Over the past few weeks, I—and my family—have been subject to an aggressive internet harassment campaign. Thousands of strangers have smeared my name, sent insane direct messages, and made more than a few death threats. Podcasters and radio hosts have slandered me with fictional tales about my private life, such as that I “abandoned my family.” My kids have been doxed by a leading website with millions of readers. What triggered this torrent of abuse?

As a modestly public figure, I committed the unforgiveable crime of existing while transgender. That’s it. Let me explain…

(Yes, it’s a bit long. TL;DR version: In my professional life, I do not care if colleagues, audiences, readers, or followers happen to be trans-skeptics. I prefer to focus on economic policy, not fight culture wars. But I also will not tolerate harassment, disrespect, or discriminatory behavior—and will defend myself when I am slandered or my family is endangered.)

Here’s What Happened

On June 27^th, I published another of my regular economic policy articles for The Dispatch. Alongside the article’s release, the right-of-center publication also tweeted my new role as an official (non-staff) “contributor” in economic policy. Within an hour, a few major Twitter accounts thrashed The Dispatch for bringing on a transgender “pervert” who had supposedly “abandoned their family”—driving hundreds of their followers to join in the slander. When a few high-profile accounts responded by defending my research and integrity, mobs of MAGA and culture warriors mobilized, conservative leaders smeared me (and The Dispatch) on their blogs, and—worst of all—the Babylon Bee (through their “Not the Bee” site) and a few other fanatics doxed my kids.

As the harassment and doxing campaign accelerated into day three, I finally decided to address the endless stream of vitriolic claims that transgenderism is entirely a “mental illness” with no biological basis. Rather than directly respond to individual trolls, I posted a thread walking through the current medical research on transgender neurobiology packed with links to research from prominent neurologists, biologists, and doctors. While the thread proved broadly popular and was endorsed by several noted scientific and medical professionals, the anti-transgender mob reacted hysterically to the idea that they may not have a monopoly on the latest medical and scientific expertise.

I was repeatedly told that responding to hundreds of vicious, public, personal attacks with a single tweetstorm calmly walking through the science and directing readers to read the studies themselves somehow made me an “activist” who “brought upon myself” the Not the Bee doxing of my family by relentlessly pushing “transgender ideology.”

That is not only absurd (even murderers are afforded an opportunity to defend themselves), but also chronologically backwards. The harassment campaign began immediately following the Dispatch announcement on June 27^th, the Not the Bee smear piece appeared on June 28^th—and my neurobiology thread was not published until June 29^th.

It really was just me writing about economic policy for right-of-center publications—rather than any “activism” on my part—that triggered the mob.

How They Publicly Justify Hatred, Bigotry, and Harassment

In the spirit of self-defense, I want to address some of the more common attacks and misconceptions I read.

Countless people have shouted at me that transgender people are mentally ill. They should look in the mirror. After all, sane, well-adjusted people do not message death threats to strangers for being LGBT. Or publicly slander transgender individuals as perverts, pedophiles, and unfit parents who should die brutally and burn in hell. Or spread lies that someone has “abandoned their family.” Or spend months posting near-daily rants about a single transgender person that they have never met and know nothing about. Or dox their children on a leading website and then mock their demands to remove it—before slandering them again on Twitter. Or do podcasts psychoanalyzing other families’ children.

This degree of obsessive, fanatical hatred, slander, and harassment of someone they have never met (who is barely even a public figure) and who is just going about their life is unhinged, sociopathic, and far more mentally ill than whatever they think I am.

Countless people have also called me an unforgiveable sinner. I was raised around the church and know many wonderful Christians who prioritize love and service. But I’ve also seen those who instead treat Christianity as merely a weapon to wield against whomever they hate.

Although I have harmed no one and humbly serve my family and community, some Christians can twist a half dozen of the Bible’s 31,102 verses to pretend that God is intensely concerned with what clothes I wear or how I treat an in-born medical condition. This is nothing new, as Bible verses have historically been twisted to perpetuate American slavery, racism, segregation, lynchings, and misogyny.

Now, some of today’s too-online “Christians”—while doing nothing to oppose Trump’s foreign assistance cuts that endanger 500,000 impoverished African children—think the better way to honor God is by harassing, threatening, slandering, doxing, and brazenly lying about random LGBT people going about their lives. What a mockery of Jesus’s teachings.

And that self-righteous defense that they are honoring God by attacking and trying to destroy the lives of anyone they deem a “sinner” sounds straight out of the Taliban. You hate transgender people? Fine. God can judge me. He doesn't need you to do it for him (Matthew 7:1-5, anyone?) And, truth be told, my Bible tells me that God is less concerned with my fashion choices and medical care than with this mob’s rejection of primary Biblical values such as kindness, compassion, honesty, humility, service, and not casting the first stone. Not to mention much of the Christian right’s aggressive rejection of Jesus’s repeated commands to care for immigrants, refugees, and the poor. Go answer for your own many sins before publicly judging mine.

This especially goes for the Babylon Bee and Not the Bee. (And yes, they are connected, for the apologists lamely trying to change the subject). These false Christians/Mormons doxed my kids and then doubled down by slandering me and then playing the victim when I aggressively demanded the picture’s removal, before (much later) taking it down. This was indefensible—people’s children must always be off-limits.

Finally, countless people smugly claimed to be simply defending “truth and science” by slandering me. Give me a break. This mob doesn’t give a damn about science, which to most of them means a few internet memes—or perhaps google-and-pasting a few barely-skimmed “gotcha” hyperlinks into a tweet.

While many unanswered questions remain, leading medical scholars surveying the field of transgender research confirm that “most cross-sectional neuroimaging research indicates that brain morphology and activation patterns… are more congruent with gender identity than natal sex in untreated MTFs and FTMs” (emphasis added). For a small sample of the transgender biological research, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Not persuaded by research? That’s fine—I do not care if someone is a trans-skeptic. But claiming the mantle of “truth and science” requires deeply and dispassionately engaging these (and more) medical studies, not flying into a hysterical rage when someone cites peer-reviewed medical research that does not align with your bumper sticker slogans.

Even if every remaining medical scientist endorsed transgender biology tomorrow, few trans-skeptic minds would change because, for the vast majority, “truth and science” is just a veneer for their gut-level disgust at transgender people. Just like the “concern trolls” who are oh-so-concerned about the well-being of my children that they dox them (or laugh about it).

I will not be lectured on current scientific research by people who have not studied it or lived it—or who also believe that COVID is fake, vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases, and evolution is a myth.

And I will not be lectured on “truth,” “integrity,” “morality,” and “bearing false witness” by people whose Twitter accounts also cheer Donald Trump and his endless lies and smears. Or who tweet racist lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets until the local schools and hospitals have to be evacuated for bomb threats. Or who brazenly lie that I’ve “abandoned my family.” The complete lack of self-awareness is astounding.

And it is especially rich to have the co-author of a book defending Justice Kavanaugh against an unhinged mob of bigoted activists who relied on ignorant stereotypes to smear him as a sexual predator with no evidence … then herself encourage an unhinged mob of bigoted activists who rely on ignorant stereotypes to smear me as a sexual predator with no evidence. I guess it really is just empty tribalism all the way down.

It is also quite rich to see angry culture warrior podcasters take a break from demanding that society stop telling them how to raise their kids to tell me how to raise mine. These gossiping busybodies should worry about their own family and stay out of mine. My kids are perfectly well-adjusted, thank you.

These smears of transgenderism and its community—“disgusting,” “delusional,” “mentally ill,” “against nature,” “biologically fake,” “dangerous around kids,” “perverts,” “recruiting kids,” “should not exist in public or the workplace”—are the same stale, braindead, malicious smears that gays and lesbians have been hearing since the 1970s (and earlier). And not surprisingly, the hysterical trolls savaging me often had Twitter pages directing similar venom at gays, lesbians, Jews, Muslims, African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, immigrants, and/or foreigners.

The Real Reason They Went After Me

Here is a key point: I came out as transgender the so-called “right way.” I waited until I was an adult (my 40s) to officially transition. I never sought out women’s sports teams or cis women’s spaces. I never “abandoned my family,” and in fact moved forward only with their enthusiastic encouragement. I limited my coming out announcement to a single tweet and Substack post explaining my updated name and appearance. And then I immediately returned to conservative economic policy and devising solutions to runaway debt, inflation, and sluggish economic growth.

That meant turning down every media request to profile me as a transitioning conservative, and refusing to rebrand myself online as a culture warrior (I’m moderate on transgender policy issues). I even clarified that I will not police pronouns or names (at least among the well-meaning), and have no problem working with trans-skeptics. I spent months working to keep my transition as low-key and inoffensive as possible because it does not define me, and I still want to be seen as an economist first.

And while the conservative policy community responded with strong support, those efforts bought me Zero goodwill with trans-obsessed culture warriors and social media mobs. In fact, avoiding the traditional conservative landmines probably deepened the backlash because it called their bluff. With me, the mob couldn’t cloak their anti-trans zealotry in more acceptable rhetoric about underage transitions, sports teams, bathrooms, abandoning one’s family, in-your-face activism, or pronoun policing.

Without any of their regular excuses, these culture warriors were left to confirm that they simply do not believe that transgender adults should be permitted the basic human right of living and working in peace. And when it comes to online mobs, cancel culture, speech-policing, intolerance, vindictiveness, and groupthink—the “woke right” is a mirror image of the “woke left.”

So they harassed me and posted stolen pictures of my kids when I came out. Then, they made sure to hijack every economics interview clip of me posted by a TV network or podcaster to relentlessly mock my appearance. And they unleashed the latest campaign of harassment, smears, death threats, and family doxing when I continued writing on economic policy for right-of-center publications. Such tough guys, hiding behind anonymous accounts at their keyboards.

While awful for my family, I know that the recent backlash was never truly about me at all. I’m not a particularly important or well-known person. However, many unhinged culture warriors are fighting a broader campaign to erase transgenderism from public life. So when they discovered that a transgender economist was employed at a prominent think tank and now had been named a contributor to a right-of-center publication (their own side!), they panicked at this tiny shift towards tolerance. Then they publicly savaged me to make me a pariah and send a message that transgender individuals are not welcome in public jobs—especially on the right.

And to justify the anti-transgender rage, the mob had to turn this boring, suburban, 40-something economist and devoted spouse and parent who also happened to be transgender ... into some fictionalized cartoon caricature who had callously abandoned their family to go live as a dangerous sex predator and “impose their fetish” on unwitting victims. In reality, I’m just at home with my family watching baseball and building federal budget charts.

Prominent culture warriors and their minions shamelessly lied about me and then told me that I deserve it as payback for “trans movement extremism”—holding me personally responsible for every underage gender transition, every uncomfortable moment in a female locker room or sports team, and every outrage (real or imagined) ever committed by a transgender person.

I’m not unique—social media has normalized public displays of bigotry against countless undeserving targets. Millions of broken people simply enjoy destroying strangers for sport. The self-righteous superiority of joining a tribal pile-on provides that quick hit of self-esteem, and whether the target deserves it is irrelevant because the cruelty is the point. To them, you are just a name on a screen, a character in the day’s story rather than a real person. It reminds me of a cheeky tweet I came across that promises “Just one more mean tweet and then maybe you’ll love yourself.”

Social media has also made it easier to understand what kinds of people could have joined the mobs beating the Jews on Kristallnacht, or lynching black families in the Jim Crow South. There will always be broken, hate-filled bullies who cowardly attack whatever minority groups are the most vulnerable—and these days, those groups certainly include the transgender community.

Importantly, all of this online nonsense has come from clout-chasing, performative haters that I’ve never met—or at most met in passing decades ago, long before I came out. Friends and colleagues who regularly interact with me have been (to my knowledge) unanimously supportive over the past few weeks—regardless of their politics. That has meant a lot.

Moving Forward…

After a long career consistently standing up to fiscally reckless presidents and lawmakers of both parties, I surely will not be intimidated by some bad faith Twitter trolls or a few washed up websites and podcasters. I’ll continue to block trolls and limit Twitter replies to people I follow—people across the spectrum who can discuss economic policy and behave like adults.

So if a bunch of bored blowhards have nothing better to do than waste their precious and limited time on Earth sitting on Twitter gossiping and lying about the lives of LGBT individuals, well, they can go ahead and shout into the vast nothingness. Most of them have now been blocked out of my feed anyway, and the economic policy community ignores them.

I’ll be over here at the grown-up table debating taxes, spending, debt, tariffs, inflation, and growth, publishing studies and op-eds, and working closely with Congressional Democrats and Republicans on bipartisan solutions to soaring debt. Now, finally, back to economic policy.

Unfortunately, this is one of those moments when I must briefly turn the attention to myself—if only to quickly (and just once) address the inevitable deluge of questions about my name changing from Brian Riedl to Jessica Riedl.

I’ve unmistakably known I was transgender since the age of 4. Medical scans and examinations—performed as a volunteer in medical studies—have since confirmed my predominantly female brain biology, along with other biological characteristics that have countered my outwardly male appearance.

While being “myself” with family and close friends, I’ve essentially had to roleplay a different gender professionally. This made me so awkward and nervous in work settings that I have long preferred to work from home, and to avoid work-related receptions, banquets, and happy hours. So, with my family’s encouragement, I finally aligned my outward physical appearance with the rest of myself.

To be clear, my wife and kids have known this side of me from the beginning, are 100% supportive, and encouraged me to take this step. This is news to the economic policy world, not to them. Nothing has changed at home.

I’m not an activist and I’m more moderate on transgender policy issues. But I’m also not naïve about the intense abuse and demonization my community endures from politicians, demagogues, and bullies who defend themselves by dismissing transgenderism as some made-up mental delusion with no legitimate biological basis. Too many adults still cling to their 10^th grade biology teacher’s (purposely) over-simplified summary that XX versus XY chromosomes cleanly determine all subsequent male or female biological and gender development.

Students who continue in biology and related fields learn that each person’s genes contain a full blueprint for both male and female development. And while the vast majority of humans still develop consistently male or female in the womb, approximately one percent of people trigger genes, chromosomes, hormones, and/or physical/brain developments that cross between the two sexes (and who do not always meet a strict definition of intersex either). Examples include being chromosomally female but hormonally male. Or—because the genitals and the brain implement their sex instructions during different trimesters—following first trimester male genital development with third trimester female brain development, due likely to chemical changes in the womb in between those points. For a sample of the research on the (very real) biology of transgenderism, from basic overviews to dense medical studies, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And while some young people believe themselves to be transgender and then later conclude otherwise, millions of transgender people live this biological reality across every known place and culture. Thus, transgenderism cannot be legislated, beaten, mocked, boycotted, or discriminated out of existence. Instead, such aggressive intolerance drives this vulnerable community’s tragically high rates of depression and suicide attempts. This includes relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues whom you’d never suspect could be transgender, yet who live in daily fear of being discovered and ostracized.

That said, working in conformity-obsessed politics, I’m resigned to some insults and reduced opportunities to share my economic policy analysis—even among those who otherwise decry “cancel culture.” But being in the out-group is nothing new. Growing up in 1980s Northern Wisconsin, as an awkward kid trying to act naturally male, I was bullied and beaten so badly and so frequently for so long that my family eventually had to sell our house and move to a new school district. Those harrowing years—which I barely survived—ultimately made me resilient and independent. I resolved to carve my own ambitious path, stand up to bullies, and never again be intimidated or fear standing alone before a mob.

This stubborn resolve came in handy in 2001, when, as an unknown, 26-year-old economist, I was hired at a leading conservative think tank and expected to keep my head down and support the home team. Instead, my relentless highlighting of Bush’s soaring budget deficits earned a briefing-and-communications ban from the Bush White House, a near-termination of my nascent D.C. think tank career—and, years later, complete vindication to the point that Bush’s own OMB director would recruit me to become his chief economist following his 2010 election to the U.S. Senate. And throughout 23 years in Washington, my non-partisan, data-heavy, inconvenient economic truths have consistently drawn the ire of White Houses, lawmakers, speech audiences, television interviewers, and Twitter mobs from across the political spectrum. As long as my economic information is correct and presented respectfully, then other people’s response to it (or to my gender) is their problem.

Despite a new name and look, I’m still the same person with the same right-of-center economic policies. Hopefully a bit more at ease. And the last thing this polite Midwesterner wants is to make anyone uncomfortable or self-conscious. So I won’t be policing pronouns or names when well-meaning people trip up on mine. And I can laugh about how being a principled deficit hawk is no longer my most unique feature in Washington politics.

My wish is to still be defined professionally by my economic research and let my gender blend into the background without any special privilege or punishment. Which is why this quick (and I wish unnecessary) message to explain my name change and share research on transgender biology will be the only time I publicly discuss my own gender identity. I refuse to give ammunition to culture warriors on either side, and no one’s transgender status should be treated by reporters as some bizarre novelty for public gawking. I may occasionally weigh in on broader transgender policy issues, but overall I’d rather continue to circulate my cool budget charts, combat conservative and liberal economic myths, and specify the most reasonable and bipartisan way to fix the federal debt.

Now, back to economic policy and my relentless warnings that Social Security’s and Medicare’s $124 trillion cash shortfall is fiscally unsustainable…

Jessica Riedl