We recently took some time to dig around the forum TrevorSpace, which they themselves describe as "an affirming, online community for LGBTQ young people between the ages of 13-24 years old." With over 400,000 members across the globe, they go on to say that "you can explore your identity, get advice, find support, and make friends in a moderated community intentionally designed for you."
Although sources say that TrevorSpace was investigated by law enforcement for facilitating inappropriate conversations among children and adults, the problem is still going on.
What we found will shock you.
TrevorSpace markets itself as a safe space for LGBTQ+ young people to talk about their experiences with identity and peer/familial rejection, which sounds like a great idea. But browsing the website for merely a few minutes makes it abundantly clear what it actually is: an online dating service for children and people aged 13-24. No website or chat room of this nature should cater to minors, especially one that encourages them to talk to adults. Adults in their 20s regularly talk to teenagers about sexuality and gender transition on Trevorspace. Profiles specify whether the user is over or under 18, but there is no procedure to verify whether the user is answering truthfully. Not only is the website specifically for children and adults, but someone of any age can say that they are a minor and have inappropriate conversations with kids.
Genspect, an organization which includes therapists, psychologists, researchers, and experts in this field, consistently point out that kids who are being transitioned often exhibit similar patterns of behavior and are victims of a social contagion. The website overwhelmingly consists of this exact demographic of kids. Although some of the theories about the teenage transgender epidemic have been heavily criticized, Trevorspace is basically the social contagion theory come to life. It is full of posts about how these girls are lonely, have little social support, low self-esteem, issues with body image, and have difficulty socializing with others. The two most alarming themes that we observed were that a lot of these kids are autistic and most of them express that they are same-sex attracted. It has been noted that a large percentage of children who are transitioning are autistic or same-sex attracted. They are being targeted. And the people doing the targeting are adults.
“Courage Is A Habit,” a parental rights group and friend of GAG, have pointed out that this new wave of child transsexualism can be attributed to a direct pipeline “from the classroom to the operating room.” They learn about various sexual identities as part of their school curriculum and even given surveys which directly ask them what their sexual identity is, pressuring them to pick an option. They are told that if they are confused or unsure about their identity, there are resources to help them, often listing The Trevor Project. Planned Parenthood, the largest distributor of hormones to kids, also recommends this website to kids who are at an age where people first start figuring this stuff out for themselves. The reality is that some kids mature faster than others. Therefore, some of the kids using this service who have not yet reached that point. Children are being pressured at school to pick an identity. It was not surprising that a large portion of their posts are about asexuality and asking for guidance about how to find their place on the “asexual spectrum.” Since they are being forced to choose a sexual identity label at school everyday, as young as kindergarten, when they are too young to even conceptualize such a concept, then they are going to choose labels on the “asexual spectrum” because kids are not sexual beings. This is not a controversial opinion – it is the difference between right and wrong.
The predatory website features various “clubs” that kids can join, where they are able to discuss their sexual identities with hundreds of other kids and adults. One of these clubs is called “Furries”, designed for people who are attracted to anthropomorphic animals. The discussions in this group often revolve around fetishism and how the “Furry Fandom” is not inherently sexual, but lets them know that there are a lot of people who engage in this for paraphilic reasons. Most of the conversations in the “Furries Club” are kids asking other users to help them discover their “fursona.” A fursona is a personalized animal character created by someone in the furry fandom. Fursonas may be anthropomorphic personas, idealized versions of their owners, fleshed out roleplay characters, or simply digital mascots. These posts feature cartoon drawings of their “fursonas” and describe different attributes that their character has. It is very easy to see how kids can easily get caught up in something that requires them to watch cartoons and pretend to be the characters they see on their screen. It seems harmless. These kids are probably just playing pretend, which is a normal thing for kids to do. But the people who are encouraging this behavior on Trevorspace are adults. According to a recent study on autoanthropomorphozoophilia, a paraphilic phenomenon where an individual is aroused by the idea of being an anthropomorphic animal and dresses up in animal costumes to live this fantasy, is a fetish in 99% of cases. It is linked to both autism and autogynephilia (fetishistic cross-dressing which develops in adulthood). It is very unlikely that these adults are all just playing pretend and do not have any fetishistic incentive. They also have clubs centered around BDSM and kink. An adult guiding a child and teaching them how to participate in their fetish is grooming and should never be tolerated in any circumstance. It is insulting that a website like this is marketed as a resource for “LGBTQIA+ young adults.” This has nothing to do with being same-sex attracted and is not beneficial to our community whatsoever. Gays Against Groomers would like to publicly denounce The Trevor Project for being an enemy to the people it claims to advocate for. It is outright betrayal and everything that the gay community spent decades fighting against.
These adults encourage social transition to these kids, leaving comments about how to dress and how to “pass” as the opposite sex. Social transition is a direct gateway to persistence of their trans identity and subsequent medicalization. They are applauded for taking puberty blockers, which are linked to osteoporosis, brain swelling, and future sexual dysfunction. They are given advice on how to get sterilizing hormones behind their parents’ back. And they are being taught that disembodiment/dissociating from their bodies is a good thing that everyone should try out.
A hot topic recently has been pornographic material in school libraries, which are labeled as “LGBTQ+ literature designed to help kids understand diversity and feel more included at school.” We are not sure what pornographic books have to do with being gay, but we completely reject this practice and the fact that it is being done in our name. One of these books is titled “This Book Is Gay” by a transwoman named Juno Dawson, describes how to use dating and hookup apps to children, including meeting up with strangers for sexual encounters. Trevorspace explicitly states that doing this is very unsafe and their website advises against it. After stating this, the next line says, “If you must meet somebody, please use this external guide (it is aimed towards adults, but a lot of it is also good information for teens). Hopefully it’ll help you make a healthy, informed decision!” Trevorspace tells children that they should not do something and then basically says, “But if you want to do it anyway, we have a guide to show you how!” There is never a circumstance in which this behavior is “healthy” for a teenager to engage in. It is a recipe for kidnapping and exploitation and needs to be terminated immediately. If The Trevor Project claims to advise against children meeting up with strangers, then why do they allow kids to make posts about their location and seeking a boyfriend/girlfriend in their area? Why are they encouraging kids to participate in this behind their parents backs and allowing adults to give advice about sex? The Trevor Project is a grooming organization that sexualizes children and puts them in danger. Trans activists can claim that there is no social contagion all they want, but the gay people in our coalition prefer to recognize it for what is is: a transgender grooming epidemic.
The kids who use this predatory dating service have threads and forums about how the website has “too many groomers and pedophiles,” yet the adults that they trust in their lives are telling them that it is a good source for social support. It is an identity crisis in a nutshell. The service is full of frantic posts from teenage girls freaking out over the fact that they are unsure of their sexual identity and how this is something that they need to figure out immediately. Since when is that considered appropriate? The most disturbing part is that a lot of these girls express that they are same-sex attracted. Instead of being told that there is nothing wrong with being gay and that they will figure this out eventually, The Trevor Project tells them that they are actually boys trapped in female bodies and minors need to be chemically castrated as soon as possible or there is a 40% chance that they will kill themselves. This overused statistic is a lie and The Trevor Project is facilitating the spread of this lie.
There are posts where girls say that they realized they were attracted to women and transitioned into boys in order to become straight. This is a new form of conversion therapy. Studies show that nearly 80% of these children will reach adulthood and realize that they are just gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Trevorspace is a grooming nightmare come to life. It is a direct contribution to an impending health crisis in the gay community – an epidemic of detransitioned people whose lives have been ruined by this new form of teenage conversion therapy, which they were groomed into partaking in. Over the next decade, there is going to be a huge wave of detransitioners who realize that they were victims of conversion therapy and grooming. The wave has already started and is going to forever be a stain on our community that we look back on in horror. Given recent events in the UK and Mermaids, it is probably a smart idea to consider the possibility that a similar phenomenon is occurring across the pond.
Detransitioned people are usually shunned from the trans community and harassed by queer activists if they try to discuss their experience publicly. This is present in the Trevorspace forums. Kids who were permanently altered have made posts about feelings of regret. They are then chastised about how the detransitioner problem is a hoax and that recognizing their existence is considered hateful, invalidating, and harmful to the transgender community. If the transgender and queer community are so hung up on validation and accuse people of “denying their existence,” then why are they demanding that we deny the existence of gay people who were converted as kids and face medical/bodily harm for the rest of their lives? My community deserves better than that. Detrans people have a lot of important perspectives to contribute and they are welcome at our table any day.
Upon finding out that kids are using a website to connect with strangers and form polyamorous relationships with multiple anonymous individuals, people in our community are absolutely horrified. Most of us want nothing to do with these people and will not stop fighting it until it is shut down. The gay community is going to put an end to this and morally mandate it out of existence. And we expect everyone involved to be held accountable.
Gays Against Groomers believes that calling out The Trevor Project, schools, child transsexualism, and the budding detransition epidemic should come from within our community.
We all had the teenage experience of figuring ourselves out and becoming happy, confident, successful, and comfortable gay adults. Being given access to a website like Trevorspace would have made that process much more difficult, confusing, and dangerous. This is directly harming our community and is only going to get worse. We are going to talk about it until it is abolished.
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