Seven Red Flags That Detransitioners Cannot Unsee In Jon Uhler
Seven Red Flags That Detransitioners Cannot Unsee In Jon Uhler
And everyone should examine for themselves
Responding to a chat question in his YouTube livestream this past Sunday, self-styled “safeguarding expert” Jon Uhler argued that his trustworthiness should not be an issue for detransitioners.
“If we have to waste the next 15 minutes explaining this, this is well worth it just to cut the show right here and have this discussion,” co-host Brad Wylder said of the chat question from “Joyce Connolly.”
“Jon, do you have any words for the detransitioners who don’t trust you?” Connolly asked.
Answering the question, Uhler referred to our investigative series on his life work and activities as “a pretty slimy campaign” and a “great distraction” that has been “really effective.” We are gratified by the acknowledgment.
Confirming what we have reported about his extreme Calvinist views, Uhler complained that our coverage “took advantage” of Nicole, his “emotionally troubled adult daughter who also just recently left her marriage.”
This is the first red flag indicator that makes detransitioners distrust Jon: they recognize a religious zealot pushing strict gender roles when they see one. They cannot unsee you, Jon.
“If someone can’t argue the points they’ll do what, they’ll attempt character assassination,” Jon said, asking and answering his own question. “The good news is you don’t have to trust or distrust me,” he said.
Referring to his slideshow, The 9 Red Flag Clinical Indicators Of Sexual Trauma Being Ignored & Reframed By Trans Pushers, Uhler instead argued that “the question is, what are you going to do with this content?”
“If you don’t wan’t to trust me, then you figure out what the indicators are.” No one else is ever smart enough to see a red flag without Jon helpfully pointing it out. This is the second giant red flag that detransitioners see in Jon: his narcissistic credentialism.
In our first investigative essay on Jon Uhler, we exhaustively debunked his claims of experience and expertise. We also chronicled his attempts to groom detransitioners and spoke to some who received his advances. Like many people we have talked to in the course of our investigation, they spoke of red flags they had noticed in Jon.
We have also found his Reddit history in the course of our research. It proves our points about Jon and detransitioners quite splendidly.
Four years ago, Jon Uhler posted “A Quick Screening Tool To Discern the Competence of a Therapist who Works with ‘Gender Confused’ Teens” in the r/detrans subreddit. Rather than plain text, Jon posted a screenshot that included an image of a young girl cutting her arm with a razor blade at the bottom of the text block.
The reader will note that we are describing this post rather than showing it to you. Self-harm prevention experts generally advise against sharing such images, as they may actually trigger self-harming behaviors.
For Jon, however, the shock value is the point. The image is supposed to be a gut-punch at the end of an advisory about choosing your therapist. They should “be able to describe what is going on in very easy to understand terms, and do so quickly, without a lot of hesitation or nebulous word salad.” We have added emphasis:
And, for any therapists who promote deviant stuff like kink… who also are into Furries and other such activities… who try to assert that such activites and such groups contain no sexual predators… here’s what should be a relatively simple assessment quiz for you:
The post now shifts point of view. The reader is no longer being asked to choose a therapist, but to imagine what a therapist should do in this situation. We have added emphasis:
Let’s say a teen comes into see you for help with her gender dysphoria. She says she doesn’t want to be a girl anymore. You look at her arms and you see the cutting she was trying to hide under her long sleeves.
She informs you that she started getting involved in Furries about 6 months ago, and attended one of the conventions 3 months ago at the invitation of some new “friends” she met online in an online roleplay chatroom.
Any thoughts re. [sic] why she might be saying what she is saying, or should you simply suggest she transition, and make a referral to a gender clinic so she can begin hormone blockers and sex change treatment?
What other diagnostic features would you anticipate this teen would exhibit?
If she had been in treatment prior to seeing you, what are the likely diagnosis [sic] she would have been given, and why?
Ultimately, what would you do clinically that would help her to stop cutting?
We are not professional counselors, but we do suggest that not showing this notional patient any pictures of a girl cutting would be a great clinical start in getting her to stop.
In the months before he posted this item, Jon Uhler lost his job with Bright Side Counseling in Blythewood, South Carolina because “Furries” complained that he was harassing them with false criminal accusations on Twitter.
This same accusatory behavior in recent months led directly to our investigation of Jon Uhler. His narrow obsessions and grudges are yet a third red flag that any detransitioner can observe, and politely avoid, without our help.
There were very few reactions to the Reddit post at the time, likely because it was so embarrassing to any detransitioner who saw it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more idiotic in my life,” said one. “Like the first part was fine then it just quickly went downhill.” Indeed.
Another suggested that the image was inappropriate, so it “might be a good idea to put a trigger warning for those uncomfortable looking at pictures of self-harm.” The entire post was later hidden, age-restricted, and marked “NSFW.”
“Thank you for the reminder. Will do,” Jon replied, because he knew exactly what he was doing and needed no reminder. After all, as he reminded detransitioners in his livestream this past Sunday, he has been a family and marital counselor for more than 30 years. He has to know exactly what he is doing. Right?
Commenting under a detransitioner’s post about self-doubt — because who wouldn’t doubt themselves, when they were so sure before? — Jon emphasized his experience “with many teens who've gone through the same kinds of feelings you've expressed,” emphasizing in parentheses that “many of those teens were sexually abused.”
Jon’s reply to the detransitioner is anodyne. Unless they have experienced abuse, he says — because Jon really hopes you have experienced the most exciting forms of abuse, or can be convinced to believe that you have, and that you will share every gory detail with him — the comment recipient should focus on, well, getting over it.
“I would suggest that you give yourself permission to risk believing that the feelings will fade with time,” he says. “I would strongly recommend you allow yourself to risk believing that you are normal, and that, as you continue to grow into adulthood, that your sense of self-worth will develop as you develop your inner beauty, character, and your empathy for others.”
This is a horoscope, not therapeutic advice. Insincerity is a fourth red flag that cannot be unseen by a young person already highly attuned to the danger of being sucked in by a stranger with a good story.
“Spend time reading the stories of those who've de-transitioned,” Jon suggests, because that will help them not want to re-transition. Captain Obvious then links to a “blog post” at his SurvivorSupport.us website which complains about “agenda-driven therapists.” It is quite long, consisting mostly of screenshots.
“You are fine as you are, as God made you special... inside and out,” Jon ends. Then replying to a polite reply from the OP, he returns to proselytizing. “Ultimately, there may be deep questions a part of you is wrestling about God, so that may need to surface too.” Religiosity again.
Jon also repeats his interest in recovered memories of abuse. “And, if truth does need to surface, a part of you may be fearful what it will tell you, as it will likely contain truth,” he says, sounding very much like the man who has helped more than one woman “remember” satanic ritual abuse through his unique form of “counseling.”
An astute detransitioner would perhaps not be consciously aware, but only subliminally sure, that something was wrong, here. If someone has been harmed by a therapist before — especially if that therapist was a psychic sadist, like Jon Uhler — one would expect that person to feel hinky about him, even if they cannot say just why.
“So, one way of combatting anxiety is to begin to do some journaling about what has happened in terms of who has crossed boundaries and/or been hurtful,” Jon advised. “If there has been any abuse, that wants to surface as well.”
He would like it very much if you could remember all the secrets of what happened to you. He is sure there are secrets. He has helped other people remember their secrets. Don’t you want to help him remember your secrets? That would be so much fun for him.
As the reader may observe in the screenshot above, Jon has never hidden his interest or belief in “recovered memories” and “multiple personalities,” especially if such pseudoscientific therapies come with salacious charges of satanic ritual abuse.
Using a stock photo of a woman, Uhler has included three pages of handwritten, stream-of-consciousness journaling by a real mentally ill woman he has “helped” this way for over 30 years. The handwriting changes are supposed to represent “alters,” or splinter personalities, emerging from their hiding place inside of her brain.
The reader may conduct an experiment in penmanship. With little effort, they can try to produce four or five different ‘moods’ of handwriting on their own. Copying someone else’s handwriting is very hard to do, but changing one’s own handwriting is easy, as the reader would soon discover.
We assess that the above screenshot, and a series of tweets connected to that one, are suggestive of folie à deux, a shared psychosis between therapist and client. This is of course a non-expert opinion. We will have more to report on this particular “client” of Jon’s in a future update.
Also known as shared delusional disorder (SDD), many transwidows report that a similar relationship with an “affirming” counselor convinced their husbands to pursue sex changes. Detranstitioners have told similar stories about credentialed therapists who first suggested a dysphoria diagnosis and then immediately affirmed the resulting ‘self-diagnosis.’
More than one commentator on the medicalization of ‘gender identity’ has therefore noted the parallels with recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse by way of “agenda-driven therapists,” in Uhler’s words.
As we explained in Part 1 of our investigative series, Jon wants detransitioners to believe that “protective parts” of themselves, and not those agenda-driven clinicians, were responsible for their medicalization decisions. This path leads away from their healing and towards the satisfaction of his fantasies.
In a Rumble livestream with Chris Mathieu a year ago, Uhler claimed that he “was on that journey with my client, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, and before I knew it, I said, ‘Wait a second, I think I’ve heard about this phenomenon.’ I think I’m familiar with the concept of Sybil,” he said, referring to the world’s most famous case of “multiple personalities” in a book and film of the same name. Modern research has determined that the story of Sybil, real name Shirley Mason, was a fabrication by the therapist.
Uhler, who remains a true believer regardless, told Mathieu that he worked with the “patient” in the above screenshot for “eight years,” and that “she has about 250 ‘parts,’ shall we say. It’s a very real phenomena.” Asserting that “brain science” shows “you’ll see different parts of the brain light up” because “trauma will take somebody’s personality and segment that,” Jon recycled a psychotherapeutic myth that is as old as Sigmund Freud.
We will delve into that history later in this series. What matters here is that Jon offers the detransitioner a recognized and debunked pseudotherapy, and that this service is provided off-the-books. His “counseling” of the woman who authored the journal entry above lasted eight years, officially, until his California license expired.
Since then, he has “cared” for this same woman under a different business model. Jon offers private counseling services through his website, but only as a personal consultant.
Jon Uhler “won’t be using my therapy license,” he says, so that “I don’t have to diagnose you” or “do a treatment plan” or “take case notes, so that you don’t have to worry about if everything were ever to go to court.” He will not be held responsible for the consequences.
The sixth red flag that alerts the detransitioner to Jon Uhler, then, is his intense breadcrumbing. As though driven by a pathological need to reveal what he really is, Jon often unsettles people he talks to because they sense a lot is going on under the surface, with him. Unsure what lurks there, or what agenda he has, many people still sense something is deeply wrong, and stay away after they sense it.
Here is an example. We recently received several graphics that Jon reportedly used in his “counseling” of inmates at two correctional facilities in Pennsylvania. We will examine them in more detail soon. This one points to what multiple sources have told us about the “confusing” way Jon “counseled” his captive audience. We have color-highlighted some of the text for emphasis. A lot is clearly going on inside the person who made this.
This graphic is very wordy, dense, and difficult to understand — it is anti-communication. We detect the influence of Dante Alighieri by way of John Calvin. Jon’s wordiness has the air of ‘automatic writing’ or ‘spirit writing’ in which human “mediums” channel messages from beyond using their psychic energy. Does Jon achieve some sort of altered state when he creates these works of art? What is going on here?
Vertical lines suggest a timeline. At the center horizontal, where “white collar criminals” and “lifetime politicians” are highlighted in color, there seems to be a narrow earthly path full of temptations. Above and below that are heaven and hell, respectively, with heaven being a place of righteous wrath, and hell being a crossroads of the guilty past with our present temptations, a tug-of war for the soul.
We have contacted Mr. Uhler for comment and will update if he replies.
According to Jon’s confusing art, an absence of “remorse” and “empathy” automagically and universally transmutates into “indifference,” then “disregard,” then “disdain,” and finally “sadistic actions” along a continuum. This descent of the soul is pride pulling against the conscience, leading to the “overriding of conscience” and “moral inversion.”
Which brings us to the seventh red flag that detransitioners now see in Jon Uhler, namely the way he treats his daughter Nicole. Detransitioners can see the way Jon treats her, and then they will never unsee it.
Jon has displayed no remorse for his actions, nor empathy for his daughter’s experiences of his abuse and coercive control. He has been indifferent to the accusations leveled against him, disdainful of charges he does not deign to deny. Instead of sympathy, Jon Uhler has responded to Nicole’s statements to The Distance with apathy.
And then there is the sadism. Anticipating that we were in communication with his children already, around Father’s Day weekend Jon attempted to preempt our reporting with a series of tweets about his happy memories of being a father. Jon used those family photos to portray himself as the perfect dad, and his children as happy objects that he remembers being in his orbit rather than as adult human beings that he does not actually know. He posted a screenshot of an email from Nicole that she says was part of his gaslighting campaign against her in 2017. He posted a photo taken at a state park that, according to Nicole, falsely indicated that the family went camping outdoors. Jon hates camping.
These are not normal behaviors. Detransitioners see the inauthentic displays of parental love and they are repelled.
Jon has privately and publicly referred to Nicole as Absalom, the son of King David at the center of the tragedy in the Book of Samuel, in an effort to undermine her credibility by citing a biblical authority. Most people who see it are repelled by it.
“I don’t necessarily need to trust or not trust the character of a person that’s writing a fact-based book,” Jon told Brad in his livestream this Sunday. Investigating Jon is as much work as a book. We do not ask the reader to trust, or not trust, our personal characters. Instead, we report facts, witness statements and documents, especially Jon’s own words, and let the reader decide for themselves what Jon is. That seems fair to us.
In fact, our rigorous pursuit of the truth has led us to a late discovery about our previous installment, and the need to make an astonishing correction, with citations.
Here is how we opened Part 2 of our written investigation into Jon Uhler, dateline February 2016. Ironically, we began with this anecdote because it seemed to humanize him a little, and we were bending over backwards to be fair.
About two weeks before Patricia jumped from the wooden balcony of the Uhler family’s Johnstown, Pennsylvania home, Jon walked in on her as she began to “examine” the genitals of her adolescent son by telling Reed to pull his pants down in the kitchen.
“I need to physically examine you because I think you have demons in you and I need to cast them out,” she reportedly said. Having witnessed this abuse, Jon described the event to Nicole later. The behavior was all too normal for Patricia — and Jon had already known it was happening for years.
The Distance has now confirmed that this incident did not happen. Jon Uhler fabricated the event in its entirety.
We assess that his false report to Nicole, apparently even enlisting her brother Reed to support his lie, is likely an example of narcissistic parental alienation, “the process of psychological manipulation of a child by a parent to show fear, disrespect, or hostility towards the other parent.” Jon knows what that is. He has to know. It’s his job to know.
Nicole agrees this interpretation is all too plausible. At the time of the alleged event, Nicole says she sadly recognized Reed was taking up his father’s “habits of lying and copying Jon in his behavior,” she tells The Distance.
Still a juvenile, Reed was in the room while Jon told her about the scene in the kitchen, she says. Looking back, she thinks that Reed’s behavior may have been a result of his discomfort with lying. At the time, she thought it was simply embarrassment. We suggest she should maybe call her brother and forgive him his trespasses. Separatism was her father’s dark design.
This points to the biggest problem in discerning the truth about Jon Uhler. Half his legend is made of fairy tales he created about himself, or about others, while trying to control the perceptions of other people about his own character.
Every time we learn something new about Jon, it turns out he is even worse than we told you before. He exhibits more red flags than a theme park. It’s not just us here at The Distance who see the signs. Lots of people do.
The better question is why some people pretend they are blind and cannot see.
Our three podcasts so far in this series, two with Nicole Uhler and Part 3 with Jimmy Hinton.
Our two Twitter/X spaces so far with Nicole Uhler and Jimmy Hinton.
Here are two video conversations between our editor, Matt Osborne, and Exulansic. These are exculsively available to premium subscribers of either Substack.
