Article on the funding behind transgender lobbying organisations

[TerfyTheCuntingTerf]

Not sure what the reputation of the source is like, but I found this article very interesting. If in doubt, follow the money...

thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/

From the article:

These men and others, including pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. government, are sending millions of dollars to LGBT causes. Overall reported global spending on LGBT is now estimated at $424 million. From 2003-2013, reported funding for transgender issues increased more than eightfold, growing at threefold the increase of LGBTQ funding overall, which quadrupled from 2003 to 2012. This huge spike in funding happened at the same time transgenderism began gaining traction in American culture.

$424 million is a lot of money. Is it enough to change laws, uproot language and force new speech on the public, to censor, to create an atmosphere of threat for those who do not comply with gender identity ideology?

I don't think Pharma is necessarily part of some big pro-trans conspiracy - they are just an amoral industry that senses an opportunity. There are very few medical conditions that require lifelong medication from the early teens, so trans kids are a rare marketing opportunity - patients who may need the drugs for 80 years.

The profit margin on each packet of hormones is small, as they are off-patent, but the cumulative profit over an entire lifetime is potentially huge, and it's secure, predictable income.

As soon as I hear Soros is involved in something I always worry the article is some alt-right anti-semitic shit, and completely disregard it.

I don't know if it would be correct to do it in this case though.

H'm, yeah - as Mrs Harvey said in A-level history - always take note of the provenance! People say things for a reason.

As soon as I hear Soros is involved in something I always worry the article is some alt-right anti-semitic shit

Agree, but the article is pretty balanced. It acknowledges that most of the large donors are donating to LGBT causes generally, not specifically pushing transgenderism. But, because trans activists now dominate the LGBT movement, the effect is to pour money their way.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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

Kthxbye

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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?

“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.

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.

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.

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

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.