Down the rabbithole of a right wing panic, inside joke, and image board meme turned bizarre community. "Transmaxxing", on the surface, is the idea that young men (mostly involuntarily celibate or "incels") are becoming trans women to increase their odds of getting laid. In right wing media, the concept is being covered as a serious movement so as to fuel harmful transphobic narratives and erode civil protections for trans people. But is it actually a thing? And who came up with "transmaxxing"? Liv Agar investigates.
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Liv Agar: http://livagar.com
QAA's Website: https://qanonanonymous.com
Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
Welcome, listener, to Chapter 239 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Transmaxing episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Liv Agar, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
Hello, everybody.
I am back, which is the most important thing to mention at the top of the episode.
An episode that is going to see Liv teach you new ways to get laid.
In this case, we don't recommend them, but they are technically.
Somebody did think them up as a new way to get laid.
Do not take the estrogen unless you want to.
Yeah, it's funny because it is basically that like old idiot thing of like, man if I was gay I would get chicks, but like taken to the absolute extreme.
Absolutely.
There is gay maxing in the incel community.
What if I became a girl?
Is this like a reference to like min maxing?
Like you wouldn't say Diablo 4?
I believe it used to be, it comes out of video game parlance, yeah.
Oh god, I was like kind of reaching, I thought maybe bad joke, but that's, that's interesting, okay.
Yeah, you'll see Jake, you're gonna love this stuff.
And maybe you'll get some ideas about um, you know, your future.
Yeah, I think I'm gonna min-max my gayness.
I am back from a stint in a certain type of college.
Let's put it that way.
A college where they take away your phone and you learn new ways to cope with life.
Ways that do not actively kill you.
And I do want to share a little bit before we jump into Liv's topic here about my experiences having conspiracy theories come to me checking into this place.
The very second day after having one night's sleep and I kind of like got in around midnight.
Well, you should, I think you should clarify.
This is a college where like police don't take you to, you take yourself to?
Yes.
No, I was not in jail.
I was in, to be clear, I was in rehab.
I'm not sure why Jake has to say that because it would be cool if people thought I was a criminal that went to jail.
That's what it kind of sounded like at the top.
I mean, that's what I would have thought.
Yeah, well, why don't you just let people think I'm cool?
Which would be really cool.
That would be cool.
He was in prison for collaborating with a foreign state.
Yeah.
He's so discontent in the American society.
And, uh, let's just say I worked out some deals, and, uh, I'll have some different opinions from here on out.
So yeah, so the very first night, you know, check myself in, first night goes by and then the next morning a guy comes in and let me try to paint a picture of this guy.
He's kind of, he's got pale skin, he's kind of gingerish, he's got these bright beady little blue eyes, kind of a little bit overweight and extremely high on crystal methamphetamine.
So just absolutely jittering all over the place, kind of sweating and quite confrontational.
And he starts this whole thing off, and I was not present for this, but I was told about it right afterwards.
He walks in, he sees these two guys, one of which is Mexican and the other of which is Armenian, and he just goes, uh, are you guys the same race?
To which they said, no, you know, and the Armenian guy said, hey, I'm from Armenia.
And he said, oh, that's cool.
You know, you guys are the first Aryans.
So, you know, being told this by, um, these two men afterwards, I was like, well, I'm, I'm pretty sure this guy is some sort of white supremacist.
And, you know, sitting with him in this little common area afterwards, this was confirmed when he told us, California is in trouble.
And someone asked, what do you mean?
He's like, well, have you seen the guard towers at the Walmarts?
You know, those are all going to be turned into prisons.
The South will rise again.
And at that point, I realized this is definitely a white supremacist.
And I noticed that his camo ball cap said white boy.
So we kind of get into it and we're like, oh yeah, really?
He's like, oh yeah, California won't have a currency by the end of the month.
Now, this was like, I think like eight days before the end of the month.
So I was like, wow, that's, that's like QAnon-like in the way that they just predict something, you know, days before it's going to be disproved.
So we were like, well, where did you, where did you hear about this?
And he goes, YouTube.
After which he said he would show us the video, which he then got into a fight with the staff because you can't have your phone and there is no internet.
He started yelling at them a bunch and he got basically kicked out.
And on his way out, you know, someone was like, so are you going to like this other place that you mentioned?
And he's like, no, I'm I'm going to go get high.
And a little joke was made about like, well, where where do you have it?
You know, is it is it up your ass?
And he said, yes, prison wallet.
So it was apparent that this man had crystal meth up his ass.
So white supremacists with crystal meth up their ass are watching YouTube and they believe the South will rise again.
So that was cool.
A good introduction.
I immediately was like, well, you know what?
Glad he got kicked out because he was going to be my roommate.
So I was really not looking forward to that first night of him not sleeping at all and potentially, you know, explaining more to me about these Walmarts and, uh, and all that stuff.
I will say Walmart guard tower is very, like, McFascist, kind of stereotypical what you'd imagine.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I should look closer because I haven't seen any guard towers.
There might be something, there might be something like that.
I don't know.
Yeah, there are rumblings online that McDonald's, all McDonald's locations in California will soon be turned into re-education centers.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the idea here was the Walmarts would be prisons for anybody who wasn't down with the South rising again.
Oh.
Oh, so he's thinking it's good.
Yes.
Well, and Walmart wouldn't be the worst.
I mean, they've got TVs, they've got game consoles, they've got cords.
I mean, if you're gonna be, you know, sequestered and, you know, in a department store, Walmart, You know, it could be worse.
I think they've got a hot dog stand in there.
Well, I mean, I think it would be a bit more like those Black Friday videos of Walmart, if you know what I mean.
So, but yeah, no, for sure they'd still have the sample lady that has, like, cocktail wieners for you to ingest, so.
I saw something online about, like, Black Friday in July.
Like, I guess they're just extending Black Friday to, like, whenever they want?
We're not going to be advertising for the big corporations today.
Sorry, Jake.
Well, I saw some deals online.
Okay, no, no, no.
Plus, this is coming out in like a week at least, so it'll be out of date on top of it, so just great stuff, great stuff, really miss this.
So then I get to the other side, you know, out of the kind of detox side of things, and my roommate, who's a real sweetheart, real nice guy, it becomes apparent, is a flat earther.
So he's immediately talking to me about how the earth is flat, and that it used to be roamed by the Nephilim, the giants of old.
Oh, a Nephilim guy!
Yeah.
Cool.
The connoisseur.
Yeah.
I use the skills that I developed in this podcast to not argue at all and go, that's interesting.
You know, do you think NASA is lying to us?
Oh, okay, cool.
Yeah.
No, I mean, that's not really what I believe, but you know, I mean, everybody has their different sources.
Yeah, he was an interesting guy.
I heard a couple other conspiracy theories, one of which is that the Pope is the Antichrist, which I guess is kind of just your regular Protestant Big Tent revival kind of conspiracy theory.
And then towards the end, a guy that I'd been friends with the whole time, really nice guy, he believed that there was a hole in Antarctica and that there was a different species living under it.
And he obliquely brought up Richard Byrd, although he couldn't name it.
He was like, oh yeah, this guy, he flew, you know?
And you were like, oh, Richard Bird, of course.
Richard E. Bird.
And he was like, oh, man, you've done research, too.
Yeah, exactly.
So it was really fun.
I mean, again, the place was amazing.
I got everything I needed from it.
It was full of love and support.
And if you have a problem, you can get help.
It's absolutely possible.
You are worth it if you're feeling really down and like, what's the point?
Don't listen to that.
Don't listen to that.
Go and get some help.
It really helped me.
And it was amazing.
Stay healthy out there, folks, and, you know, stay away from Walmarts, I'd say, just until we see if this thing pans out.
Just till the end of the month, okay?
Until the new currency is released, at least.
Yeah, until the new currency, which, by the way, that happened 11 days ago.
So, welcome to the cashless world in California, folks.
Yeah, make sure you got your Monopoly bucks stacked because that's going to be the interim currency until, you know, XRP, you know, or the Iraqi Donair, you know, until their value sort of inflates, which it will.
Iraqi Donair, huh?
Like a Donair kebab?
What was it?
Oh, D-Nar, sorry.
D-Nar, don't care.
D-Nar, don't air.
I just want to say, if you're going to go to a Walmart, instead of purchasing something, go apply for a job in the guard towers and become a capo.
I'm assuming Jake's going to be doing that within the week, as well as signing up for some sort of Walmart quest.
Hey, look, yeah, well, look, it depends on what kind of benefits there are, alright?
Yeah, well, benefits is a view, as your people are subjugated.
A good view.
Jake, I hope we're held in the same, when they take away all of the Jews and trans people, I hope we're held in the same Walmart.
We can hang out in the bouncy castle.
We would have a great time.
I would be helping everybody set up their Xboxes, you know, making sure that, you know, whatever TV they've got set up is actually set to 4K and not 1080p, like the default set.
I gotta make sure their firmware is updated.
Yeah, I feel like I could be potentially really helpful.
I hope you like basketball games, Liv.
All right, Liv, let's jump into this phenomenon known as transmaxing.
Today's episode was gifted to me by a subject of one of my previous investigations for this podcast.
And it's sort of the same sense that scalding hot coffee is gifted to one's crotch.
While doing research for my episode on the Collins family, famously known as the elite couple breeding to save mankind, I ran into a bizarre episode of their very unlistened to podcast discussing the phenomena of trans maxing.
I was taken aback throughout watching the entire 30 minute long episode, or to be more accurate, 15 minutes as I like to watch stuff on 2x speed.
Jesus Christ.
It's efficient.
I like being efficient.
Yeah, watch maxing.
As the Collins conceived of transmaxing as both a real phenomenon and something they supported.
Now, to me, a terminally online, irony-poisoned trans woman, I've only seen the term transmaxing utilized as a sarcastic self-descriptor.
Taken from the incel maxing terminology, To trans max is to dedicate one's life to become a trans woman solely for the purpose that it may increase one's odds of getting laid.
A step up from other in-sale phrases like gym maxing or jester maxing, the idea of taking feminizing hormones in the pursuit of getting girls is so absurd that it's no wonder it's been the butt of trans self-deprecating humor on the more edgy, ironic online social spaces where trans women frequent for a couple years now.
Wait, what is jester maxing before we move on here?
What the fuck?
It's trying to be as funny as possible to get women.
Fuck, man.
Jesus.
Oh my god.
This is the reverse of 1984.
We're making words longer and less sensical.
Fuck.
These very online spaces are a place where I assumed that this term was both born out of and would one day die within, to not fall upon any cisgendered ears throughout its entire lifespan.
But how, then, had this esoteric, rodden-in joke been dredged up from the depths of ironic online trans culture in order to arrive on the decks of the Thiel-aligned pronatalist couple?
Well, after digging more into it, it turns out that the story of transmaxing's creation, and how it seems to somehow have gained mainstream attention on the right, where it's been used to fuel harmful transphobic narratives made to erode civil protections for trans people, involves surprisingly little interference from trans people at all.
It would be entirely about us, but we would have little to no hand in terms of its creation, or the ways in which it would eventually spread like wildfire across the right-wing media sphere, as one harmful trope among many in the right's growing arsenal of transphobic stereotypes.
ORIGINS OF TRANSMAXING Transmaxing, or at least the essence of the idea, is a product of the chans, a forum whose cultural effects are well known on this podcast.
Like 104chan's other spawns, QAnon, there is essentially no single creator of transmaxing as an idea.
Instead, it seems to be a product of a series of refinements by similarly minded, anonymous members of the same board.
Sort of like how QAnon has its FBI Anon, High Level Insider, Mega Anon, etc.
Anonymous posters before Q making very similar claims, that QAnon would synthesize and refine.
While the term transmaxing itself is the brainchild of a particular browser of 4chan, It was strongly influenced by similar general ideas that have been present on the boards for a while.
Throughout the years, there seems to be some recurring discussion of the merit of incels, or men that have a poor lot in life in general, feminizing themselves to escape the crushing societal expectations placed on them in virtue of them being men.
Now, 4chan is a very, very silly place.
And none of the things written on it are to be taken seriously.
No one is really getting others to take hormones as a cure for not getting laid.
So just as QAnon originally existed as a LARP of people posting who were in on the joke, so too did transmexing.
Or at least the general weird ideas concerning incels being feminized that would inspire transmexing.
But you may possibly be asking, why?
Well, the discussion of involuntary celibates taking hormones to feminize themselves are essentially fetish posts, embedded in a broader obsession by many 4chan posters across a variety of boards with trans women, or more broadly, feminine people who have penises.
Even before the current intense obsession that the right has with trans women, people on the chans have been posting a lot about us.
This makes sense, I think, considering that the average poster on the chans at the time was a younger adult male with rather conservative views on politics and yet a fascination with the taboo, swirling with a combination of pent-up aggression and an unrequited sex drive.
The two seemingly very dissimilar feelings of wanting to fuck someone and wanting to harm them, of aggression and libido, can sometimes, I think especially within men, combine in the same object, which is a very important reason as to why the chans become so obsessed with trans women.
Of course, encountering a group of women that are both considered degenerate and taboo, yet also sexually fascinating, will hook the typical Chan poster's interests.
The particular social event on 4chan that would explicitly come to inspire transmaxing, as its creator admits, is something called Reiko's Trap Harem, a collective delusion that took place on the R9K board in 2018.
Now, trap is essentially a derogatory sexual term meant to signify feminine individuals who have penises, who trap or trick men attracted to them into being gay.
This is based on the reversal of cisgender norms concerning what sort of genitalia very feminine individuals are expected to have.
This reversal is both sexual in nature and also rather violent, as it connects to the harmful characterization of trans women, who are the majority of feminine individuals who have penises in real life, as deceitful towards any man who is attracted to them.
This is also used in trans panic legal defenses, where certain men will violently either harm or even kill trans women they were previously attracted to after finding out their genitalia.
Breko's trap harem appears to have begun as a so-called psyop, or collection of shitpuss, by certain posters on R9K and other boards, who attempted to convince lonely, disaffected males to take estrogen and become traps, as a way of escaping inceldom.
The logic here follows from the incel belief that the average woman is far more valuable to the opposite sex than the average man, leaving some men at the bottom to be necessarily excluded from the ability to find a partner.
The belief that women have it easier in the dating market is, of course, derived from resentment and aggressive feelings towards them, and seems to underlie the logic of many of these posts encouraging incels to take estrogen.
A lot of the information behind this so-called trap harem is poorly sourced and spread essentially through word of mouth.
So you can really treat most of this as, again, fetish posting.
These posters find the idea of dominating an incel into becoming feminine sexually arousing.
You can also complain about how easy women have it compared to incel men on the side.
Wow, so there are really layers of jacking off here.
Like, just people getting turned on by the idea that they can convince people who in turn are doing it because they want to be more sexually viable.
Wow.
Yeah, there's a lot of 5D jacking off here.
Mm-hmm, yes.
While all this can be assumed to be fake, what is relevant about it, as concerns the
creation of transmaxing, is the dominant narrative on the board surrounding Weakos Trap Harem,
which is excellently summarized by a YouTuber by the name of EsotericPoster1388, who seems
to be under the impression that it's real.
So these people openly admit going out of their way to post as many threads as possible
to convince these broken young men to begin taking hormones.
These are young men who would do anything for any kind of sexual affection or intimacy, even going as far as Uh, hiring prostitutes, or various other things, as we often see.
And we all know are fetishistically deranged.
They're all viewing porn regularly.
So now that they have an outlet to receive some kind of sexual gratification, if they begin posting themselves as traps.
And so they do this, and the Discord of these people, uh, spam erotic role-playing threads.
And they will spam idealized images of traps, these anime images.
So, what could be worse?
How could this develop any further?
The seeming leader of one of these discords, uh, spamming r9k, known as Raikou, discord name raikouhashtag3333, along with someone called Haruka, have a discord harem of traps they've collected from r9k.
They spend their time going around multiple 4chan boards, including X and Sosh, but mainly on 9k spamming invites to Ryko's harem. This is
his personal discord for the various depressed, mentally ill, neat, lifeless fucks
he's managed to convince to start putting dildos up their ass and
considering taking hormone replacement therapy.
Okay, so this guy has some terrible opinions and his perception is obviously all kinds of fucked up.
Yeah, the narrative around this essentially relates to like a transphobic backlash.
There's really no full divide between the people who are, like, sexually into it and the people who are doing the transphobic backlash calling it degenerate.
There's, like, some, you know, Venn diagram there.
But most of this narrative is essentially absurd.
I don't see any real evidence of, like, any incels really being convinced by this.
But, like, the idea that they're convinced by it is, like, upsetting and, like, controversial.
While Mr. Esoteric, whose name is very close to the Nazi dog whistle 1488, admits that most of the information gathered about this debacle is speculative, he argues that Reiko supposedly lured innocent incels into his Discord server, promising they could find sexual relief by taking estrogen, and then proceeded to collect damaging information on them, blackmailing them into taking the estrogen.
A part of a 4chan green text on the subject from April of 2018 reads, Join Trap Discord.
They asked me for a picture of me dressed up in order to join.
Showing face.
Shit is a cult.
Turns out they've doxed me and have all my info.
They're blackmailing me with the pic, saying that if I don't take HRT they will mail it to my family and friends.
They've done this shit to numerous other people.
What the fuck do I do now?
Great question.
And of course, this is also probably a lie and just another shitpost.
Oh yeah.
So just layers of this stuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
This is where transmaxing as a phenomenon begins.
Not by an actual incel attempting to medically transition, mind you, but instead by a very, very strange cisgender individual that was inspired by Reiko's ability to supposedly take advantage of incels' desire to take hormones in order to get laid, who would make it his goal to solve the supposed incel problem by encouraging incels to transition.
But unlike my impression of most of the trap-posting stuff on 4chan, this guy's efforts are sincere.
Vintology, as he refers to himself, is, among other things, a Swedish eugenicist, pro-life, anti-vaxxer, and former, maybe, incel, who has spent at least the past few years of his life spreading his bizarre and disturbing takes across a few incel forums as well as Reddit and 4chan.
He has, among other things, attempted to start his own religion, known as Darwinian Vintology.
Okay, wow.
But there isn't much theology in this 130 or so page document.
It does, on the other hand, have a collection of very confusing and bizarre takes, most of which seem to be based around his eugenicist view that genes are the main factor that determine social difference.
And, as we will see later, he also loves his typologies.
As an example of both of these things, here is his extensive list of actions that he deems degenerate.
Zero.
Gambling money with negative expected value.
One.
Sterilizing yourself.
Two.
Not fucking a female in the pussy given the opportunity.
Three.
Donating money.
Very few exceptions.
Four.
Becoming fully monogamous with someone you cannot have children with.
Five.
Committing to a loser when you are female.
Oh my god, the internet, it's just, it just needs to be destroyed.
Yeah, I, yeah.
It must be destroyed.
This is like arguing about, like, how much space exists between the cracks of the floorboard in your apartment.
It's just like making things unnecessarily, uh, fucked up.
Yeah.
A sample of positions articulated in the document are that any age of consent above 13 is, quote, dysgenic, that, to quote him, In rape cases, the attractiveness and importance of the male shall be taken into account.
Um, no.
No it shan't.
And that some women with supposedly good genes should be, to quote him, forced to have children.
Oh my god.
God!
Vintology also seems to believe that incels being unable to fuck is a result of the fact that they are genetically inferior.
So women not choosing them is actually good.
Which is weird because like he at least previously identified as like a incel and he gigamori so don't know what's going on there.
But the reason that he considered it degenerate for a woman to date a loser is because he believes it's bad for the species.
Oh my god, it's just the different bad belief systems colliding with each other and competing for the worst take possible.
This guy's got a real mind palace he's set up here.
It's very elaborate.
This has led him, at least in the past, to advocate for the elimination of incels from existence.
Initially, and much to the dislike of people on the incel forums he was posting on, this was either through sterilization or, to quote him, sending incels to the gas chambers.
I'm just so glad we finally got Travis to be on one of these episodes.
Yeah.
Because I can tell they make him profoundly uncomfortable.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this is increasingly leads me to believe that, you know, if humans haven't found the productive way to relate to each other on an individual basis by now, I don't think it's going to happen.
So this is just very unhealthy.
Thank you for this gift upon my return, Liv.
It's a perfect return episode for you, Julian.
At some point in 2019, he would find another solution to the supposed incel problem, being inspired by the perceived success that Raku's Trap Harem had in convincing incels to take estrogen, causing him to coin the term transmaxing.
He would then make another document.
called the Transmaxing Manifesto, containing all the reasons that an incel should transition.
The first few pages include a bizarre list of the supposed benefits that one gains from
transitioning from male to female. One aspect of this list is contingent upon the incel belief
that women have it easier than men, and thus being a woman will allow one to attract more
social validation, as well as an increased number of sexual partners, etc. Another aspect of this
list is that some of the benefits are clearly driven by his attraction towards trans women,
with phentology stating that transitioning will give you "softer female aesthetics"
as well as the ability to gain "sexual excitement from your own body."
This, like the Raikyu thing, is a fetish post.
He's typing this shit with one hand.
And he's really not hiding this fact very well.
He writes, for instance, that "Males transitioning to female is beneficial for society
since it would allow people to have fun fucking them."
Oh my god.
In another part of the document, where he lists the reasons why getting in-cells to transition is good,
three of the six are just basically that trans women are hot and that more of them in society would be nice.
Hey, I mean, broken clock and all that.
The sexual feelings he has towards trans women are also quite clearly combined with some bizarre aggressive instinct, similar to the Rako stuff.
As an example, in the previously mentioned Vintology Bible, he advocates for forced feminization, where he says, Males can be reduced to property and then given HRT by the ones owning them so they will become useful when it comes to sexual slavery.
See, when it comes to sexual slavery, imagine a perfect world and it involves sexual slavery?
There shouldn't be any when it comes to!
Sexual slavery is not being catered to enough.
Imagine having a fucking perfect world in your mind palace and you're like, about sexual slavery.
Its existence would be bettered by... It's like, for fuck's sake.
But what I think stands out the most in this manifesto, and the right-wing transphobic media outlets who cover the so-called phenomenon of transmaxing seem to agree with me, is the totally definitely real personal testimony of transmaxers who have improved their lives by transitioning.
So, to be clear, she is being sarcastic.
This is not real.
This is not real.
This did not happen.
Just for our more literal-minded individuals out there.
In the original version of the Manifesto, these accounts either seem to be written by Eventology himself, or are anonymous fetish posts made to various forums, many of which being Incel-related.
The first of these accounts, which is on the third page of the Manifesto, really comes to define the popular right-wing understanding of transmaxing.
and is taken from an anonymous r/incel post. And honestly, I think this one is also probably
written by Eventology, given the fact that the archive link to the now-deleted reddit post he
provides in the manifesto is only 53 minutes old at the time of archival and has zero upvotes.
So like, how did you find this man? Okay, yeah, for sure.
This post, which is pasted into the manifesto under the subheading "The Experience of Becoming
Female" details an incel who genders himself using he/him pronouns and does not experience
any gender dysphoria, who notes that his naturally feminine features allowed him to
take estrogen and then enjoy the privileges of being female.
He's also misogynistic as well as seemingly also transphobic, claiming that most trans women are faking dysphoria and are actually sex perverts, and he also claims that all of the benefits he experiences from transitioning, or most of them, are sexual.
My favorite part of the post is that he notes of how hard it was for him to produce a conventionally feminine voice, having to practice for 30 minutes a day for a whole entire month and a half, which is an estimate for how long that usually takes that is about as accurate as if you asked Bill Gates how much a gallon of milk costs.
The post ends with basically Vintology's whole thesis around why transmaxing is possible, which is that the transmaxer, who was initially only attracted to women, takes estrogen and suddenly becomes insatiably horny for men, as the estrogen has feminized his brain.
This is another remnant of the Reiko-style 4chan psy-op posts, who find it hot that they can force men into becoming women.
But the most genuinely malicious thing involved with the manifesto is the transition timeline photos, that is, a before and after of a transition, of conventionally attractive trans women that Vintology posts beside these fictionalized accounts of straight male misogynistic trans maxers.
Over the course of the 13 editions of the manifesto he has created, he's only added more of these transition photos, made to imply that the fake fetish posts are written by these actual trans women.
So he's stealing photos?
Or I guess maybe even using AI?
He's scalping them from Reddit essentially, from like other, you know, larger actual trans subreddits.
Yeah, I'm starting to think this Vintology guy is no good.
This guy's a real jerk.
Shortly after making this document, Vintology created the r slash trans maxing subreddit as a public forum to better facilitate his goal of removing incels by getting them to medically transition.
As I speak, the subreddit has three and a half thousand people subscribed to it, and two people currently browsing it.
Two of which includes me, I guess.
And to his credit, at least half of the people currently browsing trans maxing are trans women.
So maybe it is a real thing.
I mean, it's clear that because he's a eugenicist and thinks incels should all die, and also hates, you know, trans women and the act of transitioning, he basically thinks he's encouraging them to commit some form of suicide.
I don't think, I think he does, like, he does think it will improve their lives by his, like, really weird, sick view of how society works.
Like, he thinks he is improving their condition, I think.
I think that is, like, but who knows, honestly.
Is he, I mean, is the idea that, you know, it's like, well, you know, you can't live a proper non-degenerate life, but here's like the second best thing you can have by trans maxing?
Yeah, that, you know, you might as well, your life would be worse if you didn't do it.
Yeah, I mean, based on how horny he is, it's like, well, incels are useless to me.
I don't like them.
I don't think of myself as one anymore.
And if they became trans women, maybe they'd be useful to me because I would want to fuck them or jack off to them.
Yeah, basically.
That is an insane way of thinking.
I mean, I think maybe he became so misogynistic that he decided that incel men were basically interchangeable with women in how useless they are.
Essentially, that's kind of the eugenics hierarchy he puts between men and women.
Mm-hmm.
Bingeology posts to his trans maxxing subreddit relatively often, usually posting motivational images related to why transitioning is beneficial that essentially mirror the posting style associated with the Rico Discord thing.
Being a girl is so easy, men will do everything for you, you can gain sexual arousal from a feminine body, etc.
The most revolting type of post he makes in the sub are reposts of transition timelines of conventionally attractive trans women that have gotten a lot of upvotes on popular trans subreddits.
Again, to be clear, these women are not trans maxers and actually don't wish to be associated with trans maxing in any way.
Many of them reply to Vintology's repost of their photos with revulsion.
One woman commented on Vintology's repost of her photo to the trans maxing sub by saying, This pic is from my profile.
Please report the post so it gets removed.
Vintology then removed this comment from the post, as he's able to do that as a mod of transmaxxing.
He would also add this transition photo to later versions of the manifesto.
There are a couple other cases of women posted to the transmaxxing subreddit and put in the manifesto who find their likeness being used in such a way and attempt to discredit it.
It's difficult to see all of them because Vintology seems to delete some of their comments on his posts, but one response he forgot to remove was from a trans woman who said, Sex was, is, and will continue to be the last thing on my mind when it comes to transitioning.
I don't support this message.
In a reply, she elaborates on the phenomena of transmaxing in general, saying,
"It's tough because I imagine there are a lot of people involved that might just be confused
about their gender identity and led to believe really backwards things that might hinder their
self-acceptance." Aside from the fact that this practice is completely disgusting,
mentology's continued dependence on scalping and transition timelines from women that disagree
with the very notion of transmaxing show something important that you might have already caught up on.
That transmaxing is not a thing.
Not as Vintology describes it, at least.
As I'll talk about later, he sort of admits the original idea isn't feasible and that he wasn't able to convince any incels to transition to get laid, even if the reasons he provides for why that's the case are stupid.
TRANSMAXING AND THE FAR RIGHT The timeline concerning right-wing backlash about transmaxing is relatively short.
While the transmaxing subreddit has existed for four or so years now, made in 2019, it only really grabbed the attention of the right less than a year ago.
This doesn't mean that some transphobic weirdos haven't noticed it earlier, just that they noticed it on a fairly insignificant scale.
On the subreddit rslashitsafetish, dedicated to essentially scouring the internet for trans women posting about how they enjoy sex, one user notices the subreddit in October of 2019, shortly after its creation.
Given that very few people seem to post on this sub at this point, I think this goes to show how much effort certain transphobes will go to in order to confirm their preconceived prejudices surrounding trans women.
The post about transmaxxing that, from what I can tell, seems to have eventually caused a mini right-wing media storm was an article written by Sanyana Friedman to the Substack page PirateWires.
This page seems to be a right-wing quote-unquote media company hosted on Substack and owned by a man named Mike Solana, a San Francisco venture capital freak who, funny enough, has me blocked on Twitter.
The post itself, published on January 3rd of 2023, titled, Transmaxing the incel-to-transwoman pipeline, received 123 likes and 24 comments, and it's exactly what you would expect it to be.
Friedman opens the piece by lamenting the struggles of the average, quote, isolated unhappy male, who spends his life playing video games, castigated by the left for being a woman-hating incel, and shunned by the right for being a failed, unsuccessful male.
And Friedman also immediately takes for granted the idea that transmaxing is real.
As they write, For some men, the solution to the despair of living as an isolated, unhappy male is straightforward.
Become a woman.
They call themselves Transmaxers, and they believe gender transition can be an effective tool for escaping the misery of involuntary celibacy, social isolation, and professional mediocrity.
As the subreddit for transmaxxing is basically dead, Friedman instead points to the quote, 1200 plus member discord as evidence for transmaxxing's existence.
And I want to be clear that this is a really small server.
When I joined it, it had 139 users online.
That isn't the amount of users currently looking at the server, for those who don't know how it works.
But the amount of users just online in general who click join.
For reference, I have a relatively small Discord server, mainly for my Twitch stream and for links to my podcast, etc.
And at the same time, it had 972 people online.
In terms of active members who participate in the chat rooms, I'd be willing to guess that there is maybe one or two max dozen people within the transmaxxing server.
And I'll get to what goes on in this transmaxxing community and why there are a few people who do identify as transmaxxers later.
But for now, it's worth noting that even Vintology himself emphasizes to Freedman that To quote him, Although this is not him defending transmaxing as much as it is him being disappointed he was unable to convince any incels to transition, and instead attracted a couple dozen very unusual trans women.
Vitology is also contextualized not as the brainchild behind the concept of transmaxing, but as a Discord moderator.
Yet Friedman is not satisfied with this and asserts that "Discord chat suggests that many trans maxers previously
identified as incels."
I wonder if this guy joined the same server as I did?
Because when I searched the term, there was only one person in the logs calling himself an incel, whose name is miso on Discord for context.
And when one new user to the server asked if anyone in there was an incel, an admin responded, Like nobody here except maybe miso.
I don't know.
The other two individuals quoted are trans women who have participated in the trans maxing server in some way, who, as I will note later, still have some pretty strange beliefs, but confirm none of the assertions within the article of trans maxing, that is, incels transitioning to get laid, being a serious and common phenomenon that says anything about the nature of gender and sexuality.
But they're irrelevant to the rest of the story regardless, as the only bits that manage to make it through the human centipede of Vintology, then Friedman, and then finally the broader right-wing media sphere relate to the takeaway that transmaxing is a real movement of in-sale men taking estrogen to increase their lot in life.
None of their quotes are quoted by the other right-wing media articles.
Mm-hmm. You know what this reminds me of love that meme from iced tea from Law & Order SVU where he's always like
talking about made-up Drugs and how it's a serious epidemic like, you know, it
was like it's a new drug called elbow lightning curry and vape
They're calling it trans maxing.
These boys can't have sex and so they become women.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like, even though it doesn't exist in reality, the story of men who are in such incredible state of crisis that they decide to go trans, even though they don't feel trans inherently, is just such an enticing story that they decide to run with it and turn into a moral panic.
It's like those news articles where it's like, the kids are calling it Wilding Out.
One day after Friedman's Substack post, Spencer Lindquist writes an article for Breitbart titled
"A look into a sizable online community reveals the shocking motive behind some men's desire to
identify as women - involuntary celibacy." This one just basically scalps the first
bit of the original Substack article.
As Spencer was too lazy to even attempt to reformulate the basic ideas, he's stealing for his journalism job.
But like a real human centipede, the third layer of reprocessed shit is even worse than the first two.
Take this paragraph for instance, an obvious rephrasing of Friedman's quote about phentology.
One admin of the Discord says that, quote, most of the incel community are against transmaxing and incels do not participate in our space as much, though writings from those engaged in the process indicate that they almost unanimously have described themselves as incels.
Yeah, so writing about this and it's just a single idiotic substack.
This terrible telephone game of transphobia.
So, Vintology is now an anonymous admin of the Discord, whose own words are contrasted with, quote, writings from those engaged in the process of transmaxing, which seems to be a very poorly worded phrase meant to point to the transmaxing manifesto, maybe?
And the fake testimonies, which very well may have been written by Vintology himself?
Spencer's overall takeaway from the phenomena of transmaxing appears to be that These admissions seemingly, if inadvertently, discredit leftist arguments that gender dysphoria cannot be induced, successfully encouraged, or groomed into.
So, terrible writing, bad point, A+.
We love a preposition ending sentence, don't we folks?
The very awkward groomed into at the end of this quote should show you how motivated he is to connect trans maxing explicitly with the transphobic groomer narrative, or the belief that children are being groomed into transitioning.
This narrative has been the basis for a couple horrifying bills in certain American states that have banned minors from transitioning, thus forcing many trans children to develop sexual characteristics that will permanently impact their ability to feel comfortable in their own bodies.
So, wait a second.
So he's basically saying, oh, because I stumbled upon this, uh, substack, which, uh, clearly proves that incels can decide, uh, that they want to be trans to, uh, have more relationships.
That means that all trans people, uh, essentially can just decide that this is how they want to be, like.
Yeah, it's sort of, cause it, it converts a lot of preconceived transphobic notions.
So they're like, see, and they're all like that.
Yeah.
And even in the first kind of weird fetish trans maxing self-story in the manifesto, the fictional guy does say, and I think most other trans women are like this too, they just want to do it for sex.
Uh-huh, yeah, exactly.
But Spencer wasn't the only right-wing journalist who caught on to trans maxing after Friedman's article.
Two days after the Substack post was released, Mary Harrington would write an article for the British right-wing rag UnHerd.
For context, Mary Harrington is also a subsect writer, with her own page titled Reactionary Feminism, which I think should tell you exactly what you need to know about this individual.
Of the past 7 posts made to the Reactionary Feminism substack, 6 of them are about trans people, the 7th being an announcement that she was going on a road trip to the US.
Yeah.
The place where, like, anybody knows what the fuck I'm talking about.
Other than Britain.
There seems to start a trend in these articles that picks up later.
The first thing one sees when reading this article is the previously mentioned photo of the regular, conventionally attractive trans woman, whose Reddit comment asking people to report Fintology for posting her to the transmaxing subreddit was removed by him.
Because of this poor woman's inclusion in this article, that would then be cited by other right-wing articles, she's sort of become the face of transmaxing, as it was presented to a large right-wing readership.
Mary seems to be far less interested in the plight of incel men than she is about framing trans acceptance as antithetical to feminism.
She writes, "For the most part, the contest between trans activists and their feminist
opponents has been conducted on the field of 'gender' - what it is, whether it has
discrete categories, how or whether it relates to physiology, and so on."
Most of this article is drivel related to trans maxing being an example of some
so-called transhumanism, carrying on from Friedman's conclusion that trans maxers
say something deep or significant about the nature of why all trans people transition.
But nevertheless, carried within this point is that trans people don't really have it all that bad, living as their assigned gender at birth, or you know, no worse than anyone else, and that they're transitioning for some like general perceived social or sexual gain.
Transmaxing appears to have received a great deal of coverage from a couple other large right-wing media outlets in the month of January, with places like the Daily Caller, the National Review, and even Glenn Beck essentially regurgitating the points we've already gone over in one way or another.
While transphobic narratives connecting trans women and incels were already present before transmaxing received a great deal of coverage, they seem to have intensified since January of this year.
One example in culture being from Holocaust revisionist Stone Toss, who posted a comic to Twitter on May 18th of 2023, depicting an incel choosing between two lines titled, Become Misogynist and Become Woman.
This comic received 22,000 likes.
The replies, which were difficult to read because Stone Toss also has me blocked on Twitter, and apparently I can't read Twitter posts without having an account, were exactly what you would expect.
Many replies noting that trans people actually chose both lines at once, others noting that they have taken the Become Misogynist line themselves, Which I will say is a funny example of how misogynistic transphobes will become feminists, but only when it's time to be transphobic.
Like, yeah, they are misogynistic, but when they do it, it's bad.
But when I do it, it's best.
Hating women, but feministly.
Yay.
Another example of trans maxims popularity is from its coverage by YouTuber Arielle Scarcella, who previously left the left because, to quote her, I won't apologize for being transphobic.
And honestly, I won't either.
Thank you, Liv.
Putting my foot down.
Arielle posted a video on January 29th of 2023, citing the unheard article titled, Transmaxing, from incels to transwomen, which has received more than 100,000 views.
Part of the video involves her reading out the 17 benefits in the manifesto for transitioning, which also includes a transition timeline photo of a random, innocent, non-transmaxing transwoman in it.
Number one, the superiority of female aesthetics.
Female aesthetics to me, again, sounds very much like autogynephilia, honestly.
If this sh** turns you on, like seeing yourself as a woman, like you wearing it and not someone else, that's autogynephilia.
Number two, access to the trans being dating pool.
Okay, now pause.
Now I know why you guys sent this to me.
Now I know why you wanted me to talk about this, because this is just ridiculous.
So you are telling me that you fetishize lesbians so much that you go on HRT to become trans or to become a woman instead of simply just dating a bisexual or a straight woman.
Also, it's definitely not easier being a lesbian or dating as a lesbian.
I've been single for five years.
I promise it's not easier.
Bitches are crazy.
Wow, I wonder why she's single.
She seems so nice.
I'm very sad to hear that Arielle has had less success dating cis lesbians than I have, but petty comments aside, here we see a reference to the transphobic autogynephilia trope, a classic in the hall of fame of transphobia.
The term itself was coined by discredited sexologist Ray Blanchard, and literally means, attracted to oneself as a woman, meaning Blanchard believes any trans woman attracted to women takes hormones to be sexually aroused by themselves.
Now, funny enough, the Transmaxing Manifesto speaks negatively about Blanchard, pointing out that Blanchard's findings about the sexual habits of trans women are near identical to the habits of cis women, which, you know, is true.
Cis women attracted to women sexualized themselves at a similar level to trans women, etc.
But obviously, the Manifesto is essentially in agreement with Blanchard about the main purpose of transition, that it's sexual in nature, and so it isn't a surprise to see that people who believe in autogynephilia would use it as evidence.
Blanchard's typology, and by extension what is written in the manifesto, can be essentially completely discarded for being unable to account for what is called gender dysphoria, which is a catch-all term that's often made into a medical diagnosis and wrongly pathologized for the strong degree of discomfort trans people have living as their aside gender at birth.
Well, I do think it's entirely possible that someone might be able to transition successfully without this dysphoria.
As in, someone can be comfortable being treated as and looking like a man and a woman.
Like, you know, people are, like, bigender.
They're comfortable as such.
I think most people aren't like this.
Like, most men would really not enjoy growing breasts and, like, losing the function in their penis.
I think Freud, the castration anxiety thing, plays a very large role in a lot of male politics.
And besides this fact, the objective cost of transitioning, in terms of a decrease in average income, increased exposure to sexual violence, increased likeliness of homelessness, etc., makes it a choice that is only really going to be worthwhile to be taken if it alleviates a deep sense of discomfort caused by living as a gender really doesn't work for you.
And not work in a significantly deeper sense than just being a disillusioned male who doesn't have sex.
And we know that, despite the risks incurred by transitioning, it does drastically improve one's mental wellbeing.
While Vintology will believe this is because it's easier to be a woman than a man, this is just obviously not true.
Women are, in fact, three times as likely to be depressed as men, and trans women are, according to a 2022 study, 60%
less likely to be depressed than before they transitioned. Arielle brings up autogynephilia to
connect it to a paranoid discourse perioded by some transphobic cis lesbians who are constantly on the
lookout for trans women fetishizing them in the same way that cis men do. We can connect this paranoia
and the broader characterization of trans women as primarily motivated to transition for
more sex with the transphobic contextualization of trans women as, to use a metaphor,
wolves masquerading as hens in order in order to gain access to the hen's house.
This narrative is typically pushed for the end of damaging certain legal protections related to trans women's ability to exist in women's only spaces.
This narrative has done a great deal of harm to trans women, one example of which relates to our placement in men's prisons.
A 2007 study by the University of California notes if trans women placed in male prison populations that
"Sexual assault is 13 times more prevalent among transgender inmates than the general population,
with 59% reporting being sexually assaulted while in a California correctional facility."
So these are what these narratives are like really attempting to do.
Ironically, this sort of pseudo-feminist idea is for the end of ensuring that men have control over women.
Oddly enough, considering the pseudo-feminist nature of this type of attack, Arielle seems to end the video agreeing with the misogynistic aspects of the manifesto.
Yeah, I mean, as she said after she said, I can't find a date.
Women are crazy.
Bitches are crazy.
It's like, okay, so you just hate everybody.
There's nobody escaping.
Awesome.
What this comes down to in a very weird way is that being a woman or being trans is seen as offering much more than simply being a dude who can't get laid.
Or maybe in some way it's this weird idea of becoming what you can't attain.
Also something that people that are covering this topic aren't noting is that these guys might very well be doing this because the current society hates cis straight white men.
It happened with young women first.
All these young women are no longer wanting to simply be straight.
They're identifying as queer, non-binary, gender fluid, whatever these things are.
They dyed their hair, they started getting septum piercings, and all of a sudden they're showing up at pride parades.
Interestingly enough, in a twist of fate, it is now starting to affect young men.
New studies find millions of young non-binary and transgender Americans.
Apparently, roughly 1.6% of American adults are now transgender or non-binary, according to a 2022 survey.
The number is even higher among young adults, with 5% of people under 30 now identifying their gender as different from the one assigned to them at birth.
And so we're essentially back to the grooming thing from before, where transition is something that someone can be tricked into by such weak pretense as a stupid little manifesto.
Yeah, only Italians like Scarcella can be convinced of this.
This vision of transitioning is in a certain sense similar to the bizarre 4chan fetishization of trans women, the supposed trap harem made to blackmail men into becoming feminized, which is only made possible because of the specific bizarre ways that men fetishize trans women.
What the utilization of transmaxing to fuel transphobic narratives demonstrates, I think, among other things, is that the fetishization and sexualization of trans women is deeply connected to the narratives utilized to oppress and harm us.
This is also demonstrated sort of in a study by Lawsuit.org, which found a correlation between how red a political district is and how often people in that district search for trans porn.
And obviously listeners can't see, but like that sort of convincing tendency there.
Yeah, that's that's that's a trend line.
I do have to say that I met this conservative guy recently who was describing his friend and he's like, Man, this guy is, like, so addicted to porn, like, he can only masturbate to trans, uh, women.
He didn't use those words, he was way more derogatory.
And, uh, he's like, but he's totally straight, and now he can't get it up in his straight relationships.
And I was like, well, maybe he's attracted to trans women?
And he's like, no, no, no, this guy's, like, totally normal and straight, and, like, he just can't get it up with normal women.
And I'm like, oh boy.
Oh boy.
The mind.
The mind.
There's a funny belief there, because, like, a lot of straight men are, like, pretty fine with it.
There's kind of an open secret between those men and trans women because, like, you don't want to mention it to your boys because they'll call you gay or whatever.
Gotcha.
Yeah, I guess it's one of those things where it's like if you mention one time that you think something is disgusting, then maybe you just find it disgusting.
But if you make it the focus of your life and you talk about it every day, well, you're just choosing to constantly think and obsess over something you claim you find disgusting.
May raise some questions about what your two feelings are.
Yeah, speaking of, you haven't sent me any videos of you throwing knives at that log in a while, Travis.
Yeah, yeah, I apologize for that.
I will hop on that.
Thank you.
Since you're back out, you know, this is it.
I'm gonna get right back on that.
I love to make fun of you for being such a bad thrower.
That's why I like those.
Well, I'm getting better.
So transmaxing is an absurd lie which was used by the right to push a collection of bizarre transphobic and misogynistic narratives made to strengthen, among other things, a concerted effort to roll back legal protections for trans people and even ban medical transition.
And yet, as I said before, there are a few people who identify as transmaxers, and they are trans women who have medically transitioned.
So, what's going on with that?
Meet the Transmaxers.
I firstly want to note, again, that whatever is going on with this couple dozen trans women is very different from the original idea of trans maxing, as represented in these articles or intended by Vintology.
To show this, I thought it would be appropriate to bring us back to the original thing that made me want to cover this topic, the elite couple breeding to save mankind, who I talked about last month on a premium episode.
Their whole deal is believing very reactionary things, but spinning them in pseudo-progressive language.
So they saw transmaxing through the right-wing media coverage, and said that it was cool and good.
A neat way that some lonely men, who have been failed by society, are hacking the dating market, increasing their value as a commodity to others.
Vintology, who obsessively checks basically any mention of transmaxing, so hey Vintology, replied to their 300 or so view podcast episode on the subject, asking if he could come on for a discussion of transmaxing.
Accompanying Vintology in this discussion with the Silicon Valley tech elite Eugenesis Couple is one of the Discord moderators from the Transmaxxing server, who herself is a trans woman.
Simone and Malcolm begin this interview with the transphobic right-wing caricature image of Transmaxxing, but the show notes they've collected for the interview seem to be very quickly rendered useless, as Vintology clarifies early on that this image is not entirely accurate.
And so the idea is, is who this is attracting is people who otherwise might be drawn to the MGTOW community or the incel community.
Is that an accurate representation?
I mean, originally, the idea with Transmaxing was to create a solution for the issue of excess males in society, and males have, like, failed.
Gradually, over time, it became more of a general community for male-to-female individuals.
And also other people are just curious about the controversial topics.
So it kind of shifted focus, like, from my original idea.
I am a Swedish.
issues with that concept too which made him more skeptical about this particular thing.
And the issue is that, let's say you're a failed male who like completely failed as
a male in society and no hope for the future, most of these people will not be able to pass
as a female in society.
*sigh* I am a Swedish.
It's funnier that he's Swedish, I think.
Yeah, it is.
Fintology's rationalization for why transmaxing isn't a thing is of course absurd, but nevertheless comes from a recognition that the only few dozen people who have medically transitioned that he's managed to rope into this weird obsession are nothing like his original characterization of transmaxing.
I think he's kept it going because he kind of just wants to be, you know, king of the castle, even if that castle is like a very small discord of like, you know, irony-poisoned trans women that he can like, you know, boss around.
Having the wind taken from their sails almost immediately, Simone and Malcolm, the Collins couple, continue to attempt to create some meaningful distinction between trans women and trans maxxers.
One suggestion they pose is that trans maxers mainly transition for sexual reasons.
Yet even this seems eventually undermined by the second trans maxing guest, who mentions that some in the community seem to be sad about being unable to give birth.
As in, they desire femininity not purely or mainly for these kind of superficial sexual reasons.
This seems to leave Simone rather confused about what the phenomena of trans maxing even is.
And so a lot of me started thinking, oh okay so trans maxing is about sex, but here you are saying There are people in the community who are pretty bummed about not being able to carry a baby.
Breastfeeding is feasible, maybe, but probably difficult, etc.
How common do you think that is?
And do you think that it would be a misinterpretation of the community to think that it's mostly sex or relationship arbitrage game driven?
I don't think it's mostly driven by wanting a relationship or sex.
I think this is a factor that many people consider.
Yeah, so I mean, he's basically trying to sound smart and to do so he has to contradict his own material.
That's awesome.
Can we also talk about the fact that both Collins' have rifles above their, you know, respective mantles that are behind them?
I'd like those rifles to be pointed at, uh... Wait a minute.
I'd like to... Yeah, Julian doesn't like the way that the rifles are pointing.
Yeah.
It's a gun safety thing.
I think that there would be a better direction.
He wished they weren't there at all, actually.
I would feel safer if those rifles were... in the back of...
No, no, no.
And my hand were on the... What's so funny, are they in the same house in two different rooms and each room has a rifle above the mantle?
I think they do record in the same house.
They must!
God fucking damn it.
They are some of the most annoying people I've ever fucking seen in my life.
They're really annoying to listen to.
Like, it's just like...
They're able to present ideas, at least, though, because, you know, like they're successful, you know, business people or whatever that are friends with Peter Thiel.
And I think what's funny is that like Vintology and the other guys are just like giving them nothing.
They are not.
They're not even trying here.
Yeah, Vintology doesn't even have a face or a profile pic.
It's just like a little gray default, you know, human circle looking thing.
And the Collinses look like they've selected their glasses from like the Nintendo Me shop.
So the Transmaxxing interview didn't go very well for the Collinses, which is probably why they didn't upload it to their own podcast channel, even though they refer to the two people they have on as a guest of their own podcast.
Instead, I found this from Vintology's upload of the interview.
Outside of just basically shutting down most of the characterizations of trans maxing that the colonsists have, the interview is just uncomfortable to listen to.
One example of which being when Simone notes of how the manifesto gives advice on how to be conventionally attractive as a woman, which for her seems to show that trans maxers put in a lot more effort to look feminine than she and many of her cis woman friends do.
It's a great sort of backhanded compliment, like, oh, you really put a lot of effort into the superficial stuff.
But Fintology responds by saying, And also, like, if I look at your face and your features, I can tell that you have a lot of potential to, like, look more conventionally attractive if you want that.
Not that you need to because you already have a boyfriend.
There you go.
That's interesting.
If I look at your face, I can see that you should be coming with me to the chopper.
Arnold Schwarzenegger?
We could take the chopper high into the air.
We could take it high into the air.
We could aim the minigun wherever we wanted.
People that we don't like, people that we do like.
Dear God.
So he's, I guess, kind of hitting on Simone.
I mean, he's just a freak.
Like there's no...
Simone looks like a dental assistant in a Nazi jail.
[Laughter]
She's like, "Yes, Mr. Rokotansky, I... just lets me have a look at your tooth."
Your sweet tooth.
All your teeth are sweet teeth.
No, just one.
It's just that one.
The other ones are just jelly beans.
They're just, yeah, no, we talked about this on the other episode.
They're just pieces of candy corn that I've molded into the spot where a tooth would have been.
Yeah.
So what is transmaxing actually about then?
The answers to this are vague and different depending on the specific transmaxer, but I think I have the gist of the general reason why a couple of trans women have taken up this label, as noted by Vintology in a Reddit post recently.
Transmaxing right now can be summed up as transition for personal gain.
This involves taking the time to make a logical assessment on how transition would affect your life and whether it will benefit you.
Further, they will seek information and assistance on having the most successful transition possible.
The intention behind this is to help people live good lives.
There's a lot of conflicting info, and the rhetoric behind the movement has changed in the last couple years as well.
The manifesto has a lot of good information, but the website transmaxing.eu has things that are more aligned with how the community actually thinks.
Change to the manifesto will take time, and it is mostly a science-related doc, with experience reports anyway.
Yeah, it's science if you collected the data from your own brain.
It's interesting because the more recent versions, which have made the manifesto go from like 30 to 90 pages, are written by some of the trans women who participate in the Discord, but like with Fintology's supervision because he seems to kick out a couple of the ones that he doesn't like or disagrees with.
And a lot of it is just like medical information that's accurate on how to transition.
In the original document, without any trans women's help, Fintology recommends, I believe it's 13 milligrams of estradiol sublingually every day.
Which is just a little joke for, like, the trans women, because that's, like, an insane amount of estrogen.
Like, there's no medical... Like, he's just making shit up.
I think the more recent ones do have a bunch of, like, you know, scientific data on, like, injecting estrogen compared to, like, taking it orally, etc.
And the website, Transmaxxing.eu, mentioned in the post, mainly just gives advice on how to get access to hormones, how to voice train, etc.
So it seems that the influence of trans women has shifted the meaning of trans maxing away from incels transitioning for sex and towards the vague notion that someone is transitioning for personal gain.
But what personal gain means is fairly vague.
Is this still implying, like Fentology's original belief, that transitioning provides one with some objective gain?
Because, you know, it's easier to date as a woman or whatever?
Or is it subjective, as in, it's easier for me to date as a woman?
The answer is sort of vague and depends on the person, but it appears to be an attempt to be the former, that it is some objectively rational decision that they're making.
One example of someone who adds her actual real quote-unquote transmaxxing story to the manifesto is one of the current Discord moderators.
Her story, which is included alongside a real transition photo of her, is very different from any of the original transmaxxing testimonials placed there by Vintology.
She talks about how she dressed up as a girl as a child and then repressed the feelings of wanting to be more feminine, because she was shamed for it.
She then becomes rather depressed in her teen years, which she notes is caused by social ostracization, and then eventually is able to go on hormones, which she notes that the effects of estrogen seem to significantly improve her mental health, getting rid of her depression.
Which, like, a lot of it seems like, you know, a fairly straightforward story about a trans woman.
But, as she notes on the transmixing Discord server, for instance, she claims she's never experienced gender dysphoria, instead focusing on the euphoria she's gained.
After transitioning.
Okay, so it's just this kind of American attitude adjustment thing.
It's really just a question of perspective.
Yeah, and I'm making a smart, rational market decision.
I'm increasing my value as a commodity on the dating market.
It's not that I just feel better, because being a guy didn't work for me.
God, it's crazy that he's even attracted, like, anybody to his little weird community.
But, you know, I mean, the fact that he doesn't show his face, I think, says a lot when he's scalped so many photos of trans women and then put them in his documents and stuff.
So, you know, I think we can fairly say that on top of everything else, Fintology is a coward.
Yeah, I mean, it's funny because maybe this is why he doesn't identify as an incel anymore, because if he's an incel and he's not doing it, it's like, why don't you do it then?
Shouldn't you be doing this?
Yeah.
The answer, I think, is that he's extremely attracted to trans women and in total denial about it and has had his brain warped by these kind of feel-adjacent morons.
While not every trans maxer makes the claim they've never experienced gender dysphoria, this belief does show a general trend in the server, which is the idea that transitioning to become a woman gives one some sort of objective privileges that men don't have.
I think this gets to the basic reason for why anyone would self-identify as a trans maxer, which again, not that many people.
They deal with the ways in which transness is contextualized as a negative thing, that we have a supposed mental illness called dysphoria, or that we have given up a lot of opportunities and incur some great risk, by instead defining themselves through the positive experiences that came from transitioning.
As if the transition is a way for someone to increase their standing in life.
I think one reason for this is that the idea of gender dysphoria is very medicalized.
As if to experience it is to be broken in some way.
And, you know, I don't think that's fair.
This seems to be a serious factor as to why someone would assert that taking estrogen cured their depression while also saying they've never experienced gender dysphoria.
But of course, the belief that women have it easier than men in the dating market or otherwise is wrong.
I think that incel guys have a different reason for believing it than these few trans women.
But as someone who used to date women as a man and now dates men as a woman, I sort of understand why both of these beliefs come about at some level.
Not in the sense that I've ever believed it.
In the case of the male resentment cause of this belief, when you're a guy dating woman, your primary concern is usually the quantity of people who are into you, I think.
And now that I've transitioned, that's really not my primary worry, dating now.
As a vague metric, I remember pre-transition that my Tinder profile, which was only set to look for women, had less than like 100 people that had swiped right on me.
Now, with men and women selected, my Bumble app tells me I have a bit more than 2,000 people who have swiped on me.
Which is funny, because I'm therefore supposed to be a transmaxing success story.
I increased my social worth on the dating market, as if I'm a commodity being sold to the highest bidder.
When I mentioned initially that I had only encountered transmaxing as an ironic term used in jest, it was to describe situations like this.
It's a funny way of joking about something good that's happened because of transitioning.
But in this case, ironic self-deprecating humor is really a means to hide or at least cope with some underlying experience of suffering.
Because it turns out that being worried whether your date is going to kill you is a lot bigger of a problem than not getting as many matches on an app.
Dating men as a woman is scary, especially if you're trans.
That's the reason why it's funny to joke about these sort of things.
And of course, these factors were not something I was considering when I decided to transition.
Dating as a trans woman, and as a woman in general, is obviously more precarious than dating as a cis man.
Objectively, it is a worse decision to make, but I like dating more as a woman than as a man, because I like being treated as a woman.
Not because it's easier, but because I had dysphoria.
I think transmaxing might involve, for some of those who self-ID as it, A conflation of the subjective increase in enjoyment a trans person gains by transitioning, which actually requires giving up a lot of social advantages, with this very gaining of social advantages itself.
A sincere identification with the trans maxing label is probably just a step up from the ironic usage of the term.
To imagine this subjective increase in joy gained from transitioning is instead a rational decision that has made one's lot in life objectively better.
It's not that being a guy really just didn't work for me, especially because this is often contextualized as meaning that one is broken or pathological and has a mental illness, but instead, according to them, I'm just gaming the system.
It's sort of weird, and I don't think it quite makes sense, but like, if transmaxing helps you feel better about your transition early on, then I guess there are far worse things you could be doing.
Again, as I said before, I really haven't seen much evidence that trans women who participated in this phenomenon, and especially in relation to how they describe themselves, meaningfully contributed to its large coverage by the right.
I mean, I think it's detestable to associate with fidelity for a dozen reasons.
The people who like this guy are certainly not, you know, above my contempt.
But I thought this episode about trans maxing would have been remiss if I didn't at least include the self-identified trans maxers occupying the very small discord server meant to serve in the minds of the right as evidence for their transphobic caricature being I think a lesson we can take away from this is that most, if not all, the transphobic narratives currently circling the drain of right-wing quote-unquote journalism aren't caused by trans people.
They're supposed to be about us, but remain almost entirely not about the things we actually do.
This is really good.
It's encouraged me to Sober Max, in which I accept a truly inconvenient fact about myself that is basically hard-coded in my body and mind, potentially genetically, only for the advantages of it.
Because I'm a better market commodity when I'm not fucked up.
You're gaming the system.
Yeah, I was gonna say, you're gaming the system.
You can drive, uh, more often.
Uh, you can probably go to bed at an earlier time.
Uh, you wake up, uh, feeling, ah, I hate to say it, good and healthy and refreshed.
Ew.
Gross.
Nasty.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.
We will be finishing the last two episodes of Man Clan ASAP, and we will be launching into a brand new series that Jake and Brad are helming called, I believe, Spectral Voyager.
Yes sir!
Looking forward to it.
That is right.
So, if you're already a subscriber, we thank you very much.
It helps us stay advertising-free and editorially independent.
Liv, where can people find your Trans Mexican content?
I have a podcast that's just called Liv Agar with the Patreon.
Patreon.com slash Liv Agar, where I talk about kind of weird philosophy, politic stuff.
I also have a Twitch stream that I sometimes go on.
Twitch.tv slash Liv Agar.
Yeah.
Go check it out.
She's gonna have Vintology on very soon as it does.
And the Collinses and their rifles.
Just kidding.
Just kidding.
And the rifles.
Not the Collinses, but their rifles will be guessed.
Just their rifles.
They got a lot to say.
Well, we're encouraging them to become sentient so they can, you know, potentially seize the means of production.
Let's just do it that way.
For everything else, we've got a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto Q. My favorite point of yours that you made was that you, as someone, like, basically, it's very unusual for there to be a woman with a penis.
And also, there's a lot of people who are super into that.
Like, and you can just tell if you look at hentai, they're like, you know, there's a lot of it.
