Pronoun Showdown As Trans Vegan Death Cult Leader Is Arrested In Maryland

The Associated Press shifts the responsibility to LaSota

Dead? No, he was just resting. Jack Amadeus ‘Ziz’ LaSota’s mugshot from a previous arrest in which he bizarrely played dead the entire time

The Times reports that Jack Amadeus ‘Ziz’ LaSota, the 33-year-old leader of the Zizians cult that is named for him, was arrested yesterday in Maryland. “LaSota, who is originally from Alaska, has previously identified as a transgender woman, but is listed in the sheriff’s database as male,” Keiran Southern writes from Los Angeles, carefully avoiding the use of any pronouns.

Daniel McGarrigle, LaSota’s lawyer, said last month that his client was “wholly and unequivocally innocent of the charges filed in this case”. When contacted for comment on the latest arrest McGarrigle referred The Times to his previous statement.

Thanks to the rights granted to him by the Constitution and developed wihin US law, LaSota is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Thanks to the Associated Press, almost all the other news stories about LaSota’s arrest in the last 24 hours have used “she/her” pronouns to refer to him.

LaSota was arrested with two other Zizians. He was charged along with Michelle Zajko, whose parents were murdered in 2023. “A bail hearing for the the two is scheduled for 11 a.m. Tuesday at Allegany District Court,” Michael Casey reported for the Associated Press.

In the wire service article, Casey explained that LaSota “used she/her pronouns, and in her writings says she is a transgender woman.” In all too many situations where a man has commited crimes and claims a transgender identity, news outlets never explain why they are using female pronouns. That the AP made this nuance clear at all indicates that they are sensitive to the issue.

Of course, many outlets have amplified or cribbed the wire service article, for example NBC 10 Philadelphia, ABC 11 in North Carolina, national CBS News, the Guardian, and The Independent. All of them repeated the use of she/her pronouns for LaSota, as well as the explanation that LaSota “used she/her pronouns, and in her writings says she is a transgender woman.”

SFGate also made sure to note that LaSota “uses female pronouns.” Local CW affiliate KRON4 noted that “LaSota is described as a ‘male’ in Allegany County Jail inmate records,” but uses she/her pronouns anyway. “According to her blog, LaSota identifies as a transgender woman.”

The San Francisco Chronicle, which has done the most detailed reporting on the Zizians story, has used she/her pronouns for LaSota throughout their coverage. Under their headline about his arrest, reporters Megan Cassidy and Michael Barba explain that LaSota is “a transgender Alaska native and former tech worker who uses feminine pronouns.”

Cassidy and Barba were able to contact the estranged family of Daniel Blank, 26, the man arrested with LaSota and Zajko in Maryland. Blank is charged with misdemeanor tresspassing and obstruction. Family members describe Daniel cutting them off because of extreme vegan beliefs that LaSota had apparently impressed upon him.

Like The Times, Open Vallejo reporter Anna Bauman altogether avoided pronouns for LaSota in her coverage, only using the neutral pronoun “their” in reference to him once, at the very end of the article. Bauman also offered new details of how the arrest went down:

A man in Frostburg, Maryland, contacted the Maryland State Police around 3:33 p.m. Sunday to report that two men and a woman driving white box trucks with chains on the tires had trespassed on his property. The man told police that the three people were dressed in all black and asked him “if they could camp at the location for a month,” according to the court records obtained by Open Vallejo.

Two state troopers responded to the property, joined by units from the Allegany County Sheriff’s Office and the state Department of Natural Resources Police. There they found the box trucks parked at the end of a dirt roadway, according to court records. As the officers approached the trucks, a person later identified as Blank told a trooper that he had a learning disability and did not understand what they were saying, according to the complaint.

The trooper opened the back door of the second vehicle, a smaller white box truck with a temporary North Carolina license plate. LaSota and Zajko moved into the front of the truck and refused to come out, according to the complaint, while Zajko cried and asked police not to kill her. The pair eventually exited the vehicle but refused to identify themselves.

Police found a rifle in the back of the second truck, a handgun on the front floorboard, and a loaded SIG Sauer P365 handgun in Zajko’s waistband, according to the complaint. Police arrested Blank and LaSota “without incident” but were forced to perform a “controlled takedown” on Zajko after she refused to place her hands behind her back. Authorities identified the trio with photos provided by an FBI supervisory special agent, according to the complaint.

Finally, a Fox News affiliate ran this 30-second piece on the story. Like The Times, they avoided the pronoun issue entirely. Notably, Michelle Zajko appears to have cropped her hair and may have medicalized a transgender identity, yet every news outlet still uses she/her pronouns for Zajko. Is this ‘misgendering’? Inquiring minds want to know, but we are still not being told by anyone.

Apparently, the secret to getting your preferred pronouns respected is to write a blog post saying you are transgender. Of all the ideologies that shaped the Zizians, only transgenderism escapes any and all scrutiny.

It is not the change we want, of course. We would like accurate reporting that uses correctly-sexed pronouns. But most legacy media outlets apparently do feel that it is necessary to at least explain why they use female pronouns for an obviously-male death cult leader while others are trying hard to avoid using any pronouns at all. We will stay on top of this story as it develops.