In this exclusive interview, Jon analyzes his own blind spots and complains that fringe candidates are becoming the face of the Democratic Party, further alienating voters outside of deeply-blue, highly-educated, liberal urban bubbles. He is a vocal critic of the socialist DSA wing and candidates like Graham Platner.

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Jon agrees that identity politics have been a disaster for both parties. Republicans lose when they pander to Black voters and win when they are just normal Republicans who serve Black constituents well. Democrats on the other hand have slowly lost Black men by pandering to anti-police activism.

Then I asked Jon to analyze the party’s adherence to gender ideology, and we found our point of disagreement. He has not been radicalized on the issue (‘peak trans’). He still believes that “actual transgender people” need special rights. And like many Democrats, he discounts the valence of social issues at election-time.

However, Jon acknowledged that, like unrestricted immigration or consumer inflation, gender ideology can have deleterious long-term effects on the Democratic coalition that are hard to see in polling data. He admits that Democrats have a hard time being normal — and he is pessimistic about the future of the party.

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Jon’s X account is here.

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Oregon’s Intermountain Education Service District fired social worker Roderick E. Theis II in November 2023 for the crime of displaying the books He is He, She is She, and Johnny the Walrus in his La Grande Middle School office. Last week, a divided federal appeals court ruled that Theis was not protected by the First Amendment when he showed the books to students who asked to see them.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke noted the majority ruling is “irreconcilable with Supreme Court precedent.” Other school system employees have been allowed to display contentious symbols, such as Pride flags. A “free and open American society appropriately recoils at the prospect of public school teachers becoming involuntarily conscripted apparatchiks of any administration’s particular orthodoxy”, VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote.

The two-judge majority, which was appointed by Presidents Obama and Biden, ruled that a lower court judge had “acted appropriately ‘given the robust body of precedent holding that educators speak as government employees when they convey messages to students within the four walls of a school.’” A single staff member had complained that the books were “transphobic”.

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Despite the indoctrination of the federal judiciary that is evident in the 9th Circuit ruling, the original judge in the case made a ruling that is entirely consistent with the gender-affirming character of the state government and its constituent school systems. Oregon has systematically inscribed politics on the bodies of children for over a decade, overriding parental rights at the slightest sign of resistance to medicalization.

Social pressure against the non-affirming parent would be bad enough without state pressure. Oregon is now the leading state in sex rejection medicalization of young people because the state adopted ‘affirmation’ as official policy in 2014 when the Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC) decided to cover sex rejection for adults and minors under the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid).

HERC based this decision on the 2012 ‘Standards of Care’ published by WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries are all considered “medically necessary” in Oregon because WPATH says so. This alleged necessity has empowered children to circumvent or overcome parental guidance at scale.

The numbers are telling. “According to a new study published in Research Connections, at age 17, roughly 1 in every 240 girls and 1 in every 630 boys in Oregon received cross-sex hormones for “gender dysphoria” between 2016 and 2023”, Leor Sapir and Paul Terdal recently revealed.

“These figures are triple and double the national average for girls and boys, respectively.” The children subject to indoctrination the longest are the most at-risk, in Oregon. “For younger children the disparity is even greater: Cross-sex hormone use in the study was four to five times the national rate among 14- and 15-year-olds, and puberty-blocker use was more than five times the national rate at age 14.”

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Gill’s enemy is the intersectional oppression hierarchy. He is adept at twisting its administrators into pretzels with leftist logic.

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Rep. Gill started with an examination on the subject of ‘implicit bias’, which the ABA website exists in all of us like original sin. Gill challenged Behnke to name her implicit biases. She filibustered instead. Then he switched topics.

“Do you think it’s important that the next Supreme Court justice be transgender?” Gill asked. Then, over Behnke’s filibustering, he continued to ask questions over her.

“Have transgenders been included on the US Supreme Court?” Gill asked, establishing that in fact not one of the 116 justices in the history of the Court has been transgender.

“Do you think that it’s a problem the transgender community has never had representation on the Supreme Court?” he asked.

“I’m asking you about diversity, equity, and inclusion”, he said over her boilerplate non-responses. “I’m asking you about the transgender community. You’re refusing to answer my question.”

Finally: “You’re not answering in a straightforward way. Is it because of your own implicit bias? Do you have implicit transphobia?” Cue the rimshot.

Implicit transphobia is a pathologizing term that plays to the behavioral demands of transgender ideology. Failure to use pronouns in your email signature is implicit transphobia. Women’s shelters that exclude men are guilty of implicit transphobia.

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham took questions about her ‘implicit transphobia’ yesterday. Reporters wanted to know what she really meant when she said she supports fair and safe sports for girls.

Was it implicit transphobia? “I said what I said”, she replied.

Ms. Cunningham was asked to accept responsibility for any “targeting” of the world’s most marginalized community. Isn’t it possible that she has somehow implied the transes should be targeted? “I don’t dislike anyone”, she replied. “I think there’s room for everyone here.”

She maintained that “biological women” have “rights to be protected”. She stood on her “morals” and “beliefs” without apology. “Never once said that I hated the trans community”, Cunningham concluded.

This is what ‘implied transphobia’ always meant. The new thing in the world is that Sophie Cunningham is not afraid to stick to her guns and the attempted mob crucifixion is not leaving Bluesky, so far.

Is the tide turning? Is the spell breaking? Something has changed. Here is David Remnick of The New Yorker sparring with 2028 Democratic hopeful Rahm Emanuel. Remnick tried to hold the former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor accountable for soft support of transgender “rights”.

Emanuel maintained that “bathrooms” are a distraction from the crisis in American public education. “Our reading and math scores are in the tank,” he said. “50 percent of our kids cannot read or do math at grade level. And we’re gonna talk about bathroom access?”

Remnick pushed back. Why can’t the transes have their demands met immediately, he asked? After all, there were “other groups that didn’t have their rights” that were told to wait, before, and that was unjust.

Thus the desire of autogynephilic men to be in women’s restrooms perfectly compares to Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail”, according to David Remnick, who speaks for our betters in American society.

Rahm Emanuel would not let the discussion “distract” him from reading scores, math skills, or graduation rates. He has signed a ‘bathroom bill’ into law, so like Remnick, he is quite willing to support the agenda now, and in the future.

Unlike Remnick, however, Emanuel wants to win elections more than he wants to let the curious boys into the girls’ restroom at school right away. He understands that moral scolding from New Yorker columnists has no resonance with most voters.

People who are not very-online, who prefer sports to social elitist struggle sessions among the Elect, are just not into trans rights like the Democratic Party is. Emanuel is unlikely to be the party nominee, but he is being allowed to speak heresy.

Conversational dams are breaking and dialectical tides are turning. The vibe shift is real. That does not mean this particular culture war is over. We are far from finished. A long-delayed conversation has finally begun.

Fully a decade after ‘no debate’ took command of the dialogue, the silence is breaking. Let freedom ring.

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You can find Gerald Posner’s X account here.

His books are available at this Amazon link.

Here is his Substack.

Just the Facts with Gerald Posner

News and fact-driven analysis from a bestselling author and award-winning investigative reporter the Chicago Tribune described as “a merciless pit bull of an investigator.”

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Everyone can stop talking about ‘gender dysphoria’ now. The term is largely irrelevant to questions about kids and puberty blockers and hormones, anymore, because hardly anyone is actually billing for coverage under that diagnosis.

For example, Texas Children’s Hospital recently settled litigation with the Department of Justice that alleged billing fraud for pediatric sex rejection medicalization in the amount of $10 million.

However, a database maintained by Stop the Harm indicates that Texas Children’s only billed $11,000 over five years to ‘treat’ gender dysphoria.

Instead of billing for the diagnosis found in DSM-V, the standard diagnostic reference published by the American Psychiatric Association, Texas Children’s submitted false claims for nonexistent endocrine disorders.

Damages are tripled under the False Claims Act. For every dollar in claims the hospital submitted for medicalized treatments for gender dysphoria, they submitted approximately $300 in fraudulent claims for ‘endocrine disorders’.

This is not happening at just a few facilities.

Medical watchdog Do No Harm found just 22 annual insurance claims for puberty blockers or hormones for minors from 2019-2023 at the Children’s Hospital Colorado’s TRUE Center for Gender Diversity.

In court testimony, on the other hand, the TRUE Center admits treating 1,140 patients under 18 in 2025 alone.

Fraud explains the entire difference. Children’s Hospital Colorado, Texas Children’s Hospital, and the Cleveland Clinic have all settled with the Department of Justice over charges of submitting false insurance codes in pediatric sex rejection cases. Similar cases are playing out elsewhere.

This is what the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, WPATH, actively advised clinicians to do. As a result, the entire industry of sex rejection medicalization is almost certainly completely rife with potential fraud claims awaiting slam-dunk prosecutions based on black-letter law.

Arguments about transgender identification become moot under the federal False Claims Act. WPATH allegedly told American sex rejection providers to break the law, and they did.

This was not like leaving an exhaust port on the Death Star. This is like leaving a big, fat bullseye on a Death Star exhaust port that is a mile wide. This was hubris by an activist organization pretending to do scientific medicine when what they were really doing was fraud, all along.

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This was happening from the start.

WPATH exists at all because gender doctors wanted insurance coverage for their patients. As attested by internal documents from the organization, there was never a preliminary scientific evidential stage to anything they have ever done. WPATH is an industry advocacy organization.

The WPATH organization expanded their patient pool to include children in 2008. To justify the change, WPATH declared it was “medically necessary” for children to realize their “embodiment goals” as future adults, so that they would be happier as adults.

This exactly mirrored the approach of the so-called Dutch protocol developed by Peggy-Cohen-Kettenis and Louis Gooren. Altogether, during the 1990s, 12 of 105 adult male patients in their vaginoplasty program committed suicide, while a staggering 70 percent were lost to follow-up.

The clinicians still presented their findings in a positive light, saying that because so many patients had declared they were satisfied immediately after the procedure, the results were good, actually. Regret never registered on their scales.

Rather than stop and think, Gooren and Cohen-Kettenis reasoned that if they started earlier, in pre-pubertal males, the cosmetic results would be more pleasing. The unhappy boys would be a happier as transgender ‘women’, they said, because they would be more pleasing ‘women’ in the eyes of adult men.

While the industry peddled sex rejection as ‘giving kids time to think’, the actual results of puberty blockade were a fast track to medicalization with cross-sex hormones and surgeries.

In the years to come, parents across the western world were extorted with the imminent suicide of their children unless drastic endocrine disruption began immediately.

There was never an evidence basis for this claim. It is instead the rationalization of Gooren and Cohen-Kettenis for the world’s first experiment in blockading nonprecocious puberty. It remains the official justification for following WPATH guidelines to medicalize a sex-rejecting child.

Questions about brain development, body development, sexual development, and the ability of a minor child to effectively consent to future iatrogenic health effects were pushed aside at every stage.

The medical-scientific world pretended that everything it knew about the evolved human life-cycle had been disproven by ‘ settled science’.

In the United States, however, there was an important snag in health care coverage. WPATH found that insurers were never suspicious about ‘endocrine disorders’, whereas gender dysphoria diagnoses required lots of paperwork.

Being careful did not pay. Getting paid was easier if they just lied, so WPATH did, and told providers to do it. This put them on the wrong side of the law years ago. Such petty concerns were easily swept aside by the urgency of turning boys into better-looking women, so they would not take their own lives, later.

Activists in lab coats invented the ‘trans kids’.

Dr. Norman Spack, the man who brought pediatric sex rejection medicalization to the United States from the Netherlands, gave a TED Talk in 2014 that ought to have raised red flags. Instead, it was celebrated at the time.

Spack presented Jackie Green, transgendered son of former Mermaids CEO Susie Green, as a case study. Spack crowed about his decision to start Jackie on estrogen early, to fuse his growth plates faster, so that “she” would not be over six feet tall.

In this video, Spack wants us to focus on Jackie Green’s “normal breast size.” He shows a photo of Jackie in a beauty pageant representing Mermaids. Spack is similarly effusive about twin boys, ‘Nicole’ and Jonas, that diverge in appearance thanks to his endocrine interventions.

My dissection of the Spack TED talk video is the highest-performing post in the history of The Distance. It is preserved here for the historical record as well as the potential criminal and civil court record.

The evident satisfaction that Dr. Spack takes in achieving adult “embodiment goals” by altering the body of a minor child to fit the sexual tastes of adult men in the future is disturbing.

He thinks of himself as a good person, of course. Spack does not live with the damage, years later. None of them do, these gender quacks.

Jonni Skinner, who appeared in a podcast for The Distance earlier this week, had the same early hormonal interventions as Jackie Green. His puberty was blocked at 13 and his bone growth plates were locked at 14.

Just like Dr. Spack, they said it would make him better able to attract a husband.

Today, Jonni Skinner is a young gay man trapped in a boy’s body, unable to have a fulfilling adult relationship with anyone. He is anorgasmic despite being in his 20s.

Jonni’s ‘care’ was charged to his insurance coverage as an endocrine disorder, even though he was dysphoric.

Curing dysphoria was never the point. Meeting embodiment goals was always the point. It was impressed on him from the beginning of his medicalizeed sex rejection.

Doctors made Jonni “very distressed about my height”, he tells The Distance in a recent exclusive podcast interview.

One of them went out of his way to convince Jonni that he needed his growth plates locked. “I remember him specifically pulling up a chair because he was very short. He pulled up a chair and climbed in the chair to measure me just to make me feel like I was freakishly tall.”

“And it worked because I was 14.” Jonni had normal adolescent anxieties on top of other issues. “Being made to feel like I was so much taller than a grown man” was “very distressing for me.”

In another twisted turn, the boom in pediatric sex rejection medicalization saw a complete demographic flip. Today, girls are medicalized at a far higher rate than boys, with serious long-term health implications.

Jonni was the intended target of the Dutch protocol and WPATH standards. He does not expect personal justice, sadly, but the justice system is moving, and its wheels grind exceedingly fine. A reckoning is here.

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He is running to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic Party nominee for the state’s US Senate seat currently held by Republican Susan Collins. He put himself forward and stands above the rest, literally. He is actually the tallest of the candidates on the News Center Maine “Voice the Voter” debate stage.

I genuinely hope that Maine Democrats see fit to make this man their nominee. “I’m just an angry citizen now, and if I got elected, I’d be an angry Senator”, he says, which describes the current-day Democratic Party at large. I believe in representation, you see. Democrats are uniformly supportive of all things transgender. Surely if this man can identify as a woman, he can identify as a Senator, too.

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Webb claims to be intersex as well as transgender. I don’t believe him. I also don’t believe Democrats when they say they really believe this man is a woman. They know he is not. Lying about that is required to be a Democrat, however, which means the party is already seen as Ashley Webb by half the country. He might as well be its national face, at this point. And let’s be honest, if it was this guy or Susan Collins, the Democrats of Maine would vote for this guy.

Webb would make a perfect Democratic nominee for anything, mumu dress and all. He is what every Democrat looks like when they talk about the totalizing demands of gender identity as if they were an objective moral good. “What’s going on with ICE?” he asks. Viewers wonder what is going on with his evident boundary issues. Perfect. 10/10, no notes.

Webb has two albums titled Out Of The Closet: Killing Them Softly With Her Vibes and Out Of The Closet: Rage Against The System. A brief pass through his YouTube channel reveals an AI “assisted” songwriter working in eclectic styles to produce pedantic lyrics in voices that are clearly not his own.

Something else is unsettling about Webb. It’s not the lazy eye, but the vacancy in his eyes. Looking at him makes me think of James Shupe, the world’s first ‘nonbinary’ person, who took his own life after a long battle with autogynephilia. Shupe did not belong in women’s restrooms, and neither does Webb.

Paige Ashley Loud, the actual woman standing second from the left on the debate stage, is a social worker with a master’s degree from the University of Maine. She emphasizes affordable housing, universal healthcare, food access, and support for working families as well as rural communities. A member of the Cherokee Nation, a renter, and a first-generation college graduate, Loud is the perfect intersectional candidate.

Democrats were disappointed that Graham Platner turned out to be a rapey sort of guy. They have a chance to redeem themselves by running a woman. Ashley Webb, however, is the superior ‘woman’ because he has had to ‘become’ a woman rather than being born female, like Paige Loud, who has cisprivilege. This is how transgender ideology works, Maine Democrats. I don’t make the rules.

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Jonni Skinner’s X account is here.

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A venerable human rights organization that has beclowned itself in gender madness has offered to become an object lesson in how human rights actually work.

Amnesty International UK, which used to complain about regimes torturing and murdering dissidents, issued a report last week on the growing threat of an “ anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people in the UK”.

A theme emerges in this document. “Over 60% of the organisations mapped have emerged since 2017, the vast majority gender critical organisations.”

Indeed, the counter-movement to gender ideology has only existed since the overweening and totalizing demands of gender identity law and policy have been imposed on western societies by their elites.

Effect, meet Cause; Cause, this is Effect. Introductions are over.

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Amnesty International withdrew the report from publication nearly the same day they published it. Over the weekend, gender critical organizers issued legal letters demanding explanations, apologies, retractions, and meetings. Both Amnesty and their gender critical campaigner targets are government-registered charities. This will get very British, very complicated, and take time to sort out.

The report is misleading throughout. Sex Matters, Genspect, and Gay Men’s Network are part of a vast right wing conspiracy of “formal and informal groups, individuals, private and state actors whose aim is to restrict human rights by undermining human rights protections in law and practice”. There is deliberate confusion and conflation from the beginning.

Some of these groups describe themselves as ‘anti-gender’ because they visibly oppose the rights and equality of women and LGBT+ people. However, by targeting women and LGBT+ people, they also challenge a fundamental human rights principle: that human rights belong to everyone equally. Human rights are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. When the rights of one group are restricted, protections for others can also be weakened, even where the effects are not immediately visible.

Only men can be ‘trans women’. Because ‘trans women are women’, however, opposing men in women’s change rooms, rape shelters, and sports is ‘anti-women’, which makes For Women Scotland anti-women’s rights. See how that works?

Let us do the math here: these anti-rights groups are “targeting women and LGBT+ people”, which makes the transgenders and the mysterious plus sign just two of six total identity categories supposedly targeted by this anti-rights campaign.

Imagine your creepy male neighbor and a man in a dress standing behind three homosexuals and a woman. Now imagine the two of them say they speak for this entire group, which is your neighborhood Homeowners Association.

Now imagine that they claim to have newly-minted rights that apply to your fence, your home security alarm system, your workout, your bathroom, and your children. If you oppose their demands, then you are at least a bigot, probably a criminal.

This is ‘trans rights’. The pushback was ordained in the undemocratic way these unpopular ‘rights’ were impressed on the British people in the first place, through political fiat, without a debate, much less a popular vote.

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Allison Howlett, a 36-year-old man, was arrested last weekend before he could carry out a threatened mass shooting.

When police encountered Howlett on 27 June in the parking garage of the Sunset Station casino, he reportedly refused to exit the vehicle on command.

Police used his request for a drink of water to grab the transgender-identified male through the open car window and arrest him.

Howlett was charged with terroristic threats, assault with a deadly weapon, auto theft, gun theft and other offenses.

Howlett allegedly stole a vehicle belonging to his partner, a gun seller named Julie Howlett, while it was loaded with firearms prepared for sale.

Police found Howlett blasting music in the car while sitting on a handgun. An MP5 submachine gun was in the back seat. Altogether, 24 guns were found in the car along with ammunition.

Another 30 firearms were found in the home the couple shared. Julie Howlett says the guns all belong to her.

Judge Barbara Schifalacqua set bail for Howlett at $500,000 in a hearing last Wednesday.

Howlett is listed as a male in the Clark County, Nevada Detention Center because he has intact genitalia. However, news outlets are using female pronouns and refer to Howlett as a “woman.”

At The New York Post, reporter Ben Chapman writes that “investigators are still searching for a motive.”

According to a statement by his partner, though, Howlett had “made numerous threats to commit mass shootings when [he] would get angry between January 2024 and January 2025”.

Howlett’s behavior “normalized” until he “began to act erratically again” on 21 June, six days before the incident. Here is video coverage of the news story that uses female pronouns for Mr. Howlett.

Yesterday was the third day of the preliminary hearing for Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk. Prosecutors presented evidence of probable cause to the court, a procedural step in criminal cases.

Agent Brian Davis of the Utah State Bureau of Investigation testified that Robinson turned himself in for the murder. He also described the search of Robinson’s home, which he shared with his transgender lover Lance Twiggs, as well as the Robinson family home.

Most of the court’s time yesterday afternoon was spent on legal wrangling over an interview video of Twiggs. A redacted version of the video will be aired in court today.

Twiggs, who has received full immunity, is expected to confirm that Robinson confessed to killing Kirk over transgender politics. Kirk was shot right after saying the word “transgender”.

Twiggs is described as Robinson’s roommate and romantic partner, a “male transitioning to female”, but every press outlet I have seen so far uses masculine pronouns for Twiggs.

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According to the Colorado state All Payer Claims Database, the number of minors who received sex rejection services increased fifteen times over between 2016 and 2021.

Colorado was the first American state to require insurance companies cover “gender affirming care” in a 2021 decision by the state’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Colorado Democrats passed legislation in 2025 to make it law.

However, a discrepancy emerges in the billing codes.

Medical watchdog Do No Harm has found just 22 annual insurance claims for puberty blockers or hormones for minors from 2019-2023 at the Children’s Hospital Colorado’s TRUE Center for Gender Diversity.

This was enough for DNH to put the facility on their “Dirty Dozen” list. In court testimony, on the other hand, the TRUE Center admits treating 1,140 patients under 18 in 2025 alone, down from 1,203 patients in 2024.

Fraud explains the difference. Both Texas Children’s Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic have settled with the Department of Justice over charges of submitting false insurance codes in pediatric sex rejection cases.

As the Federal Trade Commission has charged in new litigation against WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health specifically encouraged this illegal activity.

A mental disorder, ‘gender dysphoria’, was treated as an ‘endocrine disorder’. I first encountered progressive activists discussing this form of fraud in 2018. It has been intrinsic to the practice of ‘gender medicine’ in kids.

Children’s Hospital suspended the ‘treatments’ in January 2026. The Colorado supreme court ruled 5-2 that the hospital must resume the “medically necessary” chemical castration of children, but doctors have refused, citing concerns they could be criminally charged.

Outsports, a website that cheers for men in women’s sports, has a list of “over two dozen out trans women who have won national or international competitions”.

“Off the top of my head I could name several trans athletes who had won major championships”, Cyd Zeigler writes. “And some digging has found over two dozen trans women (updated to May 2025) who have earned national or international victories.”

There are zero ‘trans men’ on the list, of course, because trans men are women, and women cannot compete at men’s sports. The sporting benefits of cross-sex identification accrue entirely to one of the two sexes, which is patent sexism.

Ziegler is undercounting. “There have been at least 160 men and boys pretending to be women and girls who have won state, national, or international titles in women's sports”, says HeCheated.org on X.

“If we include DSD males and other boys who do not identify as “trans,” that number jumps to over 220.”

If we add in boys and men who have won “female” regional and league championship titles, those numbers jump to at least:

360 “trans”-identified males and 547 males total who have won a major championship title.

These things that never happen, or hardly ever happen, that happen all the time, always manage to happen in only one direction.

Far from a ‘marginalized community’, transgenderism is a favored identity category that receives special considerations in every domain. Normal rules never apply to the transgender person, let alone the demands they make on systems and people.

Normal rules of evidence are not required to support the political claims of transgender activists. They are instead taken at face value, no matter how absurd the claim or how weak the evidence is.

The Labour government, for example, has “been accused of significantly overestimating the number of people falling victim to conversion therapy to justify banning the practice.”

Labour ministers made the hysterical claim that 75,000 to 93,000 people every year are subject to ‘conversion therapy’ in England and Wales. According to Baroness Cash, however, “the figure was based on a Stonewall survey that had also found that 10 per cent of LGBT people had undergone an exorcism, which would indicate 24,600 exorcisms occurred each year.”

The claim is “preposterous, incredible”, says the Baroness. Whereas the government has said that 10-15,000 people a year call an official anti-conversion therapy hotline, the charity that runs it can only highlight 195 cases in three years.

“Over a third of cases involved things that happened 5 or more years earlier”, Sex Matters.org explains on X. “Much of it was not abuse or else involved acts that are already illegal.”

“Many of the cases involve interpersonal relationships that cannot be subject to the law, especially if the individuals are adults.”

In a report on “the £360,000 helpline that didn’t ring”, Sex Matters found “not a single example of the historical practices involving electric shocks or aversion techniques that most people understand by ‘conversion therapy’.”

By contrast, of course, detransition never happens or hardly ever happens, which we know because nobody has ever measured it.

Things that never happen, happen all the time, in the magical world of gender identity, while things that happen all the time are not even happening at all.

Olivia Bailey, the minister for equalities, has clarified that the proposed Conversion Practices Bill would send parents to jail for “abuse” if they try to “change” their child’s “gender identity”, a thing that is not even happening.

The threshold for criminal charges for “abuse” are up to the purported victim. Was there “serious harm”, according to a child indoctrinated into the notion that the word ‘no’ is harmful?

I have read or heard dozens of stories about a family or parent’s experience with American child protective services over a declaration of gender identity from a minor child.

In every case, “serious harm” to the “mental or physical health” was defined down to absurdity. Words become supposed bullets, literally murdering children.

Suicide threats serve as evidence of “serious alarm and distress” that can tear a family apart forever. Taking the internet away from a child being groomed online has “a substantial adverse impact on their usual day-to-day activities”.

MP Bailey uses all of these same happy phrases when she talks about the “abuse” that her Conversion Practices Bill would punish through the usual processes.

Use the pronouns or go to jail, mom and dad. Stop being parents.

Use the pronouns or die, college speakers. Stop being right.

Ignore all the patent medical fraud, or else.

Cheer for the sports cheat, or else.

We have to do it all, otherwise some random ‘transwoman’ might explode in “her” anger, which will be righteous and justified because “she” is loving and gentle but lives in such a transphobic world. See? It’s your fault. You have to do better.

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Political scientist Ruy Teixeira has co-authored two books on the changing Democratic Party in the 21st century. He witnessed the wokening of progressive political spaces. He tried to help Democrats see reason, but they did not want to listen.

In this interview, Teixeira explains how political geography and a “shadow party” of ideological extremists have transformed the Democrats within, so that the party no longer connects with Americans outside of its own culture.

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Teha Delaruelle has been publicly repudiated by a Democratic Socialist running for Congress in Wisconsin after calling for a “trans jihad” against Republicans.

Delaruelle posted a selfie video in front of a whiteboard background reading “Kill Your Local Republican”. He wanted his social media followers to make mass murder of political opponents the “moderate position” in Wisconsin during July.

As if inspired by the end of Pridemadan, Delaruelle posted a second video calling for “trans jihad” throughout the month of July.

“It’s about making the oppressor, the bigots, the animals that make up MAGA, for example, right? So for decades, everyone else, all the marginalized, minorities, we’ve had to be the ones that walk down the streets with anxiety, with fear, but no, no more, no, no, no, no, no, no more, folks.”

In the recording, Delaruelle uses an image of a transgender flag with a Hamas-style rifle logo. He refers to Republicans as “animals” and “bigots” who must be kept in a state of permanent fear. Like Spartan helots, but with floggings for mispronouning someone.

Delaruelle, who identifies as transgender, had been a campaign volunteer for Katrina deVille, who is also transgender, in the Aug. 11 primary to run against MAGA Republican Rep. Tony Wied. DeVille has disowned Delaruelle and distanced the campaign from him.

“Reached by email Thursday morning, deVille said Delaruelle was a campaign volunteer for a [very short while] but was removed when it became apparent they were [deeply troubled,’ and later blocked from all of her accounts and pages ‘because they were actively creating a dangerous situation around my campaign’”, deVille said in a statement.

Delaruelle had echoed his called for “Trans Jihad” (capitalized) in a Substack post that described opposition to transgenderism as “genocide”. This “existential struggle” supposedly legitimates violence against political opposition.

“Society desires nothing less than our total extermination, therefore we must destroy their society. We must answer this call to a [sic] existential struggle, our jihad, our Trans Jihad.”

Police had reportedly tried to contact Delaruelle. Last night, he posted an hour-long TikTok stream in which he complained that his ‘community’ is leaving him to “get cooked” for saying things that they agree with in private. A clip:

In fact, Delaruelle belongs to a ‘community’ that does engage in symbolic and verbal abuse, as well as eliminationist language, towards its perceived or real opponents all the time. And thanks to the wave of gender medicalization in the last decade, there are more men like him than ever before.

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“Whatever your views on gender identity, and Americans hold strong, sincere views on all sides of this, I think most people agree that every human being in crisis deserves intervention before tragedy strikes,” retired FBI agent Jason Pack said in February after a man with transgender identity killed his ex-wife and son at a hockey game.

Pack stressed that individual behaviors, such as a history of violence or warning signs of violence, matter more than identity.

According to Pack, investigators often uncover missed opportunities for intervention: warning comments that went unreported, mental health contacts that weren’t followed up, family members unsure where to turn, or school flags that stalled inside bureaucratic systems.

Imagine an ideology that is designed to circumvent mental health screening, that has such social approval that families and teachers fear to speak up. That ideology exists; it is transgenderism.

What matters is not the demographic of ‘trans’, Pack said, “but what failed them and what failed the public before they ever picked up a weapon.” Coddled by a system that embraces their authentic selves, deeply narcissistic and violent men are set up to fail, and take us all down with them.

That does not describe every man who identifies as transgender. It describes the effect that social affirmation produces in men who are prone to violence. The ideology tells them they are endangered, therefore their violent impulses are justified.

The transgender Jonestown is a slow historical event because it is individuated, but we can already see it is real. Some men will act. Most will be like Delaruelle and merely speak of acting. More to the point, right now the impetus to such talk, and such actions, is strong because things are not going well in transgender world.

Supreme Court decisions are epistemic events in this ideology. If Becky Pepper-Jackson can’t be a ‘real girl’ on the track, or in the locker room, or the restroom, then transition becomes less attractive as an option for boys who feel like failures as boys.

The ‘social economy’ of transgenderism decreases in value according to the special rights conferred on this special class of special boys. Transgender activists oversold the world on ‘inclusion’, and now they cannot keep their promises.

Some young men with transgender identities are naturally going to act out as they perceive the loss of social status. The more medicalized they are, the more committed, and potentially violent, they will be.

“At 12 [Becky] started hormone replacement therapy, which brought about a typical female puberty”, Masha Gessen wrote in an op-ed responding to the Court decisions this week to let states ban boys from competing against girls.

That is an incredible sentence, meaning not credible. The fact Gessen wrote it, and The New York Times printed it, is an example of the deep ideological capture that prevails among America’s cultural elites, holding back the sensible conversation that we need to have about young men and a violent ideology.

People who demand that everyone pretend that imaginary things are real, and that we order society around those imaginary things, belong to two classes: the mentally ill, and the religious convert.

Transgenderism offers the hormone convert a jihad, as well as an umma, or community, that constantly affirms the delusion of ‘trans genocide’. Our institutions are captured by these ideas themselves, so we can hardly expect them to alert us to danger.

Wisconsin reportedly has a serious problem with ‘trantifa’ militants. I will keep an eye on the story of Teha Delaruelle.

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No, I will not be nice about this. We are many years past ‘nice’. Nor will I exhaust myself with scientific argument against unscientific arguments.

A boy demanded to compete against girls and pushed that demand all the way to the Supreme Court. Becky Pepper-Jackson thought that he was different from the other boys because of the way he feels about himself.

The girls had to put up with it. There was nothing nice about that. It was mean. A majority of the Court said ‘no’ to this unfair demand. I refuse to feel sorry for the poor tyke because he doesn’t get to beat the girls, anymore.

‘Becky’ is presented to me now as an angel-baby Aladdin-boy, stealing bread by cheating at sports to feed his starving glitter family. Reactions from the captured legacy media and Democrats have been shrill.

To rub salt in their sore wound, the Warren Court long ago set a tradition of ending their term — and releasing important decisions — right around the same day as the last day of the holy month of Pridemadan. Sacrilege!

It is all gaslighting, and I reject it. Angrily. Anger is a perfectly legitimate emotional reaction to this travesty of a fake civil rights movement, anymore. No, I will not be nice.

We tried ‘nice’. J.K. Rowling has been nothing but nice, yet somehow she was a literal Nazi the last seven years. Everyone who said ‘no’ to po’ widdle Becky, the vewy speshul boi, was a bigot, no matter how nicely they spoke. So I will not be nice.

According to opinion polls, a supermajority of Americans — and about half of Democratic voters — are all bigots because they disagree, however nicely, with the campaign to sell them on Becky.

Six of the nine justices are still terrible, no-good, racist fascist Nazi white supremacist cisheteropatriarchal bigots today for saying ‘no’ to Becky, who is soooo special.

Of course I am furious. No matter how nice, rational, judicious, and accommodating the ‘no’ is, it is always hate speech from a bigot.

Since this will always be the case, then the answer from now on cannot simply be ‘no’, but hell no to poor little Becky-boy. He is not special. His earnest desire to cheat girls out of their sports is not a reason to let him.

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‘Becky’ outthrew the nearest actual girl by two feet in this spring’s West Virginia state high school track and field shot put competition. He was allowed to get away with this while the Supreme Court considered his case.

It was supposedly justified because his puberty was blocked in Tanner Stage II, making him weaker than other boys. This does not in fact make him ‘weak like a girl’, however, because sex differences show up in athletic performance before Tanner Stage II.

Becky is not a girl. He is a stunted boy. The furious reactions are all fired by this one flame.

Chemical controversy

The Court considered two cases side by side, B.J.P. v West Virginia and Hecox v Little. Going back to the original complaint in the latter case, we find that puberty blockers were very much on the minds of the ACLU litigators. So was hormone ‘therapy’.

The existing Idaho school sports policy that allowed men to cheat at women’s NCAA sports after one year of hormone replacement, a regime that hardly removes the advantages of a male body shaped by testosterone, was preferable to the ACLU.

Policy capture through unaccountable, non-democratic, state bureaucratic and administrative entities is always preferable to any public debate, for the ACLU.

In both of these cases, the American Civil Liberties Union sought to establish endocrinal exceptions to the rule that males must compete in their own sex category.

The Court has rejected this argument. Puberty blockade does not transform a boy into a girl. Estrogen does not turn a man into a woman.

This explains the keening, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth today. The Supreme Court has declared that sex difference exists, and remains immutable, despite absurd arguments to the contrary.

This is a disaster, of course. If Becky is not a real girl, then he is just a stunted boy — a moral catastrophe, for the cult of the trans child.

Society was supposed to re-order itself around the salvation of this new, medically-created person. For society to refuse is unacceptable.

We are literally killing poor ‘Becky’ by not letting him cheat at sports. Literal murder! Literal genocide! These refrains have been used on me for a decade, so they mean nothing to me, anymore.

“Hecox and B.P.J. were biological males suing to strike down bans”, Gerald Posner explained on X in reaction to the decision.

“There was no plaintiff in either case arguing the opposite — that a state's choice to allow trans athletes violates the rights of female athletes, or that the Constitution affirmatively compels exclusion nationwide.”

Of all the cases nationwide, Posner says, Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools “is the furthest along and the one to watch closely”.

The case “has literally been on ice waiting for exactly the ruling that came down today”, which means that even blue states would be forced to comply with reality-based sporting categories if this Court decides the case.

Policy capture and consequences

Everyone who has been in this culture war trench for any length of time already knows what to expect as Soule, or a case like it, winds its way to the Court.

We will be told that Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith, and Ashley Nicolett, the litigants, are just hateful people who should have trained harder.

We will be told that Andraya Yearwood, whose puberty was blocked, and Terry Miller, who was on estrogen “treatment” for his gender dysphoria, are not boys at all, but “transgender girls”, a special kind of girl that is born in a boy’s body.

If Yearwood and Miller are not ‘affirmed’ in this belief, goes the argument — if they are not allowed to cheat girls out of their sports — then they not real girls, after all, but stunted boys.

That would be a moral catastrophe. To prevent it, Democrats will return to power and carry out their threats to impeach six justices, pack the court, and give puberty blockers to all the 6th graders.

It seems they will double-down on the ‘trans kids’, again and again, forever, no matter what. Sports is not separate from the larger project of ‘trans kids’, it is essential.

The advocates of sex rejection medicine in children will not be nice about this. Civility will not be reciprocated. Brutal honesty is required now because so many lies were told on the way to the Supreme Court, and Democrats will not stop telling lies to the end.

For now, a majority — on the Court, as well as the public — sees through those lies. If Democrats get their way, the lies will become law, and remain law wherever Democrats rule, no matter what the people think.

They have to be totalitarians about this issue because the alternative is a moral catastrophe for the left, for the media, for the people who were so progressive. They brought this moral catastrophe on America, now they whine about culture wars.

My empathy is exhausted. I will save it for the girls who are actually girls. They have been through enough, and now they have to go all the way to the Supreme Court. They deserved better, so I will not be nice.

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Three subjects of our previous reporting have released video of an altercation in a Seattle Park, framing themselves as victims of an unprovoked attack on detransitioners. The incident took place at a location that is famous for antifa organizing.

However, video evidence, timelines, and their own statements raise serious questions about provocation, suggesting they may have intended to document the event for public consumption and self-promotion.

Two of the individuals, Arianna Laureano and Erica ‘Hendrix’ Moise, are being described as “detransitioners” in coverage of the incident. Aside from electrolysis, neither individual has taken any legal or medical steps to reverse their cross-sex identification.

A third member of the group, Leta Boylan, was also present during the altercation. As The Distance explained in our original coverage of the ‘Cluster B Clique’ during March, all three individuals have been rejected by organizers in the detransition advocacy space due to their volatile behavior.

The Distance has previously reported on Mr. Laureano’s messages expressing his desire to harm a female detransitioner by “smash[ing] all of her fucking teeth on a curb”.

We have also reported on Ms. Moise’s role in a police report we assess was fabricated to harm the reputations of two actual detransitioners. We have additionally reported on Ms. Boylan’s “insane” pressure campaign on organizers using that smear.

We now assess the alleged assault in Cal Anderson Park during the evening of 24 June was likely orchestrated to garner social credit and media attention so that the trio could present themselves to the world as courageous opponents of medical transition.

However, Arianna Laureano, Erica ‘Hendrix’ Moise, and Leta Boylan are not the activists they pretend to be. Their actions in Seattle discredit detransition advocacy.

While there does seem to have been aggressive behavior by the crowd in the park, we assess that the Cluster B Clique intentionally provoked the physical response for a ‘viral video’, and that Moise was the first to get physical.

At least one of the three, possibly two, also carried pistols into the park, apparently anticipating a confrontation.

We detect embellishment in their post-incident reporting and public statements. “If it weren’t for the police showing up I would be very dead”, Moise has posted on X. We assess this is another of her overt exaggerations.

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The red hat trick

Mr. Laureano wore a red hat to the park with the words “MAKE COMMON SENSE GREAT AGAIN” printed on it. This hat is from the online merchandise shop of Brandi Kruse, host of the UnDivided podcast.

Mr. Laureano made sure to explain this connection to the police officer as he was giving a statement after the incident.

In fact, he managed to keep himself in frame the entire time without ever once capturing the face of any assailant.

We suggest that Laureano’s attention was on himself because his performance on camera was self-promotional.

The red hat appears to have worked as bait. An unnamed man allegedly took Mr. Laureano’s hat during the altercation. On the video, Laureano can be heard demanding the return of his hat.

Laureano’s video caught the attention of Brandi Kruse, which is what we assess he intended. She amplified the video, incorrectly referring to Laureano and Moise as “well-known detransitioners”.

Police arrested one man at the scene. That man reportedly told police he had smoked methamphetamine two hours before the incident. He was taken to the King County Jail on assault charges, but the booking was declined.

We might dismiss that as average policework in Seattle, a city where crime is basically legal at this point, if not for other discrepancies we discovered. We suspect the Seattle Police Department finds the whole affair as sketchy as we do.

We have what appears to be the 911 dispatch audio. “Apparently the victim here was in Cal Anderson taking pictures and videos from some sort of crime scene that happened in the park yesterday, right?” an officer explains at the 0:29.0 mark. “He was confronted by a group who demanded that he stop doing that.”

According to public records from Seattle PD, an aggravated assault case was investigated at 9:32 PM and the report was taken at 12:00 AM in the area of a Felafelville around the corner from Cal Anderson Park. (The website only shows reports for the previous 7 days, so check it out now).

Evidence of prior planning, preparation, and instigation

Mr. Laureano has stated that the trio was “peacefully” vaping on a bench together while he recorded a selfie video. In his selfie video, Laureano asks the other two individuals about a lighter, presumably to share a joint, which is legal in Seattle. They do not discuss a crime scene from the previous day.

Contrary to Laureano’s version of events, third-party video shows that Moise was acting aggressively as they sat on a bench. “I’m from Detroit, bitches! You guys are from nothing!” Moise yelled. This was moments before the first scuffle. It was not included in Mr. Laureano’s self-recorded video that Kruse amplified.

Ms. Moise was belligerent when the alleged assault transpired, and then the trio did not disclose the full context of the assault. Furthermore, video from other people at the scene shows that Moise was the aggressor.

We assess that this image below shows the trio just before the incident. Not only is Mr. Laureano wearing a red, “MAGA-style” hat, Ms. Moise is wearing an “OCCUPY MARS” shirt associated with Elon Musk. Ms. Boylan appears to be holding a sign or placard with Brian Griffin, the erudite dog from Family Guy. We understand that it had a message about LGB identities on it.

The obvious implication is that the Cluster B Clique was trying to have an altercation with transgender people or supporters that they could record for social media clout. We assess that two of the three traveled to Seattle on the day of the incident intending to visit Cal Anderson Park together that evening.

Boylan lives in Wisconsin. Moise lives in Michigan. Only Mr. Laureano lives in the Seattle area. Sources close to Boylan tell The Distance that she left for Washington state on Wednesday morning. Before she left, Boylan told her partner of ten years that she was going to appear at “an event”.

Not a conference, or a gathering, but “an event”.

Ms. Moise announced her plans to travel to Seattle and visit Mr. Laureano a month ago. On Tuesday, 23 June, the day before flying to Seattle, Ms. Moise posted on X that she was planning on “Pissing off trans people”. We note that Moise posted about her intentions with an airplane emoji, indicating that she was flying somewhere to carry out this provocation.

“It was wild. My very first day in Seattle”, Moise posted on X after the incident. We submit this timing was not a coincidence. Ms. Moise wanted to use the balance of her time in Seattle amplifying her own version of the incident.

We further assess that Laureano and possibly Boylan carried firearms in an effort to control the situation they were creating. Mr. Laureano has frequently mentioned his habit of carrying a firearm in Seattle and he has posted images of his gun whenever he feels threatened by someone telling the truth about him online. We used one of those images in our very first reporting on the Cluster B Clique:

Armed confrontation?

According to Mr. Laureano, the attack began with someone throwing water on him. This is reasonable, since there is a water feature close at hand.

In this video, however, we can clearly see that Ms. Moise escalated the physical altercation when she jumped off the bench to attack the long-haired individual in response to the water. Ms. Boylan responded only very slowly, whereas Mr. Laureano got up a few seconds later and stood by, watching. (The video jumps a bit because we have clipped it to keep the action continuously in-frame with this aspect ratio.)

Moments later, video shows Ms. Boylan choking the long-haired person from behind while they are grappling with Moise. In audio of this clip, someone, possibly Ms. Moise, is making a strange noise, a kind of “Wooo!” battle cry while this is happening. We assess that this video was likely recorded by the person in the orange shirt standing behind the bench.

After Moise breaks contact with the long-haired person, someone, possibly Moise, seems to yell “She has a gun!”, perhaps in order to de-escalate through escalation. (Credit to this person for the slowed-down video clip).

We assess from this next video that Ms. Moise continued to be the aggressor, and took a tumble face-first onto the concrete stairs in front of the Gatehouse. Moise’s eye injury may have taken place at this time. We have widened this video out from the version that was on social media in order to get a better view. Note that the man in the maroon pants, the one that Moise goes after and then misses, falling face-first, is the man who got arrested.

While this scuffle is going on, Laureano is already taunting people. He does not seem to fear for his life. Also, note that Ms. Boylan appears to reach under her skirt in the video above. As explained below, we assess she may have been furtively reaching for a pistol in a thigh holster.

A gap exists in the video coverage, so that we are missing what happened between two different scuffles. After the first altercation seen above, the trio apparently moved around the Gatehouse, from the southeastern side to the western side, where Mr. Laureano was knocked down in a second scrum.

In this video, Ms. Moise is on her feet defending Laureano, who is shouting “Leave me alone!” Moise appears to engage in a kicking contest with the long-haired individual with whom Boylan was wrestling earlier.

Ms. Boylan was then recorded holding what appears to be a pistol. On X, Moise has claimed “That’s a phone” in Ms. Boylan’s hand, but it sure looks like a gun on the video. If true, she might have risked committing a gross misdemeanor, here, because she was in no immediate danger that we can see.

We have slowed down this video clip to 1/4 speed. We observe Ms. Boylan reaching under her skirt for what appears to possibly be a handgun. The video is from a local LGBTQ+ activist Instagram channel. We assess that if it was a gun, then her earlier furtive gesture, reaching under her skirt, was an act of armed indecision during the first scrum.

Of course, we could be wrong, and Boylan was perhaps really holding a camera in this clip. However, while we are aware of commercial thigh holsters for handguns, they are unusual for cameras.

A witness reported seeing a magazine containing hollow point bullets. Mr. Laureano has admitted carrying such ammunition as well. We see nothing unusual about that in itself. Hollow point rounds are entirely normal in concealed carry. (Ms. Boylan may have erred by forgetting how the ‘concealed’ part works.)

The unusual part is that at least one, possibly two of these three people appear to have possibly brought guns to an event where they apparently intended to provoke, or at least risk, physical confrontations that they could record on camera for social media likes and shares.

According to the “community” in question, both Boylan and Moise were “grabbing and pinning” people, who then used pepper spray in response. All three complained of receiving defensive spray in the face. “I was maced [sic] by like 6 different trans identified males, beaten all over, kicked in the face multiple times, and was completely blinded by being maced [sic] so many times in a row”, Moise posted on X.

We have no doubt this experience was painful and humiliating. However, it does not amount to being “almost murdered”, as Ms. Moise has maintained since the incident.

Embellishment and exaggeration

“They knew Ari,” Moise said later through her X account. “I jumped in front of him and that’s how it started.” From the available evidence, that does not appear to be true. Rather than report the facts like the lawyer she is supposed to be, Ms. Moise has speculated on what “almost fucking” happened.

Ms. Moise posted a video of her black eye on TikTok. We assess that this injury far more likely resulted from a punch than a kick, and that it probably occurred during the initial brawl at the bench.

We have seen some speculation about the object in Moise’s hand here being a makeup brush, but that is incorrect. Mr. Laureano recorded Moise giving him an iPad stylus at the airport and she seems to be holding that object. We assess the injury to Moise’s eye was real enough.

Ms. Moise has already returned to the park with the other two individuals to shoot more video because she clearly wants to make the most she can out of this. On social media, critics are asking why Moise went back to the park at all. Moise has answered by claiming that she had to walk through the park to get to the police station. We find this explanation unconvincing, as the park has streets on all sides.

Ms. Moise says she was “maced [sic] and beaten” and “hit in every way possible” during the altercations, though they did not last long enough for anyone to be truly creative in their assaults. She says her vape pen was stolen.

Also, she really, seriously wants people charged with attempted murder for it.

Under Washington state law as we understand it, a single kick or punch that results in a black eye is almost never enough by itself to establish intent to kill. Courts and prosecutors view such an act as evidence of intent to assault or injure, not to commit murder.

A black eye does not constitute a “substantial step” towards homicide, either. We are not attorneys, but Ms. Moise is one, so she will understand better than we do that her demand for an attempted murder charge is ridiculous.

We expect a professional prosecutor to turn her down, and we expect her to shout about it when that happens. Just like the false police report in Boston, Ms. Moise is not really pursuing justice, here. She is using a criminal reporting process to promote herself through social media.

She shares this character trait with Mr. Laureano, who also says his vape pen was taken along with his hat, glasses, iPhone, and selfie stick. He further reported the attempted theft of his own firearm during this “heinous attack” by “trans”, which left his knees hurting and tore the fabric of his pants.

Here are Laureano’s words. We have added emphasis:

Last night, while peacefully recording video footage in a public space, we were subjected to a vicious, unprovoked physical assault by a group of masked Antifa agitators… One individual delivered a forceful kick directly to Hendrix’s face… Law enforcement personnel who responded… informed me that individuals perceived as critical of transgender ideology… are routinely targeted for severe violence in this area… Officers expanded by explaining there were cache’s of weapons hidden around the park. Officers explicitly warned that continued presence could lead to lethal retaliation. One officer expressed concern that they would be called one day to aide in the recovery of a deceased detransitioned gay man’s body from Cal Anderson Park.

This attempt to cast police as sympathetic with the detransition mission clashes with the King County Jail’s decision not to charge the suspect.

Further, it is quite odd for a police officer to express concern about such a specific scenario. A detransitioned gay man being murdered in a park that is famous for meth heads, antifa violence, and LGBTQ+ demonstrations does not sound like the thing police have in front of their minds.

We assess that Mr. Laureano, the one local member of the Cluster B trio, came up with this idea to provoke ‘trantifa’ on video and convinced the other two individuals to take part in the scheme. At core, this was about becoming ‘famous detransitioners’, even though nobody wore a sign to let their assailants know this about themselves.

Here is the video that Brandi Kruse posted. We note that it is missing the seconds in which the altercation began. Watching just this video, one might think there was only one altercation instead of two. None of these videos show any of the three individuals saying the word ‘detransition’ to anyone.

In our coverage, The Distance has exposed Boylan’s story of becoming a professional whistleblower as a wholesale fabrication. We have revealed her hidden motive for an untrue backstory in a massive unpaid child support bill. Ms. Boylan’s past attempts to disrupt detransition advocacy with Moise and Laureano discredit her as a detransition advocate.

Again, Arianna Laureano and Erica Moise have not undergone a medical detransition or altered their legal documents. A verbal declaration — “I am a detransitioner” — is the entirety of their commitment. Yet both of them simultaneously, and constantly, attack and undermine the detransition experiences of other people.

None of these three people is recognized by detransition advocacy organizations. In fact, all three of them have been rejected as unstable. That vetting has been vindicated. What they just did in Seattle was not detransition advocacy. They are not opposing medical transition.

They are promoting themselves at the expense of genuine detransition advocacy. Their disrepute should be their own to bear. We fear they are going to get someone seriously hurt.

Legal threats from Erica Moise

In our previous coverage of the Cluster B Clique, we revealed that a Boston Police Department report they used to smear two detransitioners was flawed and incomplete from inception. Following the publication of our coverage, Moise made materially false public statements and legal threats against the editor of The Distance. It was a clear attempt to intimidate us from further reporting on her activities.

Ms. Moise falsely claimed that we had never reached out to her for comment in our stories on the Cluster B Clique. However, we have receipts of our attempts to reach her by email, as well as through a direct message on X. Moise blocked the account used to contact her after reading the message. She is quite simply not telling the truth about this matter.

We do not expect the promised lawsuit against The Distance to ever be filed. Moise has yet to even specify which of our claims about her are untrue. We stand by our reporting in its entirety.

Indeed, her latest crime report only deepens our suspicion that Erica Moise wants to make a habit of annoying police departments with false reports in order to amplify her public image as a crusader.

“Today I had to go back to the scene of the crime at Cal Anderson Park to give my official statement to the Seattle Police”, Moise posted in a video on her X account. “I will be pressing charges, and the King County Prosecutor’s Office has no idea how persistent I am.”

We are not holding our breath for a breakthrough in this investigation. Cal Anderson Park is famously part of the so-called CHOP/CHAZ zone, while Seattle is now known nationwide as a lawless city. We assess that the Cluster B Clique chose Cal Anderson Park as an anarchic location where their own actions would be unaccountable.

We assess that Erica Moise started the physical aggression. All three individuals experienced assault and pepper spraying. However, claims of “attempted murder” strain credulity past the breaking point. Moise was clearly spoiling for a fight, and found one.

We reached out to Ms. Boylan for comment and will update if she replies. We also reached out to Ms. Moise, who responded that her legal name is still ‘Hendrix’ (because she has not detransitioned). “Go Fuck Yourself. Don’t ever contact me again unless it’s in response to litigation”, Moise replied.

Ms. Moise has had more than 30 days to carry out her risible threat of litigation against The Distance. We are not holding our breath waiting on her to follow through.

We will continue to monitor this story.

ADDING: As this story went to press, we learned that Arianna Laureano’s “ApostateAri” account had been suspended by X. His “transphobe01” account is still active.

UPDATE: New video has emerged that makes it very clear Erica ‘Hendrix’ Moise was aggressive throughout the first scuffle during this incident. Mr. Laureano published this video to his Facebook, so it has not been altered by some third party.

Moise has posted a TikTok video with a week-old black eye.

We will continue to monitor this story.

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Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse has charged Michelle ‘Jamie’ Zajko in the New Years Eve murders of her mother and father, Rita and Richard Zajko. Both were shot to death in Michelle’s childhood bedroom.

Rouse says that the identity of Zajko’s co-conspirator has not been established yet. However, “we are very certain that Michelle Zajko was in the home and arranged for the death of her parents,” Rouse told a press conference.

After a years-long, exhaustive investigation, Rouse has been convinced by “phone analysis”. Out of habit, Zajko allegedly analyzed the “f**k-ups” the conspirators had committed during their crimes, leaving traces of the conspiracy Rouse can show a jury.

“This included not getting rid of the shell casings found at the scene. This included not getting rid of the ammunition that was later recovered from her Vermont home that matched … the shell casings found at the scene”, Rouse explained.

The conspirators had failed to use a complex deception plan involving burner phones and fake text messages from a conspirator left behind at the scene. The evidence of a conspiracy was overwhelming. “We are finally at the point where we can say beyond any doubt that Michelle Zajko was at least in part responsible for the death of her parents.”

Rita and Richard Zajko were both shot in the head at close range, surrounded by Michelle’s childhood dolls and toys. A neighbor’s doorbell camera recorded two people arriving in a vehicle at the residence in Chester Heights, then voices shouting “Mom!” and “Oh my God! Oh, God, God!”

Zajko is already charged with providing the gun that her fellow cult member Theresa Youngblut used to kill a Border Patrol officer in a shootout on Inauguration Day in 2025. Another member of the group, Felix ‘Ophelia’ Bauckholt, was killed in that shootout.

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According to NBC News, when Pennsylvania state troopers encountered Zajko ten days after the murders, she fled the scene, abandoning her vehicle and $40,000 stashed inside it. Troopers also encountered LaSota, who bizarrely played dead and escaped custody at the hospital hours later.

Zajko was finally arrested with Jack ‘Ziz’ LaSota, the leader of the ‘Zizians’ transgender vegan death cult, in February 2025. Both were initially charged with trespassing and weapons possession in Frostburg, Maryland. They have pleaded not guilty to all charges.

LaSota’s attorneys deny any such group as the ‘Zizians’ exists. Zajko has claimed that she was arrested with LaSota to prevent the exoneration of Youngblut, who could face the death penalty. The Zizians do not want to be called “a cult”, but also insist there is a conspiracy against them as a group.

Six homicides, one cult

“You, the public, are being lied to”, Zajko wrote in a 20-page handwritten “Open Letter to the World” that her attorney provided to the Associated Press in April 2026. “And while I don’t promise to answer all your questions, I think the truth about my friends and I will make a lot more sense than what you’ve been reading about in the papers.”

“My friends and I are being described as like Satan’s lapdogs, the devil & the Manson family all rolled into one,” she wrote, denying charges no one has levied against her. “These papers are flagrantly lying. For instance, there were no truck-fulls of guns, no machine gun, & I didn’t murder my parents.”

Zajko denies any connection with Maximilian Snyder, who is charged with killing a witness against the group, their former landlord Curtis Lind, in California. Snyder had applied for a marriage license with Youngblut, who allegedly killed a Border Patrol officer in Vermont.

Zajko had been estranged from her family in the year before the murder of her parents. Her association with LaSota began in the Berkeley, California rationalist community. Breaking from that movement over the perceived doomsday of artificial intelligence, the Zizians tried living according to their libertarian ethos.

In 2017, he convinced some friends to help him buy the Caleb, a 94-foot tugboat, and sail her to the San Francisco Bay area. His plan was to live ‘anchor-out,’ away from shore, rent-free, “escaping the burdens of society” while they pondered the saving of the planet from the ravages of AI.

San Mateo County Harbor District has already tried to sue LaSota, Danielson, and the other owners for as much as $100,000 in towing and cleaning fees for the abandoned tugboat. LaSota faked his own death in August 2022 by pretending to fall into San Francisco harbor.

When the Caleb had gotten too expensive, Danielson came up with the idea for “stealth RVs,” box trucks with solar panels on the roof, a tiny apartment inside, “plus extra items like a water-purification system, ‘yeast algae and bacteria bioreactors to create food’ and ‘materials for aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation.’” Group members allegedly walked around the storage lot nude.

Curtis Lind rented lot space to the Zizians to park their stealth RVs. When he evicted them for nonpayment, three members of the group allegedly ambushed and assaulted him with samurai swords. Lind was blinded in one eye and stabbed.

Using a pistol, Lind shot and killed Emir ‘Emma’ Borhanian in self-defense. LaSota was found at the scene, supposedly dead. He was not arrested, as his involvement was not apparent at the time.

Lind also wounded Alexander “Somni Logencia” Leatham, who awaits trial for his role in Borhanian’s death. A second attack by Snyder, Youngblut’s prospective marriage partner, allegedly succeeded in killing Lind, who was set to testify against his attackers.

Kill your family, save the planet

While veganism is not a violent dietary practice, an extreme diet was one of the control techniques Jack LaSota reportedly used as ‘Ziz’. He also used extreme sleep deprivation on the theory that a tired brain brought internal selves into creative conflict. The two techniques were reinforcing, as a malnourished brain is a vulnerable mind.

Through his blog, LaSota also taught his followers that transgender brains are especially gifted at hosting this conflict of the internal self. LaSota believed he was able to harness the dissonance for mental innovations that would save the world from AI. This is not a normal or usual belief among the trans-identified.

Furthermore, not everyone in the Zizians group identifies as transgender, though many do. Daniel Blank, who was arrested with LaSota and Zajko, does not seem to identify as transgender. The press refers to him with male pronouns.

Blank’s father “noticed a change in his son when he visited that Thanksgiving [in 2022], recalling a rare disagreement during a shopping trip, when the father purchased non-vegan food.”

“He was really looking down at me,” Alexander Blank said. “Not that he actually violently argued, but he said, ‘You shouldn’t do that, animals have the same rights as humans.’”

The ‘cult’ aspect in this story is Daniel Blank cutting off his family over veganism, not his private adoption of a vegan diet. Blank’s beliefs evidently led him to disapprove of his father’s morality and cut him off, behavior consistent with conversion to a cult.

In his ‘Sinceriously’ blog, LaSota described “breaking up” with his family, which he denounced as a source of emotional and human attachments that were “not agentic”, conflicting with his desire for “strict consequentialist optimization”. The traditional, biological family was holding LaSota back from realizing his radical ideals.

Definitions are always contested in these stories. The media understandably wants to avoid sensationalizing the sensational, so headlines generally refer to the Zizians as “cult-like” rather than a cult.

The transgenderism in LaSota’s anti-family ideology also goes unexamined by press outlets. Helpfully, the Zizians are all different from one another, and the confusion makes it easier to dodge this implication.

Pronoun rules

Blank and Zajko do not appear to have adopted a cross-sex identity, and the press consistently refers to them with correctly-sexed pronouns.

Tessa Berns, previously reported and even indicted as Suri Dao, was the third group member involved in the sword assault on Lind. Berns now identifies as “trans nonbinary” using they/them pronouns. The media landscape obliges her.

Maximilian Snyder, who allegedly murdered Curtis Lind, the sole witness to his own attempted murder in 2022, helpfully uses “any pronouns.” The media has defaulted to male ones.

Theresa ‘Milo’ Youngblut, the woman arrested in the killing of Border Patrol Agent David Maland on Inauguration Day, is “she/her” in all press coverage despite having adopted a masculine name.

Borhanian, the man Lind killed in self-defense, and Bauckholt, the man killed in Vermont, both identified as transgender, and both have been awarded posthumous female pronouns by a compliant press.

Jack LaSota has grown large breasts, apparently due to hormones. Media outlets all use female pronouns for LaSota.

The upshot of all this confusion is that the role of transgender ideation gets minimized or ignored in most coverage of the story of the Zizians. Their coherence as a cult becomes questionable rather than clarified, so that the murders of Rita and Richard Zajko lose sense and meaning.

We need to talk about why these kids were not alright.

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The United Kingdom is about to have a new prime minister. Andy Burnham is in the photo above. He is standing on stage with Sarah Wakefield, the Green Party candidate for the Makerfield by-election in Greater Manchester, along with a trash bin and a fox.

You may remember Wakefield for her recent viral moment when she expressed surprise that the laws of supply and demand apply to immigration and housing. Her corkscrewed face became famous. Wakefield got 308 votes in the actual election, about 0.7 percent of the final tally.

Burnham was the runaway winner. Now that Labour has forced out Keir Starmer, they seem ready to give Burnham a go at prime ministering. This bodes poorly for the stability of the office, but that seems to be the new normal in Britain.

Starmer was willing to say that a woman is an adult human female. He welcomed the April 2025 UK Supreme Court ruling clarifying that “woman” and “man” under the Equality Act refer to biological sex, even for those holding a Gender Recognition Certificate.

Burnham has made similar statements and he has walked back his earlier position on self-ID. There is abiding distrust on transgender issues, but a lurch back to the left is unnecessary now, for he has no left flank. Sarah Wakefield solved that problem for him.

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Parliament did not waste the opportune moment of anarchy. With Starmer gone, and Burnham not yet in power, the Labour majority decided to allow an NHS puberty blocker study that should never have been proposed. Burnham did not want to spend political capital or take any risks, and now he will not have to.

Why this is happening

It is to the ultimate discredit of Dr. Hilary Cass that she even suggested a puberty blocker study should happen.

As important as the Cass Review has been in discrediting the manufactured consensus around gender medicalization in children, this poison pill was always written into her text.

“The evidence base underpinning medical and non-medical interventions in this clinical area must be improved”, Cass wrote in Recommendation 6. To that end, “a full programme of research be established.” We must do it for science.

This should look at the characteristics, interventions and outcomes of every young person presenting to the NHS gender services. The puberty blocker trial should be part of a programme of research which also evaluates outcomes of psychosocial interventions and masculinising/feminising hormones.

Dr. Cass is very concerned with “consent”, but no one under the age of 16 can legally consent to a medical experiment, while puberty blockers are most ‘useful’ in children under 16. Parents will instead give this “consent” for kids as young as 11.

The study is unlikely to discover anything new, which is just one more ethical problem in an objective risk-benefit analysis. From her public statements, Dr. Cass clearly believes that further testing is needed before we can be sure that blocking the human life-cycle is harmful to developing humans.

Recommendation 5, on the other hand, was supposed to supply existing data on puberty blockade. As part of the systematic review, Dr. Cass had requested “a quantitative data linkage study” that would “fill some of the gaps in follow-up data for the approximately 9,000 young people who have been through GIDS”, the now-shuttered program at Tavistock.

“Despite efforts to encourage the participation of the NHS gender clinics, the necessary cooperation from GIDS and the NHS adult gender services had not been forthcoming.”

Now, “NHS England … should direct the gender clinics to participate in the data linkage study within the lifetime of the current statutory instrument”, Dr. Cass recommended in 2024.

It has never happened. The NHS has yet to reveal the outcomes for thousands of children who have already had their adolescence delayed or blocked altogether before they do it with thousands more children.

NHS is ready and eager to start the new experiment, but they still have not shared the results of the previous experiment. That is to be expected, unfortunately.

The gender quacks always hide the data

This is a disturbing pattern with pediatric sex rejection medicine. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy buried study results when they did not support the kind of risk assessment that she needed to continue blocking puberty in minor children. She is one of the pediatric gender clinicians now advocating for “embodiment goals” to replace terms like ‘medical necessity’ in her industry.

WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, commissioned systematic reviews of their standards of care by Johns Hopkins University. When the results did not support WPATH practices, the organization buried the research. It was never published.

This week, three Norwegian gender clinic researchers have been charged with research misconduct for two articles that the Integrity Committee wants withdrawn from publication, as well as two more articles declared “reprehensible” that are recommended for further action.

The researchers “have shown serious violations of recognized research ethics standards. The actions are grossly negligent.”

“The whistleblowers are the Patient Organization for Gender Incongruence (PKI) and a statistics expert”, according to the committee report. If the “gender incongruent” fail to appreciate all this effort to commit scientific fraud on their behalf, that is because the side effects of this putative treatment for the supposed disease include lowered bone mineral density, reduced cognitive development, infertility, anorgasmia, weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cancer.

The new experiment was paused in February, but approved in June. Now Labour has given it the green light. “PATHWAYS TRIAL is the first randomised controlled trial to explore the effects of puberty suppressing hormones among young people with gender incongruence”, reads the King’s College website.

Children must be at least 11 years old to have their puberty blocked to cure this deadly condition of “gender incongruence”. According to Parliament’s definition, gender incongruence “occurs when a person’s gender identity markedly and persistently does not match their experienced gender and sex registered at birth.”

If not for NHS England’s longtime commitment to secrecy, we likely would already have evidence that Tavistock and the GIDS clinic did not achieve better results treating this so-called disease than Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, WPATH, or Norway’s National Treatment Service for Gender Incongruence for Children and Adolescents.

James Murray MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, reassured the House of Commons Monday night that NHS England is “committed to delivering the data linkage study.” The Cass Review was published in April 2024. Two years later, everyone is super duper double-dog committed to getting this one done, guys.

But the old data is too “limited” to be as useful as the new data, Murray insists. We need more data. Better data. We have to be absolutely sure the obvious harm is harmful before we stop harming children with it.

The insane experiment proceeds

Tavistock GIDS patient data will reflect their scattershot approach, which varied by clinician. Dr. Cass found that the evidence base for puberty blockade is “remarkably weak”. We need more scientific results, goes the argument.

This argument came from Dr. Hilary Cass herself. There is no popular demand for the Pathways trial, not even inside the Labour Party. A survey by Whitestone Insight for Transgender Trend in December 2025 found that 63 percent of adults agree the trial should be stopped, while only 18 percent support the trial as planned. 59 percent of Labour supporters opposed the trial.

Andy Burnham will act as if he is powerless over Pathways because he probably is. Even if he wanted to stop the study, Burnham would find institutional resistance at NHS. Keir Starmer famously discovered that he could pull the levers of power and watch nothing happen. Burnham is not the man to fix that problem, either.

Hilary Cass oversaw the publication of an important, even historic document that ended the days of ‘no debate’ in pediatric sex rejection medicine. Inchoate rage from some very-online voices on the ‘gender critical’ side actually obscured this problem with the Cass Review right after it dropped.

Over time, Recommendation 6 and Pathways became a major focus of ‘gender critical’ organizing in the UK. James Esses, Genspect, Sex Matters, Women’s Rights Network, LGB Alliance, Gay Men’s Network, Transgender Trend, and the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender (CAN-SG) all tried to stop Pathways.

Dr. Cass now defends the Pathways trial as the only way to prevent uncontrolled private use of puberty blockers. No one is buying this ‘harm reduction’ argument, however. “There is no safe option” for blockading puberty, Transgender Trend points out. Harm is intrinsic to the experiment.

There was no guarantee that Pathways would happen, and there was time to stop it from happening, and there was an activist focus in time to stop it. The risks of the trial are clear while the proposed benefits are not.

Cass is ultimately the responsible medical figure, but Labour has chosen to let Pathways happen, inscribing politics on the bodies of children. They picked this perfect moment when no one has to be the face of political responsibility. What cowards.

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Litigation filed this week promises to break the spell of protection that pediatric ‘gender medicine’ has enjoyed in American discourse.

WPATH “has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services”, the Federal Trade Commission says on their announcement page.

“Children, but especially their parents, must have complete and truthful information when making decisions to purchase medical services”, Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson explained.

FTC joins the attorneys general of four states, Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, in charging the World Professional Association of Transgender health with “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” and “unfair methods of competition” in violation of the FTC Act.

Fraud. WPATH is charged with fraud.

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The trial will be held in Texas because WPATH never filed the necessary legal paperwork to leave the state when it was incorporated in Illinois. After I attended the FTC panel in July 2025, I was very confident that federal action would take down the pediatric transition industry during Donald Trump’s second term. I am more confident than ever, now.

My confidence has grown for three reasons.

First, because the powers of the FTC are unassailable. The First Amendment does not protect WPATH from fraud laws. Wearing the label of a “medical association” does not grant a protective immunity. Fraud is a crime.

I have frequently compared pediatric gender medicine to patent medicine fraud in the 19th and 20th century, a phenomenon that FTC has banished from the American landscape.

“For decades, the FTC has taken action against entities that make deceptive and unsubstantiated health-related claims”, Ferguson said in a brief announcement. “The complaint filed today reflects that same long-standing mandate: when an entity makes a claim about a medical treatment, the claim must be truthful, evidence-based and not misleading.”

The WPATH “Standards of Care” (SOC) are a joke. No evidence basis has established a special group of children exist that need hormonal interventions or surgeries to alter their sex characteristics, or else they will die.

Citing WPATH standards, clinicians across America have prescribed these interventions to children, telling parents they risked their child’s death unless they agreed.

‘Nice trans kid, would be a pity if something happened to it’ is mafia talk. This sociopathic behavior has been encouraged and enabled by the entire medical establishment for years now on the basis of WPATH standards that, again, are an absolute joke.

Presented with the evidence, a fair court will have no choice but to conclude that WPATH misrepresented its science, its guidelines, and its goals as an organization to the public for decades.

Under pressure from the Biden administration and the American Academy of Pediatrics, WPATH removed age limits for almost all surgeries. WPATH contracted Johns Hopkins for systematic reviews of their evidence, then buried the studies when the evidence showed no improvements in mental health or suicidality.

Meanwhile, the population of children being ‘treated’ grew all the time. WPATH encouraged overdiagnosis. “Between 2017 and 2021, the number of children who were diagnosed yearly with distress about their sex traits in the U.S. nearly tripled from around 15,000 in 2017 to about 42,000 in 2021”, according to the complaint.

These figures are consistent with information that has come to light before. I have confidence that these numbers are right because the fingerprints of Glenna Goldis are all over this complaint, and she is always in command of the facts when she speaks.

Glenna Goldis lost her job with the New York State attorney general because of her advocacy against pediatric gender medicine. This made her a free agent, and FTC has been the recipient of her wisdom since February. Now she will destroy WPATH in detail.

“Please define the word ‘gender’ for the court.”

“Define the term ‘gender identity’ for the court, please.”

“How many genders are there? Can you name them all for the court?”

“What is ‘gender fluidity’? Please explain for the court.”

Glenna Goldis can take up an entire morning, and probably an afternoon, with an excruciating examination of a witness on the terminology that does all the heavy lifting for WPATH. She will make them seem ludicrous, highlight their contradictions, and unpack the organization’s decisions.

“Please define the term ‘reversible’ in reference to puberty blockers for the court.”

“What evidence did your organization use to establish that puberty blockers are ‘reversible’?”

“Why did your organization fail to follow normal standards of evidence-based medicine when you formulated your claims that puberty blockers are ‘reversible’?”

Glenna Goldis is very good at her job, which is prosecuting fraud. No one in the world will be better at this particular job than she is. Moreover, she is very good at telling other lawyers how to unravel the linguistic frauds of genderwoo. A whole team of lawyers can do this to any number of witnesses. Her involvement gives me tremendous confidence.

The lawsuit very neatly lays out the elements of fraud. WPATH was created to access insurance payouts for ‘gender medicine’ in adults. When WPATH re-issued their standards of care (SOC) in 2008, this organizational purpose was expanded to minors.

“As a result of WPATH’s claimed status as the authority on medical transition, WPATH has secured substantial insurance coverage for its members’ pediatric medical transition drugs, surgeries, and services”, the complaint explains.

The 2008 SOC revision succeeded in convincing medical insurers to cover pediatric transition by calling it “medically necessary”. WPATH leadership was “amazed” at the “powerful effect” this had on insurance companies, and the market was soon exploding.

This claim of ‘medical necessity’ has no scientific backing. It is a strong recommendation made on very weak evidence, and explicitly justified in pursuit of “embodiment goals”. Embodiment. Goals.

Cosmetic results, not mental health, are paramount to this ‘treatment’. Minors are embodying themselves as adults through medicine. The latest version of WPATH’s standards of care, SOC-8, “directs doctors to honor these [embodiment] goals as ‘medically necessary.’”

The child must be allowed to change their body to look the way they want it to as an adult, otherwise the child will die: this extortion scheme has been carried out in thousands of medical offices across the country.

After holding their panel last July, the FTC reached out to parents’ organizations and received thousands of stories. Many of them are in the lawsuit. I know a lot of these people. I have read their anguished Substacks and met some of them in person. When the FTC called, the community answered.

This is the third reason I was confident in the outcome of the FTC process: I knew the community would respond.

The FTC has received hundreds of reports from consumers of medical transition services, including patients and parents, as well as healthcare professionals. In particular, numerous parent and patient declarants have complained to the FTC about serious medical complications arising from medical transition services—and that the risks and side effects that they incurred were often not, or not adequately, disclosed to them.

History is made of people in motion, and the history of ‘gender critical’ organizing consists of families impacted by patent ‘gender medicine’ fraud. Angry parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and ex-trans adults responded to the FTC. No right wing conspiracy was necessary.

The effects of this fraud impacted families across society. “Regardless of where they end up, children and parents are unlikely to avoid being influenced by WPATH’s deceptive claims and omissions.” Doctors, nurses, counselors and therapists — all of them have followed WPATH standards.

Clinicians use deceptive words, phrases, and themes from SOC 8. They fail to disclose side effects because the WPATH SOC does. Worse, “SOC-8 permits disregarding and leads clinicians to disregard other causes of distress and encourages proceeding to medical transition as soon as possible.” All roads lead back to WPATH.

Emphasis added: “Despite providing no tools to determine the source of a child’s distress, SOC-8 tells clinicians that, when faced with a child who expresses that they are the opposite sex, clinicians need not — indeed, should not — seek to resolve a child’s issues regarding mental health and trauma before administering cross-sex hormones and performing medical transition surgeries.”

Every systematic review of the evidence has found that psychotherapy should be the first line of treatment for children with gender distress. Instead, because of WPATH, the gender diagnosis overshadows every other problem a child may exhibit.

Hormones and surgeries are prioritized. Mental health and adolescent turmoil take a backseat while the body of a child is altered to fit adult goals.

A right wing extremist could not write that paragraph. Like most people in the community of parents and affected minors, however, Glenna Goldis is urbane and liberal. She did not come from a conservative Christian values conference. She came from the bike lane with a vengeance.

The historical process unfolding here is a community reaction against systemic fraud. Because “WPATH's activities go beyond educational speech to seek to enhance the profits of its members through deceptive speech, then the activity can satisfy the elements of an FTC Act claim.” They are cooked.

Conflicts of interest, circular citations, and admissions against interest show that WPATH was always a fraudulent scheme. The victims of that scheme want justice. WPATH exists because gender doctors wanted insurance coverage for their patients, and then expanded their pool of patients to children, through fraud.

Across society, media, and medicine, we were told it was all evidence-based, medically necessary, and life-saving, so questioning it was practically criminalized.

Now it can potentially all unravel in a single judgment. Assuming that the court gives the evidence a fair hearing, an injunction against WPATH will likely have ripple effects throughout the insurance-industrial medical complex, undercutting the work of gender identity activists and leftist politicians.

Without WPATH, the cult of the ‘trans child’ must wane in America. It has been a mad time, and we shall look back on this fraud with horror. I shall be watching the progress of this case with an historian’s interest.

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The collapse of Pride was already visible in 2025. In 2026, the air going out of the rainbow bubble is so visible that it cannot be denied by anyone. The most visible thing about Pride month anymore is that it passes with less fanfare, and more controversy, than ever.

According to one recent report, Pride events that used to draw tens of thousands of people have been canceled in Tampa, Florida; Arlington, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; and Ashtabula, Ohio “due to hostile political climates, funding issues, volunteer shortages, and safety fears.”

Sponsors and past participants both increasingly see attendance at Pride events as “potentially dangerous”. One sponsor “was heartbroken to tell me that he couldn’t support. And not only could he not support by writing a check, but he also couldn’t have a presence there,” says Becke Powell, executive director of Ashtabula Pride, who blames “hatemongers”.

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Corporate image managers in particular began to cut back on ‘woke’ sponsorships during 2025. They weren’t simply responding to the ‘vibe shift’ of Donald Trump’s second term. Pride aesthetics were already an established brand-killer by the end of 2024. ‘Woke is broke’, and the writing was on the wall.

Things are worse now. NPR, which is the state radio network of the queer nation, noted in May that “Pride celebrations across the country continue to lose out on large sponsorships as corporations, a key source of funding, shrink their affiliation with diversity causes and LGBTQ+ events.”

Organizers of Pittsburgh Pride estimate they will take in “30-40%” of the funds they were able to raise just a few years ago. Individual donors and state grants — taxpayer largesse — have become important new sources of funding.

In Florida, Tampa Pride announced a one-year hiatus after a slew of corporations dropped their sponsorships, said Carrie West, who ran the organization.

“All of a sudden, bingo. Here you have no money, no grant money, no supporting money, to make operations, to plan, to get any kind of anything,” he said. “Oh my gosh, it was, it’s devastating.”

Speaking of devastation, let us recall that Adrian Mardell had to step down as CEO of Jaguar last July because one Pride-themed advertisement wrecked their brand. Coming on the heels of the Bud Light fiasco, in which Dylan Mulvaney’s mug destroyed a beloved beer brand that has still not recovered, corporate America has learned that the public does not want Pride in its products.

“Federal contractors are in a particularly precarious place when it comes to Pride, because Pride is so closely integrated into broader DEI efforts,” an organizer says about WorldPride, which was smaller than usual this year.

Perhaps that is because it was held in Washington, DC, land of federal contractors. “And I think for a lot of companies celebrating Pride just comes a little too close to the danger zone where the administration might be targeting them on DEI more broadly.”

Two things can be true at the same time: the politics of Pride can be bad, and the marketing optics of Pride can be bad at the same time. In fact, this combination is worse, from a brand perspective.

The Pride brand was sold to corporate America as a safe virtue signal. It has proven toxic to other brands. It will still prove brand-toxic elsewhere.

WorldPride still had a big party, of course, because America is in fact still the land of the free. Everyone had a good time. No one was actually oppressed by the Trump administration.

The organizers, Capital Pride Alliance, planned more than 300 events over the course of three weeks beginning in mid-May, including dance parties, films, Drag Story Hour, events for LGBTQ military personnel and, one of the key features of past WorldPrides, a human rights conference. The big closing ceremony this weekend includes a parade and a concert with a massive lineup of performers that includes a “Global Dance Party” with Jennifer Lopez, plus another concert featuring Cynthia Erivo and Doechii.

Madonna held a pop-up event in a crowded Times Square to promote Pride, as well as her new album. Her own brand is unlikely to suffer from association with Pride. Doechii, whoever that is, will probably not have a hard time because of this performance.

Musicians are not car companies or beer companies. They are still not giving up on Pride as long as it remains non-toxic to their careers. But that time may coming soon. Pride month faces increasing community resistance at schools, even in very liberal places like Ottawa. Outside of our cultural elites, the acceptability of Pride has continued to decline, year on year.

Of course, our cultural elites are not blind. They understand that public acceptability of gay and lesbian relationships has slipped from a high of 71 percent down to 62 percent in just a few years. Rather than take a second look at Pride, and reconsider their public approach, elites and their institutions too often double down on forced speech.

These episodes are becoming more visible all the time. Three relief pitchers for the San Francisco Giants wrote bible verses on their baseball caps this weekend during the LGBTQ+ Pride Night game. Major League Baseball has sent them all a warning letter about “defacing” their uniforms, which on this very special night included a Pride logo on the caps.

For anyone old enough to remember when quarterbacks could get politicians to take a knee in the end zone and score progressive political points, it is strange to see the same media outlets that hyperventilated about politics in sports now excoriate these players for daring to deface their holy Pride hats.

In recent years, America has seen the phenomenon of rainbow street crossings that receive special police protection from vandalism with paint and tire marks. These are no longer crosswalks — in fact, they confuse service animals and police horses and likely violate disability access laws. They are now holy sites of joyous public celebration. Be joyous, and repent. Also press your accelerator smoothly, you bigot.

Defacement of holy Pride hats and holy Pride crosswalks is a crime that must be punished in the court of public opinion as well as actual courts. Blasphemy brings on the cancel mobs. Organized, well-heeled special interest groups will show up waving progress flags, pretending to speak for a ‘community’, demanding ‘accountability’.

The relationship between Major League Baseball, a hypermasculine institution, and Pride goes back to a 2002 Los Angeles Dodgers game in which two lesbians were ejected for kissing.

It should go without saying that both lesbians were women. In 2026, Pride rejects the idea that the word ‘lesbians’ should imply that two people are both female.

“Baseball is for Everyone”, the League announced. Like Stonewall, the British gay rights organization which transformed into a transgender rights organization, this Pride presence within MLB has become something different than it was a quarter-century ago. Gender identity is the entire difference.

In America, two men ought to be free to kiss at a Dodgers game and call themselves lesbians. That is freedom. The reader may disagree with my statement, “ought to be free”, because the reader is free to disagree.

In current America, everyone is obliged to celebrate two men kissing at a Dodgers game and call both men lesbians. Disagreement is not allowed. It is impolite, or rather impolitic. A taboo. This is oppression.

These two Americas exist side-by-side in a quantum state because Pride is not what it used to be. Politics are the only thing keeping Pride alive, now. Rather than freedom, Pride is chiefly a dependency: right wing bogeymen will supposedly genocide the gays unless we give puberty blockers to the kids.

It is a pale, rancid replacement for American civic religion with constitutional values, and so Americans increasingly reject it.

Meanwhile, the reputational risks inherent to the Pride brand grow over time. By April 2025, Pride event organizing had reportedly lost about 40 percent of its funding on both sides of the Atlantic. This has only gotten worse, according to the Pride organizers themselves.

The public image of Pride organizing has taken a number of hits in the last year. During 2025, Stephen Ireland, the co-founder of Pride in Surrey, was found guilty of raping a 12-year-old boy he had met on Grindr.

During the trial, a British court learned that Ireland and his partner, David Sutton, referred to themselves as “pedos” and fantasized about feminizing their victims with hormones and surgeries. Unsurprisingly, Surrey organizers have called off Pride for 2026, citing a decline in corporate sponsorship.

Since then, Samuel Winbridge, aka ‘Kizzy Lavender Lee’ (real name Samuel Wimbridge), the founder of Newbury Pride in the UK, has been charged with sex offenses against a girl under 13.

During January, Ashley Boyd, “Trans liaison” to an NHS trust and Chair of Swindon Pride, lost his nursing license for “unnecessary” and “sexual” examinations of children. In Canada, the founder of Innisfil Pride was convicted of seven sex trafficking charges last month.

The market is checking out of this high-risk activity even as the institutions remain in thrall to the special pleading of Pride. MLB is doing very well these days — their viewership and stadium attendance are up — but then again, Bud Light used to be a beloved beer brand, too.

The Pride brand is not what it was. The Pride brand is no longer received by the public the same way it was ten years ago. On both sides of the Atlantic, an increasing number of people see Pride as something more sinister than just adults behaving badly.

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An investigation by the US Department of Education has found that “San José State University knowingly recruited a male student athlete” for the women's indoor volleyball team “with the intent of gaining a competitive advantage over other teams” in April 2022.

Former SJSU coach Trent Kersten, a man, “began actively recruiting a male volleyball athlete from another university to join the SJSU women’s indoor volleyball team” in April 2022. Fox News Digital has identified him as “Coach 1” in the investigation.

Kersten left the Spartans a year after recruiting Fleming. Kersten contacted the campus PRIDE and Gender Equity Center to make sure his virtuous recruiting choices were noted by the administration. He now coaches for a Division I school, Oregon.

Coach Kersten “stated he wanted to ask the women on the team their thoughts after they found out [Fleming] was joining the team, but he did not want to relinquish decision making power to the women on the team regarding whether a male player would be allowed to join the team.”

Kersten wanted to win, so that he could move up in his own career, so whatever the women on the team felt about it did not matter to him. Three former SJSU students, Brooke Slusser, Elle Patterson and Alyssa Sugai, are plaintiffs in a Title IX lawsuit against SJSU as a result.

Patterson never received the three-year scholarship that coach Todd Kress offered her to play at SJSU. Instead, her family paid out of pocket for a year while she played back-up to Fleming, who received the scholarship that would have gone to Patterson.

Coaches said they were withholding the scholarship because Patterson had suffered an injury. In fact, she had played in three more games than Fleming, 20 to 17, because he had missed even more games due to injury than Patterson.

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Patterson was not told about Fleming’s sex at first. She changed in front of Fleming in the locker room several times without knowing he was a man, Patterson says. Meanwhile, Kress “didn't seem like the type of coach and the person who recruited me when he was actually coaching at San Jose”, Patterson tells Fox News Digital.

The way in which he went about certain situations and just playing was more along the lines of just completely tearing you down as a person and not building you back up. But it definitely felt like he had certain people, one being the man on our team, that he would have done anything for... but it didn't feel like he had the support and belief in some of the other girls on our team.

Kress had every reason to focus on the male player. After all, the coaches were depending on Blaire Fleming to deliver a competitive edge. There was no time for debate, or silly things like Title IX and fair sporting values. The interests of the women on the team were ignored.

An assistant coach, Melissa Batie-Smoose, was fired after she divulged that she had not been told about Fleming’s birth sex before her hiring. She says that she was instructed not to tell the women on the team about it when she did learn the truth. Batie-Smoose has filed litigation against SJSU for wrongful termination.

According to previous reporting in The New York Times, Fleming acknowledged the importance of telling his new teammates about himself, but ultimately decided with Kersten that he would tell each teammate only individually, after Fleming “knew them better.”

As a result, “most, if not all, of the women on the team at the time of sharing a dorm room, hotel room, and/or locker room” with Fleming only found out afterwards, through other means than their coaches or Fleming, that he was male.

Everyone who has observed gender ideology long enough will already understand what happened here: Blaire Fleming’s desire to ‘pass’ as the opposite sex outweighed every right and rule in the book. This is the rule with ‘gender identity’, not the exception.

“I enjoyed being around Blaire, nothing against Blaire as a person”, Patterson says. She did marvel at his apparent athletic ability. “I just felt like I had a lot of work to do to get to that point at where Blaire was at. How am I going to get there?”

How can a woman ever compete with a man? Cheating, of course. Behaviors that undermine sportsmanship and fair play, that seek unfair advantage over opponents, are contrary to NCAA rules for a reason. Transgender sports ‘inclusion’ ruins the ethics of sport. Coaches who cheat will coach students who cheat. Knowing dishonesty kills team spirit.

Slusser alleges in her complaint that Fleming met with Colorado State's Malaya Jones the evening prior to a match and “engineered a plan to leave the centre of the court open so that Jones would be able to target Slusser with powerful spikes in an unhindered fashion”, according to Quillette.

George M.J. Perry observed at The Female Category in 2024 that the game stats and video support Slusser’s allegation her game performance suffered as a result of Fleming’s positioning on the court the next day. Fleming also made more than twice his average number of errors in that game.

This was allegedly an attempt to harm Slusser, according to the Department of Education, which says the claim is “undisputed”. Fleming got away with it because of the dysfunctional team culture the coaching staff had created.

“To silence dissent, ‘scare tactics’ were used. The women on the team were told they needed to be careful of what they said because they all signed a contract and could lose their scholarships. That threat made several members of the team afraid to speak out.”

‘Gender’ ruins everything it touches. “We were not supposed to bring light to it, make Blaire feel uncomfortable, even though that might have made me feel uncomfortable. I know it made some of my other teammates uncomfortable”, Patterson says.

If the suspicious 2024 match had been connected to online gambling, SJSU and California would likely have capitulated to the Department of Education many months ago.

But because Blaire Fleming is a man who ‘passed’, CSU is suing the Department of Education to dispute the findings that SJSU violated Title IX. As far as California is concerned, no one did anything wrong by housing a man in an apartment with three women roommates for a year while keeping his sex a secret.

Boundary violation is essential to the project of transgender equity. Blaire Fleming will literally die, vanish into a puff of logic, without a scholarship to play volleyball with women.

He ceases to exist unless he can be in the locker room while they change. He ceases to exist unless he is allowed to share a hotel bed with Brooke Slusser, a woman. So says the state of California.

His masculinized body does not exist, goes the logic, but Blaire’s inner being, his feminine sense of self, ought to exist in the material world, therefore the whole of society must surrender sporting values and ethics and all concern for women’s boundaries so that this gendered being can exist on a women’s volleyball court.

This is not leading to wider social acceptance. Quite the opposite. According to the most recent Gallup poll, the moral acceptability of “changing one's gender” has declined 14 points since 2021. A majority of Americans, 57 percent, opposes it, an increase from 43 percent.

The minority of Americans who approve of ‘gender identity’, or ‘legal identity’, as a moral good has shrunk to just 38 percent. The question was 5 points underwater in 2021 and 19 points underwater today.

Transgender sports ‘inclusion’ has been the most visible transgender issue ever since Lia Thomas dove into the women’s pool in 2022. Men on women’s medal stands have been a disaster for the public acceptance of transgenderism.

This was predictable, I predicted it, and I call it the Lia Thomas effect. But we could also call it the Blaire Fleming effect. We have thousands of names we could use, really, and that is the actual problem. We see this happening all the time, now. It is repulsive to the public and contrary to the public interest.

Americans see a Lia Thomas, who does not ‘pass’, and perceive it as a man cheating at sports. They find out about Blaire Fleming, a man who did ‘pass’, and become furious at the deception.

Transgender advocacy projects a theory of mind on opponents of this ‘inclusion’. This growth in public opposition is supposed to result from evil, right wing racist dark money spreading misinformation about trans people, etc. In fact the sight of men on women’s medal stands has done the trick.

Kato Crews, the judge presiding over the three women’s lawsuit against SJSU, has deferred his ruling until after the US Supreme Court decides B.P.J. v West Virginia. This case is named for a boy in West Virginia who recently threw his personal best in the shot put, beating the nearest girl by two feet. He has also been accused of coarse locker room behavior towards girls.

It is all supposed to be justified by the mental health needs of Blaire Fleming. Subsequent to a series of teams forfeiting to SJSU over his presence on the court, Fleming’s mental health deteriorated.

Trent Kersten, who knowingly and deliberately set Fleming up to fail at ‘passing’, has reportedly not checked in with Fleming since he moved on to a bigger, better position. One wonders why the press has not checked back in with Fleming, either.

Coach Kersten and Coach Todd Kress wanted to win, no matter the cost to women. Or sports. Or society. They relied on the political and social power of the transgender advocacy juggernaut to protect them from consequences for cheating.

We are not supposed to call it cheating because none of the usual rules apply anymore, once a transgender identity gets involved. But we still see it.

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He pushes his feelings down and hardens himself to the world. He never cries or shows weakness. Instead, he is aggressive, callous, constantly competitive, chasing status and wealth at the expense of others. He devalues femininity and ‘women’s work’, withholds all emotions except anger, avoids intimacy, and asserts himself through physical superiority.

In normal men, these traits — hyper-independence, risk-taking, physical and verbal confrontation, a defining of the self through strength and victory — are the textbook pathology of the ‘toxic male’.

This phrase, ‘toxic masculinity’, began as a critique of the unhealthy standards and social pressures that made men unhappy. Today, it names the power men have to make other people unhappy.

The Race To Be Myself glories in making other people, especially female athletes, unhappy. According to his own book, Mogkadi Caster Semenya is the most toxic sort of male one could ever regret meeting.

Semenya is not a normal man. Born with a disorder of sexual development (DSD) that no one recognized until he was 19 years old, Semenya insists that he is a woman, so that it is unfair to exclude him from sports for women.

His autobiography however is a perfect study in hyper-masculine toxicity. Whereas ‘toxic male’ is too often an insult aimed at men for normal behavior, it absolutely describes the self-description of Caster Semenya.

“I let my fists finish the conversation”, Semenya says about the first of many fistfights he had, or wanted to have. “I’m not particularly proud of the ass beatings I handed out,” he lies, because if that was true he would not brag so much in this book about how many fights he got into, or tried to start.

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I suspect that Semenya never picked a fight with any boy or man stronger than himself. Frankly, he needs physical defeat more desperately than any grown man alive. Being forced to ‘tap out’ would have broken down the immense ego that leaps off the pages. Men should have set him straight before he stole medals from women.

The failure to treat him as a boy, and physically conflict with him like any other boy, is the supreme failing of the boys in his youth. “My male cousins were the ones who taught me how to fight like a boy — we’d roughhouse for hours”, Semenya writes.

It does not occur to him that his male cousins had no incentive to win any of these fights with what they perceived to be a girl, that they would have been tougher on him had they understood him as a boy.

Indeed, inability to see himself through the eyes of other people is a consistent theme of this book. “I was a woman”, he insists of his examination by doctors. “I didn’t care about their Xs and Ys and what their manmade data and machines showed. I sit down to pee just like their mothers.”

Semenya insists that “I had to go through this bullshit because I didn’t look how they thought girls should look.” He does not allow that anyone might object to competing with a man just because his groin looks like a woman’s groin.

His disbelief in his own maleness is an incredible act of rationalization. Semenya refused to wear a dress when he was “5 or 6”, preferred the singing of boys to girls, hated romance films, “loved movies about gangsters, drug lords, serial killers, and especially about soldiers and war.” He was all boy.

As puberty hit, Semenya’s voice got deeper, his body got more muscular, girls found him attractive, and “it dawned on me that I didn’t want to hit girls because I actually just wanted to kiss them.” He never got his period, but instead of being alarmed or curious about this, Semenya simply shrugged it off. He did not want to know.

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We are supposed to feel bad for poor AB Hernandez. AB was born in the wrong body, you see. It’s not “Abbie’s” fault that a girl-gremlin was trapped inside the body-cage of a boy at conception by a psychotic God. How dare we object to this clownish display of unconvincing sex mimicry?

Just look at all the lovely equity that California educators have created with participation trophies for the girls who are forced to share a podium with AB. This is necessary, otherwise the poor child will murder ABself. Also, female sports are not even important, so why not just let AB have your medals and trophies, girls? Be kind. You won’t miss them. But he needs them to feel whole.

Jolene Vanyo has a daughter who is forced to compete with Hernandez and suffers quietly at school. “She agrees males have an unfair advantage and allowing them to compete in girls’ sports is unfair, I feel she hesitates from publicly expressing that out of fear that saying so will hurt her transgender peer’s feelings, or cause them distress”, Vanyo tells Fox News Digital.

“I feel a lot of the silence from many, not just my daughters, stems from the fact that speaking about gender ideology is highly polarizing.” Indeed, there is no middle ground on the issue. Athletes who do speak out receive harassment, death threats, and ostracism.

According to AB’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, AB is “simply being who they are” when AB beats girls at track and field events using his boy-body. We have to let AB win, otherwise AB will stop being a real girl.

If the magic spell of the transgender identification is broken, the transphobic energies of a cruel world will rush in, killing the gender gremlin trapped inside the body of AB Hernandez.

AB beat the girls last year, and his gender-gremlin was eager to repeat the achievement while trapped inside of his body.

Fearing another ugly scene of backlash like the one in 2025, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) implemented a “pilot program” that gives equal awards to female athletes, a one-spot promotion for every girl he beat.

“California’s solution to the male athletic advantage is not to address the advantage”, Paula Scanlan writes. “It is to redefine the word ‘winner.’” AB Hernandez beats all the girls at the triple jump, but his best distance is 7 feet shorter than the winning boy at the same event.

Beth Bourne, who has followed AB’s career closely, noted that AB won the high jump by two inches at 5’10, whereas “the boys’ all jumped between 6’-4" and 7’-2" tonight.”

Bourne also posted video of a PFLAG trans activist confronting her at the event. “Why are you so hateful? Why are you so unable to express love for kids who just wanna be who they are?” asked an angry man in a skirt.

The gender gremlin trapped inside of AB Hernandez appears to be a sex clown. We are not supposed to notice this. Noticing is racist.

AB wears pancake makeup and stands pigeon-toed to look like a real girl. This affectation mirrors the ‘in-toed’ posture found in Japanese imagery, uchimata (内股). Female characters use this pose to signal femininity, cuteness, innocence, shyness, and a submissive or demure nature.

Standing that way also makes AB’s legs appear slimmer and more delicate. Like a real girl’s legs.

AB just wants to be what AB is by cheating girls out of their sports while wearing five layers of makeup. The school system supports this, the community “supports” this, and the state of California supports it all, because the magic ritual of the transgender athlete is necessary for the transgender child to exist.

AB literally stops existing unless he gets to beat the girls. This is an emergency that requires a whole-of-society effort. No wonder Democrats like AB Hernandez. No wonder he is celebrated for supposedly overcoming Trump hate. These are humiliation rituals for all of us. We are supposed to be demoralized into accepting this as normal.

Why are we doing this again?

None of this was ever based on actual evidence of benefit. Start with medicalization. “When WPATH’s 2001 guideline was published, recommending early pubertal blockade for certain patients, the published evidence consisted of a single 1998 case report co-authored by a CEGD psychologist”, Kathleen McDeavitt writes in a recent article for the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.

The so-called Dutch Protocol “is a treatment in search of an indication”, McDeavitt says. Puberty blockers “do not meaningfully provide ‘time to think;’ and indeed this clinical rationale no longer appears to be operative even among the strongest advocates for paediatric medical transition”.

These days, ‘embodiment goals’ are now the cited justification for medical interventions. The rationale has shifted. Rather than mental health, or suicide prevention, the argument for medicalizing a boy like AB Hernandez in adolescence is embodiment, which is expressed in a language of civil rights (‘bodily autonomy’) and a discourse infused with the word ‘bodies’ (as in ‘black bodies’).

It is the exact same argument used for ignoring the plain text and meaning of Title IX to let AB Hernandez cheat girls out of their sports.

AB Hernandez started out wearing girls’ clothes at school, which did not tell his mom, because they respected his bodily autonomy.

Kids who “just wanna be who they are” are exercising bodily autonomy, goes the argument.

AB can be an underdeveloped male if he wants, and still beat the other girls if he wants. Best of both worlds, not too hot or too cold, but just right.

The horrific irony, of course, is that early interventions make later interventions problematic. “If started at pubertal onset, PBs will indeed prevent the need for some surgical procedures; however … with respect to vaginoplasty, use of PBs also limits some future surgical options.”

This is a sanitized acknowledgement that surgical construction of a vagina from other tissues than a fully-developed adult penis is even more gruesome and dangerous.

Little wonder that so little good evidence exists for these interventions. “Healthcare providers cannot say, with any reasonable degree of certainty, what type of effect (positive, neutral, or negative) these interventions may have on mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, suicidality, and GD itself. Simply put, the effects on mental health are unknown” — the science is hardly settled.

The Endocrine Society and WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, collaborated on guidelines that reduced the criteria for transgender medicine. Once it was no longer necessary to have gender dysphoria, the patient population boomed, and the demographic changed.

Suddenly, “adolescent females without clear history of prepubertal GD and with higher than expected rates of mental health and neurodevelopmental comorbidities” were turning up in droves. Females make up about three-quarters of the youth cohort identifying as transgender now, whereas they accounted for only one in four prior to the changed medicalization criteria.

Which is weird, because logically there ought to be at least three ‘trans boys’ in the male division at the CIF championships for one AB Hernandez. “I didn’t hear or see any and I was there on Saturday”, Beth Bourne tells The Distance. “If a girl was a good enough athlete to make it to the CA boys state finals in any of the track and field events she’d be an Olympic level athlete in the women’s division.”

The benefits of cross-sex identification in sports apply to only one of the two sexes, the minority sex among the age cohort of transgender students like AB Hernandez. His athletic ‘achievements’ are patent sexism.

AB Hernandez finishes the American high school track and field season ranked number four in the nation in the girls’ triple jump. According to HeCheated.org, if Hernandez was ranked among boys, AB would share the 3,053rd spot nationally with 15 other boys like himself.

But then he would be nobody. Billionaire gubernatorial hopefuls would not be seen with him. Headlines would not be written to praise his stunning bravery. The ceremonial celebration of AB Hernandez requires everyone to participate in the lie, and be a good sport about it, so that the ‘trans kids’ can exist.

AB Hernandez must be allowed to win so that California girls can keep getting their testosterone and double mastectomies. Otherwise, why are we even doing this at all?

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