly. Make that space, and then shut up.  And I think that what you just said there about like, like white people unpacking whiteness. When white people and the left in general, regardless of race, starts unpacking what whiteness is and what it does - fascists are in trouble. The right then is in a lot of trouble.

Finally, the way to create something new is through empathy. All of these anxieties that fascism fuels itself upon stem from creating hierarchies and making people fear losing that position… so our goal should be to work to eliminate ways we view each other as better or worse, and we do that through understanding that we are all, each of us, different and beautiful. This fight requires us to look around us, see those different from us, and take delight and love that which is not ourselves. Fascism thrives on only loving what it sees in the mirror and trying to press that mirror onto the world. Hope and love thrive on seeing humanity reflected at us, not in the mirror, but in those around us whom we can love because they are beautifully different. From that… hate cannot survive.

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https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/09/19/our-voices-can-no-longer-be-denied-says-detransitioner-in-new-documentary/