Episode 7 | Erin Friday: Fighting the Gender Identity Cult

5 Great Questions | The Podcast

Episode 7 | Erin Friday

Erin Friday is a Northern California mom, lawyer, and advocate for children and teens to be allowed to grow up happy in their own bodies.

Erin and I crossed paths at the Orange County premiere of the film 'Dysconnected' - a film on detransitioners I shot with longtime collaborator Don Johnson.

Erin and her daughter's full story can be heard on Prager U at:
https://www.prageru.com/video/how-erin-friday-saved-her-daughter-from-the-trans-cult

Erin's non-profit is https://ourduty.group/

In the summer of 2023 Erin sued California's AG Rob Bonta: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article283648963.html

Sacramento Bee and Erin Friday on California's AB1314: https://fb.watch/uUz9muCNpz

Follow Erin on @ErinFriday75490

Alden on X @alden_olms

Thanks for listening

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
She actually talked, get out of here.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, I've.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Really gotten into the bad habit of asking a huge
amount of questions.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Just a question between friends, you know, she actually talked. Hi.
My name is Alden Olmsted and welcome to Five Great Questions,
the podcast where I try to find interesting people or

(00:37):
people that have had something interesting happen to them and
ask them some interesting questions. So that's how we're here.
I'm joined with my very special guest, and thank you
for joining me. Aaron Friday. That is her real name,
even though it sounds like a good, you know, movie
name or sitcom name or something like that. But I'm

(00:59):
sure she's heard all the jokes. So we are here
because of a very real just a strange new reality
that we're all living in, I think is maybe one
way to say it. And you may have heard Aaron
Friday already on I don't know a host of other
podcasts or CBS Bay Area. Aaron, you are a northern

(01:21):
California mom and lawyer, if I understand that's correct, okay,
And a few years ago, something interesting happened, unfortunate and
interesting happened to your daughter. So for and I will
put in the link to you know, the Prager University
or the other videos where you really tell the whole

(01:42):
story and a lot of detail. But I think for
this podcast, since I have some other questions, let's just
start right off by kind of getting everyone up to
speed of your your story between with you and your daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Sure, I'll be brief on it. My daughter May made
a u pronouncement that she was really a boy, and
that actually occurred through me listening to her speaking to
her public school and having them call her by a
male name. I'm using male pronouns. And this was right

(02:20):
in the middle of the pandemic, or right at the
beginning of the pandemic. So my daughter had no issues
with accepting her female body as a child, typical girly girl,
and then there was a sudden change with her and
I wasn't I wasn't super alarmed because she was going

(02:41):
through puberty, so wearing big clothes seemed kind of normal.
Plus it was the pandemic. We were all wearing sweatpants.
And so she made the announcement that she's really a boy.
And that's when I took a deep dive into the
transgender agenda. And I'm really pleased, I'll shortcut the story,

(03:04):
really pleased that she now a grown woman and very
comfortable in her female body.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, well, and so just tell me about just that
gut feeling you had when you actually were walking by
her door and heard someone. You know, because most parents
go through, you know, I don't know a fair amount
of time and effort to come up with a name
for their child. It's not something you think about when
you're driving to the hospital. Most people have thought about it.

(03:31):
So what did you think and what was that feeling
as a mom when you walked by the door and
heard a voice calling her by a name other than
the name you had given her.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I was furious, I mean, apoplectic is probably the better word.
I called the school and really laid into them. You know,
how dare they take away the second thing I gave
my child? The first thing I gave her was my body,

(04:03):
and the second thing was her name. And a bunch
of strangers. And they were truly strangers because they had
never met my daughter. She never walked into that school.
She was a freshman. This was the pandemic, and they,
you know, usurped my parental authority without so much as

(04:28):
a phone call to me. And then they had the
audacity to tell me that they had to be a
safe space for my child. What safe space? She's down
the hall. They couldn't define the word safe. It has
no meaning anymore if it means parents are unsafe just
because they don't subscribe to gender ideology. But yeah, I was.

(04:52):
And you know, I'm a Democrat, I'm a liberal. I
live outside of San Francisco. I read, you know, at
the ti time, I read nothing but the New York
Times and left magazines and publications, and so I didn't
even know this whole transgender agenda was underfoot because we

(05:13):
you know, they don't They don't write about it in
the left papers, at least not not then.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, and then and what happened? What happened after that?
After you had expressed concern to the school, Was that
was it welcomed?

Speaker 2 (05:27):
I would say not. They sent child protective services to
my home and the police soon followed. Now the school
claims it's because my daughter was suicidal, but I know
why they did it. They did it to flex their
muscles and to scare me into, you know, calling my

(05:49):
daughter by a male name. So I pulled her from
the public school, which is really interesting because there's that
school who was so concerned with my daughter, so concerned
for her safety that they changed your name and sent
the police and the CPS to my house. They never
called to see how she was doing. It was all,

(06:11):
you know, just a bunch of for show.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, yeah, just it seems like all a show. They
because they weren't trying to remove your daughter from your
from your home. They just wanted to check.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
In, Yeah, and wield their power.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah yeah, what. So the good news is, especially for
anyone listening who's heard part of your story, the good news,
as you said, as your daughters now is approaching adulthood
and seemingly doing fine, and and you've had your own
I'm calling it, you know, I call it the red

(06:48):
Pill moment because it's the Matrix, and The Matrix was
such a great movie. So I can't, you know, any
excuse to reference the Matrix. But would you say a
red pill moment or would you call it something different?
As far as your own background in politics, And I'm
also from northern California, so I know, you know it's
people from not from here, don't understand how it's everywhere.

(07:11):
It's not It's never questioned what you will, you know,
how you will vote, or believe or think, what's what's
virtuous and what's not. It's just in the air. Almost.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, it's just a given. Well, but I you know,
I've been a Democrat since I was eighteen, so I
come by it honestly. I was from the East Coast too,
but yeah, I was definitely. I guess we would call
it red pilled or I had an epiphany and it
was not just the transgender agenda, but once you start

(07:46):
to see the truth, you see the truth in everything
and everything, I started to question. I remember reading an
article about Kyle Rittenhouse, the young kid who shot someone
or in I think it was Wisconsin or Minnesota, and

(08:06):
I read two articles and it was as if they
were reporting on two different incidents. The facts were completely
different between these two publications. And I'm not saying that
all the rightly need publications are always accurate either, but
that was kind of earth shattering to me that someone's lying,

(08:29):
and they're lying in a huge way. And so you know,
once you start pulling on that string of that sweater,
the sweater just disappears, and it's really difficult. So I
understand why democrats get stuck and they refuse to see
because you have to admit that you were tricked for

(08:52):
a very long time. And you may think of yourself
as very intelligent, which I thought of myself as being,
you know, proud, listen to the daily every morning. Look
at me. That you were fooled and you were going
only getting.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
You know, probably yeah. And so when this happened to
your daughter, was it during was it the very beginning
of COVID or was it the fall when California went
into more lockdowns.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Well, you know, hindsight is twenty twenty. So if I
look back in time, that transidentity was probably already percolating
in seventh and eighth grade before the pandemic. Because my
daughter did come home from her sex ed course in
seventh grade and she and all of her friends, I

(09:39):
mean all of them, five out of five picked something
on the LGBTQ spectrum. Nobody picked you know, white sis
girl who likes boys. They were all something. And you know,
these kids were eleven and twelve claiming identities of pan
sexual and polyamorous. It was senseless. And so I already

(10:04):
knew that something, you know, I knew something was going on. Obviously,
I just didn't know the depths of it and the pandemic.
You know, I saw one thing that people don't understand,
and this is a really important facet, is that these
girls are inundated with images of how their bodies are

(10:29):
supposed to be the way that women are supposed to
behave and look, they're inundated with pornography also, and so
you see these girls as they're developing their bodies and
their breasts and their hips, they're they're fleeing from it
because they don't want to be a sexual object because

(10:51):
mentally they're not there, but their bodies are becoming sexual
in appearance. So I did it as a kid. You know,
I started to wear giant sweatshirts when I started to
develop because I didn't want anybody looking at me. So
I thought it was kind of a normal course of

(11:12):
you know, eventually you get over it and you celebrate
your body. You're kind of proud that you know of
your figure, but certainly not when it's happening, And so
I didn't think much of it. You know, a lot
of kids, this is when the hair dye was in
a lot of kids were dyeing their hair, different colors.
All of it seemed kind of developmental. You know, I

(11:34):
put son in in my hair and tried to be
a blonde you know, back in the eighties. Didn't work
out too well. Your hair turns red. It's awful. But
all of these things are normal. You know, you're searching
for identity. You're searching for who are you going to
be when you grow up? Are you going to have
permed hair? Are you going to be you know, the
rocker chip, the artsy kid, the sporty kid. You're trying

(11:55):
on these new things. So none of that was, you know,
odd to me. But then the personality changed. And that's
something that a lot of people who don't have kids
who take on this identity, transgender identity, don't realize that
these kids become severely depressed, and depression with children shows

(12:17):
itself in anger, and they become very rude and mean,
you know, out of the ordinary, harsh towards their parents.
Because these kids truly believe that everything is wrong with them.
You know that they are. It's not just that you know,

(12:38):
they have a fat rear end, it's everything from their
head to their toes, their voice, their body movements is wrong.
And then on top of it, they're told that their parents,
if their parents don't believe them that they are actually

(12:59):
the opposite sex or non buying area, whatever identity they pick,
that their parents hate them. And so you have a
child who is hating the image in the mirror and hating,
you know, thinking that their parents hate them. And then
you add the third rail, which is and by the way,

(13:19):
trans kids kill themselves. And so now you have a
child who is in the deepest, darkest place imaginable. And
then you have the pandemic not going to school, living online,
living in this virtual reality. So it was a perfect storm.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah. I just can't think of anything worse to tell
a child that, or not to tell them directly, but
to anything you tell a child that results in them
hating their parents and hating themselves. I just it's so insidious.
And I mean, growing up in the eighties, we were
you know, we were inundated with with you know, the

(14:00):
stereotypes of the white van pulling up offering candy or something.
But now those things just seem so tame because it
wasn't psychological. Here's something bad for your cigarettes, or it
might be pot or something. But I mean that there
wasn't any of the of the mental aspect, which is
just so hard and so far I haven't seen, like,

(14:25):
I haven't seen a clear way out of it other
than just incredible, you know, support from the parents and
and like you've said, shutting down, you know, doing the hard,
making the hard choices with the phone and doing those things,
and really being choosy about who their friends are, which
I mean we were told growing up too, you know,
your friends, your friend group is very important. Now it's

(14:48):
like it might be the difference between I mean, I
hate to, you know, overdramatize, but it might be the
difference between life or death. You're like your friend group.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Well, I'm glad you brought up the friend group because
it's a whole different world too. Because mom and dad
knew your friends, they came to the house. You didn't
have friends that lived out of state that you knew
through your gaming console or from the internet, and your
friends actually knew you and cared for you. You know, if

(15:20):
I was going to make a stupid decision, which I
did make many as adenator, but one of my friends
would say, like, do you think that's a really good idea?
Do you really think we should drive down the shore
when you don't have your driver's license. I'm not going
to go. I'm going to get in trouble. But when
you have internet friends, they don't really know you, they
don't really care about you, and they'll egg these kids

(15:44):
on sure, of course do it?

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Do it?

Speaker 2 (15:46):
You be you? I mean, how many times have we
heard that you be you? Yeah? You do you? Yolo?
You only live once. And these people don't care about
that child that they're pushing into dangerous territory. And so
parents too have lost We've lost our parenting ability to

(16:09):
the internet. And truly, and I'll fall on my sword
on this, we gave some of it away when we
handed them these phones. And even if you go back
when we handed them the iPad to keep them quiet
in the car or in the restaurant, is we actually

(16:30):
shifted our parenting responsibility to a bunch of strangers. And
we're not paying attention to even the commercials that these
kids are being exposed to. You know, we're taking the
easy way out because it is easy. You know, you
PLoP that thing in front of a child, they're quiet
for a while. But at the same time, we're losing

(16:51):
our authority. And you know, my generation, we're the first
generation to parent against the Internet, and we failed, including me,
failed miserably.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Is that yeah? I always I always think of that.
I don't know if it's someone quote or if it's
if it's just and so obvious, but it's like if
you think it's you know, you're up against this huge
goliath or something, it's the truth really is well if
you're if you don't parent, if you don't raise your child,
someone else will, right.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
And again, I mean I don't want to completely blame
the parents either, because you're really running up a hill.
You know, you're in northern California. So we have buses
that are clad in trans flags, clad in them front,
you know, front to back. We have trans stores now
in my tiny little neighborhood, you know, a children's neighborhood

(17:48):
like filled teemy with kids now, commercials, candy bars. I mean,
it's ubig what it is, and so you can only
safeguard your children from seeing it to a limit extent.
But what we have to do is actually insulate them
and get to our children first when they're very young,
and talk to them about biological reality. And anybody says

(18:13):
keep a secret from mom and dad. They're a bad person,
you know. Forget the white van. It's people who say,
don't tell your mom and dad. Hide this from your
mom and dad. A website that has a you know,
they're like Trevor Project has a basically an eject button
so that if mom and dad walk by and see
it on your computer, they can push one button and
it just disappears, so they can't see what they're looking at,

(18:36):
and that those why are they doing that? You have
to teach your children. Why are they doing that? Because
they want you, They want to capture you.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah. Well that's a good segue into what has what
has your experience led you to be doing as a
part time situation as far as other than your day job.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Part time, it's time, it's full time. Yeah, it's seven
days a week, twenty four hours a day. Yeah, became
an advocate. I don't know what I do. I know
that I just work NonStop. I can't describe it. Somebody
just said, you're a connector. I connect parents with lawyers
who will take their cases. I connect lawyers with plaintives

(19:21):
when they have a good lawsuit that they want. Connect
reporters with people who are willing to talk on the record,
and we have an underground railroad where we connect parents
to safe therapists for their kids. I run a group
called Our Duty. It's Our Duty dot group. We just

(19:42):
became a nonprofit actually like two weeks ago, not Our
Duty USA, and we're an advocacy group. So we fight
against bills, we promote bills, we write bills. We're writing
amachist priests, which are called friends of the Court, to
help persuade judges that there's no such thing as a

(20:03):
transgender child. There's a child with acute distress, and trying
to persuade the courts to do the right thing and
stop keeping secrets from from parents. So we do, you know,
a myriad of things, and I'm just I'm not going
to stop until this is over because what we went

(20:25):
through as a family, and we're lucky. I mean, I'm
so lucky. I have the fairy tale ending in this.
I don't I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy,
because it's it's horrible to watch your child die by
a thousand nis. Well, people are cheering that.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
A and and in your own and in your own home. Yeah,
I mean, it's not it's not. It's not like I said,
like the old days where they're gone, which is also horrible,
but right right in your own home. It's it's like
a horror movie. The insides are being taken out, the
mind is being taken away, the soul is being manipulated

(21:04):
in the heart, and yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Last week, I got three phone calls, three phone calls
from three different sets of parents who are losing custody
of their kids through CPS because they're not affirming their children.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Is that the most common lawsuit that you're what's the
most common way that you help, like the most common
thing that people ask for help with.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
So I work on a lot of the school cases.
So I wrote a bill that didn't even get a
hearing in California to get an author and thanks to
assembly Member Bill A. Saley, but I wrote six bills
to protect children. One two got picked up. And so
the schools became my focus because really, the schools are

(21:50):
the ones that are creating gender just for kids. This
isn't a natural occurrence, this isn't organic. We never had
in the human raise the number of so called gender
dys for kids. This is being foisted on them it's
a social contagent of you know, colossal effect, and it's

(22:11):
the schools. The schools are the faucet they are creating
these confused kids. These confused kids remain confused and then
they're getting fed into the medical system. So I work
a lot with the schools, and now I'm turning my
focus to the CPS type of cases because I knew

(22:33):
they were going to get there because we already have
laws that you know, essentially are being used to call
parents like me who believe in biological reality abusers emotional abusers.
So you know, it's a sophie's choice either poison your
child with a cancer drug or a sex offender drug,

(22:55):
or lose your child, lose custody of your child. Like
this is where we are. And it's not just California,
it's in every state. You see it in Washington, d C.
A family lost custody of their autistic son, severely autistic, Montana,

(23:15):
Washington State. It's all over. And that's the new frontier
is weaponizing child protective services to take these really distressed
children from their loving parents. And you know, the outcome
for these children isn't good outcome for foster care kids

(23:39):
isn't good. We know that, and then take take a
kid who is now, you know, wanting to poison themselves
without knowing the consequences, and you know we're in for
Mark my words, the the suicide rate in the United
States is going to explode in the next five and

(24:01):
ten years when these children reach adulthood and say, what
did they do to me? Because it's they who did
it to them? What did my government force this to happen?
I can't have children. I don't know. I mean, I

(24:23):
have d Transitioners call me and they say, I don't
know where I belong. What am I? I don't have
my uterus, I don't have my breasts. I'm still not
a man? But am I still a woman? What am I?

Speaker 1 (24:38):
You're a ward of the state? Really? I mean is
that if you had to venture a guess as to
why schools are pushing this is it is easy as saying, well,
there's so much money in big farm and it's tied
up in the teachers' unions. Do you think there's something.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
It's a multi headed hydra. So that questions asked a lot,
Why why? Why? And there's this simple answer that everybody
can understand is the money aspect, Yes, big farm is
making money. Why is there used to be one pediatric
gender clinic that opened in two thousand and seven. I mean,
let that's think. In two thousand and seven there was one.

(25:17):
Two thousand and six there were none. Zero, We weren't
doing this to kids. Two thousand and seven there were one,
and now there's over two hundred and fifty plus all
these private, private clinics doing this to kids. Why because
it makes money. So you have that money. Then you
have money on the other end, which people don't realize

(25:37):
is once you take that child from that loving family,
where does that child go? They go into the foster
care system, and there are residents or facilities that are
funded by our tax payers, you know, to the tune
of twelve to fourteen thousand dollars a month per child.

(26:00):
These nonprofits are making money off of these children. So
there's money that way too. There's money in these NGOs
going in and teaching doctors transgenderism. So there's a ton
of money to the two. You know, this is outside
of the surgeries. There's a whole industry that is built

(26:23):
on the transgender agenda, including, like I said, the stores,
marketing and then you have the sexual fetish aspect of it,
because it's always money and sex.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
You pump a girl with testosterone, a young girl with testosterone,
and guess what, she's promiscuous because women's bodies we don't have.
We have some testosterone, but not to the even close
to the level of men. For a reason, because we're
actually the morality keepers. Right. A woman can go out

(26:58):
to a bar anywhere, or even and even a store
and come home with a man pretty much regardless of
their age or even what they look like. We're the
ones who say no. And I'm not trying to denegrate men,
but that's our job. And when you when you switch
that and you pump these kids with girls with testosterone,
they're they're easy to take advantage of, and there's a

(27:21):
whole bunch of fetish. I mean to be gross here.
I'm going to be gross. We're making humans, and I
say making on purpose. There are surgeons out there who
are creating fake genitals on humans so that they have
both sets of genitals. And why are they doing this?

(27:42):
Because why porn hub thinks it's pretty cool. You know,
there's a porn industry, so there's money to be made.
There's money to be made off of these girls rejecting
their bodies and these boys thinking that they're women. There's
a whole genre of pronagra fee called sissy porn. So

(28:02):
you have so it's you know, it's multi headed. And
then you have the civil rights and then you have
the breakup of the family and the Marxism. I mean,
the yeah, the why and I hate to go like
all the way down in that rabbit hole. Coach James
Lindsay does such a great job on that, but but
it is true, like we're and and then there's you know,

(28:23):
calling the herd because these kids are sterilized. And you
know this, the number of kids that think that they're
trans correlated with the number of children who are autistic.
So they're getting rid of, you know, the the bad

(28:45):
genes they're they're they're sterilizing autistic kids, kids with o
C D ADHD ohing and gay kids. I mean, let's
let's talk about that. The ultimate conversion therapy is to
change a little boy who likes fairies and pink, who
will probably grow up to be gay, change them into

(29:06):
you know, a fictional female. And so it's huge. I mean,
that's the problem you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, well, and I mean it's like there's a lot
of people that don't want to admit, uh, you know,
Planned Parenthood's founder, her ideas of race and genetics and euthanasia.
There's a lot of people that just don't want to
admit that that that their movement started with somebody so
sick in the mind. You know, do you think that
you're Let's go through a couple of the questions. Do

(29:34):
you what percentage because I'm guessing it's high. What percentage
of your role do you feel is just purely educational?
Because there's so many people that just think this is
a an overhyped issue on certain news channels, or it's
it's a right wing talking point. What do you say
to that? Well, well, sorry, the question is, yeah, do

(29:57):
you is a large part of your your duties right now?
Do you feel is just purely educational?

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Well, educational and then action based? Because I think talking
is great, But then what do you do with that information?
You have to be armed with some tools to how
do you safeguard your children? Number one? And number two?
How do you safeguard our world? Because everyone has an

(30:26):
obligation to do something in this space to help end this,
whether it's writing a check or it's actually going to
your legislator and talking with them. But education is huge,
and that's where you know, my superpower comes in because
I am a Democrat. I'm still a Democrat. I know
how they think because I was that. And you know,

(30:50):
people still don't know, mostly the left. People still don't know.
They don't believe that thirteen year old girls are getting
their breast removed. Right, just played tennis with a bunch
of women and I like to wear my messages on
my body. And somebody asked me a question. I said, well,
you know there's men in masquerading as women and in

(31:11):
our sports. And one of the women was like what,
And I'm like, yeah, yeah. There's a you know, a
really tall man at San Jose State who plays volleyball
and he's getting accolades left and right. Look at his jumps,
Look how hard he she? They call her she. I'm like,

(31:33):
this is really truly what's happening. But the media calls
him she. And so if you're reading only lefty newspapers,
you're going to just think it's a super strong, super
tall woman, and really it's a man. And so again,
like the doors. Some people are more likely to believe

(31:55):
me because again, I'm a Democratic for a really long time,
even though you know, it's funny. The left, the left
wing media, maybe they won't put my name in anything.
They'll they'll say, I identify as a Democrat. I don't
even know what that means. I mean, it's just stupid.
And and then the La Times they wouldn't believe I was

(32:19):
a Democrat until I sent them a picture.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Of your voting.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
I mean, yeah, of me actually standing on the road
because it was there was some day like we're all
supposed to stand on the road and protest Donald Trump
not being the president. There I am like here, I.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Am what do you when? What is the hardest What
is the hardest thing for your fellow Democrats too to believe?
Is it that it is actually happening, or that it's
happening in larger numbers than they than they think, because
I do. I've talked to people that my friends that
are that are on that side and extremely liberal, and

(33:00):
they they understand that maybe there's a few, but they
just have no idea and they don't want to see.
And I can send them a list. I can send
them the stats, even when they say, well you need
to prove it, well, I sent you everything. What they
just need?

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I would love to know the answer.
We should do a focused focus group because sometimes I do.
You know, obviously I'm able to persuade people. But you know,
one of the things that most Democrats believe is that
it's immutable you are born that way, because the campaign
about being gay, being born that way, love who you

(33:37):
want to love, and so the conflation with being being gay,
which I believe on the whole is an immutable characteristic.
Not always, but there is no such thing as a
transgender child, and people actually believe that that you could
have a female brain on a male body, And so

(33:58):
there's that inflation. You know, nobody wants to be the biggest,
you know, the hateful person, especially if you're a white,
middle class you know liberal, you kind of have to be.
You have to bow down, or you're an oppressor and
you're a horrible human being, you're a racist, big at all,

(34:19):
those all those things. So Democrats have a hard time
with that. And then the I'm sure you get this too,
like why do you care? Well, I care because my
bathrooms now have people with penises in them. Yeah I care.
I have to shower and undress and there could be
a man in there, and my daughter will have to
face that, and my grandkids would have to face that, like,

(34:42):
and that's why I care.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, yeah, So what Like, Let's take the group of
tennis woman that you played with. Let's just pretend a scenario.
Let's say someone asks about the shirt, and the group
is talking and they you know, you're all back at
your cars, and one woman kind of comes back to
you and says, hey, you know, this is still hard
for me to ask you, but my child is you know,

(35:06):
my teen girl has been saying some of the things
that you mentioned, And I'm wondering if this is worse
than I think. What's what's the best entry point to
really begin. It might not be a full red pill,
but maybe it's just an orange pill. You know.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
I don't go down there the politic rabbit hole ever
with people. I want to reach them in a human,
human way, not that politics aren't human, but you know,
you really start with these simple questions, like, you know,
ten years ago, did you ever have a child say
that they're transgender? Did you know anyone who said that?

(35:44):
Like you get them to come to their logical conclusion
on their own But if they're if they are having
if they're worried about their own child, then I I've
had many people pull me aside and say, that's happening
to me, it's happening my sister. And that's when I
really spring into action and I get them into the
parent groups that can offer them comfort and ideas on

(36:10):
how to help their child. I used to do that part.
I don't do that part anymore because there's not a
lot of lawyers out there that are fighting the way
I fight on this and people who are visible, so
I have to really use my time in different ways.
But these one on one conversations actually really break through people.

(36:33):
So you're playing tennis, they get the sports. They've played
tennis with the man, They know how hard he can
hit the ball, even if he's a crappy tennis player.
So you try to you try to bring them in
where they're where they I hate to even say where
they're at, but like what you think is going to
affect them most, Like would you be comfortable with your

(36:54):
seven year old daughter and a naked man in the bathroom?
Would you be okay with that that right home?

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, do you or is anyone that is on your team?
I don't know if you call them that that? Do
you like? Basically, do you have any success stories of
someone that you spoke to or or shared what's really
going on and they actually were able to you know,
save their child before going down this road or tons? Tons?

Speaker 2 (37:22):
And you know that's why these podcasts are so important,
and the ones with preigor you and on the daily
signal is I have no idea who I'm reaching, you know,
just like the other outspoken parents, we have no idea.
We never know, but we'll get an email thanking us.

(37:43):
We'll get a call saying you helped me save my child,
and I get those all the time. And I also
was the one doing the calling because there were people
who came before me who I used as my role
model to get my child out and they didn't know,
they didn't know that their one podcast gave me the

(38:04):
ideas of how to deal with the names. And so
that's why, you know, keep talking because you know a
lot of these people are parents are suffering in silence,
and they'll take a little piece here and a little
piece here from what they hear as ideas, and yeah,
we have a I mean there's quite a few success

(38:26):
stories in my parent group alone. And we also save
a lot of parents from bringing their kids to the
gender clinics because that's what you want to do, right,
and we we like, no, don't do it. Never, don't
go any go and go near a gender clinic a doctor.
Stay away.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
So for the parents that feel, because I hear this
a lot, that it's so overwhelming, this issue is so huge,
it's already gone so far. There's you know, it's difficult
to get my kid. I don't want my kid to
be the one without a phone or whatever. What's the
what's the smallest way that you help someone to get
started when they are overwhelmed? Because this is this is

(39:08):
an overwhelming issue, and when you you know who you're
fighting up against, You're not just you're not just fighting
up against your local city council to you know, build
some speed bumps to because your kid was in a
bike accident. You know. So I know that parents can
get overwhelmed with with your you're telling you have to
do one more thing a side of working and feeding

(39:29):
and taking care of my what's the smallest way that
someone can get started. Who is concerned or wants to
fight back?

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Your question appears to be twofold to me. One what
what can the parents do to safeguard their child, like
to insulate them, if I'm hearing you correctly, And the
second is what can they do to help change this?
So the safeguardian the child begins at the at the
youngest of age where you're reading your child books about

(39:57):
their body being their body and role modeling. How cool
it is that that dad's so strong and you know,
and that you're the mom and the lovey and really
defining those female and male and telling your child over
and over again. You know that you're a boy. Little
boys do this, Little boys can, little boys can cook,

(40:20):
but you're still a boy. You know, little boys can
play with barbies, but you're still a boy. I mean,
those things have to happen. Be very vigilant. I mean,
I mean, look, I'm a realist. Are you going to
have your child go through their whole teenage years without
a phone. No, that's not going to happen. But you
can put a lot of limits on their phone right

(40:42):
from the get go. You know, they get their phone
only if you have their pass code. I wouldn't give
a child a phone until they're until the latest that
you can do at fourteen. There's no need for a phone.
There are safe phones out there that don't have connections
to the internet. Your school and walk that classroom. Yep.

(41:03):
The parents like, Look, if you want to safeguard your child,
an ounce of prevention is worth a lot. You don't
want to go through what I went through. You want
to look at the books that are on the bookshelf
inside that classroom. Do you see something that's alarming, Pull
them off, check them out, see the flags that are
being hung. Talk to the teacher, find out, you know,

(41:24):
read the book before or even the summary of the
book before your child reads it. Know what they're getting
indoctrinated with. And if you don't like that teacher, tell
the administration you want your kid in another class because
you're not going to win that battle. Your child's in
that classroom six hours a day if they're in grade school.

(41:45):
So you have to flex your muscles as a parent
and set the boundaries and keep your kid in reality
right outside healthy. I mean, we were that too. That's
not a you know, I mean I was that mom
who chased my kids around the playground, even you know,
when they were older and they didn't like it anymore,

(42:05):
no kidding, but you know you have to tell them
what's real in the world. The tree is real, not
a computer screen. And then for parents who want to
affect change, and everybody listening should think, what can I
do right now? You can donate to our Duty doc group.

(42:27):
You can donate to another group that is fighting this.
That's easy, you know, that's a really easy thing. Takes
you thirty seconds. Then you can start going to your
school boards. You can start you can join my Call
to Action group and again you can go to our

(42:49):
Duty sign up and then you'll get these calls to
action which are simple. Call Gavin Newsom, tell him you're
against this bill. Do these things work? They absolutely work.
I I mean I wasn't political at all, but we
stopped bills because parents and involved citizens called Gavin Newsom

(43:10):
and left messages and talked with staff and said veto
this bill. When you have hundreds thousands of people calling in,
they don't care the reason why you're against the bill.
They just put a little check mark. The more check
marks they have, that's how you kill the bill. When
nobody's paying attention. They do whatever the heck they want,

(43:32):
and we have to pay attention, and it's grueling, but
it's changeable. I wouldn't be doing this if I thought
it was a lost cause. I don't think it's a
lost cause at all. I really don't. We're making immense
amounts of progress, even in crazy California.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, where where does the ballot initiative that you got
the you were a couple hundred thousand signatures short or
whatever it was that, where's that stand right now? Or
is that going to go another round?

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Or well, we're we're looking at what we're going to do.
I mean, now we have four hundred thousand signatures, right
we needed five hundred and fifty thousand ballid But now
we know who were the big collectors, so we have
a lot of data. We know who was And this
was our first rodeo. We were not funded at all.

(44:20):
I mean we raised two hundred thousand dollars. That's nothing, nothing,
and we got four hundred thousand signatures. I think that's
a first. So it's pretty amazing to shows you how
many people are want to affect change. So we'll come
out of the gate with a different ballot initiative. Maybe
you have to do it a little more incrementally. But

(44:42):
now we put ourselves on the map. Nobody knows who
I am, you know, or who I was? Right, why
would they invest in this mom, mom, lawyer? Who's doing this?
But we're on the map now because we and I'll
tell you the government of California was afraid of us.
We were afraid we were going to do it. And
I know this because that weekend that we were supposed

(45:06):
to turn in our signatures was the weekend that they
dropped that really bad bill that same weekend, So they
had it prepared, right, you know.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
They were in nineteen fifty five or yes.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Abe nineteen fifty five, So they were watching us every
time we set a press conference, so to Gavin Newsome,
and this is a group of ragtag moms, you know,
and dads. So there's there's power in us. That's what
our democracy is all about. We can actually affect change
and it doesn't take that much. If people give ten

(45:44):
minutes a week, that's sufficient.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah. Well, I asked you about success stories with parents,
specifically with moms. Do you have any As we're kind
of wrapping up, do you have any success stories of
teens that have that have expressed thanks and gratitude that
that you helped their mom or their or their parents

(46:12):
to stop this, because I know it's hard for them
to admit to what they've been through. I would imagine, well,
my daughter, that's the best one.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, it's the number one. But no, I haven't had
I have a lot of de transitioners that I am
really close with, and you know, they thank me for
fighting so hard, but no, I mean most of these kids,
they're embarrassed. Yeah, and they don't want to ever include
my daughter doesn't ever want to talk about it because

(46:45):
they don't think of it as a big deal still
because they were they don't know. You know, you're still
a kid. You're not thinking about whether you're going to
have a family and a husband or a wife, right,
so you don't really know what you done. Because trans
identified adults they have a really hard time finding partners,
Like life is hard for them, and that doesn't hit

(47:08):
until they're lonely.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Yeah, yeah, and that's not the time when they're gonna,
yeah think back, and I mean you hope they think back,
but yeah, you're right, DoD knowing that you dodged a
bullet sometimes that that realization doesn't come into you're in
therapy at thirty eight or something.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, and you know what, there was a time that
I was speaking somewhere and there were three you know,
obviously trans identified girls. You know, they were wearing the uniform,
there's a trans uniform, you know, buttoned up men's shirts,
early short hair, cargo pants, and they were sitting in

(47:47):
the audience and they were there to heckle. And I
talked about the fact that I loved my daughter so
much and that I accepted I wanted her to except
herself as perfect because she's perfect and no one should
tell her that her body isn't perfect, just the way
it is. And the two of the kids heckled and

(48:13):
left and the ones stayed and she kind of you know,
we were actually long story, but we were kicked out
of the library for being for misgendering, which we sued
them and we want some money. So that was good. Yeah,
don't mess with lawyers. Were religious anyway. But we went

(48:33):
outside to finish the talk and she was standing away
from the crowd but still listening. And so in the
back of my mind, I'm like, I think we hit
we we hit her because we're not hateful people. We
want these kids to love themselves, their natural self. You know,
transgenderism is the ultimate body shaming. It's the ultimate self loathing.

(48:58):
And every child old is perfect just the way they are.
They don't need drugs, they don't need surgeries to be perfect.
And I think, you know like that that that day,
Like I drove home and I'm just like, I think,
I think we saved a kid today.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good I was thinking the other
day of that. I still don't know if it was
a TV special but or if it was a series
at my school, But what was that free to be
you and me thing? Do you remember that? Yeah? That's
I mean, that's kind of what I think about when
I think we were we were told we were still indoctrinated,
but we were told the opposite. We were told that,

(49:38):
you know, you are better than just okay as you are.
You're the greatest thing ever, just as you are. And
at the time I think I was, I'm certainly I
was dismissive of it, just thinking, oh, this is some
silly slogan, But now I listened to it. So I
went on YouTube the other day and found that song
and I was like, oh my gosh, this is It's

(50:01):
as like the Heaven's opening up and and yeah, I
just those are the moments that I that I wish
some of these kids could have. You know, is is
is the clarity to to hear that you know, they're
one hundred percent okay, they're more than one hundred percent okay,
they're perfect there, they can do anything they want and

(50:23):
they and they there. They just have to they just
have to know that there's a lot of bad actors
out there, and the bad actors, unfortunately on some days,
are really good actors and they just don't have your
best intentions. And even if the song sounds so sweet
and innocent, it's it's just sad that it but that

(50:46):
it doesn't, and that there are so many out there
that that are preying on on kids and and using safe,
safe sounding words like gender affirming care and safe spaces,
and I just think how insidious the the words are
that just seep in and when you hear it first,
you don't think it's that big deal. You think, oh,
love is love, Well, that sounds like a nice slogan.

(51:08):
Well if you repeat that for ten twenty years, all
of a sudden, you know, one state wants to you know,
lower the age of consent or transgender comes in and
you think, well, yeah, that's true, and you know, and
most people aren't going to spend the time to have
that thought and and to really try to reconcile it

(51:31):
in their heads. So it's a crazy world. But I'm
thankful that there are moms like you, and I know
a lot of people are. I think a good place
to wrap up is that we do have a connection
that we didn't know about until just recently. And that's
the movie that I helped my friend Dawn shoot. While
I shot, I was the videographer for it, called Disconnected

(51:54):
a few years ago. And why don't you tell the
audience what our connection is? Are you going to be
one of the ones we interviewed or were you just
going to be at the premiere?

Speaker 2 (52:04):
No? No, it was totally serendipitous. So my co my
my co lead down in southern California said let's go
to the Academy of American Academy of Pediatrics and hold
a rally. And we wanted it to be nonpartisans, so
we had purple signs, so red and blue together we had,

(52:26):
you know, the lefty feminist groups with us, and then
we had the you know, the right Christian groups with
us and you know, holding hands, which is terrifying for
the politicians. Look at that we're actually getting along. But
we we went down we were going down there to
do our first rally and hoping to get the pediatricians
because ten thousand pediatricians were descending upon Anaheim, and we said,

(52:51):
we're going to stand there, and you know, I spent
we spent thousands of dollars making brochures and information and signs,
and we were you know, we looked professional and we
didn't bang on pots. And then we found out you
were premiering your movie that's that same night. So we

(53:12):
had our rally on Saturday. You premiered your movie on
Saturday night. And what made it so cool was this
was the first time, I think in the United States
that we had a group of D transitioners. I think
we had ten to twelve at our rally together, which

(53:34):
was a big deal. Scott Nugent was there too, from
What Is a Woman And so it was a big, big,
big deal and it was really cool for the D
transitioners to meet each other in person and then go
to your movie and meet Daisy, and it was I mean,
you know, it was It was pretty pretty cool that

(53:55):
we timed it that way.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
We didn't really, but yeah, sometimes sometimes sometimes good triumphs
and things work out. Did you you were able to
see the movie? I guess at a later date. I'm
assuming I was.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
I was dealing with the press after the event, but yeah,
I definitely saw the movie and I got to meet
Daisy because you know, we we were in this movement.
We're always tracking all the detransitioners out there who are
being vocal. Yeah, it's great to meet her.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, that was the the Daisy was such a great
part of the story. You know, because some documentaries, you
you know, one kind of documentary, you're just telling a
story that you already know and you know how it's
going to end, and then some of them you kind
of just take up a leap of faith. And we
didn't know what the ending was going to be. We
didn't want it to be just another just a preachy
thing only And when I think I just happened to

(54:46):
be on YouTube one day and saw that Daisy announced
that she was, you know, getting married, and I like,
we got to go back to Chicago and get her story.
And then while we were f she said, well, or
was it? It was either right then or a couple
of weeks later, said you know, I'm pregnant too. And

(55:08):
that's when you know, the light bulbs of the filmmaker
go off and you just think, oh my gosh, how
I don't want to spoiler alert, but it's a great ending.
And I can't think of a better ending than bringing
a new life into the world from someone who was
so close to, you know, ending her capacity to to

(55:30):
be a mom. It's just it just the way it
worked out was really amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
Yeah, and how grateful she has to be that she
is a woman, because sorry, guys, you don't. I mean,
there's nothing really cooler than feeling your baby swimming around
in your belly. It's just an amazing.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
Yeah feeling, No, I can totally imagine. Yeah, I mean,
it's it's it was a great story, and even though
you weren't able to be there, I'm glad it was
a great film.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
It was a great Did I of course get to
see I try to watch everything.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, yeah, Well, do you any any other final thoughts
that you have? I think we covered a lot of it.
I wanted to cover the the California initiative side because
you know that's always changing, and like I said, I
want anyone that listens listening to know that you you
can get started today on any positive action if you

(56:24):
if you need to go to the store and buy
your kid a flip phone, they are out there. I
bought one during the pandemic, just just to have a
second phone. They're they're easy, they're cheap. You do have
the power, and you do have the support. Oh that's
what I want to ask you. The support the moms
or the parents support group that you have. Are you
is that replicated in any other counties or states or
how it's nationwide?

Speaker 2 (56:45):
Okay, So there's there's a bunch of parent support groups. Uh,
there's international ones and then there's US ones and they
fill various roles. Our Duty is not a support group
in the United States. We're an advocacy group. Our Duty
in the UK is a parent support group. Our Duty
Canada is an advocacy group. So there's many parent groups

(57:09):
here and they're regional. So in California there's three Northern, Central,
and Southern, and then there's you know, support groups that
have really tight schedules, well not tight, but very scheduled meetings.
So you have meetings for the boys because the boys
who get caught in this, they have different needs. Of course,

(57:31):
everything's binary, right, of course it is, but you know,
and then there's groups for parents with kids who are
over eighteen because they have a whole different set of needs. Yeah,
so there's a lot of support out there for the parents,
and thank god, because when we were going through it,

(57:51):
they were far and few between, and it's sad that
there's so many because that means there's a huge need
for it. And then there's you know, anybody, anybody can
donate to their local candidate who is proparent. You can't,
you can, you can find you can, you can find

(58:11):
your niche. When I was trying to figure out what
I was going to do, I joined every group. I
went from ultra religious to the radical feminists. I joined
every single group to figure out where did I belong.
You'll find your you'll find your people. If you're into
the sports things, there's a whole sports group. If you're
into the children thing, there's all children thing. If you're

(58:34):
into women's rights, women's rights things, so everybody can do
something and we outnumber them right by a lot, even Dems.
The Poling Choe seventy five percent of all Californians, the
most Democrat state in the Union, is against gender interventions

(58:57):
on children seventy That means your neighbors are probably against it.
So don't be afraid to.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Talk, right, Yeah. I think that's that's the positive is
that I do think that people are getting tired of
being silent. I do think that people are understanding that
your your child's future is at stake. So this is
if you offend somebody that that is so minor, so

(59:24):
minor to what is going on here. So uh, well,
you keep me up to date on by email and
if there's any thing local in northern California, any event
or any big news. You know, I have limited time,
but sometimes I can make it out, so maybe we'll
see each others.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Most of it's a phone call, it's really like, and
I'll put it in there. This will take you two minutes.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
That's great, yeah and it yeah, absolutely well, thank you
very much Aaron for what you do and are continuing
to do, and just the resource that you are and
the fighter that you are and I hope anyone listening
is inspired. If one person listens to this and gets inspired,
I will consider that a success.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
You too, are right, and come with me. Were the
jail and off free.

Speaker 4 (01:00:19):
Come with me. Take mind and will me wether river streets,
being countries, so the shining seat, the horses, Me and
you and me.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Every book under school posed to be his own man
in this world. Ranger girls to be girl woman. Take
my hand and come with me where the child are,
Come with me. Thank