Trevor Project Still Gaslighting YouTubers With 'Conversion Therapy' Message

Discussions of children and transition politics seem to trigger the algorithm

Malcolm Clark discusses kids and the trans craze with Andrew Gold

Hospitals in New York and Los Angeles have halted pediatric medical transition of minors after President Donald Trump’s executive order to end the practice. Despite some resistance, the order has still impressed the medical profession with the newly-increased risks of ‘gender affirming care’ for young people. A series of detransitioner lawsuits and a Supreme Court decision in the Skrmetti case will further impact the risk assessments of hospitals, insurers, and clinicians regarding pediatric sex lobotomies.

Rather than change with the times, however, the Trevor Project has fine-tuned their message on YouTube. As I first reported in December 2023, any discussion of children and medicalized gender ‘transition’ seems to trigger an algorithm that embeds a message under the offending video. Back then, the message read: “Conversion therapy, sometimes referred to as ‘reparative therapy,’ is any of several dangerous and discredited practices aimed at changing an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Trevor Project apparently altered their script sometime since then. Now the automated message reads: “Conversion therapy refers to a range of dangerous and discredited practices aimed at changing one’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.” Telling a boy to put on pants is now exactly the same as telling him to stop being homosexual, according to the Trevor Project.

This is of course insane. It is also completely normal for the Trevor Project, which has always hyped transgender suicide risk contrary to its own published advice on best practices. Trevor Project never calls out GLAAD or prominent influencers when they ignore the advice of the Trevor Project to avoid hyping suicide risk and that is because the Trevor Project model the misbehavior themselves.

To tell a boy that he should put on pants is exactly the same as saying that he ought to un-alive himself: this is what the Trevor Project means by “trans rights.” Here is their same message under the YouTube version of my recent podcast with Exulansic. We discussed five deaths of ‘trans men’ influencers she was following on TikTok, some of whom transitioned as minors, in just the last six months.

According to the Trevor Project, telling a lesbian girl she was born in the right body is “conversion therapy,” a “dangerous and discredited practice,” whereas the surgical mutilation and biochemical harms of gender quacks are life-saving settled science etcetera. Of course, the sick joke here is that some of the deceased were also clearly same-sex attracted, becoming ‘men’ in order to cope with their internalized gay shame. “They're literally ‘converting’ girls to boys,” Exulansic told The Distance when asked about the embedded message.

In an effort to understand this repulsive phenomenon, I spent part of last night going through the entire YouTube channel history of the Gender: A Wider Lens podcast with Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad, two of the founders of Genspect. They recently ended their run as a weekly podcast after 204 episodes, so their channel was a perfect sample set to measure the impact of this algorithmic thumb-on-the-scale.

Altogether, I found twelve instances of the Trevor Project algorithm posting a rebuttal under their full-length interview videos, a bit less than 6 percent. However, I also noticed an interesting pattern to the videos that got Trevor’d. All of the videos in question tread upon the overt politics of ‘gender identity’ as they affect young people in one way or another.

The July 2024 Gender: A Wider Lens podcast interview with N3VLYNNN got Trevor’d

Lynne Chadwick is interviewed about detransitioner lawsuits. Trevor’d

Vernadette Broyles of Themis discusses secret social transitions. Trevor’d

Emma Thomason, child of an autogynephile, discusses her lived experience while the Trevor Project calls her “dangerous and discredited”

Leor Sapir of the Manhattan Institute discusses the consumerism of gender medicine and gets Trevor’d for his trouble

Stella, Sasha, and Lisa Marciano discuss their book, When Kids Say They’re Trans

Stella and Sasha discuss the origins of the “affirmative” model. Trevor’d

Stella discusses her book What Your Teen is Trying to Tell You, with Sasha. Trevor’d

Stella and Sasha discuss their new guide for therapists. Trevor’d

Stella and Sasha discuss desistance in 2022. Trevor’d

Stella and Sasha discuss the differences between gay conversion therapy of yore and the imaginary gender conversion therapy of 2021 with Bob Wethers. Trevor’d

Stella and Sasha discuss the politicization of gender in February 2021. Trevor’d

YouTube is the top streaming service on the planet. Google, which owns YouTube, has been telling its viewers that Stella and Sasha need a ‘fact check.’ Similar messages appear under videos on contentious, conspiracy-addled topics such as climate change, flat earth theory, and Atlantis. YouTube is silently suggesting that these women belong in the same category of content.

Thanks to a nontransparent algorithm, Trevor Project has the unearned and undeserved imprimatur of expertise on YouTube, as well as right-of-reply in advance to anyone who challenges their most sacred political orthodoxy. We will continue to research this phenomenon and update our reporting as we learn more.