In this article, I’m going to document how an alleged high school teacher in Ottawa went from being supportive of LGBTQ students to making her entire public persona about being a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist).
Though she used to put a full name on Twitter, and there is a teacher by that name currently working at an OCDSB high school in Nepean, I’m not going to reveal her presumed name or this school. I am against doxxing and for all we know this could be a pseudonym or there could be someone else with the same name. This article will only show her public tweets and I will only refer to her by the initials A.M.
I’m treating this as a case study in anti-trans radicalization.
Before radicalization
A.M. has had a Twitter account since 2014. She wasn’t a frequent poster, and the tweets she did do varied thematically though social justice issues popped up regularly.
When she tweeted about trans youth, it was supportive. Among her tweets was one addressing disinformation about care for trans youth, and another supporting trans kids in sports:
Radicalization
On October 18th, 2021, A.M. retweeted the following. A well-known transphobe who protests against trans inclusion across Canada was going to protest outside three Nepean schools. A.M. retweeted a post about the counter-protest.
As she would later recount, attending this counter-protest would prove to be her turning point:
The very day of the protest she posted anti-trans disinformation that had been mainstreamed; namely the book “Irreversible Damage” by Abigail Shrier (see my posts here, here, and the bogus science its based off of here) and W5’s episode on trans youth that spread misinformation. Within days, she retweeted a post warning of the “Gender Agenda Pushed on Kids” by the Canadian Gender Report, whose innocuous name is an intentional cover as part of a new wave of hate groups.
After radicalization
After this the Twitter posts increased in frequency. A.M. began to follow more and more accounts that supported her burgeoning skepticism about accepting trans youth. As mainstream institutions in Canada support accepting LGBTQ youth, this left her with fringe groups; including TERFs.
A.M.’s language consequently became more extreme. She posted tweets calling trans people groomers, promoted the idea that there was a nefarious “trans agenda”, and that trans people were mutilating minors, erasing women and destroying female sports. Pretty unhinged stuff.
By this point, her tweets which had previously been thematically diverse became focused on one cause: opposing the acceptance of trans people. She made that her whole identity, changing the name on her account from what I presume was her real name to “Ottawa Terfling” (The TE in TERFling standing for “trans exclusionary”).
Whereas she would once retweet from the Human Rights Campaign, she now retweeted content from Libs of TikTok, an account linked to the far-right that targets and harasses youth and teachers that advocate for the acceptance of gender and sexual diversity. Those targeted by the account have received death threats and lost their jobs.
It was also the Libs of TikTok that instigated the attempted attack on Pride by 31 members of the Patriot Front, a white supremacist group in Coeur d’Alene.
Throughout this A.M. affirmed her opposition to Bill C-16, which had added “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the Canadian Human Rights Act, and C-4 which banned involuntary conversion therapy.
Going forward
A.M. asserts that it was the behaviour of the counter-protesters that changed her mind. I believe her to a degree.
The dog whistles employed by the transphobes that showed up at those schools were designed to be appealing to those who don’t know any better; and society conditions us to associate having a negative tone with being wrong. This is also not the first time I’ve witnessed a cis person identify more with another cis person being transphobic for the backlash they get.
I don’t fault the counter-protesters; they succeeded in protecting the students. That the beliefs of the transphobes appealed to her, and that she became completely closed off to any countering information after that, speaks both of her and the power of dog whistles.
A.M. may eventually reevaluate her beliefs but I don’t think that will be soon. She’s made advocating against trans inclusion her identity, to the point of making it her name on Twitter, and she’s falling for preposterous conspiracy theories. Simply presenting the facts in the face of falsehoods isn’t likely to work because it doesn’t address why these absurd conspiracy theories won out over a much more mundane reality to begin with. Every push back is also likely to make her more committed to her world view; such as when she was ejected from her choir for making transphobic statements.
Though A.M. is vocal about her views on trans people, she’s hardly the only individual involved in education to fall for this rhetoric. One of the transphobes that showed up to protest the inclusion of trans students at a Nepean school that precipitated all of this for A.M. is running as a school trustee in Ottawa. Like A.M. his entire Twitter feed is devoted to calls to reject trans people; he posts multiple time a day about it. Like A.M., he believes conspiracy theories. What’s particularly sad about his case is that he has a trans child, now an adult, who he’s completely rejected. Their kid has spoken publicly about how their dad’s toxic treatment of them has been harmful.
His campaign has distributed these pamphlets to Ottawa homes:
He’s joined by another candidate who is also running on an explicitly transphobic and racist platform. A former teacher, she too is supported by Chris Elston (Billboard Chris) who organized the action in Nepean. It’s a deeply interconnected club:
For every person like A.M. and these candidates, there’s going to be more that have bought into this rhetoric but aren’t as vocal. Like the people at the Ottawa Citizen who wrote this headline suggesting that trans people’s pronouns were undermining Canadian unity:
Where I find comfort is that despite some high profile individuals having these views, as well as some leading political parties and media establishments, society as a whole has moved significantly forward. So while there’s negative legacy and social media attention on trans people that was largely absent before, there’s more information than ever for parents, there’s more awareness of care options even if they have to travel for it, there’s more opportunities to push back against this brand of prejudice, there’s more representation than ever and it’s accessible on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, there’s more protections and awareness in the workplace; things are just night and day better. Overall, the world is becoming more tolerant of diversity.
Comments
2 responses to “The radicalization of an Ottawa teacher”
So in other words, the extreme and hateful behaviour by TRAs made people sympathetic to their cause (e.g. woke teachers) balk and do a complete 180 over night. But the TRAs cannot ever be wrong, rather than re-evaluating your tactics to be less toxic it’s someone else’s fault.
Libs of Tik Tok had nothing to do with the Patriot Front rally. It was planned months in advance according to the FBI.
https://mobile.twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1541843877073526784
All the account does is repost social media content from sites available to the public. It doesn’t send people death threats or encourage such behaviour. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and losing access to children is an appropriate consequence for grooming kids and bragging about it on the internet.
The dam is bursting wide open. Tavistock was shut down, fully vindicating JKR, and the lawsuits are a-coming. While this will no doubt make gender-dysphoric children safer in that country, sadly it will do little for the thousands that have already suffered bone loss, heart and brain damage, loss of sexual function, double mastectomies, surgical castration, and everything else that comes with a healthy child being turned into a permanent hormone patient.
Keeping this comment for posterity; it’s a good record of the specific brand of misinformation pervasive among transphobes in 2022. Note that this person too believes this “grooming” narrative; it’s the same playbook as the 1970s panic around gay teachers and Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign.
JKR here refers to JK Rowling, the British author of the Harry Potter series who turned into a hero among TERFs for her comments about trans women (eg. example, example, example). Tavistock refers to the Tavistock gender identity clinic in the UK, a favourite target of TERFs.
The assertion related to Libs of TikTok precipitating the attack in Coeur d’Alene was substantiated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and that account also instigated far-right attacks on LGBT people gathering across the US by white nationalist groups such as the Proud Boys (source).
That the FBI was already monitoring other white supremacist groups does not remove the culpability of this account. The lack of concern for ties to violent white supremacist groups is unsurprising; TERFs and these groups share many of the same underlying beliefs and will post the same content.