Article on the funding behind transgender lobbying organisations

There are certainly people making money from this. And I expect a number of them are doing so cynically and unscrupulously. They are simultaneously exploiting a situation, and in doing so pushing it further.
But that is not proof of a grand, big conspiracy.

The idea that population control is behind this is particularly ridiculous; if you wanted to limit population growth, there are far more effective, more efficient, less complicated ways to go about it than targeting a small percentage of a demographic that typically doesn't have large families anyway, within countries where small families are the norm.

The main reason why big, complex conspiracy theories often collapse when I look at them closely is not because I doubt the capacity of humans to have sinister/evil aims, its because they always seem like a ridiculously difficult means to that aim.

The world is so complex, and it consists of so many interconnecting, complicated systems. Plus, those systems are shifting all the time.
It is almost impossible to predict how a particular action on one part of the system (say funding a TRA group) will have on another (say, population growth). However, it is (comparatively) easy to stir up shit- because you don't need to know exactly what effect your shit stirring will cause, you just need to know it will cause a bit of chaos.

So I think there is a bit of that happening on social media. There are also some unscrupulous individuals who have spotted a great way to make money, some attention seeking people who have found a great way to be in the public eye, some power/popularity seekers who think they are aligning themselves with public opinion, some sexual predators who have spotted a great way to access what they want/a literal get out of jail card, some people who think they are supporting a just cause, some people with MH difficulties who think transition is a panacea to their problems, some misogynists who instinctively sympathise with pink-brain-blue-brain-bollocks, some who aren't yet really fully aware of what they are supporting, and some people who are just thick.
This rag tag mob may not be very large relative to the population, but they are disproportionately loud and some of them are influential/powerful.

Couple them with the majority of the population who are as yet unaware of what is going on/don't care/too scared of potential repurcussions to not tow the line, and you get this weird situation which appeared to spring up out of nowhere overnight (I don't think it did- mouldy apples and all that).

If you want an analogy for how this took hold so fast, I think that previous civil rights movements are the wrong analogy. Look instead to cults, and even social awareness over issues like veganism, plastic waste etc, which can grow from a small base to a large one very quickly - there's a sort of positive feedback loop at play sometimes. Sometimes this is positive (pubic awareness over plastic etc) and sometimes negative (cults etc).

It's not the magazine's publication of trans issues I'm describing as sudden.

It's their deciding a lesbian feminist's voice is important. What do you think the chances are of them publishing a fully pro-choice article by the same author?

The OP was about who is supporting various trans agendas. I broadly agree with HairyBallTheorem above, that there are many different interests converging to form a perfect storm (though I wouldn't confine it to "lefty": dudes of all shades are enjoying this).

But I'm concerned there's an additional interest: to amplify transactivism in order to paralyse and distract feminist action. Possibly also to cause division with feminist allies.

And I think it's working. Even just on MN, how much time bandwidth do we spend talking about the things we used to BEFORE trans? Remember those days?

So when a magazine that does not usually have women's welfare at heart is suddenly all over trans issues, and selectively offering a platform to someone whose other work is anathema to them, I'm not convinced they're doing so primarily to benefit women.

Sup with a long spoon.

The trans issue has made me question a lot of my usual political alliances. I used to be a dedicated Guardian reader and now I have a sub to the Times. The liberal left no longer speaks to, or for, me or women.

Oh it's not sudden Perking. They've published quite a few articles questioning the transborg.

So you've just confirmed she doesn't need The Federaist in order to get published.

I don't doubt the author has impeccable credentials, and I think the article should be taken on its own merits.

But re the question of "who's pushing this", I'm finding it interesting that a homophobic, anti-feminist publication should suddenly decide it's important to hear the voice of a lesbian feminist. Selectively.

And there is a whole movement in the US called Hands Across the Aisoe which is about building alliances between the Christian Right and left wing radical feminists to tackle the transborg. I don't particularly like it but it doesn't mean Bilek is making stuff up

Well it's true Perkin. She's contributed to a book on female erasure which has a forward written by Greer. She's a New York activist and artist.

A blog doesn't get the hits.

The author of that piece is a lesbian feminist. The site is anti gay and shitty but she isn't. It's the problem that no one else will publish these things.

These days, she doesn't need more than her own blog to be able to publish. So I don't think that stacks up.

“It's a little too sudden and spread out to feel truly grass-roots to me"

It has also been very targeted in the right places. It is not organic and haphazard.

Well, no one except for the Daily Mail. The Mail on Sunday. The Times. The Sunday Times. Sometimes the Guardian (not so much these days). The Sun. The New Statesman. The Spectator...

It's not as though MSM refrains from offering a platform to the anti-trans argument. You don't need the hard-far-alt-right-anti-woman-homophobic-prop-up-the-patriarchy-white supremacist media outlets.

I mean surely it must have occurred to somebody that you really can't trust those people? Surely?

No one else will publish it. Jennifer Bilek is sound. I don't like the Federalist but there is financial motive here. See also this series of tweets from Lily Maynard. twitter.com/lilylilymaynard/status/966803337520828417

Hopefully that link works.

"It's a little too sudden and spread out to feel truly grass-roots to me"

That's my feeling too. It's just so...odd.

wow.

The Federalist? Seriously?

Founded by, if memory serves, a dude who was fired from the Washington Post after just 3 days because of multiple counts of plagiarism? Ben Domenench I think.

Beloved of the libertarian wing of the hard right? Who posted a defence of Roy Moore which was literally 'teenage girls are allowable because reproduction'?

If you have any concerns about the reputation of the source OP, you would have grounds. Especially for tin-foil hat level conspiracies like this one.

I really think blaming big pharma in particular is a complete red herring. I'm on HRT and checked out the cost of it - it is basically cheap as chips.

Puberty blockers are worth more. I agree not to get too caught up in conspiracy theories but some of this stuff needs looking at.

The author of that piece is a lesbian feminist. The site is anti gay and shitty but she isn't. It's the problem that no one else will publish these things.

Also anti-abortion and anti-women's rights.

Kthxbye

Sorry nope.

The Federalist is far-right, anti-gay, execrable shit of the shittiest order.

Can't believe anyone with any sense is even considering believing a word of it.

Come on MN, you really can do a lot better.

I'm of the cock-up rather than conspiracy frame of mind.

I really think blaming big pharma in particular is a complete red herring. I'm on HRT and checked out the cost of it - it is basically cheap as chips. No huge profits there, even if you got 1% of the population on them. Ditto gay eugenics - anyone with half a brain knows (as one of my gay friends puts it) "it takes two straight people to make a gay person". If there is a hereditary component to being gay, it's a complex one, and one not going to be removed from the population by sterilising gay people (and I honestly don't think there's some sinister bunch of homophobes pulling the strings of the TRA movement saying "let's sterilise gay people by stealth by manipulating these useful idiots": the fact that the TRA movement is deeply homophobic is a kind of unintended side-effect of its underlying misogyny). I also think the paedophile accusations are over-egged - the enthusiasm for transing children is driven by wanting quite literal "poster children" for the movement, rather than a sinister drive to create more victims.

So I'm more in the "perfect storm" category of thought on this one. You have genuine civil rights movements (equal marriage for instance) finally making progress and a climate in which this can happen - so a spurious civil rights movement tries to piggy-back on top of this. You have a few incredibly wealthy TRAs prepared to fund it. But at the same time as civil rights movements have made some progress, underneath it you have a society where misogyny has never really gone away, and in particular a load of lefty dude-bros who scent blood (again not even at a rational thought-out level, I think they just instinctively sense, in the manner of abusers the world over, that this is a chance to piss on women's legs and tell them it's raining).

Particularly interested in Soros funding as he is a proven backer of a number of de-stabilizing organisations and groups

Sheila Jeffries said something like this at the Bristol Women’s Place meeting.

I remember a poster a couple of years ago ( @werkzallhours ?) talking in here about the role of big pharma in all of this. They’ve reached saturation markets with hormonal contraceptives and many women are now far more cautious about HRT.

So this is a new market.

If sterilisation of children to allow for 'self expression' becomes acceptable among the middle class, presumably the market for surrogates and/or artificially grown children will increase. I wonder if the funding of trans is deliberate to begin creating and growing that market. On one hand I feel like a conspiracy theorist, but on the other, it is very easy to see the value to these billionaire backers of being suppliers of children to a sterile middle class. And then following that line of thinking it's not long before we hit the ideas and goals of Martine Rothblatt, the trans identified man who has been called "the highest paid female executive" in the US (so presumably the world). Martine funds a range of biotechnology projects working on growing human organs and envisages a future where they can create new bodies which can be uploaded with people's memories and thoughts and so death would become optional (seriously, that is one of the founding beliefs of the religion they began). Presumably also at a price. But growing babies to sell to a sterilised population doesn't seem so far fetched when these people have a goal of growing empty bodies as vessels for eternal life for those who can afford it.

www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/martine-rothblatt-she-founded-siriusxm-a-religion-and-a-biotech-for-starters/2014/12/11/5a8a4866-71ab-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html?sw_bypass=true&utm_term=.dc3aa41e0892

It's a little too sudden and spread out to feel truly grass-roots to me.

I agree. Grassroots work on the issues of plastic waste and urban air quality, over two or three decades, is only now coming into the mainstream.

I have in the past thought people were just being paranoid and tinfoil hat like about this, but it does make sense. Same as I thought that people were being silly thinking Lily Madigan was a tory plant, but thats starting to make a lot of sense too.

People tend to dismiss "Conspiracy Theories" reflexively because the notion that people might do such a thing is too horrible to contemplate. But they do happen. A thematically related one is the state of Israel secretly giving birth control (depo-provera) to Ethiopian immigrants. Many didn't know what they were getting and had been told they were flu jabs. Others knew what it was, said they didn't want it and were forced to. It has only now been reported on and stopped because some social workers five years ago put the pieces together when they realised that the birth rate in Ethiopian communities had fallen by 57%. Each of these things I've just said is verifiable fact. Nor are any of the post-fact excuses very convincing. Such conspiratorial attempts to alter populations do happen. The will is there, we know that. Millions of Iraqis died following our invasion of their country and it's madness to suppose those of us marching in the streets knew massive deaths would result but the people building the case for war somehow didn't. There are people in power willing to sacrifice a million lives for the sake of profit. We know this to be true. We have seen it.

That rant over, do I think this is population control? Not as a pure numbers game, I don't. Any drop is too easily made up by immigration or a rebound. But I could see it as a general social undermining or experimentally targeting some group. Someone said they get wary when Soros is mentioned because they think it's some anti-semitic conspiracy. I'm not anti-semitic but I do think Soros is dangerous. He does engage in wide-spread and dangerous social manipulation. And he's a man who didn't mind causing massive damage to the British economy and our businesses on Black Wednesday to enrich himself further. He's not a man I associate the word 'altruism' with.

I don't think there is a conspiracy going on but it is startling how much money goes into these trans advocacy groups. It would make more sense for the Soros' of the world to pay their taxes and the money go where it is needed as decided by democratic government.

I'm pretty wary of conspiracy theories, tbh.
There may well be some dodgy funding going on, but if there is I think it's mainly opportunistic shit stirring, using money to exacerbate a situation in order to create a bit of chaos. I think that political interests may be involved, but only as one part of a perfect storm. Good intentions, stupidity, the polarizing effect of social media debates, band wagons, peer pressure and plain old misogyny still play a major part I think.