Know Your Transphobes

Welcome Transphobe hunter. Grab a flashlight, your journal, and a camera.

Content advisory - transphobia, obviously. Pretty tame otherwise. Rated PG-13 for swearing.

Circa September of the year 2020, Kinetic Studios released a game titled Phasmophobia. The premise of the game is that you are a scout for professional ghost hunters and exorcists. You go to a location that has a ghost and your job is to coax the ghost into revealing its power level and its true nature.

And in a lot of ways, online discourse can feel very similar when there’s rampant transphobia on the loose.

In Phasmophobia, each kind of ghost has a signature set of signs that they will give off. Some, and only some of the ghosts will write in the coloring books, some and only some will cause rooms they inhabit to dip below freezing temperatures, and so on. If you can definitively detect three different signs between all possibilities, you’ll have enough information to identify exactly which ghost you’re dealing with, because it will be the only kind to exhibit those three specific signs together.

And dealing with transphobes is similar. There are some key differences, which I’ll talk about, but similar enough that I think this theme is fitting and fun. I mean, it was either that or a Donkey Kong Country endgame roll call.

(Weird animals float across the screen)

So, stop stacking paint cans and let’s get started.

The Average Bystander (Normius bystanderus)

Generally speaking, people are okay, I guess. They invented cheese toast so they can’t be all bad. Most people just want what’s best for themselves and everyone around them.

The Normie isn’t actually a transphobe… kind of. “Normie” here represents the average person who means well but isn’t up to speed on trans issues. Usually for two reasons. One, there’s so little visibility for trans issues and so little representation that someone uninvolved would have to go out of their way to be exposed to the subjects. And two, they generally aren’t affected by these issues so there’s no real motivation for them to do their homework on them. And there’s a larger question of duty to be informed - there are so many issues that need attention in our lives. There’s racism, homophobia, sexism, world hunger, capitalism, a global shortage of Mandalorian episodes, (HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME LUCASARTS?! [Lucasfilms? You know what, I don’t actually care.]) So, it’s pretty reasonable for someone to not be fully informed on all of them at once. We need fighting on all fronts. But the good news is that people can always learn more, always become better allies to more people. And eliminating transphobia doesn’t just help trans people - everyone benefits from every form of bigotry eliminated.

Maybe this describes you, in which case, thank you for taking the time to learn more and I hope this video is both fun and helps you help more people around you.

*PORTAL clip: “Thank you for helping us help you help us all*

Speaking of help, don’t forget to help the channel by haunting that like and subscribe button-

Signs: Microaggressions

Microaggressions are just little things people do out of ignorance, generally without malice. They’re little, hence *micro*, but they add up and they can really be insulting and frustrating.

Consider the microaggression that was common ten years ago: when a gay couple would introduce themselves to straight people, they’d often get asked, “Which of you is the man and which of you is the woman?” It comes from the assumption that every relationship must have a man and a woman, and projecting that norm onto people onto whom that assumption profoundly does not fit. And even on a good day, it’s really intrusive because it’s loaded with assumptions about what is the “man’s” role and the “woman’s” role in a relationship. Come on, you know what they’re *really* asking and we all know that’s nobody’s business.

Anyway, here are some of the microaggressions that well-meaning people do to trans people and why you shouldn’t say or do these things,

“Do you know Nikki Tutorials?”

Trans people don’t all know each other, there’s no hivemind.

“You mean like Caitlyn Jenner?”

Trans people generally don’t care to be compared to the *other* one trans person you’ve heard of.

“Have you had ‘the surgery’?”

That’s none of your business. Transition is an incredibly personal decision and trans or not, someone else’s genitals are none of your business unless you’re dating them *and* the relationship has reached that level of intimacy.

Like, it’s natural to be curious about a kind of person you’ve never been exposed to. But please don’t put trans people on the spot to answer overly personal questions. Just chill, put your curiosity aside, and maybe when there’s an appropriate time you’ll get to talk to your new trans friend and they'll share their experiences with you. If they have the energy.

“Okay but Blair White gave me permission to say tr-”

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

How to respond:

These are the people where persuasion and patience will have the greatest returns in terms of effort into directly bringing people into allyship. These are people who want to do good, want to help other people, and so, if you can show them that being an ally is a way to do good and help people, then it’s pretty reasonable to anticipate them starting to use that information to start helping people.

If you’re in this group and you want to learn so you can help more people, great. YouTube is an amazing resource for learning. It’s where a lot of trans people have already put energy into explaining things so you don’t have to ask your trans friends to educate you themselves. That’s hard work, actually. I’m linking in the dooblydoo some other channels to consider - you shouldn’t limit your education to any one voice.

If you’re already an ally or trans yourself - know that these are people who can really easily be helped to become allies, but remember that you’re never obligated to expend your own energy to educate someone else. It pays forward, and it’s absolutely worthwhile and noble, but if you’re ever on the spot and don’t have the time or energy for it, just remember to take care of yourself first.

And if you’re in this group and you trip up and get reprimanded, it’s not the end of the world. Learn and move on. And if you accidentally did a microaggression and a trans person snapped at you - it’s not because you are an enemy to trans people, but because trans people already deal with so much, and it adds up, and gets really damn tiring.

With any struggle for dignity and respect, you shouldn’t choose who you take care of based on who’s nice to you, but kindness is a really good way to inspire people to care about those around them.

Reactionaries and Chuds

“Chud” is a slang term describing a spectrum of right-leaning beliefs, particularly social beliefs, that are… well… compared to the well-meaning bystander, much more likely to be rooted in bigotry and more likely to be actively hostile.

And here, we see the people who are progressively more and more along a pipeline of justifying ideology and cognitive traps with the extreme end being… well… fascism.

It’s like a really awful pokemon evolution.

The start of the spectrum is the stage where a large parcel of people who vote Republican are at. The stage where they think bigotry is bad, but they also don’t believe that they’re ever being bigots, and they think the people who point out bigoted things they do or say are being “politically correct” and that anyone who challenges their bigotry is being a “wokescold”.

These are people who can still be reached, at this stage at least, but almost never directly. Usually, they need something to jar them and make them realize that their indifference to the plight of others is kind of shitty. Someone they care about has to be affected in a way they can’t look away from.

But things can get worse if left unchecked. “Ironic” and “edgy” forms of bigotry can turn into desensitization to genuine bigotry.

Signs:

• Chud Comorbidities - casual racism, “ironic” antisemitism

• Accuses anyone they don’t like of “Postmodernism” but can’t actually define postmodernism with any respected sources nor demonstrate how it applies

• Uses “Woke," “Wokescold," and/or “SJW” as pejoratives, accuses people of “virtue signaling," claims that “Political correctness is ruining society.”

• Claims to have taken the “red pill”

• Shares Prager U videos

Advanced chuddery signs:

The chud may be beyond helping if they exhibit some or all of these signs:

• Idolize Trump,

• Call people they disagree with “NPCs”

• On 4chan, “Don’t reveal your power level”

• Q Anon level of conspiracy theorist garbage

• Adamantly against anti-racism

• Flat earth, climate change denialism

• “Ironic” Nazi admiration

Tactics:

This is where patience really isn’t a virtue on social media. The process from “as long as they don’t act gay in public” to “go ahead and be gay in public, I no longer feel threatened by the existence of gay people” is not a journey that one can be shepherded along by strangers.

Depending on how far along the pipeline they are, you might feel tempted to just try to talk them out of it - but note that a stranger alone is not going to be a persuading force in getting them to go home and think about their lives.

*clip of Obi-Wan telling Deathsticks dealer to go home and rethink his life*

Hey, he’s a ghost now so it’s on topic (picture of Obi-Wan as a ghost)

When you encounter the chud online, you have two options, one is to try to bait them into considering other avenues and sources of information than the ones they’ve been stuck in. Respond with video links to leftists, especially edgy leftists*. When someone is along the pipeline to the right, edgy leftists seem to have the greatest success pulling them out of that spiral, and from there, they usually start to integrate into communities where they learn that giving a shit about your fellow human is actually pretty cool. All the youths are doing it these days and it’s making the world a better place.

*note on edgy leftists - shit’s complicated, that’s probably a whole ‘nother video on the overton window and how people’s politics evolve in response to who and what they’re exposed to.

But beware - as tempted as you will be to try to reason them down from their chuddery, they can’t ultimately be reasoned out of a position they didn’t come to from a place of reason in the first place. If you try to ‘debate’ with them, as in try to show them new information in the hopes that they’ll reconsider their wrong assumptions, they will just be wrong and loud at you for as long as you let them. And once you detect that, you have to be willing to abandon hope of converting *them* and instead, focus on doing the following:

• Humiliate their bad positions - make it so anyone watching sees them for the absolute clown that they are.

• Rebuke them - tell them their bigotry is not welcome here and tell them to fuck off and that you won’t let them waste any of your time.

• Block, ignore, walk away.

Notice the first two of those three responses, you’re not doing it *for* them. You’re doing it for those watching the exchange. On social media, disagreement is as much a spectator sport as the exchange of ideas between interlocutors. If you can humiliate someone for bad takes, you potentially reveal chud heroes as fools and their followers will reconsider their ‘team’ accordingly. And if you hold a line and shout a chud out of a conversation, you send a message to the people that they would otherwise be trying to harm - a message that you have their backs and that bullying won’t fly around you.

These are skills, and if you want to refine your skills on that, I would highly recommend watching Ian Danskin’s Alt Right Playbook as a starter, and then checking out persuasive leftist rhetoricians to learn by example. And once you’re sufficiently inoculated to chud ideas, maybe even start studying their rhetoric to see who buys into it and how to effectively intercept their targets.

And when it comes to professional chuds - people who *can’t* publicly change their political positions or risk losing their careers - then don’t go after the con artist themselves, try to intercept the marks.

Assimilationists

These are the people who embody the phrase, “Justice? Nah, Just Us.”

With almost every civil rights struggle, ever, there’s a temptation to throw other related struggles under the bus, a real political selfishness that many rationalize as pragmatism.

There was racism within the suffragette movement.

In the Black Civil Rights movement in the United States, when Bayard Rustin was outed as gay, he was basically abandoned by his comrades, who were not prepared to fight a second battle, not prepared to tie black civil rights with a group of people who were seen as deviant, perveted predators.

One of the first debates I remember after discovering my own sexuality was for a nondiscrimination act that was floating around and LGBT groups were split on whether or not to add “gender identity” in addition to “sexual orientation," with the fear being that if the protections for trans people were added, then they would lose key votes and therefore, not make *any* progress. And so it became a sort of trolley problem.

Do nothing, and only trans people get run over. Flip the switch, trans AND gay people get run over.

Except here’s the thing with the trolley problem. The problem is the trolley, not the person at the switch. The solution in the end isn’t to flip the switch to the path of least destruction, it’s to prevent the destructive tendencies of the trolley. And that’s the ultimate flaw of assimilationism

The goal of assimilation is to appeal to the sensibilities of the dominant group, which requires complicity with the harmful assumptions that the status quo relies on. An example would be gay people who distance themselves from Pride parades, from people radically trying to counter homophobia and harmful norms of what sexuality is, or should look like, or how it should be expressed. Their goal is to step on others to reach acceptance, and then pull the ladder up behind them. It’s beyond selfish. And I will NOT have it.

Signs:

• Denies that trans people were present at Stonewall.

• “Makes the rest of us look bad”

• Follows the LGB Alliance, Demands that LGB and T advocacy be separated somehow

• “Genderfree”

• “Gay not queer”

• Claims that “Queer theory is taking over” but can’t cite any current or respected proponents of queer theory or even define it - just point to really old nobodies that were ultimately rejected from the movement as if they represent the movement now.

• Claims that trans people or their allies are trying to “trans away the gay.”

Tactics

Assimilationists will always try to appeal to transphobic tropes to evoke transphobia in the hope that by distancing themselves from trans people, they can make themselves look better in comparison.

They never dare challenge the actual systems or attitudes that marginalize gay, queer, OR trans people, otherwise they would acknowledge that all of our struggles are intertwined. Patriarchy relies on telling people that there is a way that people *should* be, who we *should* like, and how we *should* identify, all based on our birth sex and reproductive potential. It’s not hard to see that the idea of “if you are born with a penis, you must partner with someone who was born with a vagina (or vice versa) and make babies together” is especially harmful to gay, bi, asexual, trans people. I mean, it’s even harmful to cishets because that’s still societal pressure and we should all get to decide what we want out of our lives without external pressure, but LGBTQI people are more likely to not be comfortable with the prescribed outcomes.

This kind of person can rarely be convinced directly - they’d need actual in-person experience interacting with trans people in order to have meaningful realization that solidarity is the way to go, not political selfishness. But you can dissuade people who are observing this and keep their arguments from taking hold in onlookers - by pointing out how various forms of bigotry are related and also by pointing out the comorbidity of different kinds of bigotries. In particular, point out how the people they’re allying with are often members of the far-right who, if trans people were to be anchored more securely in their oppression again, would then move on to attacking gay people and gay rights. When they post an article from a smaller publication or platform, follow that platform back to its source and look at their other positions. And so very often, you’ll see….

Family watch international, if you look at their positions and their video library, are about:

• Families

• globalism

• Pornography

• Same sex attraction

• Sexual education

• Therapy ban films

• Transgender

That does not sound like a very gay inclusive group/

We’re all in this together. Transphobia is rooted in homophobia, and homophobia is rooted in sex essentialism. They cannot be separated, and attempts to separate them only serve the goals of bigots to divide and conquer those they want to marginalize, oppress, and erase.

Chasers

Inb4 a chaser says, “I’m not a transphobe, I’m a transphile!”

No. Chasers are people who fetishize trans people, most commonly trans women, but trans men are not immune to this problem either. And there’s enough to unpack here for a whole video in its own right.

But the need-to-know is: It’s not “respect” to treat people as sexual objects, existing only to fulfill a sexual desire, even if that desire isn’t heteronormative. Chasers are transphobic for the same reason that pick-up artists are misogynists. There’s absolutely the room for a healthy sexual appreciation of people whose combinations of sexual characteristics and gender expression deviate from the typical binary, but chasers are NOT that.

Signs:

Treats trans people the way your typical chauvenist pig treats women, or the way a race-fetishizing pig treats people of color.

Tactics:

The same tactics the more common forms of misogynist use against cis women. Unsolicited dick-pics, objectifying solicitation for sexual attention… just block them.

TERFs

A majority of people that I go after, both on Twitter and in my videos, are TERFs. The acronym stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists. They almost always call themselves “Gender Critical," but that’s just rebranding akin to eugenicists trying to call themselves “race realists”

The term was coined by Viv Smythe, a cisgender woman and self-proclaimed radical feminist. A radical feminist being someone who rightfully believes that we can’t make small adjustments to our culture here and there to end sexism - we have to make dramatic overhauls and massive changes.

By adding the T and E (not to be confused with T&A), Viv was trying to point out that so many would-be-feminists were falling for the trap of sex essentialisation, which is itself profoundly anti-feminist, and through that, becoming overtly transphobic.

And gradually, that branched out into a movement of people who call themselves feminists, but who are ultimately just hateful of trans people.

The reason that I focus hardest on TERFs in my work is because they’re the ones who have the most clout in discussions about trans people and trans rights. Since they wear the pretense of feminism, they’re most likely to have the ears and attention of people who are otherwise progressive. They’re the most likely to be able to mask outright transphobia under plausible deniability and misleading rhetoric because they speak the language of feminism most fluently of all of the other groups.

And speaking of the other groups, side note that there is a LOT of overlap with them and the assimilationists - most LGB TERFs are themselves rabid assimilationists.

And dear LORD are they persistent. And nasty. And…

Signs:

Strap in, there’s a lot here.

• Tries to disrupt discussions with “DEFINE WOMAN.” Answers with “Adult human female” or has that in their bio. Uses the terms “Natal females” or “Natal Women,” claims that “cis” is hate speech or that “TERF” is a slur.

• “Sex-based rights”: But never actually answers as to which rights should be granted to some people but not others based on legal sex classification.

• Talks about “Peak Trans”: The act of exploiting transphobic anxieties latent in many people who haven’t examined those issues to induce more overt transphobia, as if it’s a good thing.

• The “Staniland Question”:

• I <3 JK Rowling, Rowling drawn as a saint as profile picture, #IStandWithJKRowling, #IStandWithKeiraBell

• “Listen to detransitioners!” and unsubstantiated claims that someone is “transing kids,” insistence that dysphoria magically ceases after puberty or that typical difficulties cis kids experience during puberty are easily mistaken for dysphoria.

• Tries to frame any and all criticism of their transphobia as “Attacking women” but can never substantiate any claim of their opponents being misogynistic.

• “I JUST WANT TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM DANGEROUS UNKNOWN EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENTS WITH PERMANENT IRREVERSIBLE EFFECTS!”

• Will gladly side with anyone else, no matter how homophobic, racist, or sexist they are - as long as that person also hates trans people.

• Refers to trans people and their allies as “TRAs,” trying to implicitly compare them to MRAs, or men’s rights activists, which is itself just a cover for anti-feminism. This, despite the fact that MRAs hate trans people too.

• Uses outdated or discredited research to back up their transphobic assertions and then dodging when the flaws of that research is pointed out

• Cry about trans women in female prisons, but never talk about how prisons are fundamentally unsafe for all inhabitants.

• “Sex is immutable,” “You can’t change sex,” “Sex is Binary” on repeat.

• Bang on about the “Wrong Body” metaphor as if it was ever used prescriptively.

Tactics:

The main tactics of TERFs are the aforementioned “Peak Trans” tactic, plausible deniability, deflection, and DARVO.

Take, for instance, the patron saint of TERFs, Jo Karen Rowling. Her infamous letter, “Reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues” repeats many of the false and misleading claims used by transphobes consistently and frames the number of trans people who are out as an “alarming trend” as if it’s growing out of control - soon there will be no cis people left to make the babies! But of course, in that same letter - the one where she frames trans people as an existential threat to cis women, frames being trans as a social contagion that leads people to snort hormones at 5 and get surgery at 12, that she loves trans people and would totally march alongside trans people should they ever face “real” oppression.

One of the more important things to point out is “Peak Trans,” which is an important part of many TERF narratives. Many frame themselves as formerly being trans allies, until the “bad ones” pushed them away, and they could no longer condone “denying biological reality” or that trans rights groups “just went too far.” Peak Trans is when someone’s latent transphobic anxieties are exploited or magnified, usually by carefully curated negative examples from more devout transphobes, until that person themselves believes they’ve had their “eyes opened” to how trans people really are…when, in fact, they’ve had a twisted view of trans people force-fed to them to get them to snap and become adamantly transphobic. It’s almost the same exact mechanism of the “red pill” for chuds.

The Staniland Question in particular is a prime example of this - it’s trying to evoke a mental image of a hulking, powerful, predatory man forcing a dainty, helpless girl to behold his genitals. It evokes, by association, fear-mongering tactics of showing contrived examples of little girls being attacked in public bathrooms by burly men. Despite that not actually being a systemic problem. They’re trying to use salient exemplars to TERF-Pill everyone around them.

The full playbook of TERFs is actually quite varied and I’ll probably have a whole series of videos out on them all, with in-depth explanations of the rhetorical tools they use, why they use them, and how to counter them.

For now, it’s enough to leave it at this: dunk, block, and drown them out. Bait them into admitting the cruelty that is the logical conclusion of their arguments, and send the fruits to @GCMisogyny, @GCRacism, and @GCHomophobia. Do NOT try to reason with them because they are virtually never engaging in good faith. They are arguing dishonestly and will try to manipulate you if you go in diplomatically. All transphobes are bad, but TERFs are among the absolute worst in terms of bad faith debates. And the reason is because they have been led to believe that trans people are an existential threat to cis women, to lesbians and gay people, and to women’s rights, women’s right to be exploited in a sex-segregated prison industrial complex, and most importantly, women’s sports. They legitimately believe that trans people are a critical pillar of the patriarchy, part of a war on women, and all part of a bizarre plot to replace cis women. I’m not fucking joking. They think the one percent of people who are trans, are somehow going to overrun the 50-ish percent of all humans who are cis women, or that every cis woman is going to be transed into a man, SOMEHOW.

As mentioned before, someone can’t be reasoned out of a position that they did not reason themselves into. TERFs have to deradicalize themselves, and that’s difficult emotional work. The most likely way to motivate them to actually do that work is to put on blast the comorbid forms of bigotry that TERFs endorse and commit themselves until, finally, they can no longer turn away and they have to admit to themselves that they’re part of a hate movement.

And more importantly, we have to intercept the people they would otherwise persuade. Again, they’re the most persuasive to people who would otherwise be supportive of trans rights because they have practice exploiting transphobic anxieties that are common, they know how to lead people into believing the lies that got THEM into it.

DO NOT engage with terfs unless you are prepared and willing to deal with some of the worst kinds of abuse they can dish out. They will dox people, persistently harass and abuse, instigate extremely malicious dogpiles, and otherwise try to make you miserable for daring to face the dragon. I’m resilient as fuck, and they’ve even gotten through MY armor more than once. The most effective tactics I can recommend are:

Bait them into saying indefensible things that you can either call out, dunk on, or report,

Call out their deceptive and dishonest argument tactics

Especially with bigger transphobe accounts, fill the replies with links to trans-positive youtubers or other creators. Reply to Shrier trying to shill her book with links to videos that go in depth into how it’s cruel and dishonest. Philosophy Tube videos. And cajole them into responding - put pressure on them to engage with ideas that counter their bigotries.

And as an added bonus, everyone who clicks any of those links will have more trans-inclusive videographers recommended to them. You’ve heard of alt-right pipeline, get ready for the leftist pipeline, where people are gradually exposed to ideas that help them care about their fellow human being, bay beee.

I’m going to cut it short here, because there’s two smaller groups I want to mention.

Transmedicalists

Yes, you can be trans AND transphobic. Just like you can be gay AND homophobic, or a woman and still be a misogynist.

Transmedicalists are those who believe that being trans is a disorder defined by gender dysphoria, as opposed to trans being a subset of the many natural variations of gender. And that belief is transphobic for the same reason as believing that being gay is “sexual inversion” or induced by sexual trauma.

Their goal is to assert that trans should be treated as a mental illness so that they can obtain treatment, in this case transition…the only problem here is that they’re playing into the hands of people who are happy to see transness as a disease that must be eliminated - and not by letting people transition. Transphobes don’t want to give trans people that kind of bodily autonomy, they want to force trans people to undergo conversion therapy.

There are exactly two grains of truth to transmedicalists: One, that being trans is not a choice. Two, that dysphoria is bad to the point where it often warrants being treated as a form of medical distress. But with ANY medical condition, the patient should always be in full control of their treatments and free of external pressure. Transphobes want to pressure people away from medical transition, but transmedicalists are, inadvertently, pressuring people INTO medical transition that they might not otherwise want by pushing the line “if you don’t intend to transition, you’re faking it, you’re not really trans” when there could be any number of reasons that a trans person would choose not to medically transition. Some can’t because of their financial situation, for their own safety as they would effectively be outed to dangerous transphobes, some can’t because of other medical conditions that would make it dangerous to medically transition. And if someone wants to merely socially transition and not medically transition - that’s valid AF too. Let people decide what their own bodies mean to them and how to navigate those bodies, for fuck’s sake.

Signs:

• Trans, calls self a “transsexual," an outdated term used to specify someone who was transitioning or had already.

• “You can’t be trans without dysphoria.”

• “Nonbinary isn’t real.”

Tactics:

The primary tactics of transmedicalists are to claim that they’re just in it to make sure that trans people have access to transition under programs like the NHS - if they can classify it as a disease, then transitioning as a treatment would be covered, as opposed to it being considered elective.

But again, this ignores the obvious thing that transphobes are going to try to do. Why let people get expensive surgery on taxpayer dollar when conversion therapy is comparatively cheap to provide.

Furthermore, there are LOADS of problems with seeing transition exclusively as a treatment for binary trans people with dysphoria, not the least of which is intense gatekeeping, most of which is counterproductive. Trans nonbinary people for example are effectively shut out if they try to transition with systems that only allow transition as a response to intense dysphoria, even in cases where the nonbinary person DOES have intense dysphoria.

The good news is that transmedicalists are relatively few, so you don’t have to worry about them often. But if you do encounter one in the wild, the best response is to just remind them - if you medicalize trans, they won’t try to fix your dysphoria (not on your terms, anyway) they’ll try to “fix” your gender identity. Fuck. That.

Quislings and Pick-Me’s

Oh yes, I went there.

The term Quisling in sociopolitical discourse (aka idpol) refers to a member of a marginalized group who betrays the group they are a part of, named for Vidkun Quisling who helped Nazi Germany turn Norway into a puppet state during World War 2.

In short, they’re people who think that if they play to the sensibilities of the group that’s doing the oppressing, then they can garner favor and sidestep the persecution they would otherwise receive, in return for helping to maintain that same persecution on others.

This has been a problem in literally every civil rights struggle, ever. Consider Jesse Lee Peterson, who has said in no uncertain terms that he believes that white people are just genetically superior and *should* be in charge. Or Candace Owens and her entire career.

Or Milo Yiannopolous, who told gay men in Australia that they should vote against marriage equality for gay couples in order to preserve Western Society and prevent the degeneracy of homosexuality. While getting married to his husband. At a ceremony held in Australia.

In trans discourse, it seems anecdotally that there are a LOT of quislings out there, and part of that, I think, is just because most of the gay quislings have been forgotten, quietly pretending that they never said shit like “I’m gay but I don’t flaunt it like *those* gays, they give us a bad name.”

They’re basically to trans people what NLOGs are to women and girls. NLOGs, for those of you who don’t know, are “Not Like Other Girls”, and I’m linking an excellent video by Sarah Zed, which talks about how internalized misogyny and our culture’s habit of demonizing anything made for or that appeals to girls, especially teenaged girls, is toxic. It creates a social atmosphere where some women - particularly young adults - feel the need to distance themselves from a demonization of their group by trashing on that group.

Signs:

• Trans, often also a transmedicalist.

• Publish a lot of content about “the bad ones” - focuses HEAVILY on pointing out despicable people, all of whom happen to be trans.

• Parrots TERF rhetoric, including “We need to protect children from transition” and “Transtrenders” or social contagion rhetoric.

Tactics:

The entirety of “One of the Good Ones” is to pander to transphobes. And you don’t necessarily need to intervene - they’ll either realize that they’re catering to people who are trying to erase them, or they’ll go past the moral event horizon and leave themselves to the mercy of people who will deny them the rights that they sold their souls for.

You might not be able to save them, but you can counter their rhetoric, and for that, basically respond to them the same way you would respond to TERFs. Make sure they don’t get to post any transphobic talking points unchallenged.

Ex-Trans

Let me be clear before I continue - detransitioners are valid. People detransition for a variety of reasons - perhaps as they started to transition, they became more visible and they had to detransition to go back into the closet. Perhaps they medically detransitioned because of health reasons. Maybe they just discovered they weren’t actually binary trans after all, that they were gender fluid and that transitioning wasn’t going to provide any net benefit - that’s probably the boat I’d be in if I tried to transition myself.

But there’s a difference between that, and “Ex-Trans,” though ex-trans types will never call themselves that. Because there’s a difference between “I thought I was gay, but I realized I’m just not, actually” and ex-gay.

Ex-Gays were people who, because of self-loathing and internalized homophobia, would loudly renounce their “homosexual ways," declared they were ‘healed,’ and then go on and talk about how the Gay Agenda is a nefarious influence trying to lure people (particularly children and teenagers) away from healthy, heterosexual relationships where they would experience life’s one true calling: Making babies. Sound familiar? Because it’s all basically the whole “We must save children from being taken in by this trans craze or they’ll hormone away their baby-making potential.”

Signs:

• Lizard in their twitter handle.

• #GenderFree

• “I should have been challenged more.” Basically blaming doctors for having the audacity to believe trans people instead of treating them as unreliable narrators.

• Crusade against Tavistock and GIDS.

• Usually also TERFs.

• Think blockers are a gateway drug or turn people trans.

Tactics:

Most Ex-Trans types will weaponize their regret, but offer ‘solutions’ that don’t actually do anything to help anyone. The ‘solutions’ they offer usually wouldn’t even do anything about their own cases. Consider Keira Bell, who managed to convince judges to prevent doctors from prescribing blockers, exogenous hormones, or referring for surgery until the age of 18 at minimum, save for with a court order that would be absurdly difficult to obtain. Except Keira herself didn’t start exogenous hormones until 18, and got top surgery at age 20. She was prescribed blockers at 16, after most of the effects of puberty were already in place in her case. The only thing that would be different in her case, with the laws she argued for, is she would have had two fewer years - from 16 to 18 - on blockers.

And yet, she is lauded as proof that children can’t make permanent decisions, and heralded as a hero by TERFs… who don’t actually care about children suffering from dysphoria, but want to weaponize this case to argue that intervening against dysphoria is bad, that being trans is a social contagion, and that trans people don’t deserve bodily autonomy.

And to make things worse, they don’t even realize they’re being useful idiots to groups that want to take away abortion rights. Keira’s lawyer, Paul Conrathe, is part of the ADF, short for “Alliance Defending Freedom," which, when you open its page, begs you for donations to “defend your religious freedom," an argument tactic almost always used by the religious right in order to claim that it’s their “religious right” to dictate how other people live their lives.

Not making this shit up, they fight AGAINST hate speech laws being passed, have an official standpoint of being against legalized abortion, claim that Planned Parenthood is “deceiving” us all, and they come to the legal defense of anti-abortion activists. Hey buddies - nobody should be forced to remain pregnant if they don’t want to be pregnant, end of story. Oh, and they also frame marriage as only good if it’s “One man, one woman” and imply that same-sex marriage is selfish. LOOK AT THIS SHIT. I HAD TO SEE IT NOW SO DO YOU.

https://www.adflegal.org/issues/marriage/overview

Jayzus.

Review:

So, what I originally intended to be a very simple overview video turned into a more detailed video essay because once I get started it’s very hard for me to stop. Attacking transphobia is like Pringles to me.

One thing I would like to mention is that these are very informal categorizations. As in, there isn’t a hard line between one group and another. In fact, many of them will trade members in a sort of bigotry exchange program. Being a terf can lead someone down the alt-right pipeline, a Quisling or Transmedicalist might reach a critical point of self-hatred, detransition, become ex-trans, and bathe in the praise they’ll inevitably get from the people who hope for exactly that, but for every trans person.

With most transphobes, the best response is generally to point out the flaws in their logic and disengage if they start dragging you into the weeds - remember, on the whole, you’re generally not trying to convince the person you’re arguing with, because they will dig in their heels and go on defense, use evasion tactics, and so on… but when you show how foolish they are, other people who see the exchange might rethink their positions and avoid falling for misinformation.

In the video game Phasmophobia, as of writing, you can’t actually defuse the ghosts. You can’t banish them, you can’t exorcise them. The story goes that you’re just surveyors and the real heavy lifting has to be done by a different team, offscreen. And similarly, you have to make peace with the fact that, online, you can’t directly purge transphobia from transphobes, or often, chuddery from chuds of any sort. But you can spot them, identify them, and warn other people of what they’re dealing with - and help them avoid getting pulled into that same rabbit hole.