The EU's Stealth Push for Trans Ideology Exposed
If you thought USAID's promotion of trans ideology was bad, wait till you see what’s unfolding in the EU.
Thanks to DOGE, Americans have uncovered USAID’s multimillion-dollar efforts to push gender ideology—efforts that stayed discreet until recently. The European Union’s quieter campaign, however, has dodged similar exposure. Yesterday, Genspect’s Stella O’Malley joined sociologist Ashley Frawley and political scientist Faika El-Nagashi at an MCC Brussels event to tackle a pressing question: Does gender self-identification threaten women’s rights and child safety?
The EU’s drive to weave gender policies into its legal and social frameworks, epitomized by the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy (2020-2025), hinges on self-ID—allowing individuals to define their “gender identity” and alter official documents without medical, legal, or external validation. While proponents frame it as progressive, a damning new MCC report by Frawley, released today, exposes the EU’s role in fueling gender ideology’s rise, eroding the rights of children, women, and democratic principles.
Stella O’Malley: Kids as Collateral
Stella O’Malley kicked off the discussion by dissecting why today’s adolescents are uniquely vulnerable. She argued that self-ID arrests identity formation and amplifies puberty’s natural distress, creating a pipeline that funnels kids into trans ideology. Vulnerable youth, wrestling with identity or emotional turmoil, are prime targets for activist narratives peddling self-declaration as empowerment. Without gatekeeping, especially as parental authority is undermined, kids are fast-tracked to life-altering choices like hormones or surgeries before they can grasp the consequences. O’Malley cited evidence: 80% of children distressed at the onset of puberty resolve it if given time to adapt to their maturing bodies and sexual awakening. The EU’s policies, she warned, prioritize ideology over developmental psychology, exploiting youthful malleability and raising ethical alarms about consent and harm.
Stealth and Suppression: El-Nagashi’s Revelation
Faika El-Nagashi then exposed the EU’s tactical sleight of hand. Gender ideology, she said, never announces itself outright but piggybacks on women’s and LGB rights, masquerading trans inclusion as progressive continuity. This deliberate sidestep of scrutiny leverages established moral capital to push a broader agenda. Worse, it is paired with suppression: dissent is branded hate speech, debates are silenced, and fear stifles critique. Self-ID and its accompanying policies are not anti-discrimination. they are an assault on women’s and girls’ protections and a redefinition that erases same-sex attraction. El-Nagashi called it a bureaucratic power grab, a creeping authoritarianism under a rainbow flag, hostile to Europe’s people and democratic norms.
Evidence of Erosion: Frawley’s Report
Ashley Frawley unveiled her MCC report (aptly titled “Mission Creeps”) showing how self-ID jeopardizes sex-based protections across life’s spheres. In sports, biological males competing against women undermine fairness; in prisons and shelters, housing trans women with biological females sparks safety fears; in everyday facilities like toilets and changing rooms, privacy norms are shattered—with women powerless to object. She spotlighted the obsession with children and youth: activists, unable to fix societal ills, are remaking childhood around their agenda. The report also reveals the EU’s vast spending to promote gender ideology, not just within its borders but globally, including Africa along the lines of USAID but with less visibility.
Ideology Over Reason
The discussion raised urgent questions: Can the human rights language, co-opted by activists, be reclaimed to defend biology and tradition? How can free speech survive when critics are marginalized, events shut down (activists tried to stop this one), and dissent labeled hate speech? Unlike the U.S., where DOGE is unmasking USAID’s spending, the EU’s opacity persists. Frawley’s report is a start, but the path forward is murky—many organizations pushing gender ideology also serve worthwhile roles. Can they be salvaged? As Frawley argued, the hour is late, and it will take nothing less than a social movement to reroute the next generation from these disastrous, activist-laid paths.
Watch and Read More
To overcome the adversary it is first necessary to understand him. Applying this principle to struggle against gender ideology and the excesses of trans activism, anyone interested in understanding mainstream support for the trans phenomenon and mainstream opposition to the gender critical point of view should read a recent piece by the center-right, Never-Trump pundit Jonathan V. Last. The essay elicited over 1,000 comments. Most of them are also worth reading for the same reasons.
On March 12, Last published "Leave Trans People Alone: A Rant' on his "Triad" Substack account. The lede was "“Trans sports” isn’t an actual problem in the real world. The problem is that life is hard. Don’t make it harder." https://www.thebulwark.com/p/leave-trans-people-alone-a-rant
Since this piece is behind a paywall, it appears here in its entirety. There is insufficient room here for the 1,244 comments the piece had elicited since it appeared. They can be found here:
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/leave-trans-people-alone-a-rant/comments
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1. Begin Rant
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get pissed about the bullying of trans people.
Would you like to make the case that trans women should be excluded from women’s sports at elite levels under certain circumstances?
Fine. We can talk about this. We can go through it, case-by-case, and make prudential judgments so long as we all understand upfront that every single one of these examples is an edge case.
Is it okay for a 12-year-old cis-girl to play on a Little League baseball team that’s otherwise all boys? Yes. It happens all the time. No one cares.
Is it a good idea for a trans woman to fight in MMA? No. Combat sports have lots of rules in place to prevent them from becoming too dangerous: Weight classes; gloves; no small-digit manipulation or eye gouges. Having trans women compete against cis-women in combat sports crosses the boundary of an acceptable level of danger.1
Literally every other “trans person in sports” question falls somewhere between these two poles. These cases are rare enough that we rarely need bright-line tests and strict rules. In almost every situation we can figure these things out and make reasonable accommodations that keep most of the parties happy enough and preserve everyone’s dignity.
It’s. Just. Sports. This isn’t life-and-death. Sports do not count for anything until you get the the level where money is on the line. Until then, the only thing going on in sports is character development. And the truth is that, in the unlikely event that you find yourself caught up in a situation in which a trans person is trying to be accommodated in your recreational sport, that’s an opportunity for character formation for everyone.
It’s a chance to learn wisdom, courage, compassion, honor, empathy, and charity.
Maybe it won’t always be thus.
Many years ago I wrote a piece about trans women in sports and I worried about what would happen to Title IX if trans women started taking over Division I college scholarships.2 Would such a development hurt the financial and educational prospects of biological women? It probably would. That would be a problem. We should be monitoring that situation.
Well guess what: It hasn’t happened.3 It turned out that the edge cases we saw many years ago are the same edge cases we see today. There has been no trans takeover. So until such time as trans women start taking scholarship slots that would have gone to cis-gendered women at the Division 1 level, or start crowding out roster spots on professional teams, can we stop perseverating about the “trans sports” problem?
Here’s what is happening at scale:
About 15,000 trans people who volunteered to serve their country—and are doing so honorably—are in the process of being kicked out of the military.
Suicide rates and suicidal ideation among both trans children and adults is heart-breakingly high.
And the Trump administration is trying to erase the existence of trans people in ways that are openly demeaning and mean-spirited.
Cases of trans-sports conflicts are so rare that you can probably name all three of them.4
Cases of trans folks—and especially kids—being bullied are so common that they don’t even register.
Finding your place in the world is hard.
Even under the best of circumstances. If you’re a neurotypical kid with both parents at home and enough money to be comfortable, growing up is still hard.
If you’re different in any way—if you’re black, or autistic, or your parents split up; if you’re dyslexic, or you have a sibling with special needs, or you’re just kind of quirky—growing up is even harder.
As Don Draper once said: The universe is indifferent. No one cares about your struggles; everyone has problems of their own.
So why are some people determined to make the lives of trans kids harder?
Do you think these kids are having an easy time of it?5 Do you think they’re comfortable in their own skin? Do you think their parents are making them this way because of some ideological crusade?
To be a parent is to have your life hostage to the fate of your least-happy child.
Anyone who has ever had a kid who struggled, in any way, understands that feeling of desperation and dread. You want them to be okay. You’ll do anything to help. And you know your kid better than anyone else does. Better than their teachers. Better than their doctors, even.
And certainly better than some busybody across the country who is hot and bothered because of something he saw on Fox.
So before you say anything about trans kids, imagine a specific trans kid in a specific family and ask yourself two questions:
(1) Do you think that kid’s parents want to hurt him or her?
(2) Do you know that kid better than his or her parents do?
Then instead of trying to tell these families what they should or shouldn’t do, say a prayer for them. They don’t need lectures. They need to be loved.
Because again—and I cannot emphasize this enough—life is hard enough. Stop making it harder. That’s what bullies do.
If you saw someone in a wheelchair getting picked on, you wouldn’t applaud it. You’d stop it.
If you saw someone on the street who was confused and vulnerable getting hassled, you’d stand up for them.
You wouldn’t heckle someone with autism spectrum disorder, or someone who didn’t have a lot of money, or someone who—through no fault of her own—was getting picked on by a mob.
Yet that’s what’s happening in America, right now, to trans people.
We’ve had a lot of discourse about whether Democrats should abandon trans issues.
Let me say this very clearly: Trans people playing sports isn’t an “issue.” It’s a small universe of edge cases that can mostly be sorted out by the direct stakeholders.6
The “issue” that’s broad, and systemic, and happening right in front of us is that we have a society that’s decided it wants to bully a class of vulnerable people who are already having a hard enough time. We have an unhealthy percentage of citizens cheering “LFG!” as the current administration revels in the freedom to target anyone on the margins.
The trans “issue” is, at root, simple. Be a good person. Try to help others make their way in the world. Don’t be a bully.
2. Character
As I said up top, until money is on the line, the only thing that matters in youth sports is character development.
I don’t care how elite a young athlete is: None of the outcomes in their sport matter.
You win some. You lose some. But on the question of whether or not you advance to the next level? The sport makes those decisions for you, irrespective of the outcomes of any particular game.
When college coaches recruit a basketball player they look at the body, speed, vertical leap, shooting percentage. They can see everything they need in an hour-long scrimmage. Whether or not the recruit’s team wins or loses a game? Absolutely immaterial.7
In swimming, or track, an athlete is judged by his or her personal record. The result at any given meet—even a championship meet—is immaterial. If a kid can run a 4:15 mile, then he can run at the next level. It doesn’t matter what time the kid next to him runs.
Sport is a microcosm of the human condition: joy, pain, anxiety, determination, camaraderie, grace, courage. That’s why participating in sports is good for kids. It takes the biggest aspects of life and compresses them into a manageable size.8 So that you can learn from them.
The trans-athlete controversy of the moment is a kid in California, AB Hernandez, who won the girls’ triple jump at the Ontario Relays by 8 feet. This kid gave a quote to some reporter that’s gotten plastered all over Murdoch media: “I just keep telling myself you are No.1—it’s yours to lose.”
That’s not great. I don’t know this kid’s circumstances, but she could be a little more gracious. She’s asking to be treated with respect and dignity and in return she should probably understand that she’s an edge case, the running community is accommodating her, and that if you’re one of the other girls getting outjumped by 8 feet, this incredibly unusual circumstance might not feel fair.9
But Hernandez is a high school junior. The whole idea is that her experience in sports will help her grow into the kind of person who understands nuance and extends grace to others. Hopefully, the other kids at the Ontario Relays will come to understand that the girl who won the triple jump has probably had a hard road, and that her result doesn’t diminish their own efforts or achievements.
And what all of them will learn, I hope, is that a week from now no one will care, or even remember, who won what at that track meet.
What people will remember is how they made each other feel.10
What did DOGE uncover about government spending on Trans issues? The study on rats? Why wouldn't we want to know about the possible harmful effects of wrong sex hormones on rats? Is it better to not investigate this? DOGE is a scam. Full of fake news.