Althouse: "The fact that Kirk was killed while he was answering a question about the purported prevalence of trans mass shooters (a fiction he had helped promulgate)..."

September 22, 2025

"The fact that Kirk was killed while he was answering a question about the purported prevalence of trans mass shooters (a fiction he had helped promulgate)..."

"... and the news that the suspect in Kirk’s killing apparently has a romantic partner who is trans have hypercharged this process of disowning [the work of civil society]. On Monday morning, before returning from a weekend away, I entered the following words into the search bar on my phone: 'famous trans people.' Then I tried 'transgender journalists,' 'transgender professors' and a few similar queries. My name did not come up. This was my inexact way of measuring the risk that someone would target me. It appeared to be low, even after a weekend of Donald Trump and his prominent allies blaming the left in general and trans people in particular for Kirk’s assassination. OK, I thought, I could go home, for now...."

Writes M. Gessen in "This Is the Feeling of Losing a Country. I Know It Well" (NYT).

72 comments:

tommyesq said...: On Monday morning, before returning from a weekend away, I entered the following words into the search bar on my phone: 'famous trans people.' Then I tried 'transgender journalists,' 'transgender professors' and a few similar queries. My name did not come up. This was my inexact way of measuring the risk that someone would target me.

Quietly, I suspect "they" were quite disappointed by this.; 9/22/25, 8:29 AM
wendybar said...: Wahhhh. Keep on being a victim. The right isn't assassinating trannies. I don't care what you decide to do with your body if you are an adult. What WE have been upset about, is the children they are indoctrinating into thinking cutting off your body parts is normal. It's not.; 9/22/25, 8:30 AM
Leland said...: Isn’t it “funny” that one can say mass shooting by trans is a fiction, when they have occurred and more often in recent years. Yet, it is wrong to misgender a trans person. Who is doing the denying here, Gessen?; 9/22/25, 8:31 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: These people cannot have a discussion without larding it up with their fantasies about "what is happening" taking prevalence over the facts they pretend to want to discuss. A trans person is more likely to be suicidal than non-trans is a fact, not an opinion, not hate speech. Until these delusional being agree to participate in a human, fact-based discussion what is the point of publishing this tripe?; 9/22/25, 8:32 AM
Dave Begley said...: Apparently! Apparently! The evidence is irrefutable.

The NYT prints this garbage as part of its sick Marxist agenda.

I see where the DFL candidate for Hennepin County Attorney claims he has a trans six-year-old and he's been treating his son like a girl for three years.

Society needs to recognize that these trans people are deeply mentally ill and progressivism helped cause it.; 9/22/25, 8:38 AM
Aggie said...: No, you cannot have the microphone, and no, you cannot have Center Stage. Go away - your problems are sad and banal, and you have made yourself ridiculous by demanding that everybody must attend your parade and cheer.; 9/22/25, 8:39 AM
Leland said...: Why is it ok to tell parents, “if you don’t allow your child to transition, they’ll most likely die of suicide”? If that is ok, then let’s talk about suicidal ideation and what it means. The fact is, those contemplating suicide often value the lives of others equal to their own, which is much lower than the average person values the lives of others. In short, suicidal people are often a danger to others as they are to themselves. This is why there is a high number of murder suicides. Accepting all this is true (and there is evidence that supports it being true), then why is it fictional to believe trans people commit mass shootings?; 9/22/25, 8:40 AM
CJinPA said...: "Who Gets to be Victim?" seems to be the political struggle of our time.

Having cultivated victim mentality to achieve political and cultural power, the Left will fight viciously to retain its benefits.

So, yes, the assassination of an American by a man in a trans relationship MUST mean the real victims are transgendered people and their enablers. They can't portray it any other way.; 9/22/25, 8:45 AM
Jamie said...: A trans person is more likely to be suicidal than non-trans is a fact, not an opinion, not hate speech.

And that relationship persists with or without "gender-affirming care."; 9/22/25, 8:47 AM
n.n said...: Simulants or homosexuals? The former are disproportionately representive as abortionists, even mass abortionists in our society.; 9/22/25, 8:48 AM
Peachy said...: The left are self-absorbed demons.

btw- I thought the last question to Charlie was about gang violence?; 9/22/25, 8:48 AM
Jamie said...: this process of disowning [the work of civil society]

And by the way... what?; 9/22/25, 8:48 AM
Peachy said...: CJ in PA - that sums it up perfectly.; 9/22/25, 8:48 AM
Earnest Prole said...: Narcissism is when you witness the worst American political assassination in fifty years and somehow find a way to make yourself the victim.; 9/22/25, 8:49 AM
BothSidesNow said...: Interesting word choice: "The fact that Kirk was killed..." Always be suspicious of the folks who use the passive tense. I read the op ed yesterday and felt sick. A man is speaking to a group of college students on a bright sunshiney day and someone shoots him through the neck -- we all see it; we see the crowd, we see the impact, we see him slump over. In the face of that, Gessen crafts an op ed that is 1001% about Gessen. No empathy, no remorse for others (except that a late night comedy guy with a small audience loses his show). The worst part of the op ed is to compare the shooter to the young man in 1938 who killed a Nazi diplomate in Paris. Thus validating the shooter. That the NYT published this? Not a surprise at all.; 9/22/25, 8:49 AM
Kevin said...: Charlie Kirk assassinated, trans people hardest hit!; 9/22/25, 8:51 AM
n.n said...: Johns Hopkins determined that homosexuals are typically a stable in the transgender spectrum, bisexuals, too, but simulants invariably exhibit a progressive condition expressed through abortive ideation that may only be coincidentally entertained, even celebrated in liberal culture.; 9/22/25, 8:51 AM
planetgeo said...: Yet another NYT LGBTDNC piece getting the vapors about losing their Democratcy. I'm guessin' that Gessen has no clue that Kirk wasn't the one who was promulgating fiction.; 9/22/25, 8:52 AM
The Vault Dweller said...: What narcissism. This oppression Olympics mindset is what is turning many off the left.; 9/22/25, 8:52 AM
Dave Begley said...: Losing a country. So, so dramatic.; 9/22/25, 8:54 AM
Breezy said...: I have my own garbage to worry about. Don’t try to saddle me with yours. I don’t care.; 9/22/25, 8:57 AM
n.n said...: Perhaps socially distancing of homosexuals and bisexuals from simulants through symbols and rhetoric was an ill-advised choice and emotional forcing that prompted catastrophic anthropogenic climate change including affirmative abortion events. DEIsm (i.e. institutional, systemic class-disordered ideologies), too.; 9/22/25, 8:58 AM
jim5301 said...: Dave - since you say the evidence is irrefutable could you provide a link to the evidence? I’m not disagreeing with you. Just want to see the studies you are referring to. Tks; 9/22/25, 8:58 AM
Achilles said...: These leftists will be happier somewhere else. They need to leave.; 9/22/25, 9:00 AM
Chris said...: This is what they do. They frighten people into thinking THEY are in danger, after they and their rhetoric have begun to get people killed. I have a gay friend. We've been good friends for years, and recently he told me that HE's in danger and can no longer be my friend due to my politics because it put's him in danger. I know a couple, the woman a sociologist, they had a boy. when he was 2-3 she started transing him. They just moved to the Netherlands because THEY are in danger. Ugh. I'm so done with these people.; 9/22/25, 9:02 AM
Peachy said...: The left demand that books about sex sit in your child's school library.
Not just sex - pedo sex and homo sex... fetish sex... gender confusion sex... Not innocent birds and bees.; 9/22/25, 9:05 AM
Jaq said...: My personal experience with Democrats IRL is that they have minor qualms about shooting Charlie Kirk, but zero problems with shooting up the ABC affiliate.; 9/22/25, 9:07 AM
William said...: Lawdy, lawdy, Miss Claudie - -
I never heard such self-aggrandizing poppycock in my life. What is WRONG with these people? They're simply sending out a message that says, "I'm messed up. All I need is a soap box to make it all go away."

Quite sad, actually.; 9/22/25, 9:08 AM
David53 said...: The hundreds of transgenders murdered since Kirk’s assassination speak power to their words.; 9/22/25, 9:11 AM
Iman said...: Always so centered on self, and yet reflection never enters into it. Always “poor me”, always the victim.; 9/22/25, 9:12 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Tearing down the border between male and female is part of creating a borderless world.; 9/22/25, 9:13 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Here's why I put "[the work of civil society]" after "this process of disowning."

The paragraph that precedes what I quoted is: "President Trump is remaking the country in his image: crude, harsh, gratuitously mean. The ongoing attack on civil society, which his administration plans to intensify in the name of Charlie Kirk, is a part of this program. Civil society makes life more livable. The administration’s message is that the work of civil society no longer belongs in this country."; 9/22/25, 9:14 AM
Hassayamper said...: I see where the DFL candidate for Hennepin County Attorney claims he has a trans six-year-old and he's been treating his son like a girl for three years.

That’s child abuse.

This guy has a mental illness himself, or more likely, is a doormat for his domineering, mentally ill wife.; 9/22/25, 9:14 AM
Martha said...: The COMMENTS section is now closed —maybe M. GESSEN did not like the type of comments her op Ed engendered.; 9/22/25, 9:14 AM
Ann Althouse said...: So "the work of civil society no longer belongs in this country" = there is a "process of disowning."; 9/22/25, 9:14 AM
ga6 said...: From his/hers/its playlist:

https://www.bing.com/search?pc=MOZI&form=MOZLBR&q=Poor+Poor+Pitiful+Me

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=%22Poor+Twisted+Me&&mid=E23D758C89C114523B79E23D758C89C114523B79&FORM=VAMGZC; 9/22/25, 9:15 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "The COMMENTS section is now closed —maybe M. GESSEN did not like the type of comments her op Ed engendered."

The newest comments are dated September 21, so nothing from this morning. So it wasn't an objection to people that went there through my link (unless there were comments that were deleted).; 9/22/25, 9:16 AM
Jaq said...: "This is what they do. They frighten people into thinking THEY are in danger."

Right now Germany is in the process of re-arming, or trying to, without energy or steel production, because of the threat of a country that supposedly has taken a million casualties and hasn't even crossed the Dnieper River.

The Democrats know their Goebbels. The first thing that Goebbels would have done is accused his opponents of being Nazis.; 9/22/25, 9:17 AM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: Maybe transies need their own country, something like The Island of Misfit Toys. Instead of cowboys riding ostriches and squirt guns that shoot jelly, they will be crying "I'm a woman with a penis".
The difference is the misfit toys were made whole when they were adopted by a child. But transies adopt the child instead and mutilate them to make them as miserable as transies.; 9/22/25, 9:21 AM
Sebastian said...: "my inexact way of measuring the risk that someone would target" How does that risk compare to the risk of kids at Christian schools or conservative speakers on campus being targeted by trans or trans-allied killers?

As others have noted, it is remarkable how a trans person turns instances of trans violence into self-justifying self-pity. A peculiar kind of cruel political narcissism. In all the Dem professions of opposition to political violence, has even one of them denounced it?; 9/22/25, 9:22 AM
Breezy said...: So "the work of civil society no longer belongs in this country" = there is a "process of disowning."

Ah - globalism is the answer! We are not responsible enough to do civility…. Aka civility BS.; 9/22/25, 9:22 AM
Peachy said...: Trump: "If speech is violence then some are bound to conclude that violence is justified to stop speech."

what side said speech is violence?; 9/22/25, 9:25 AM
Wince said...: "Writes M. Gessen"?

Is that pronounced "I'm guessin'"?; 9/22/25, 9:28 AM
Iman said...: shim hardest hit…; 9/22/25, 9:33 AM
Birches said...: Oh brother; 9/22/25, 9:33 AM
wendybar said...: "The administration’s message is that the work of civil society no longer belongs in this country."

Can't blame that on Trump. I blame the left for calling Presidents Hitler for years, and we on the right have tried to stay civil, but we are tired. We don't care about the hate from the left anymore. THEY did that....not Trump.; 9/22/25, 9:41 AM
Tina Trent said...: Wrong. Trans mass shooters are overrepresented in terms of their population. The absolute numbers are small because they make up such a small part of the population, but they commit mass/political crimes nearly twice as much as their population would indicate. According to a writer to Steve Sailer, about 2% of this category of killings is committed by .6% of the population. Again, the numbers of shooting are very small, but as the trans movement ramps up and becomes more about a radicalized imaginary victim group rather than real trans people, expect those numbers to rise. They have also become more prevalent in recent years, as "trans" has become more of a glorified victimization trend than an actual, rare occurance.; 9/22/25, 9:41 AM
R C Belaire said...: Inga? Kak? What say you?; 9/22/25, 9:43 AM
Tina Trent said...: Cbrist: domeztic and other internicene violence is commited by gays -- by other gays. He has less to fear of you than by his own cohort.; 9/22/25, 9:43 AM
Peachy said...: anyone recall if Trump ever called Kamala a fascist?

I do not.; 9/22/25, 9:45 AM
Skeptical Voter said...: Narcissist whack a doodle complains no one has taken a shot at him--he has a lot of fever dreams. Or is it "they" have a lot of fever dreams. Whatever.; 9/22/25, 9:48 AM
Beasts of England said...: ‘Narcissism is when you witness the worst American political assassination in fifty years and somehow find a way to make yourself the victim.’

Precisely.; 9/22/25, 9:49 AM
Achilles said...: Ann Althouse said...
Here's why I put "[the work of civil society]" after "this process of disowning."

The paragraph that precedes what I quoted is: "President Trump is remaking the country in his image: crude, harsh, gratuitously mean. The ongoing attack on civil society, which his administration plans to intensify in the name of Charlie Kirk, is a part of this program. Civil society makes life more livable. The administration’s message is that the work of civil society no longer belongs in this country."

If it was just an assassin who killed Kirk things would be moving on to some extent.

But it isn’t the assassin that is the main problem.

It is how Democrats are acting right now.

They just have to leave. They will be happier in a different country.; 9/22/25, 9:57 AM
Maynard said...: NYT and WaPo gaslighting mainly serves to keep loyal Democrats in line.

They are the useful idiots of our time.; 9/22/25, 10:07 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: "If it was just an assassin who killed Kirk things would be moving on to some extent.

But it isn’t the assassin that is the main problem.

It is how Democrats are acting right now."

Exactly. The new talking point is that "the left" didn't shoot nobody, it was some waka- doodle nutbar. So please ignore the gloating, celebratory posts from tens of thousands of leftist ghouls and the years of eliminationist, dehumanizing rhetoric from the highest reaches of the Democrat party that continues today.; 9/22/25, 10:11 AM
hombre said...: The NYT is in the business of preserving and adding to the mental instability of its readers. They are a bulwark of Gramscian Marxism since they can’t be stupid enough to believe their bullshit.; 9/22/25, 10:14 AM
n.n said...: The "useful idiots" or the "good Germans... Americans" are a sympathetic population in left-wing regimes.; 9/22/25, 10:17 AM
Dude1394 said...: Every damn thing he said was without evidence. Typical democrat pablum.; 9/22/25, 10:20 AM
n.n said...: Under Critical Diversity Theory, aligned axes powers... interests can be treated as a bloc act. Doh! #HateLovesAbortion; 9/22/25, 10:21 AM
Jamie said...: Civil society makes life more livable.

...he or she asserted without evidence.

Civil society, lately, has policed speech and behavior in ways that lost school-age kids at least a semester of meaningful instruction - a full year in a lot of states. That lost people their jobs and in some cases their entire livelihoods. That kept people huddled in their houses, drinking. That tarred half the country with a label that is second only to the n-word in social unscceptability. That almost got Andy Ngo killed, what, twice? and did get Charlie Kirk killed - and, by the way, is probably also at fault in the killing of the Holmans. That caused downtowns all over the country to buy plywood in mass quantities... which then charmingly tried to disguise the fact that they feared for their businesses by allowing the production of "murals." That demoralized (demoralizes) and physically threatened (threatens) all law enforcement. That has so pretzeled the English language that we can't even figure out if a news story is talking about one person or a group, but to use ambiguous words incorrectly might be a crime, depending on where you live.

For whom has civil society made life more livable? Maybe this writer, in that he or she can speak and act with impunity (as we all should be able to do, up to the point where our swinging fist encounters another person's nose, in the old teacher illustration of the concept) while anyone this person doesn't like has to self-police or else. But I think I'd argue that it hasn't even made life more livable for this person, since there's undoubtedly someone one rung higher on the intersectionality ladder who can demand that this person dance to a different tune.

Jon the American right, and live and let live.; 9/22/25, 10:23 AM
Original Mike said...: "I’ve sat through over 50 hours of Charlie Kirk’s videos as an ethnically Black American. Not one racist word. Not 1. What Democrats do is cut snippets, strip context, and shove sound bites at the same gullible slob audience too lazy to fact-check. That isn’t exposing racism .. it’s manufacturing lies to spark division."; 9/22/25, 10:26 AM
n.n said...: Now that women have been pushed to the back of the bus, girls under the bus, and babies sequestered in sanctuary states, the new handmade tales are brayed about simulants with prospective leverage and salivating about forward-looking profits. Black Lives Matter not.; 9/22/25, 10:26 AM
Humperdink said...: Yep, it wasn’t the shooting of Charlie Kirk, it was the Commie reaction to it. Who are these people? Citizens who want to participate in a civil society? I think not. Not when they cheer and then produce lists of the next candidates to be 86’d.; 9/22/25, 10:29 AM
CJinPA said...: Ann,

He also compares Kirk's murder to a young Jewish man who killed a Nazi diplomat, which was used by Hitler as a pretext for Kristallnacht.

"Tyler Robinson might have felt a similar desperate fury" as the young Jewish man," he writes.

Thereby making a more direct, and dangerous, Trans-Assassination link than the paper that pays him has made in its news section.; 9/22/25, 10:32 AM
Jamie said...: The new talking point is that "the left" didn't shoot nobody, it was some waka- doodle nutbar.

OF COURSE it was a waka-doodle nutbar. It's ALWAYS a waka-doodle nutbar. Is anyone going to claim that a sniper, outside a military or law enforcement setting, is a rational actor? The shooter's motive is important insofar as it points to a societal problem we have to try to alleviate, since I doubt there's any solving it. But the Democrat reaction is the story - from the refusal of so many Democrats to join in the resolution honoring Kirk's commitment to open dialogue to the attempts to blame him for his own death to the nauseating celebrations.

It's like the Hunter Biden laptop story. How hard did the Democrats try to make everyone believe that the story was Hunter Biden's drug use and general grossness, instead of JOE Biden's influence-peddling to which the laptop attested?; 9/22/25, 10:32 AM
hawkeyedjb said...: "Charlie Kirk was murdered; it's all about me."

Yes, yes. "World ends. Women, minorities and transgenders hardest hit."; 9/22/25, 10:34 AM
Mason G said...: ""President Trump is remaking the country in his image: crude, harsh, gratuitously mean."

Really? I haven't seen him remaking anything around here and things/people are not crude, harsh, gratuitously mean.

Except for maybe the more crazed Democrats. But then, they've always been like that.; 9/22/25, 10:34 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: An impenetrable farrago of bullshit.; 9/22/25, 10:41 AM
Joe Bar said...: "I’ll still be thinking of me, Al Franken. But for you, you’ll be thinking more about how things affect me, Al Franken. "; 9/22/25, 10:41 AM
Ron Winkleheimer said...: "OF COURSE it was a waka-doodle nutbar. It's ALWAYS a waka-doodle nutbar. Is anyone going to claim that a sniper, outside a military or law enforcement setting, is a rational actor? The shooter's motive is important insofar as it points to a societal problem we have to try to alleviate, since I doubt there's any solving it. But the Democrat reaction is the story -"

Yes, I agree. "The left" didn't shoot anybody. But a hell of a lot of leftists cheered when it happened and a hell of a lot of leftists are up for it happening to more of the people they perceive as evil Nazi scum.; 9/22/25, 10:46 AM
Original Mike said...: "On Monday morning, before returning from a weekend away, I entered the following words into the search bar on my phone: 'famous trans people.'"

I'm worried about my safety, so I'll publish on oped in the NYT.; 9/22/25, 10:46 AM
narciso said...: roske makes the 10th attempt, what foolishness is gessen attempting here,; 9/22/25, 10:46 AM