In Rejection of Terrorism: The Political Violence Behind "Trans Activism"

In our hunt for terrorists, the first and foremost characteristic we look for is their subscription to an ideology or doctrine which has no room for compromise. That may sound simple and plain, but it is not. Its significance becomes all the more compelling when we realize that most people do not subscribe to an all consuming-uncompromising ideology. 

Joe Navarro
Hunting Terrorists: A Look at the Psychopathology of Terror 

The primary goal of the Civil Rights Movement was to end legal racial discrimination and ensure equal legal protections for black Americans. Similarly, the gay rights movement focused on extending legal protections to men and women threatened with discrimination on the basis of their same sex attraction. Both minority groups succeeded largely by appealing to the principles and sense of justice of the majority. They simply wanted what most other citizens already had, nothing more, but especially, nothing less. 

What is the goal of trans rights activists? What right do people lose by choosing to identify as trans that needs to be re-attained as a trans right? What right do they lack that people who do not identify as trans already have? My use of the word choose has been frequently disputed, but the only way to be trans is to identify oneself as trans. No one has yet explained who or what forces people to take on the identity if there is no choice. The simple fact is that no one loses any right by choosing a new identity and no one can opt into being marginalized. Trans rights activism isn't about a civil right, but narcissistic demand for external validation dressed in the language of civil rights. Rejecting the demand has been likened to directly harming people who choose to identify as trans. What might be the danger of convincing a group of people struggling with delusion that the people not affirming their false reality want them dead? The Covenant School shooting on March 27th in Nashville offers what should be a sobering clue. Rather than a complete outlier to trans activism, it is an extreme example of the violence of trans activists consistently justified as a form of self defense. But the extreme is becoming more commonplace.

The trans narrative to justify violence is built on catastrophizing dysphemisms and comforting euphemisms. They are being erased by people, recognizing that this is a political ideological movement, who refuse to pretend that sex is mutable. They will die without trans healthcare, the extreme cosmetic body modification through surgery and wrong sex hormones they call life saving. They are the most vulnerable minority, despite, unlike every vulnerable minority group in history, being supported by every major corporation, the media, and political leadership across the west. Somehow, while the numbers of people who choose to identify as trans continue to grow, they face a trans genocide in which no one is being killed for choosing to identify as trans. 

The use of genocide is especially disturbing. Trans, as an adjective, should be recognized to typically mean the opposite of the modified noun, as with a trans woman being a man, a trans man being a woman, and trans healthcare meaning a decrease in health. In the case of trans genocide it is evolving somewhat. It was initially a metaphor equating not recognizing someone as their desired sex with killing them by driving them to suicide. The genocide was the asserted increased risk of suicide, not actual death. While there is no data that shows this increased risk of suicide, the assertion serves as evidence that trans is just a socially mediated identity. It only has meaning if you believe it does. It is an identity entirely dependent on external validation, without which it ceases to exist. This constant refrain to insecure people that the proper response to strangers not sharing their belief in gender is suicide has been grievous enough. Yet, the rhetoric continues to grow more extreme and perilous.

As the impacts of gender ideology on children has galvanized calls for age restrictions on medical transition, trans activists have expanded their definition of genocide. They now equate it with this demand for better evidenced, age appropriate healthcare for confused children because it increases the likelihood they will desist from the opt in identity. It is an attack on "trans children" from which they need protection because it may stop them from "being trans". Since children don't need protection from evidence based medicine they are protecting their political ideology by using children to justify their license of increasing violence. We are witnessing the change in meaning of trans genocide from a fear claim of what will happen to people who choose to identify as trans, to a threat of what will be done to protect them from that possibility. This is not a concern about all people who choose to identify as trans, it is about the escalation of the rhetoric and the behavior it invites, the increasing number of extreme visible events, and the lack of condemnation by political leaders, which at times seems like encouragement.

MN Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan

Former FBI agent Joe Navarro published Hunting Terrorists: A Look at the Psychopathology of Terror in 2005. In it, he documented several signs that characterize a terrorist movement. It starts with an uncompromising ideology. "There can be no room for discourse, no alternative view, no equivocating...a belief system that does not wince or waver, even in the face of alternative and persuasive thoughts, ideas, evidence, or even potential incarceration." The adherents of the ideology are disaffected social outsiders with intractable minds who express rage at those who disagree with them and seek radical, instead of incremental change. These movements often attract opportunists who want to engage in violence or criminal action using the movement as legitimation. Put simply, a movement around an ideology supported by thought stopping mantras built on tautological arguments forcing compliance through violence or threat of violence may be considered a terrorist movement.

When you ask radical trans activists why they believe men belong in women’s sports/spaces…
pic.twitter.com/HSG92nCrPu

— Jon Root (@JonnyRoot_) April 7, 2023

There has been a constant theme in trans activism for years which promotes violence against people the activists call TERFs. They wear t-shirts, carry signs, repeat variations online of kill, stomp or beat TERFs. They equate the people they call TERFs with nazis. TERF stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. The premise is that these mostly middle age women are "gatekeeping" being a woman because they don't want to share intimate spaces with males. They call these women TERFs and liken them to nazis to dehumanize them and minimize their concerns as bigotry. Doing so allows men to physically attack these women and justify it as a form of self defense. The truth is that there are no women excluding men from being women. They are simply acknowledging that male biology excludes men from being women and wish to preserve single sex spaces. Remember, this isn't a civil rights movement it is entirely ideological. There are legitimate arguments for rights denied to people on the basis of immutable attributes. Since there is no honest argument for accepting people as the opposite sex, trans activism attempts to silence and intimidate opponents of that activism. There have been videos going back years showing that when that intimidation has failed, they resort to violence. Still, it truly feels as if the violence has reached a new level of intensity. It is not just that there have been a number of recent high profile events, it is also the response to those events.

Just prior to the mass shooting in Nashville, women's campaigner Kelly Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker, held Let Women Speak events in Australia and New Zealand. Let Women Speak invites women and male supporters to speak publicly about their concerns with the loss of women's rights. The events are often protested by chanting crowds of trans activists attempting to drown the women out. The footage from the Auckland event shows a group of angry men breaching the barrier between the speakers and protestors, one repeatedly punching a 70 year old woman in the face, before being pulled away. The police were at the event, but for some reason did not intercede until Keen and the other women were forced to flee the stage from the angry mob. While on stage Keen was assaulted with soup by a man who chooses to identify as trans. A warrant was only issued for his arrest after days of international pressure. Prior to the event she was attacked by the media and local politicians for being a bigot.

The weekend after the shooting a campaigner against child transition was attacked in Vancouver. Chris Ellison, also known as Billboard Chris, wears a placard advocating against giving children puberty blockers to prompt public conversations. Video footage from the Trans Day of Visibility event show him being surrounded by a group as several enter his personal face while loudly and repeatedly screaming "fuck you" into his ear. When he tries to re-establish personal space a man who chooses to identify as trans physically attacks him. As with the Auckland event, the police were present, but only acted once it had elevated to violence. Despite being shown video of the attack, which they witnessed, the police chose not to arrest the assailant.

The most violent group in the western world are transgender activists.

Here I am getting assaulted in the presence of dozens of police who do nothing. pic.twitter.com/luJgBGPyy6

— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) April 1, 2023

Less than a week later Riley Gaines was attacked by a man and mobbed by a group of students at San Francisco State University forcing police to pull her away. They sequestered her in a classroom for three hours for fear of student violence. Gaines is a former collegiate swimmer forced to compete against male swimmer Wil(lia)m Thomas competing as a woman. She has been campaigning to preserve women's sports as a spokeswoman for the Independent Women's Forum.

They're trying to kill Riley Gaines

This is the left

This is what we're up againstpic.twitter.com/gam9ueaMv5

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 7, 2023

Instead of condemning the violence or veto of free speech through intimidation, the Vice president for Student Affairs thanked the students for their peaceful protest.

The greatest concern in all of this is less the violent adherents than the political response to their violence. This is not to diminish the violence of individuals, just to note that it is somewhat predictable. We are talking about a group of people rejecting the objective reality of their bodies with a paranoid persecution complex centered on people recognizing the reality they reject. Despite the tenet of their ideology that their brains don't match their bodies, their brains have the same hormonal needs as their bodies for healthy function. We do not truly know the impacts of wrong sex hormones on mental health beyond the professed satisfaction of the person taking the hormones. One of the few high quality long term post transition studies shows an increased rate of suicide with each stage of the process. The correlation suggests that the impact on mental health is not exactly positive overall. A number of women who have begun the process of transition have noted feeling angrier and more aggressive after taking testosterone, like the Nashville shooter.

In the days following the Nashville shooting President Biden said, "transgender Americans shape our nation's soul" after saying little about the shooting. His press secretary, Karine Jean Pierre said during the briefing on March 30, "our hearts go out to the trans community, as they are under attack right now." The "attack" she is referring to is state governments limiting medical transition to those over 18. It should be noted that the legislation parallels what is happening in European nations after they evaluate the evidence for transition. The White House is using much of the same rhetoric as the trans activists and reinforcing their persecution complex. In doing, they are promoting the political ideology and growing the number of adherents.

In Hunting Terrorists, Navarro delineates the types of terrorist from solo to state sponsored. Trans activism seems to represent a new type of coalition  or issue based terrorism. Unlike the examples Navarro offers, like the Earth Liberation Front, trans activism is state condoned if not fully state sponsored. The danger in this is that it not only increases the likelihood of more extreme violence, the political support obscures that the violence is the epitome of ideological terrorism.