Controversial Speaker Addresses Trans Issues; Expresses Concern about Davis/DJUSD

By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor

Davis, CA – Evolutionary biologist and founding editor of Reality’s Last Stand, Colin Wright, returned to Davis on Saturday, where he had been an undergraduate student a decade ago.  Wright drew a fair-sized audience of 40 to 50 inside the library, and another 20 to 30 protesters outside of the library.

Both sides largely kept to their own space, which resulted in no notable disruptions or confrontations.

Wright began with a relatively lengthy talk explaining his position where he clearly came down on the side of sex being a biological and binary phenomenon where one is either male or female, and spent much of his time attempting to dispel alternatives such as a spectrum or a social construct.

Wright explained where he was coming from, saying, “I’m not a pundit.  I’m not here to provoke anybody.  I’m not a bigot.  I just want to make factual claims about biology.”

He added, “I see my duty as a scientist is really just to, state things about how the world is, and then we can all have productive conversations about what we do about those, the state of reality.”

He added, “I’m not political. I’m not here to own the libs. I’m not here to get certain candidates elected into office. I just want to make factual claims about biology, and then we can all hopefully have productive conversation.”

He called “some of the biggest pseudoscience out there” the “notion that sex is a spectrum.”

He spent considerable time attempting to debunk “this myth.”  Instead, he argued, “There are only two sexes in human.  And so, because there’s only two sexes, sex is binary, that should be the end of the talk.”?

But he argued, “A lot of activists will try to just muddy the waters about those absolutely basic facts of, of biology.”

On the other side, the Phoenix Coalition’s Anoosh Jorjorian explained that they are there today because the Mom’s For Liberty, Yolo Chapter, was holding an event.

She explained, “He is a specialist in spiders. Apparently because spiders have only two sexes, he believes that this applies to human sex and human gender identity, which is incorrect.”

She explained that this “erases, the entire population of intersex folks. And of course, gender as a human construction is not, (and) does not have a parallel in spiders.

“Because there’s been this ongoing campaign of disinformation and lies about the trans community, about how trans children transition and about our organization, we are here to provide some truth,” Jorjorian told the Vanguard. “We have a truth booth set up for people who are interested in learning the real facts. And we’re here to show that Davis rejects transphobia.”

For local parent Allie Snyder she explained how she got into this fight because she recently became aware of the “mental and physical harm” resulting from DJUSD policies.

Snyder said, “I encourage parents and guardians to get curious, find out exactly what your children are being taught and by whom. When I began sharing my concerns with my child’s science teacher two years ago, I was dismissed as prejudiced and not taken seriously.”

She said, “This year, my kids were asked by multiple teachers for their preferred pronouns on their first day of school, forcing them to consider if they may have been born in the wrong body. I had immediate conversations with their principals and the teachers responsible. Additionally, I began addressing my concerns to the school board and continue to do so regularly.

“Our kids are constantly bombarded with gender dogma on their campuses and often compelled to repeat it,” Snyder explained.  “The pressure to comply with peers and school messaging is hard on children who know someone’s feelings can’t change their sex. The emotional bullying that comes with non-compliance is enormous.”

The second part of Colin Wright’s talk examined current trends and what is happening in Davis.

Going through a number of definitions, he concluded: “Masculine girls and feminine boys are considered transgender by definition. There’s no such thing as like gender nonconformity anymore.”

He added that “the most horrific part of this whole thing is that this is, this is part of the, there’s a giant medical apparatus that swings into motion for, to medicalize what is just common gender nonconformity, tomboys and feminine, and feminine males.”

He continued, “It’s no wonder that we’re seeing this 20- to 40-fold of spike in the number of kids who think that they’re trans. I’m surprised it’s not even more in this and probably will be.”

He ran through DJUSD’s guidelines, after the 2013 passage of AB 1266, saying “the faculty must use their preferred, preferred name. They can name themselves whatever they want (even if) it’s different from what their parents name (them). They can use cross-sex pronouns that you must now use, and they have to have access to opposite sex restrooms and facilities.”

Wright explained, “Most pernicious about it is included, included this right to privacy. You required a student’s written consent before their trans or gender nonconforming status was disclosed to anyone, including their parents.”

These new guidelines, he argued, “resulted in California being this hotspot as a state for gender ideology and kids identifying as trans.”

Trans-identified kids in California in 2020, he explained are at 1.93 percent, which is “38 percent higher than the national average.”

In Davis, pulling from two surveys, he concluded that seven percent of 11th graders identify as neither male or female.

“This is an absolute floor estimate” because he said some students will identify fully with “actual cross-sex identifies.”

He therefore argued that “this floor estimate is 4.3 times the national average and three times California’s national average.”

Why is it so high?  He offered explanation of demographics—largely white, upper middle class and educated— “that tends to be sort of the class of people that tend to be going all in on the gender stuff.”

He also argued political orientation.

Finally, he said, “You have this sort of mental illness feedback loop where you have these survey results that show all the trans and non-binary kids are, you know, extremely low, uh, mental health. And then they use that as sort of just justification for policies that double down on this gender ideology that further makes the kids detached from their bodily existence that causes them to have more, even more plummeted mental health.”

Anoosh Jorjorian believes that most of the community is on their side.

While the second part of the presentation included a local Davis mother, Allie Snyder, according to DJUSD, the number of current parents who have complained about curriculum is exceedingly low.

“We have seen again and again, every time this group comes out to promote transphobic narratives and transphobic disinformation, that the community comes out in exponentially higher numbers to rebuke their message.”

She said, “Unfortunately, it’s only a handful of people who are behind this, and yet they seem to have unlimited amounts of time to not only put on events like this, but to attend every single public meeting and also send email after email, after email to our public officials wasting their time on these, their made-up concerns.”

We have seen the temperature in the room rising at times.  At the city council meeting, a near-shoving match broke out.  At various school board meetings, we have seen the situations escalate as well.

However, things remained calm on Saturday.

Jorjorian explained, “Our purpose today is to really represent queer and trans joy. So we are not interested in confronting them or raising the temperature at all. We are here to show that there are healthy, happy trans folks and people who love them. And we are here to celebrate human difference.”