Facing Audrey

Could your child become a shooter’s victim? Could my child become a shooter? Parents of trans-identified kids demand “don’t keep us in the dark.”

On February 11 another trans shooter attacked — this time at a church in Houston. It’s becoming a thing.¹

For over 32 weeks last year, law enforcement and media suppressed material information about the Nashville school shooter, a “female-to-male” transgender-identified 28-year-old woman named Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who murdered three children and three adults at the Covenant School last March. Now that Steven Crowder has leaked a sample of her diary, we have to take the next step in understanding the shooter. We have to face Audrey.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Hours later, the New York Times (motto: “all the news that’s fit to print”) called for silence and opacity and ignorance. The NYT’s motives are simple: it doesn’t want to be known as Radio Rwanda. For years it’s been promoting “Ibram X. Kendi’s” (Henry Rogers) incitements, and judging from Audrey’s diary, now perhaps someone has acted on it. If “stochastic terrorism” really is a thing, isn’t the NYT guilty?

To the Covenant School parents like Brent Leatherwood, whose children survived the shooting, my heart goes out to you. To lose a child, or fear losing a child… words fail me. But many of us parents of trans-identified kids (POTIKs) know just what that feels like. Many more of us are stuck in a gray zone between loss and wholeness.

Mr. Leatherwood, please invite other people, especially other parents, into your decision to continue suppressing the diary. You live in a society. Your concerns are real but other people have concerns, too. I understand your desire to suppress the diary. Do you understand our desire, as parents of potential Audreys, to release it and learn from it, to prevent future tragedies? You may not understand the scale of the threat. Maybe we do.

USE ME

We parents aren’t hobbyists or rubberneckers indulging a sick curiosity. We know that our own trans-identified kids (TIKs) have been captured by an institutionally supported cult:² doctors, pharma, media, education, politicians, you name it.

We’re scared of TIKs because we have them. We know them. We know how much anger TIKs harbor; the state and media supported Trans Cult has encouraged them. We know how evil TIKs can be.³ We know how susceptible they are to crazy suggestions. We know what wrong-sex hormones can do to a young body and mind, especially testosterone given to females. Forget about hormones, we know how hideously therapists can screw up. We wrote the book on this. Use us.

THE AUDREY CONJECTURE

Trans activists dismiss concerns about trans shooters, saying that the fraction of TIKs among shooters is not much higher than their fraction among young people in general. But by lumping two categories they dodge the key issue. Most shooters have been male. If trans is creating a new category of female shooters — a category that barely existed in the past — the activists’ dismissal misses the whole point.

Every MTF (male-to-female) TIK is confused and delusional. Many have undergone normal male puberty. It’s no surprise if (noncastrated) MTFs commit violent acts at the same rate as other mentally ill males. It’s the FTMs that are the wildcard. Here’s The Audrey Conjecture: are FTMs at elevated risk of violence compared to mentally ill but non-transed females?

(The 80s term “roid rage” described the effects of artificial androgens on male bodies and minds that are already designed for natural androgens. Female bodies and minds are not designed for testosterone. Females are not socialized to manage its effects. A young female who declares herself FTM is already angry and alienated, and likely to become more so; but if she also takes some combination of psychiatric meds and testosterone — Violence Juice — who knows what that the effect will be? Don’t we need to update “roid rage” for the 2020s, when young females take the stuff, too?)

PARENTS HAVE TO KNOW

We have to know what drove Audrey in case it’s doing the same to our kids. We POTIKs have to know how much of a role trans played in this, and whether our own children, alienated from parents by the cult, are at risk — not of getting shot, but of doing the shooting.

If trans did drive Audrey, or if The Audrey Conjecture is even close to true, then society has a big problem. Last year America created 7,400 more potential Audrey Hales (and that’s only kids under 18). This year, 8,900. Just since the shooting Tennessee alone has created 67 more.⁴

Every parent thinks of the shooting and says “there but for the grace of god go I” — meaning that my child could be a victim. In the wake of Audrey Hale and the other TIK shooters, POTIKs say it a second time — worrying whether my child could also become a shooter.

Not knowing is what torments us. For years, people and institutions we trusted deliberately kept us in the dark — and not out of concern for our feelings. Our feelings were the last priority. They did it in order to snatch our kids. Well, enough secrecy. Enough lies. We pray for Covenant School parents to find peace, and we demand the truth. They will have to find peace amid truth. That’s the best peace. It’s painful, but anything less is not peace so much as numbness. We POTIKs know about that, too.

Leatherwood and the other Covenant parents have a point: would releasing Audrey’s journals re-traumatize them? Would it inspire another attacker? Could more kids be harmed? But other parents have a point, too. What is the chance that another TIK would do the harming? Are some of our kids walking timebombs? We don’t know, and that’s the problem.

Every TIK is confused and delusional. Mine included. Most TIKs make secret plans behind their parents’ backs (with ample help from schools, therapists, and doctors). Many TIKs are angry. Some TIKs are dangerously angry. How many? We don’t know, since the data’s being suppressed! But the list of school-shooters sure seems to have a lot of TIKs, especially FTMs. Are TIKs at elevated risk of violence? Again, the people closest to them, America’s front-line of defense and early warning, have no way of knowing because they continue to be kept in the dark.

PARENTS ARE SOCIETY’S SMOKE DETECTORS

“It is a federal crime to disable the smoke detectors,” we’re warned every time we fly. But California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, insists on disabling them. He criminalizes giving parents the information they’d need to serve as “smoke detectors.” Disable them, or you'll be in trouble! Shut off the radar. Tape over the security cams. Professionals will handle this, not you! The professionals who’ve done such a wonderful job over the last few years? It's a bad plan. High school kids spend about 1,000 hours in school per year, split among many teachers. And counselors? At our school, each kid gets on average maybe 0.002 of a counselor's attention. But life has 8,760 hours per year and most kids spend most of it with parents. Parents who know them. Parents who love them. Parents who don't have 400 other kids waiting outside. Parents who aren’t unionized government employees. Which is the better early warning system? Society needs more and better warning systems, not fewer and crappier.

Every POTIK looks at Audrey Hale and wonders whether our own child might become a monster. Is a growing terrorist army living quietly inside our homes? Or is that overblown nonsense? We don’t know. Anyone who says he does know is lying. And until we get more information, we won’t know. The people who think it is nonsense should want transparency, to refute that claim.

Maybe trans is not the root of Audrey’s rage. Maybe she was driven by something else entirely. We have to know. Release the diaries. Because this just seems to keep happening. Don’t disable the smoke detectors. ■

NOTES

1. An incomplete list of recent trans- and nonbinary-identified shooters:
February 2024, Houston church shooter Jeffery Escalante / Genesse Ivonne Moreno (adult trans)
March 2023, Audrey Elizabeth Hale killed 6 in Nashville (trans)
November 2022, Anderson Lee Aldrich killed 5 in Colorado Springs (non-binary they/them)
May 2019 Alec McKinney in Denver (trans)
September 2018 Snochia Moseley in Aberdeen, Maryland (trans)
March 2023 William/Lilly Whitworth planned school and church shooting in Colorado Springs (trans); sentenced to six years in prison
More?

2. I saw a great meme: “Gender Theology: A regressive cult popularized in the 2010s and 2020s, which posited the body as an incidental meathousing for sacred inner ‘gender souls’. It practiced child sacrifice in the form of sterilization of gay and autistic children, where substantial body modification was performed to bring the child’s physicality into congruence with the ‘gender soul’. This became a powerful and influential religion - adherence was institutionally mandated and signaled by the ritualistic performance of believers stating ‘pronouns’ upon introduction. Non-believers were shunned and often ejected from main-stream society.”

3. I chose the word “evil” with care. We don’t normally think of kids as evil. My TIK was groomed and recruited by other TIKs, deliberately and methodically, knowing that it would harm her and her family. That was the whole idea. Those other kids liked it. All TIKs are confused, but some fraction of TIKs are frighteningly clear about what they want. “Evil”? Yeah.

4. Reuters says that “The number of children who started on puberty-blockers or hormones totaled 17,683 over the five-year period, rising from 2,394 in 2017 to 5,063 in 2021.” That’s an average annual increase of 21%. Assuming that rate continued, then some 7,363 children started drugs across the US in 2023. (That’s just children, it doesn’t count the young adults who started drugs at 18+.) Prorated to the 46 weeks since the shooting and the fraction of US trans-identified minors who live in Tennessee (1.03% according to Williams), we estimate 67 Tennessee children started drugs since the shooting. How many of the 67 could go Full Audrey? We don’t know, that’s the problem, and we won’t know until we learn more about what drove Audrey.