On Saturday, 30 August, three days after Robert ‘Robin’ Westman fired into a Minneapolis church, killing two children and wounding 17 other people, a gang of protesters tried to intimidate detransitioners at a public forum by saying “shots fired.”
Participants in the event at the Yolo County Library in Waltham, California arrived to find a man clad in black, along with other ‘trantifa’, attempting to intimidate members of the public at the entrance.
Organizers had asked for police protection but their request was denied. An officer arrived after the verbal intimidation incident but made no arrests and took no statements.
“Transphobes enter here” and other choice phrases were chalked on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the library meeting room. Your humble correspondent last witnessed these tactics being used by protesters against an abortion clinic, though with less violence or police cooperation.
Inside, the event proceeded as planned. Layla Jane, Ari, and Exulansic described their experiences at the hands of a disinterested system that harmed them. Alana, a Native American, offered an “indigenous perspective on trans identities” that that spiritualizes rather than medicalizes.
“Is medicalization necessary to be transgender?” asked Democrats with an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG), Women Are Real, CAlifornians United for Sex-Based Evidence in Policy and Law (CAUSE), and Moms for Liberty. “Does this harm gender non conforming LGB and autistic people?”
The event was livestreamed. Speakers shared their views on contentious questions in a transparent environment where the public could ask questions. You can watch the entire panel here to see what was so terrible, that trantifa did not want you to hear.
Regular readers of The Distance will be interested to note how Alana explicityly spiritualizes his identity-formation to pursue a healthier, non-medicalized path of exploration. A “two spirit identity” takes the place of the hormone cult and the surgical sorcerers.
Outside, protesters in favor of pediatric genderwoo chalked slogans about bodily autonomy on the sidewalk. All of them wore masks to conceal their identities.
One man named an organizer, Beth Bourne, out loud. This is called ‘doxxing’ and it is supposed to inspire fear. Ms. Bourne is formidable, however, whereas the young man was hard to take seriously while holding a didgeridoo.
A guitarist appeared to be a ‘trans man’. The one clearly-identifiable female among the protesters, also masked, decided she did not want to appear on camera despite appearing in public, and that it gave her the right to start a fight.
Clearly a leader, she was spoiling for a confrontation so that she could make a spurious complaint about violence. After all, trantifa have to justify their own terroristic violence, somehow.
Ms. Bourne also appeared to be getting the best of her interaction. At that point, a protester used their sign about bodily autonomy to violate the bodily autonomy of the woman who was recording the scene. Here is the video:
A still image shows that the person with the sign, who appears to be a trans-identified male, was in fact the aggressor.
Despite the sparring, no one was injured, the event proceeded, and police took no action other than briefly showing up. Organizers are attempting to identify the individual with the sign for a civil harassment order.
Here is Ms. Bourne’s video of the altercation. As you can hear and see, the protesters were absurdly claiming that children “realize they are transgender at birth.” Such ideas cannot withstand rational scrunity, which is why no debate can ever be allowed (see: ‘This is not a debate!’).
During the discussion, the protesters played “Be A Man” from the Disney film Mulan in an attempt to disrupt the speakers inside. “You're a spinless, pale pathetic lot / And you haven't got a clue. Somehow I'll make a man / Out of you.” It was of course a perfect projection who don’t believe that men and women exist.
Inside the event, Exulansic decided to record the protesters through the windows of the meeting room. The same female-appearing instigator countered with her own phone again, blocking Exulansic’s camera.
Acting on a hunch, Exulansic clipped the camera to the curtain. Incredibly, the woman stayed still, perhaps suffering from infantile lack of object permanence, or ADHD. “I even covered the camera, to test her grasp of object permanence and her memory/attention span.”
“She continued to stand there and film back at the covered camera on the curtain of the livestreamed event for nearly a full minute before mentally declaring herself the victor of the duel/succumbing to the agony of perceived defeat,” Exulansic tweeted. Watch:
A few minutes later, as the volume outside peaked, Exulansic exited to confront the protesters, who were “loitering outside our event with only large obscured windows separating they/them and us.” As can be seen in the video clip at the top of this post, that’s when the protesters decided to escalate their verbal tactics.
“You know you can exercise your First Amendment rights over there, you don’t have to disrupt ours?” Exulansic asked them.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the confrontational woman replied.
“I know! Because you don’t know very much, do you?” Exulansic said.
The young men standing nearby mocked the exchange, yelling: “Shots fired! Shots fired!”
“Except not really, because we’re not shooters, unlike some people,” Exulansic said, naming Robin Weston before going back inside. “Oh! Too soon?”
Police arrived shortly thereafter, did nothing, and left. Exulansic writes:
The police officer … had questions for me because I was on the flyer but [the protesters] were not required to stop harassing us or blocking the accessible entrance to prevent disabled people from entering and exiting a venue because they hate members of protected groups they have ideological fixations on, like detransitioners. If the law was being fairly applied, their unlawful stalking behavior today would get a hate crimes and RICO enhancement.
Organizers had invited Davis city councilwoman Gloria Partida and “speakers from the LGBTQ community as well as representatives from Davis Unified school district” to attend the event and ask questions.
“I did invite others in [the] trans community to speak on Reddit UCDavis channel,” Ms. Bourne tells The Distance. None of them attended. “Why wouldn’t the trans activists join us inside and listen to the speakers debate?” She asks of the protesters. “We had 45 minutes of open discussion where they could have voiced their opinions.”
Moms For Liberty and other organizations sued the Yolo County Library in 2023 after a library official ejected them from the reserved meeting roomed for referring to transgender athletes as “male.”
In 2024, Yolo County settled the litigation for $70,000 and attorney’s fee. The terms of the settlement also include an agreement that library officials “shall not interfere with presentations or other speech by individuals or groups that have reserved meeting rooms based on the content of such speech” and that staff will “curtail any disruptive behavior.”
On Sunday, Ms. Bourne revisited the Yolo County Library, where online records show that there are 215 books about transgenderism and 48 books of them are in the Kid’s Catalog.
Ms. Bourne chalked her own messages — “No One is Trans, Your Body is Perfect” — in the same sidewalk location where trantifa had left their scrawlings the day before. “Where are my First Amendment rights lawyers?” Ms. Bourne tweeted, for “within an hour the library manager came out with a mop and bucket of water to remove my messages.” Video below:
We will bring you more information on this story as it develops.
The VA Governor's Race Is Becoming A Referendum On 'Trans' Policy Demands
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