BITE Model: Behavior Control

Using the BITE Model of authoritarian control to analyze how the trans movement exerts behavior control.

This is part one of a series that will contain four parts total.

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BITE model

The trans movement is often described as having “cultlike qualities”, or even as outright being a cult. Ex-members of the ideology and the loved ones of people who are sucked into it report eerily similar trajectories and dynamics that reflect the intense manipulation and authoritarianism of the movement. Others, usually those who are currently devout to gender ideology, object to this description, citing the lack of centralization in a leader as evidence that “cult” and “cult-like” are not accurate descriptors, and that calling the trans community a cult hinders our ability to name “actual cults”.  However, the lack of a central charismatic leader does not automatically place the trans movement decidedly in the “not a cult” camp. Groups can exhibit manipulative and authoritarian dynamics without a central leader and can even closely resemble the dynamics within traditional cult structures. There are models we can use to analyze the behavior of groups and get a sense of how much their behavior aligns with what is understood to be cult behavior.

Steven Hasan is an author and counselor specializing in authoritarian groups and belief systems. Though his work has been controversial, particularly in the ways he has applied it to politics (something with which I personally disagree), his work on describing and understanding the fundamentals of authoritarian group control has been groundbreaking. While other scholars have tended to focus on cult dynamics within a more literally religious framework, Hasan’s work has explored how authoritarian control is used in groups that lay outside a conventionally religious framework. Authoritarian emotional and behavior control, which he calls “undue influence”, can be present in everything from religious sects to political ideologies and activist groups, crime and terrorist organizations, multilevel marketing schemes, and smaller scale situations in families and interpersonal relationships. Based on research into authoritarian groups and ideologies, Hasan developed the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control to help individuals, families, and law enforcement examine groups, belief systems, or people they believe may be exerting undue influence. We can use the BITE Model to understand how the trans movement exerts control over the Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotions of those who subscribe to its ideology.

Now, I am not the first person to have done this kind of analysis. Others have used the BITE Model to examine the trans movement, and recovery from authoritarian control in the trans movement has been a subject of discussion among desisters and detransitioners for a long time, but there are aspects I have observed that have not been covered in these previous works.

It is important to understand that because of the internet, the “trans cult” is not one group operating in one place in one particular way. This is one reason that the BITE Model is useful; it allows us to dissect these group dynamics even though they fall outside the particularities of cults that existed before or outside of the internet. The internet facilitates the spread of this viral, manipulative ideology into communities which themselves are distinct (such as fan or hobby forums and educational institutions) and are not overtly connected in either digital or physical space. One can think of these as “micro-cults”, where smaller groups of individuals exert undue influence over each other but under the umbrella of a more wide-reaching ideology. These micro-cults typically have their own hierarchy of individuals, in which some individuals play a more direct leadership role in the authoritarian control, and others are more like followers. The observable effects on behavior will be different based on whether the group is primarily online or primarily in-person, and I will do my best to make these distinctions wherever applicable.

One final consideration is that what is called “gender ideology” cannot be completely separated from social justice ideology. Social justice is the ideology or movement based on the idea that humanity can be broken down into identity axes which relate to one another based on their status of “privileged” or “oppressed”. The “oppressed” must be liberated by distributing societal resources and changing societal attitudes to be more “equitable”, ie. more resources and more generous attitudes go to people belonging to “oppressed” categories, and those who are “privileged” should forfeit resources and accept lowered social status and unkind treatment. Sometimes called “identity politics” or “intersectionality”, this wider ideology has been brewing in our culture for decades and has reached critical mass with the large scale radicalization capacity and information control technology provided by social media. The idea of “gender identity” is perhaps the purest form of this ideology, but it is my opinion that not only should gender ideology be rejected as a toxic, authoritarian belief system, but ideologies along other “identity” axes as well, because they all contain the same fundamental poisons of Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control. There are elements of authoritarian control that are relevant to the trans movement but have their roots in social justice ideology more broadly, and I will make that distinction wherever applicable as well.  

Behavior control is an aspect of the trans movement that looks very different depending on if an individual is participating in a group that is primarily online or primarily in-person. Online, there is only so much influence messaging and rhetoric can have over real life behavior, but it is not uncommon for in-person groups to behave in an extremely authoritarian manner. University LGBT clubs/organizations, “support groups”, and queer housing situations are some examples or where behavior control can reach similar levels to that of other offline cultic groups. Members may face rigid rules about socialization, sex, self expression and be physically or socially punished for behavior that violates the rules of the groups.

Online, there are similar mechanisms at play, but of course they will look different and potentially be less extreme, though still highly influential.

1. Regulate the individuals physical reality

In this interview with Benjamin Boyce, a detransitioned young man who goes by Limpida online describes how during his trans identification, the group he lived with at his university conducted “restorative justice hearings”, a form of behavior control which uses shaming rituals and social isolation. He recalls how he was forced to remain in a sectioned-off portion of the group’s house without permission to leave the designated area, and how under these abusive cult dynamics, he felt that it was his responsibility to earn back the good favor of the group and did not understand how abusive the situation truly was.

               “I wasn’t allowed to talk about it with anybody, and it turned out after the fact that no one outside of the house actually knew that I was part of a restorative justice hearing, they just thought I dropped off the face of the planet. I was under watch. They segregated me from the rest of the house … I had no stove, I had no washing machine … I had to buy my own equipment for cooking. I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs for any reason, and they even put up a curtain by the back stairwell so they wouldn’t have to see me while walking upstairs.”

The other members of the group (also under the influence of behavior control) were regulating his physical reality. Gender and social justice ideology permits (or requires) this level of abuse to create an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, and desperation which discourages critical thought and honest expression, a hallmark of cults and authoritarian ideologies.

In this instance, the group in question was not an exclusively trans/queer group, but a social justice/Black Lives Matter group that emphasized “queerness” in its ideology, which is often the case. As stated previously, trans is one “axis of oppression” within a wider radical social ideology. Though there are strains of the ideology that focus more exclusively on gender, or there may be individuals who identify as trans but are not especially radicalized, “gender ideology” can never be fully separated from social justice or intersectionality as a whole, and a large percentage of trans and nonbinary identifying people today are radicalized into social justice ideology.  

2. Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates

Also applicable to Limpida’s situation, this aspect of behavior control can be seen in in-person groups and online. Members of groups both online and offline monitor each other for who members follow online and whose posts are shared or liked. If a member of the group is suddenly deemed “problematic” for whatever reason, members are expected to shun that person and will monitor and enforce this rule against each other. If a member is caught associating with or sharing or liking a post by someone deemed “problematic”, others in the group will post screenshots to publicly shame the individual and accuse them of associating with bigotry and harming marginalized people. That person will likely be punished using something akin to the “restorative justice hearings” Limpida describes, or one of the other methods of behavior control I describe in point 9 of this article.

An example: The acronym “TERF” stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist”, but at this point it has become a catch-all for “insufficiently conformant to gender ideology”, and does not necessitate a person being a literal radical feminist or even overall trans-critical. Someone who is deemed a TERF could make an entirely unrelated post, like posting a picture of their cat, and trans people will flock to it, sharing with the comment “OP is a TERF”, alerting fellow cult members to block the account so that they do not accidentally interact with a TERF (and therefore receive punishment) by liking or sharing the cat picture. If a group member were to share the cat picture, unbeknownst that it was the cat of a “TERF”, other members would message them something along the lines of “I’m going to assume you didn’t already know this, but just so you know, OP is a TERF. Delete this.” If they don’t delete it, the next step would be to screenshot the shared post and write a call out post (more on this later), alerting the community that a member is associating with a TERF. Then that member might themselves be deemed a TERF, and it would from that point be expected from other members to avoid following, sharing, or liking posts from that person.

3. Dictate when, how, and with whom the member has sex.

I know multiple young women both online and offline who have been socially pressured into engaging in sex acts or sharing explicit images with “trans women”. Women who are lesbian or bisexual can be pressured to prove they believe trans women are women by engaging in sexual relationships with them. Lesbians have been speaking out about this online for years, and one mustn’t look far to see the kind of rhetoric used by the trans community aimed at guilt tripping women into engaging in sex acts with trans women. In in-person trans groups, I imagine this pressure is even more palpable, and there have also been instances of women writing online on forums such as reddit, confessing that they have been engaging in sex acts with '“trans women” in their social circle out of fear of social stigma if they were to reject the “trans woman”.

When a woman is sexually assaulted by a “trans woman”, the other members of the group may either refuse to believe it or justify the behavior on the basis that “trans women” are oppressed by “cis women”, therefore a “cis woman” cannot be sexually abused by a “trans woman”, because the cis woman “holds the power in the situation”. I know a young woman who was raped by a trans woman, and when she attempted to confide in her friends (also indoctrinated into the gender cult), they became angry with her for accusing a trans woman of something as horrific as rape and suggested that she was making the accusation because she was transphobic and feeling shame over having consensual sex with a trans woman.

As a teenager, I had a Tumblr friend who had been chatting with a “trans woman” online for months, believing they had a friendship. All the while, this person was putting forward a victim narrative about being lonely and suicidal because society was transphobic and nobody would date him. He would ask my friend for explicit photos, and eventually she gave in. When she told me about this, she felt ashamed, but refused to acknowledge any abusive behavior on the part of the “trans woman”, making justifications for why society made him do it. I remember there being multiple events on Tumblr where a popular trans-identified male blogger would be called out for predatory behavior once it became so prolific and extreme that the community could no longer hide or justify it. Often, the predation was based on inducing guilt in women for not being attracted to “trans women”, thus slowly encouraging them to take further and further steps towards “proving” that they were not transphobic or averse to trans women sexually.

7. Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence

Financial exploitation and manipulation is a massive problem in gender ideology and social justice communities. Today, there have been so many scammers exposed that I think even devout cult members are a bit more careful, but transition fundraisers and other manipulative online panhandlers are still prolific. When I was indoctrinated, I felt constant pressure to donate to “trans women’s” PayPal accounts. “Trans women” would have their PayPal links in their blog descriptions and add them at the bottom of many of their posts. They would also make posts with passive aggressive language pressuring readers to donate to them and share the link. As a young minor at the time, I did not yet have my own bank account and could not donate to these PayPal links, but I remember feeling extremely guilty that I could not donate. I felt anxious and afraid that somebody would find out that I was not donating and would ruminate on how I would explain that I could not donate because I didn’t have a bank account to donate from, but worried that this would be seen as an excuse. One year, I was gifted an Amazon gift card worth $100 for Christmas, but instead of being excited to use it myself, I felt relieved that I finally could show that I was willing to donate to “trans women” by giving away my $100 gift card. I posted on Tumblr that I was giving it away, and asked trans women to message me if they wanted it. Hundreds of people responded, and I entered all the names into an online raffle program and gave it away to the name selected, after verifying that this person was indeed a “trans woman” through an interview.

There is an explicit dynamic in some parts of the trans community that female people (especially “cis women”) owe trans people money for the oppression they enable by existing, especially “trans women of color”. This is also seen in social justice more broadly where white people are made to feel they owe “POC” money, and I’m sure it exists in disability and fat activist communities as well. Young girls especially are guilt tripped and pressured into donating either their own money (if they have it), money they are gifted, or their parent’s money to trans people/trans women of color or organizations and fundraisers that purport to support them. Many of these fundraisers and organizations turn out to be scams, because scammers know how reliable it is that guilty young girls and women will donate money to “trans people/trans women of color”. I had a friend years ago who was black, identified as trans, and posted a plea for donations when Trump got elected, saying that Trump was going to come after trans people of color and they needed money to evade this fate. They made $2000 dollars in 24 hours! Yes, that’s two thousand. Most of the donations were from white women.

9. Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self-indoctrination including the internet

Obsessively consuming trans content on the internet, protesting, online pile-ons, even medical procedures could all fall under this category of group and/or self indoctrination and rituals. Most detransitioners and parents of trans-identifying teens and young adults report a very similar trajectory of indoctrination, in which the young person begins to spend much more time online, isolating from family and non-trans-identified peers, consuming trans social media content day in and day out. Online, people are told to “educate yourself” and socially punished for not being up to speed on current ideology. This results in a compulsive reading of ideological material to avoid shaming and reprimanding.

Protesting, which is not always something that makes national news and may be limited to small protests on university campuses or in local communities, is an important ritual to maintain the cult dynamic. It serves the purpose of uniting members in a highly emotionally stimulating environment around a shared goal. Shared chanting, dances, or other movements like raising fists in the air in unison, locking arms, holding hands are activities that bond groups of people on a physiological level. The planning that precedes protest and the identification of a situation or person as needing to be combatted with protest (because it violates the groups ideology) are also highly charged events that increase the emotionality and focus of the cult mentality. The “restorative justice hearings” Limpida describes in the interview serve a similar function, but since in this case the “protest” is against someone within the group, requiring members to turn on a friend, it has the added benefit of heightening fear, suspicion, and compliance between group members.

The online analogy to protesting is are pile-ons, brigading, and call outs. Group members identify a transgression, either by another group member or a person or organization the group wants to subdue, and begin a campaign of targeted social punishment. This can be a pile-on, in which many ideologues will comment on or share a transgressive post with insults, threats, and accusations. The sheer number of people involved in a pile on makes the victim feel terrified and isolated. If the victim is a group member, a pile-on can concretize the ideology to an even greater degree through fear and shaming. If the victim is not a member, they may become a reluctant supporter of the ideology due to the fear and shaming. For the participants in the pile on, the experience is emboldening and uniting. It gives the participants a sense of camaraderie, strength, and moral virtue (because they are condemning something the group sees as a moral violation).

A “call out” is often what precedes a pile-on. During a call out, a group member is identified as doing, saying, or even thinking something that goes against the ideology. This can be anything from being caught fraternizing with someone “problematic” to leaked private conversations where a member expresses doubts about the ideology, or even speculation that the member may not be as ideologically devoted as they purport to be. Another member or group of members will compile a “call out post”, citing all relevant “evidence” of these crimes, usually editorializing a fair amount, skewing the “evidence” to look as nefarious as possible. This is intended to rile up the community and direct a pile on in the direction of the victim. Of course, the victims friends are expected to participate and condemn their own friend, and they usually do. It’s like an online struggle session. It doesn’t matter how much the victim apologizes or grovels, their reaction will still be twisted and contorted to seem offensive to the rest of the group, inflaming the situation further.

Brigading is when one distinct community (say a forum or chat group) launches a spam campaign against another community. This is common with trans groups on Reddit and Discord who launch attacks against groups or forums they perceive as being “transphobic” or “TERFs” or “right wing”. The attacks consist of infiltrating the forum or chat and spamming with everything from threats and insults to pornography, gore, and in some extreme cases, child pornography. When attacks are this extreme, the goal is for moderators to see the extreme gore or pornography and shut down the entire forum or chat because of it. It’s a form of online ideological warfare and trans communities are especially well known for doing it. Like the other examples, it serves as a group indoctrination ritual to obsess over, infiltrate, and then unanimously attack and take down an “enemy” group.

11. Rewards and punishments to modify behaviors, both positive and negative

I’ve already elaborated a fair amount on the kinds of punishments a member of the trans movement might experience, but of course there are rewards too. This typically comes in the form of “love bombing”, in which either a new member or a member who has achieved a milestone (like changing hairstyle, beginning hormones or undergoing a surgery) is overwhelmed with positive interactions from others in the group. They will be lauded as brave, beautiful, inspirational, and gain new social media followers and friends from the group. If they have posted photos of themselves online, their photos may be commented on and shared with lavish compliments and praise about the way their appearance has changed since adopting new clothing or hairstyles or undergoing medical procedures.

One of the greatest rewards offered is legitimacy. Legitimacy as in being treated as a legitimate human being with thoughts, feelings, and desires that are not automatically assumed to be malicious. When one participates in a social group where gender ideology is predominant, it becomes clear quickly that a “cis” (or straight, or white, or male) person is considered nearly inhuman. Nothing a “cis” (or straight, or white, or male) person can do can be authentic, understandable, excusable, deserving of gratitude, or benevolent. The “cis” person is villainized and demonized, constantly viewed with suspicion. According to the ideology, “cis” people are responsible for all of the pain, “oppression”, and “violence” trans people face (which is to a large extent fabricated), and they are bred from birth to want nothing more than to cause the pain and suffering of trans people. They want to take advantage of and exploit trans people in order to maintain their status as oppressor in society.  Therefore, they must not only be viewed with the utmost suspicion, but it is necessary for trans people to fight back and knock them down from their privileged state through chipping away at their self-esteem, insults, pile-ons, struggle sessions, derogatory and dehumanizing humor, and generally mean behavior. The “cis” person on the other hand, should accept this treatment as deserved for their oppressive status and suppress all feelings of indignation or offense. The “cis” person should even be thankful to the trans people for teaching them how to be a good “cis” person and understand their place. The “cis” person should not even express any emotions that are completely unrelated to gender ideology, such as feelings related to family issues, because this is distracting from the pain and suffering of transgender people, and nothing a “cis” person could ever experience, no matter how horrific, could ever compare to the pain and suffering of transgender people.

Especially to a young, isolated person who is emotionally dependent on communities where this dynamic is present, the pressure to avoid being seen as bad is immense. But after some time, it becomes unbearable accepting this kind of treatment. As the discomfort mounts, so does guilt and fear for feeling that discomfort. The greatest reward the trans cult offers is the ability to not only relieve this burden but join the ranks of those who by claiming oppression, can also claim legitimacy and humanity. Instead of being the abused scapegoat, they could join in on the abusive behavior and feel strong and accepted by others. All that “cis” person must do is announce that they are “questioning their gender” and would like to “use they/them pronouns for now”. Magically, they are transformed from the worst conceivable scum on earth into one of the most celebrated and sacred beings imaginable (especially if he is male, because trans women are the most celebrated and sacred, and of course “cis men” are the lowliest possible category of human).

Upon announcing that one is trans or questioning one’s gender, the other members of the community respond with positivity that could never be achieved as a “cis ally”, and each time that person takes another step deeper into the trans rabbit hole (such as changing hairstyle, wearing a binder or body shapewear, announcing a new gender identity evolution, or undergoing a medical procedure) the reward feedback loop is further solidified. Before long, it is unfathomable to that person that they would ever go back to being a “cis person”. In this highly emotionally charged, stressful environment of desperation and conformity, an illusion of permanence is created through the give and take dynamic between overwhelming acceptance and fierce rejection.

12. Discourage individualism, encourage group think

I will expand on this further in the information control section of this series, but there is no such thing as individualism in the trans movement. Ironically, it may look on the outside that the navel gazing about one’s gender identity indicates individualism or even hyper-individualism, but that assumes that to decide one has a “gender identity” is an organic, individual process. On the contrary, the interpretation of one’s emotions and experiences as being indicative of various gender identities is merely the creation of a cult identity that conforms to the group ideology. Individuals may have their own rationale for why they believe they are a certain gender, but the interpretation of the self as a gender rather than as the personality of a dynamic human being necessitates the forfeiture of individuality.

Members of the trans movement are required not only to conform ideologically, but to interpret themselves at every level through the lens of the ideology. A member of the trans movement can neither express any beliefs or consume any content that strays from trans dogma nor see themselves as a complex being, only a combination of several privileged and oppressed group identities, which are seen as monoliths without individual thought.

23. Separation of families

The separation of families is a core aspect of the trans movement and gender ideology. Of course, there are families where the parents themselves are gender ideologues and encourage or even force their children into trans identity and medical procedures, but these are a minority. The vast majority of families are ravaged by the radicalization of their adolescent or young adult family members. In the trans movement, parents are subjected to the very same treatment as any other “cis” people, in that they are viewed as malicious enemies to be either subdued through self-esteem abuse and manipulation or cut off and excommunicated. Young people radicalized into trans ideology no longer make a distinction between their authentic self and their cult identity, whose main purpose is to pursue further induction into transgenderism through social behaviors and medical procedures. When parents react to this with anything ranging from mild hesitancy to a parental boundary preventing the young person from pursuing these changes, their child will interpret this as the parent wanting to kill off or erase their identity (ie. their cult identity), which ignites intense anger and fear in the young person. On the other side are other members of the trans community feeding them a constant supply of positivity and “acceptance”, telling them they don’t need their parents and their parents (as “cis people”) will ultimately only want to hurt them, and would even prefer they die by suicide than accept a trans person living their truth (because that’s how “cis people” think).

The trans movement will encourage family separation through things like triangulation against parents by school personnel, social workers, or therapists siding with the indoctrinated child. The child will then feel like they don’t need or want their parents because they have adults who “accept” them in the movement. Other young members of the trans community may encourage things like running away from home, falsifying abuse and reporting parents to child protective services, or legal or financial emancipation, often facilitated by adult cult members.

Many of these parents are not actually abusive. They may be human beings who have made mistakes or miscalculations in parenting, but they fundamentally love their children and want to have a good relationship. Trans ideology exploits any weak points in that relationship and reframes them to conform to the ideology (any issues between parent and child are because the “cis” parent inherently hates and wants to suppress the “trans” child). Then, these tensions are inflamed and the trans community uses any behavior from the parent that deviates from total facilitation of the child’s transgender goals as further evidence that the parent hates the kid. The kid’s anger and hurt increases (because it hurts to find out you are “hated” by your parents, especially if you already had unresolved issues with them), leading to more inflammatory interactions. In response to these heightened tensions, the parents responses will become more emotional, which is experienced as even greater rejection, which of course is then used as further justification that the parents are bad, because the only “good” “cis” parent would completely suppress their emotions in favor the “trans” child’s perceived feelings and needs. The child is told by the trans community and ideology that any panicked, negative, or emotional reactions from the parents are indication that they are just like any other “cis” person, hateful and dangerous.

The worse the relationship and communication between parent and child was before the onset of this, the more out of control this dynamic of family antagonism will become. However, it is not uncommon to see relatively stable relationships between parents and the trans identified child’s siblings, but total estrangement between parents and the trans-identified child. This to me is one of the biggest indications that the trans movement does essentially function as a cult. This is why when I talk to parents who are experiencing a lot of antagonism from their child and their child’s trans-identified friends, I tell them to drop the gender debates and focus on creating a sense of stability in the relationship first, even if that means their child goes on to a medical procedure if they are legally able to do so. It is better to maintain a line of connection and a relatively calm relationship than to lose them to estrangement completely, which is what the trans movement wants. It wants it because people who are cut off from their family are even easier to manipulate.

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The other items on this list are not things which I think are common in trans communities online or offline, thankfully. Of course, due to the decentralized nature of the trans movement, there may very well be isolated instances of these types of events, but I have not heard of them.

In the following installments, I will discuss the ways in which the trans movement exhibits Information, Thought, and Emotional control over it’s members and supporters.