 Daily Wire investigative reporter Christina Buttons publicly announced her resignation from the company on Tuesday, citing inflammatory attacks against trans people by Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles as the main reason for her departure. But before you give her credit for having a change of heart or being some sort of a trans ally, understand that this disagreement is very narrow in scope and ultimately comes down to civility and strategy. She explains, I was told that the Daily Wire stance was that adults could live their lives however they pleased so long as they kept kids out of it. I mean, Ben Shapiro is literally against gay marriage, but okay. There was no clash between safeguarding of children and tolerance for alternative adult lifestyles, even ones that some might regard as unhealthy. It was a message I could get behind. But recent videos and posts have weakened my confidence in their commitment to this message. Valentine's Day Matt Walsh did a segment on his show about transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney that has now been viewed by millions, quote, you are weird and artificial. You are manufactured and lifeless. You are unearthly and eerie. You are like some kind of human deep fake Walsh said, everyone who looks at you will see something pitiable and bizarre. Walsh has defended these statements as quote good strategy because he says they rally the conservative base. He adds that the goal is not to convince the other side, but to defeat, humiliate and demoralize his opponents. This triggered a race to the bottom with other social media personas one upping each other to see who can take more extreme stances. Now let's just pause there. This pivot from concern trolling about trans youth to a full on war against trans adults is the crux of her disagreement with folks like Matt Walsh and also Michael Knowles who she does bring up and defends against the media's supposed misrepresentation of his comments at CPAC and just a bit of a tangent for those of you who missed it, Michael Knowles at CPAC called for the eradication of transgenderism and claims that that's not actually a call for genocide because he's trying to disaggregate transgenderism from transgender people. The problem is that you can't eradicate transgenderism without eradicating transgender people in the same way that you can't eradicate Judaism without eradicating Jewish people. It's inherently genocidal rhetoric and he's well aware of what he's doing, but she defends him, though disagrees with him when it comes to the banning of adults from transitioning. The problem is that banning adults from transitioning was literally always the goal of conservatives when it comes to transgender people. I mean, just look back at any civil rights fight in American history. This whole think of the children argument was always used as a justification to delegitimize civil rights movements and ultimately deny them their civil rights. You don't even have to go back that far to find these examples. Think about how conservatives asked, well, what am I going to tell my kids when they find out that two men can get married? I mean, I don't know, but your kids learning that gay people exist isn't a valid reason to deny civil rights to an entire group of people. So these types of arguments in some variation or another are pretty common and it's bizarre that she doesn't know this as a journalist specifically who reports on trans issues. The eliminationist rhetoric the right has been using against LGBTQ plus people for decades has been the first clue. So I'm sorry, Christina, you're naive to think that the right would stop at children. These are Christo fascist authoritarians who believe that they have divine authority to subject all of us to the laws of their God. So in their view, the lines that you're drawing are arbitrary and Christina mentions in the article that she's an atheist. So perhaps she's not familiar with their authoritarian tendencies, but I am. And I can assure you that enhancing freedom for adults is not the core concern of fundamentalist Christians. So her first contention overall is that she doesn't agree with them about banning adults from transitioning and her second disagreement is about the ways in which figures like Matt Walsh paint all trans people with too broad of a brush. And again, I can't help but think no shit Sherlock. But let's hear what she says about this in particular in these next couple of paragraphs. Quote, there are transsexuals who are not ideologues who know they cannot literally identify out of their sex and who believe that medical transition is a choice for adults, not children to make. I count some of them as my friends. They are trying to educate the public using their unique position as transsexuals to deflect ad hominem criticism that they are motivated by prejudice or perversion. Some have also participated in helping to pass legislation to protect women's sports and safeguard children. Walsh's rhetoric coincided with a sudden deluge of animus toward transsexuals like my friend Blair White, simply for being transsexual. I can only assume that the enthusiasm generated by Walsh's hard line position encouraged another colleague of mine, Michael Knowles, to make a controversial statement at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC. She later goes on to argue the political right often rails against identity politics and group labels, yet many fail to distinguish between transgender people and transgender activists. Not all transgender people are transgender activists. In fact, many, especially of the older generation, find the extremism of contemporary trans activism appalling. Yeah, because the only way to be a valid trans person in her view, apparently, is to not be a trans activist. How do you not be a trans activist if you're a trans person in the year 2023? When you admit the things that people like Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles are saying is deeply, deeply divisive, they're attacking their civil rights and trying to ban them from transitioning. So as a matter of your existence to maintain that and defend yourself, you have to be an activist in some sort or at a minimum, an advocate. So I don't get that contention with some trans people who are activists, but she is correct that public figures know that they can grow their audiences by farming negative engagement and saying the most extreme things possible. Even if a majority of the engagement that they get by doing that is negative, it still bolsters their name recognition and shows up support with their core audience. So it's a net benefit to them overall. So long as they're able to skirt social media bans, some are more clever at it than others. Stephen Crowder is not very good at this, but Matt Walsh somehow has evaded bans. But again, her argument about some trans people being good trans people misses the point entirely. This is someone who is very clearly approaching this issue with no knowledge of queer history whatsoever. So let me break it down. When you're trying to dehumanize an entire group of people on the basis of their identity alone, propping up examples of good trans people is fundamentally antithetical to that goal because it inadvertently primes people to think that if there can be one good trans person, well, maybe there can be two good trans people or more good trans people, or perhaps maybe most trans people aren't bad after all, actually. See, opening the door to the prospect of quote, good members of the group you've otherized is a problem for bigots because it breaks the illusion and undermines the demonization narrative that they've been pushing in the first place. So this is why they're unequivocal in their anti-trans beliefs and firmly committed to the vilification and total dehumanization of all trans people, because that's the most potent and reliable way to farm hatred, propping up examples of good trans people in their view could be a Trojan horse to full acceptance, which is a risk that people like Matt Walsh aren't willing to take. So of course, when he's demonizing trans people, he paints with the broadest brush possible because that's how he drives home the point that trans people are invalid. Couple more paragraphs, though. She concludes writing, I am keenly aware of the distinction between factual reporting and opinion as a journalist and reporter, I dedicate my days and nights to meticulously surveying data, scouring the primary literature and choosing the best words to accurately convey the truth. But such painstaking attention to detail is rendered meaningless when the company's flagship entertainers and personalities speak impulsively and deploy divisive rhetoric for entertainment and clicks. This is not a game, and we cannot afford to make these issues overtly partisan. The body's minds and lives of children are being permanently damaged, and everyone, not just reporters and journalists, has a duty to approach this issue with the seriousness it demands. In light of these concerns, I can no longer in good faith maintain my employment with a daily wire. Now, there's a lot that we didn't get to, and I'm trying to be as charitable as I possibly can to her, but I can't read her entire article on video, so I'll link to it down below if you want to see what she's saying. But I will say this, as much as I vehemently disagree with her about trans children, I do respect her for condemning the divisive rhetoric from the likes of Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles. I think it's the bare minimum that you can do to just be a decent human being, and I do think that she's genuine in her concern for trans youth, but that doesn't change the fact that she's wrong and clearly blinded by the bubble that she lives in. For example, in the second paragraph of her article, she explained how world-rocking it was to see so many trusted institutions being misled on the issue of trans youth, which includes academia, the medical establishment and LGBTQ plus civil rights organizations, among others. But I mean, if all of them are on one side, namely academics, medical experts and civil rights organizations, and you're on the opposite side, maybe that's a sign that you're the one who's being misled. I mean, think of it this way, if someone with zero expertise in astronomy told you that scientists and astronomers are being misled about the heterocentric nature of our solar system, I think that most reasonable people would suspect that they're the ones being misled, not the experts. So why wouldn't you be introspective and apply that same logic to this issue and assume, okay, if the academics and medical experts are saying one thing, perhaps I'm the one who's in the wrong here. Furthermore, LGBTQ plus civil rights organizations are composed disproportionately of LGBTQ plus people. Don't you think that they'd know best? Are you really going to say that they're all being misled? I mean, to reach your conclusion, you literally have to deny the lived experiences of millions of people. Most LGBTQ plus people, including trans people will tell you that they knew they were trans at a very young age, including her friend, Blair White, case in point. When did you feel, if you can remember, when did you feel like something was off, that you were supposed to be a girl? Like five. At five? Yeah, I remember being in preschool. Like my earliest memories in life were feeling like the only way I can describe it was like a very intense misalignment between the way I was perceived and the way I had my self concept. Um, so I would say five, uh, but obviously I didn't have the words to articulate it at five. Yeah. Now Blair White will probably tell you that she's against kids transitioning to, despite knowing that kids know their gender identities at very young ages, but I'm assuming that she's being strategically intellectually dishonest in order to get transphobes to accept trans adults at a minimum as a sort of compromise, even if they reject the identities of trans youth. But the pick me strategy never works. Ask Dave Rubin. But to diminish the lived experiences of the overwhelming majority of LGBTQ plus people in general is a position that is based on either cognitive dissonance or ignorance. And if Christina is really as committed to objectivity as she says she is in this article, then as a journalist, I would recommend that she spend some time with families who brainwash their kids into gender ideology, get to know them, hear their stories, and you might learn a thing or two, because these are just normal families who are trying to do the best for their children. Either way, I do give her credit for denouncing the inflammatory rhetoric. I know that resigning from that position was probably really difficult, and I doubt that other people in her position would be as principled as her, but that doesn't change the fact that she's still wrong. And if she was genuinely in pursuit of the truth and not just confirmation bias, I think she'd learn that civil rights organizations and medical experts and academics aren't being misled on this particular subject. She is.