Let’s Read The Transgender Leviathan

We all need to read and promote The Transgender Leviathan, a 40 page report written for The American Principles Project¹ by Pedro Gonzalez² of Chronicles Magazine. Though written by someone decidedly on the right, Leviathan is comprehensive and fair, and it implicates people, corporations, and institutions across the political spectrum. It’s pure fire starting with its title page,

There have been many terrible medical experiments in America, but none of them have had the deadly and destructive combination of ideology, politics, and profits propelling them into the culture. Lobotomies had profits, but no ideology or political movement supporting the procedure. Eugenics had an ideology and a political movement, but no profits that could be reinvested in lobbying for protective legislation. Transgenderism has the winning trifecta, and it makes the movement much more difficult to defeat, despite its obvious harm to people and the lack of any legitimate science or data to back up its central tenets.

Contents:

1 Patient Zero
2 Bad Medicine
3 Big Medicine
4 Coming for Your Kids
5 The Politics of Transgenderism
6 Social Contagion
7 The Way Forward
Followed by seven pages of footnotes containing 170 references and links

I'm the parent of a child who trans-identified as a teen. Like most of us parents, I recognized some of the names and themes and facts in the report, but much of it surprised me: for example the linkages between the trans lobby and Red political figures. Gonzalez paints the lure of trans money as a universal and irresistible problem: sure, Blue America has it worse, but everybody has it. “The amount of money moving through corporations, NGOs, PACs, and governments is staggering; the number of powerful individuals involved is myriad and includes Republicans and Democrats.” (page 5) President Trump “has close ties” to a lobbyist that takes a lot of Lupron-connected money. (page 17, 24) Texas Governor Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick also take a lot. (page 18) I didn’t know that. Did you? Gonzalez’ willingness to blow the whistle on everyone, including his own team, increases his credibility in my eyes.

The report can be downloaded for free as a PDF file from this page, or directly from this link. At 40 pages and 14,000 words, it’s long to read online. For $7 I printed a black-and-white copy at my local UPS Store.

Thoughts

Leviathan is a powerful weapon against trans ideology in several ways, including its blistering rhetoric, and novel insights and connections like the lobotomies-eugenics-transgenderism “trifecta,” above. Fact-filled, it’s already powering other analyses of trans. Well-footnoted, it’s a goldmine of references and future reading.

But I wondered if Leviathan may signal something larger, a realignment—what Martyr Made called “the re-emergence of a constituency for normalcy after bioleninist elites make a hash of things.” 

Most Americans live, politically, inside a large coalition. At some point, one part of your coalition may do something that appalls you and at that moment you can choose to stand up and call-out your own team. Gonzalez is doing that here. Some people find that easier than others – PITT essays make it clear that when it comes to trans ideology, the right is better equipped to resist than the left – but still it demands an act of resistance toward one’s own team.

Gonzalez is right-wing. It’s no surprise he’d criticize trans ideology. What is surprising is that his critique would be anti-capitalist, and point the finger at Red leaders. He’s not alone: Florida’s Red Governor DeSantis made a similar point: “the modern left has jettisoned principle in favor of power. As long as large corporations help advance the left’s woke agenda, the left is willing to do their bidding.” But then DeSantis turned on his own party: “old-guard corporate Republicanism isn’t up to the task at hand. For decades, GOP elected officials have campaigned on free-market principles but governed as corporatists ... But policies that benefit corporate America don’t necessarily serve the interests of America’s people and economy.”

Has trans finally done it? Has trans ideology scrambled the battle lines? Has it made old categories irrelevant? Is anti-gender a left-right issue anymore? Is left-right even meaningful here? 

Four years ago the radfems at WoLF found themselves deplatformed by the left, so they platformed with… The Heritage Foundation! Now Chronicles Magazine is sounding like Mother Jones. What gives? Did the reaction against trans ideology do this? If so – if trans ideology is moving the battle lines – shouldn’t “allies” pause and take stock? Is trans ideology radioactive? 

Have you seen the new Florida Senate Bill 952: Employer Coverage of Gender Dysphoria Treatment? Transing people has been both profitable and low-risk; it must become financially risky. This bill “flips the gender transition movement on its head by requiring employers that provide coverage for gender transition procedures also to provide coverage for de-transitioning.” That’s got to be the definition of fair. And if detransition is as rare as TRAs say, who could possibly object to this bill? But if SB952 passes, it will suddenly become expensive to be an “ally.” Good.

1. Leviathan was sponsored and published by the American Principles Project. APP is a populist conservative 501(c)(4) think tank founded in 2009 by Princeton University Professor Robert P. George, politician and speechwriter Jeff Bell, and political strategist Frank Cannon. Sean Fieler is APP’s chairman and Terry Schilling, son of the late Illinois congressman Bobby Schilling, is its president.

2. The report’s lead author, Pedro L. Gonzalez, is an associate editor at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He has written for The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Spectator, and The National Interest. He is the recipient of a Lincoln Fellowship from the Claremont Institute and a Haggerty-Richardson Fellowship from the Conservative Partnership Institute. Gonzalez is an interesting choice to write this report. An up-and-coming young writer from middle America, he is a pitbull among Red thinkers. He is also relentlessly candid, which APP says is why they asked him to write it.