Notable Gender Identity and Trans-Related Stories From the Last Ten Years in America
A review of the literature
by John Morrison
March 28, 2025
In July 2021, the School District of Philadelphia invited staff to attend the Philadelphia Trans Wellness conference. It included sessions on “kink,” “BDSM,” “trans sex,” “banging beyond binaries,” and “Bigger Dick Energy: Life after Masculinizing (Gender Reassignment Surgery)”. Some sessions were open to minors where hosts promoted prosthetic penises and breast binding. The organizing group was funded with millions of dollars of government money.
Christopher Rufo reports that the School District of Philadelphia’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusions sent teachers and staff invitations to the Philadelphia Trans Wellness conference, organized by an LGBTQ activist group called the Mazzoni Center.
The Mazzoni Center received over $5 million in government contracts in 2021.
Ruffo reports that the conference included sessions on topics including:
“The Adolescent Pathway: Preparing Young People for Gender-Affirming Care”
“Bigger Dick Energy: Life After Masculinizing [Gender Reassignment Surgery]” “Prosthetics for Sex”
“The Ins and Outs of Masturbation Sleeves”
“Trans Sex: Banging Beyond Binaries.”
Ruffo adds that “there were graphic sessions on prosthetic penises, masturbation toys, and artificial ejaculation devices, which some hosts explicitly promoted to minors.”
“As one session host explained, ‘there’s no age limit, because I feel like everybody should be able to access certain information.’”
Ruffo says the conference started with presentations that promoted genital surgeries, puberty blockers, breast removal, and hormone treatments. Dr. Scott Mosser, principal at the Gender Confirmation Center in San Francisco, said he’d performed,
“Over two thousand top surgeries,” and that “I do not have a minimum age of any sort in my practice.”
The session entitled “Gender-Affirming Masculine and Feminizing Hormones for Adolescents and Adults” was open to children. In it, Dane Menkin, divisional director of LGBTQ services at Main Line Health, encouraged listeners to “bind for as many hours a day as you can tolerate binding.”
The most graphic presentation was entitled “Trans Sex: Banging Beyond Binaries” and led by a self-described “kinky,” “polyamorous,” “pretty big slut,” and a “white, queer, kinky, polyamorous, visibly able-bodied, Jewish, witchy, non-binary, trans femme”.
The pair talked about organizing orgies, fetishes, and correct anatomical language like “front holes” and “back holes”.
Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the city’s biggest children’s hospital, partnered with local school districts to promote “trans-friendly” sex toys for children, gender theory, “kink,” and “BDSM.”
Christopher Rufo obtained insider documents and reported on them in August 2022. A whistleblower claimed that the hospital distributed the material to at least four published school systems in Chicago: District 75, District 120, District 181, and District 204.
The main training document is called “Beyond Binary: Gender in Schools” and teaches what Rufo describes as “the basic narrative of academic queer theory”, namely that society oppresses gender binary attitudes.
The presentation encouraged school staff to support “gender diversity” and “affirm” students who declare their sexual transitions. One version of the presentation says that its goal is to disrupt the “entrenched [gender] norms in western society.”
Rufo writes that “In at least two districts, the activists at Lurie Children’s Hospital also recommended that teachers offer a series of sexually explicit resources to children as young as 11.”
The “Beyond Binary” presentation called for a “Binder Exchange Program” to help teenage girls bind their breasts, as well as a “kid friendly website for gender affirming gear” that sells artificial penis “packers”.
The presentation also recommended an “LGBTQ friendly sex shop for teens” that sold dildos, anal toys, trans-friendly toys, vibrators, and harnesses. The links included descriptions of bondage, sadomasochism pornography, and transgressive sex.
The hospital also released a public policy guide for school administrations to encourage a gender-affirming approach to curricula and to provide gender-affirming children’s books in libraries.
It also called for schools to let students use bathrooms of their choice, compete in athletic events of their choice, and sleep in bunks of their choice during school trips.
School districts across America have been using the “Genderbread Person” to teach gender identity to students. Sam Killermann published the first version of the Genderbread Person in 2011 and waived copyright in 2013. Critics say the diagram makes transgenderism more fun and approachable to minors.
Sam Killermann created the genderbread person in 2011, describing it as a “cute, approachable model for understanding the social construction of gender. He waived copyright in 2013.
As early as 2014, Fox News was reporting on Acalanes High School in Lafayette, which was teaching students about gender identity using the “Genderbread Person”.
In 2022, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District was found to have purchased “Teen Talk”, which is used to teach thousands of California students.
The Genderbread Person was used again, including a video on “what it’s like to be trans in high school,” which involved two teenagers talking about transitioning.
In March 2025, reports revealed that parents in several New Jersey hospitals are asked about their newborn babies' gender identity and sexual orientation on a form required under state law.
Several New Jersey hospitals handed out the form, which asked about the newborn baby’s gender identity and sexual orientation.
The Telegraph reports that “Lawmakers said that the form was not required to be filled out for patients so young; however, the group representing the hospitals distributing the form insisted it was a legal requirement.”
Congressman Herbert Conaway (D) said the bill was never meant to involve the collection of data about babies’ sexual orientation.
But Inspira Health said it made the form to comply with New Jersey Law.
Inspira Health produced the report and operates four hospitals and eight health centers in New Jersey.
There have been a number of notable incidents involving transgender-related government spending waste, including: $477,000 for research on transgender monkeys, around $10 million for transgender animal experiments, more than $5.4 million from the Pentagon for services for transgender-related services, $389,087 interviewing transgender people in India, and many DOGE cuts listed below.
The New York Post reported that the NIH spent around $50 million on monkey-related research, including awarding $477,000 to a Florida lab to fund research into transgender monkeys, males injected with female hormones.
White Coat Waste Project revealed in late 2024 that around $10 million in taxpayer money was awarded to fund a series of transgender animal experiments, like injecting male rats with sex hormones to study the cardiovascular effect of “feminizing hormone therapy.”
The Pentagon spent more than $5.4 million in grants and contracts for transgender research and accommodation since the Obama years. Examples include diversity training, research to help integrate LGBT people into the military, and psychological and medical services.
The Department of Health and Human Services under Biden gave $389,087 to academics to carry out quantitative interviews with thirty transgender men in Mumbai and Delhi, as well as online surveys to three hundred transgender men in the cities.
The aim was to assess “inform the development and evaluation of an intervention to promote mental health” for transgender people in India and to “impact rapidly evolving transgender health and social policies in India and beyond.”
Brooke Rollins, Trump’s Agriculture Secretary, said DOGE cancelled a $379,000 grant to teach transgender, BIPOC, and queer farms about food justice. Other DOGE cuts include:
$100,000 to Vanderbilt University to study social networks involving sexual and gender minorities.
$681,000 to the University of Pennsylvania for social media anti-vaping messages for sexual and gender minority teens.
$225,000 for the University of Colorado to study the “effects of hormones on headaches in transmasculine adolescents.”
Parents Defending Education revealed in March 2023 that almost 6,000 public schools covering over 3.2 million students hide a child’s gender status from their parents. Biden approved the guidance nationwide in his Title IX ruling, but a federal judge struck it down, and Trump rolled it back.
Parents Defending Education revealed in March 2023 that over 3.2 million public school students fall under rules that stop parents from knowing about their child’s gender identity. The guidance included at least 168 districts governing 5,904 schools.
The New York Post reports that the list includes:
Los Angeles Unified School District
Chicago Public Schools
San Francisco Unified School District
DC Public Schools
Baltimore City Public Schools
Portland Public Schools
Seattle Public Schools
As well as sixteen districts in Pennsylvania, eleven in Idaho, and seven in Virginia
Biden approved the guidance for nationwide enforcement in his new Title IX regulations, effective from August 2024. However, a federal judge blocked the expansion of the protections, and Trump reversed the regulations to their 2020 status quo.
Michelle Tea, a left-wing activist and writer, started Drag Story Hour and similar events in 2015. In June 2015, Drag Story Hour had 35 chapters in the US and another five international chapters. The program aims to "capture the imagination and play of gender fluidity of childhood,” and events in New York have been paid for with over $200,000 in taxpayer money.
According to its website, Drag Story Hour “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves!”
The events have spread across the country, and New York City Public Schools used over $200,000 in municipal government funding to host dozens of performances in elementary, middle, and high schools across the five boroughs.
But these events, as well as other drag events not organised by the organization, have attracted controversy for their sexually explicit behaviour in front of children.
In Minneapolis on October 17, 2019, a drag queen wearing a pink miniskirt flashed his crotch to a group of children.
In October 2018, a transvestite at a Portland event let toddlers grab his fake breasts and press themselves against him.
In 2022, a man with large fake breasts wearing a thong struts grabs a preschool girl’s hand and struts around the venue with her.
A drag queen in Washington D.C., wearing chains and leather, taught a child how to dance for cash tips.
By June 2022, at least seven drag queens who performed for children have been arrested for child sex abuse offences.
The Democrat-associated Future Forward PAC said the “Kamala if for they/them” advertisement shifted the race 2.7 points in Trump’s favour after viewers watched it. The ad contains clips of Kamala Harris boasting of her support for tax-funded gender-affirming surgery for prisoners.
The New York Times wrote that despite Trump leading on the two most pressing issues in the race, the economy and immigration, the former President’s campaign took a gamble to change the discourse with advertisements attacking Harris’s transgender positions.
The advertisements contained clips of Harris stating she “made sure that they changed the policy (in California) so that every transgender inmate would have access (to transgender care).” The advertisements closed with taglines like “Kamala’s agenda is they/them, not you” or “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”
Bill Clinton was so worried by the advertisements that he told associates, “We have to answer it and say we won’t do it,” but the campaign said that they were not necessarily having an impact.
Trump’s gamble paid off, and the Democrat-associated Future Forward PAC said the ads shifted the race 2.7 points in the former president’s favour after viewers watched it.
From April 2023, Bud Light suffered a consumer boycott after it hired transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the company on her Instagram account. Bud Light’s sales fell up to twenty-eight percent, and the company lost its 20-year status as America’s best-selling beer to Modelo Especial. Then former President Trump defended the company and called for it to be given a second chance.
Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing from July 2022, wanted to make Bud Light marketing more inclusive, describing the humour of previous advertising as “fratty and out-of-touch.”
Dylan Mulvaney started to document her gender transition from March 2022 in a series of TikTok videos called “365 days of Girlhood.” But Mulvaney’s videos attracted controversy for what critics said were stereotyping, humiliating, and demeaning depictions of women.
Mulvaney uploaded the promotional video to her Instagram account on April 1, 2023, during the NCAA’s March Madness event. Mulvaney, dressed as Audrey Hepburn and drinking Bud Light, claims not to know what the event is and refers to her gender transition journey.
A boycott immediately ensued, largely from right-wing groups. However, President Trump defended the company and called for a “second chance.”
An analysis by Harvard Business Review found that Bud Light sales and purchase incidence in the three months following the controversy was around twenty-eight percent lower than in the same period in previous years. Sales did not recover quickly and were down thirty-two percent in the fourth quarter of 2023. In May 2023, Bud Light lost its 20-year status as America’s best-selling beer to Modelo.
Interestingly, Harvard Business Review found that the decline of Bud Light sales in Democratic counties grew larger over time.
Fallon Fox is the first MMA fighter to come out as transgender and competed professionally between May 2012 and September 2014. However, despite being transgender for twenty years, Fox only came out in March 2013, a few days after their second professional fight.
Fox had already knocked out two women in professional fights by the time of their announcement on March 5, 2013. Following Fox’s September 2014 first-round victory against Tamikka Brents, Brents suffered an orbital bone fracture, a concussion, and seven staples to the head.
Fox compared their status as a transgender fighter to Jackie Robinson’s status as a black man playing baseball.
“Has anybody ever watched the movie 42? Remember when commentators said Jackie Robinson had an unfair advantage because black people had "larger heel bones" than the white men he was competing with? Are we repeating history yet again with bogus bone claims? Can we couple these bogus claims with Rogan's horrible language that was aimed at me from the video I put out last week? I'm a transgender woman. I deserve equal treatment and respect to other types of women. I feel that all of this is so ridiculously unnecessary and horribly mean-spirited.”
On March 27, 2023, a twenty-eight-year-old transgender man carried out a mass shooting at a Christian school in Tennessee, killing three children and three adults. But left-wing commentators struggled to grapple with the shooter’s gender and blamed Tennessee for its inflammatory anti-trans laws. Meanwhile, the local police force repeatedly suppressed the release of the shooter’s manifesto.
On March 27, 2023, a transgender man murdered three nine-year-old children and three adults in the deadliest school shooting in Tennessee history.
However, left-wing commentators inferred blame for the shooting on Tennessee’s allegedly anti-transphobic laws or drew attention away from the shooter’s gender identity.
The New York Post reported that “Top executives at CBS News have banned staffers from using the word “transgender” when reporting on the Nashville shooter — despite the fact that police have said Audrey Hale was just that and cited it as a key point in the case.”
Newsweek published an article entitled “Tennessee Republicans' Ban on Drag Shows Criticized After Mass Shooting” and criticized the state for not enforcing gun control.
ABC News anchor Terry Moran implied that Tennessee’s legislation could have provoked the attack: “The shooter identified herself as a transgender person. The state of Tennessee earlier this month passed and the governor signed a bill that banned transgender medical care for minors, as well as a law that prohibited adult entertainment as well as male and female impersonators after a series of drag show controversies in that state…”
Benjamin Ryan, a freelance reporter for NBC, linked the shooting to the presence of The Daily Wire in Nashville, “NBC has ID’d the Nashville shooter as Audrey Hale, 28, who identifies as transgender and had no previous criminal record. Nashville is home to the Daily Wire, a hub of anti-trans activity…”
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) repeatedly denied requests to release the shooter’s writings and even denied they were a manifesto after initially saying they were. The manifesto was leaked to Steven Crowder on November 6, 2023, and revealed the shooter’s hatred towards white people.
“Wanna kill all you little c*******..."Bunch of little f****** w/ your white privlages f*** you f******."
“I'm a little nervous, but excited too. Been excited for the past 2 weeks… Can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm ready... I hope my victims aren't."
