Warning:
This article discusses a very sensitive topic for many people on both sides of the LGBT Issue especially the Transgender Issue which is the focus of the article. No matter what stance you hold on this issue if you are very easily offended now is a good time to click away. With that said the views expressed in the following interview belong to the person/s being interviewed and/or the group the person/s may represent. It is presented in a non-judgmental format and it is for you the reader to make your own decisions about the subject being discussed. See the Equal Time policy at the bottom of this Article if you have a contrasting view point.
Over the weekend the Daily Wire posted a documentary on Twitter by Matt Walsh called What Is A Woman (Still available on Twitter as of Thursday, 8 Jun 2023) and it blew up Twitter. Request for an interview with Matt Walsh has thus far gone unanswered. But after attending a Twitter Spaces hosted by Gays Against Groomers I reached out to the head of the Washington Chapter Alex Chrostowski who agree to an interview.
The Interview
David: Let’s start with who you are and what Gays Against Groomers is about.
Alex: My name is Alex Chrostowski I am the Washington State lead for Gays Against Groomers and Gays Against Groomers is an organization made up of LGB and T people, who stand opposed to the indoctrination, sexualization, medicalization, and mutilation of children. That’s really are entire mission to protect kids from people using our community as a shield to sterilize them or expose them to sexual content.
David: How many chapters are there and what progress have you made toward this?
Alex: That would be available on our website, let’s see we have: Washington, California, Oregon, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona. That all that I have right of the top of my head, that’s nine but we may have more. We have a couple of international ones now, we have one in the UK, Canada, and Japan now as well.
A check of the Gays Against Groomers website showed that their were also Colorado, North Carolina, and New York chapters as well. I did notice that some of the chapters mentioned were missing from the website; however, while on the Spaces I heard these chapters mentioned as well.
David: When I was listening in on the Twitter Spaces I heard that there were already some countries that already banned transitioning of children for sex changes, do you know which countries they are off hand?
Alex: I know that Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, they are mostly the Nordic countries and theirs been restrictions in the UK. After their fall out from their gender clinic Tavistock. Definitely quite a few, it’s not a small number by any means.
David: Fallout from their clinic?
Alex: Yeah, so, unlike the United States in the UK they did a comprehensive study of all the data they have relating to transgender care for minors, and they found that really it was not helpful. The do no harm principle was clearly being violated and so they put a pause on all transitions for minors. So that’s what I mean from the fallout from that. So far the United States is refusing to do a comprehensive study because they know what the outcome of that study would be.
David: So just to be clear, you aren’t against adults transitioning themselves, just the children right?
Alex: Correct, if you are an adult and you choose to do these procedures more power to you. The important thing is you are being able to fully understand the consequences, the risks, the implications that children just can not understand at a young age.
David: Have you or any member of your group experienced any threats of violence from those opposing your efforts?
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. We get general threats, you know, “I hope you die,” type threats on our socials quite frequently. As for physical violence in person, I think there was an incident with I think it was with our South Carolina or North Carolina chapter where something physical occurred. But you see other things like Billboard Chris had his arm broken, so these things do happen. That’s why we have to hire security for almost all of our events.
David: How can people get involved with your movement?
Alex: So if you are an LGB or T person you can go to our website and apply to be a chapter leader or to join a chapter. If you are someone who is straight but also want to work with us, we do have an allies page where you can sign up as an ally and then you will be able to come to events and things like that to show your support. And also of course you can donate, right now through the entire month of June, I think it’s 20 percent of our sales from our merch store is going to de-transition care. So that’s one way people can help right now.
David: Can you explain what de-transition care is?
Alex: So if an individual was transitioning and is choosing to stop that treatment, you can’t exactly just stop everything it doesn’t work that way. So what ends up happening is you might need more corrective surgeries, you’re going to need different course of hormones and you will find that the medical community is a lot less supportive of de-transition. And they also don’t really have any care standards for de-transitioners, so basically it’s just to help them with their struggles and that.
David: So de-transitioning they don’t really have the care to do that?
Alex: Not really no.
David: What about transgender individuals using public bathrooms, facilities, or participating in sports teams that has up until now been reserved for biological gender?
Alex: So that is not exactly something that is in our purview, basically that is a social issue that is not our concern unless it’s dealing with children. So bathroom use in schools our answer should be sex-specific spaces for the safety of children. Same with K through high school sports, now once it gets through the collegiate level or it gets into other public spaces that is a different policy. It’s obviously a nuanced conversation but is not one we take an official stance on.
David: So while preparing my note I’ve come up with breaking news here that a federal judge just ruled in the Norther District of Florida, has put a stay on what they are characterizing as Florida’s ban on transgender affirming care. He goes on to state that, “Gender identity is real. Those whose gender identity does not match their natal sex often suffer gender dysphoria. The widely accepted care calls for evaluation and treatment by a multidisciplinary team. Begins with mental health therapy and is followed by appropriate cases by GnRH agonists and cross-sex hormones. Florida has adopted a statute and rules that prohibit these treatments even when medically appropriate. The plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claim that the prohibition is unconstitutional.” What do you say to that judge?
Alex: We would obviously argue that we would disagree. Gender dysphoria is real there are as many ways of treating it, the argument that this is necessary care for minors is simply false. Yes, obviously all the major medical institutions in our country currently recommend these things, but they are doing that based no on science, but based off of another non-profit organization which is the WPATH. Which is run by a bunch of transgender advocates and activists. So it’s not scientifically based. Really their greatest argument is that if they don’t get the care the kid is more likely to become depressed and kill themselves, which is also not shown in the data. So again I would argue that do they legally have a point considering the medical associations in are country are currently saying? Perhaps they do, it’s hard to speculate on cases. Obviously, that ruling can be appealed. I’m sure the state of Florida will appeal it. So it’s hard to say how that’s going to go, there are also a challenge, I think is a similar type of challenge in Tennessee. So it’s gonna be interesting to see how this plays out as the legalities of it become more debated, but our general response is no these treatments is not necessary for minors, and so I think that basis is incorrect.
David: So let me give a few bullet point on the Florida law:
- Parents can apply for a warrant to receive physical custody of a child
- State funds are prohibited from being used for gender-affirming care
- People under 18 can no longer receive gender-affirming care unless they qualify for an exception
- Physicians must be in the room with adults receiving gender-affirming care, barring the use of telehealth services
Alex: I haven’t read the law since Florida is not my chapter but that sounds to be accurate.
David: I also understand that you have a website Reject5599.com?
Alex: That’s not our website it is the website for the referendum against 5599 which is a Washington State Bill, but yes that site is up and functioning.
David: What is 5599 exactly?
Alex: I have to check the language of the bill to make sure it says this specifically… So 5599 is a bill that allows any person, or youth shelter, or host home to keep a child’s location hidden from their parents if that child is seeking protected healthcare services. Under Washington law what protected healthcare services are abortion or gender-affirming care. Let’s envision right that a student goes up to a teacher and says, “I wanna transition. I don’t think my parents are gonna go for it.” The teacher could then theoretically say,”You know there’s this shelter down the road you can just go there,” and the student could after school before they go home, go to that shelter and say, “I’m safe at home, I wan’t to receive gender-affirming care.” That shelter will then house them without notifying their parents, and they will facilitate them getting gender-affirming care at that shelter, and they can pretty much keep them their indefinitely. Now they do have to notify DCYF about this, but the issue with that is DCYF has no obligation to inform the parents either. The shelter does not have to inform law enforcement, and DCYF is critically understaffed. So there were many people in the professional realms of Washington, there were police officers, there were DCYF officers who came and testified against this bill basically saying, if this laws is put in place kids are gonna fall through the cracks, we’re gonna lose kids, we’re gonna lose track of where they are. This is accurate, and so it is a very damaging bill, it is designed to separate children from their parents, and make it easy for them to access essentially optional healthcare that a parent may or may not wish their child to have.
David: Have you heard of any cases where a child wanted to go against their parents and transition into another gender?
Alex: Sure it happens all the time.
David: Oh it does?
Alex: Yeah, sure. There is online chats that show this fairly regularly, it’s not uncommon that children want to transition and their parents obviously do not want to go along with that. So yeah, that happens.
David: Are there parents trying to transition their children that are like very, very young, so young that they couldn’t even possibly understand what’s going on?
Alex: Yeah, there is plenty of videos on social media where parents are talking about their trans-two-year-old or their trans-one-year-old. So that happens as well, obviously, that child is not trans that child can’t speak. You’re just making an assumption base on your observations of well my kid rips out their hair clips, so obviously that means she is a boy. It’s that kind of insanely disjointed logic that these people are using. And I think there’s a fair bit of social pressure and incentives going on where if a parent comes out with a video like that they get a huge amount of support and attention, that I don’t think should be understated or over looked.
David: I’m sure you are aware of Matt Walsh’s documentary that he put out, what’s your take on that documentary?
Alex: It’s and absolutely fantastic documentary, Scott Newgent is in that documentary and we are doing an event within Missouri. I think it’s on the 21st or the 24th of this month. Everything in that documentary is completely legitimate, you hear right from that mouths of the people who advocate for this type of care, and the only reason they look that insane is because it is insane. You literally have somebody who is not even out of their mid-twenties talking about how they think they are a wolf and they can be transspecies. You have people talking about how you know someone is trans based on the colors they like. It talks about the history of gender theory, queer theory, and how it all started with John Money and a couple others that is also completely accurate. Scott Newgent tells about he fell into this trans ideology and he tells the story about the complications he faced from these surgeries. They are incredibly experimental, they have high rates of complication and most people do not know how gruesome these surgeries really are. And so it’s a very impactful and meaningful documentary. That doesn’t mean that we as Gays Against Groomers or I, myself necessarily agree with everything Matt Walsh does. In fact there’s quite a few things that we do not agree with, but the documentary is not his not his personal feelings, it is letting other people talk and answer the question of, “What is a woman?” And it is a very valid question to ask if we are talking about the idea of transitioning, we should be able to answer that question honestly.
David: I know that there has been a lot of push back and I saw the documentary, the proponents of transitioning are… my take is that they are trying to silence the people who are objecting and calling them transphobic, and bigoted do you see that a lot?
Alex: Oh, all the time. I get people all the time who comment on my appearance in my videos, they will say, “You’re not far from trans-affirming care your self.” making a reference to the fact that I’m obviously a more masculine woman. Or they will say things like, “The self-hating gays are the worst,” they will outright say, “Well you can’t possibly actually be gay,” because obviously if you don’t agree with us in every single way, and agree with our politics, and out values then you can’t be gay somehow. As if that’s how that works. So yeah we get called bigots, we get call homophobic, we get called transphobic almost on a daily basis. Sometimes it’s quite funny other times it’s annoying, it just depends on the day.
David: We are getting close to the end of the half-hour, is there anything you would like share with the audience out there?
Alex: We have the Missouri event, you can go to our website it’s on our events page. It’s a very big event going on in St. Louis, Missouri. We have the referendum here in Washington which I would urge everyone to sign both referendum and the initiative. And I would also like to remind people that we have a tendency in society to pendulum between one extreme and the other, and we are certainly on the extreme on this issue where it has gone way too far. It’s important not to go too far in the other direction, gay people are not the problem, trans people are not necessarily the problem here, the problem the complete lack of honesty about core issues and their effect on children. We need to be far more honest and understanding with each other. We need to be less inclined to have this ideological split where if someone doesn’t agree with you, somehow they’re your personal enemy. We need to get back to being able to have conversations where you can actually have a cordial and respectful conversation with someone who doesn’t agree with you, and that doesn’t mean they hate you. I think that’s really important and more important as we go along with this process.
Equal Time
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