archive https://archive.ph/7ANwn
As a former restaurant critic, I don’t get to go to dinner on assignment much anymore. But last week, I spent a grueling few hours in the private back room of a restaurant in North Beach, listening to a crowd gnash their teeth about “parental rights,” and the Trans Conspiracy to Destroy the American Family, while noshing on very dry garlic bread.
Hosted by the San Francisco Republican Party, the event was billed by the group’s chairman John Dennis as “a reasonable conversation for parents who have concerns.” Speakers included Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, a Bay Area-based former social worker and a leader in the right-wing organization MOM Army; Erin Friday, a San Francisco attorney who spoke about rescuing her child from “transgenderism”; Sierra, a woman who formerly identified as transgender; and Brie Hanni, the San Mateo County chair of the ultra-conservative Moms for Liberty and Moms for America organizations.
Organizers claimed that this was the first GOP event on this topic in California, so I attended to get a sense of how deep into the anti-trans rabbit hole the local wing had descended. Because as anti-trans politics play out in the wider United States, it’s clear that the “parental rights” angle is simply a prelude to banning gender care for adults. In the past year, lawmakers in several states, including Missouri, Florida and Arizona, have followed up on bans on treatment for minors with bans on gender care for adults. I wanted to know: Are local anti-trans activists willing to go that far?
The event was tightly locked down “for safety reasons.” You weren’t told the location until you paid the $20 for the event, or $55 if you wanted in on the buffet dinner (which my morbid curiosity insisted that I did). The alleyway entrance to the restaurant, American Bites, had two layers of security.
I learned from my restaurant critic days that a costume can only do so much to obscure your identity, but I nevertheless spent the day leading up to the event hunting around the city for things to wear. I hit up my fellow queers for accessories and suggestions for clothes that reminded them of the churches they grew up in.
This wasn’t your everyday infiltration, so I tried to look convincingly straight and cisgendered. As a food critic, I hid myself to gain a fairer representation of dinner service for readers; this time, I have to admit that I was worried about being fingered as a member of the “trans cult.” My hair is too queer; my garish button-down shirts, definitely queer.
Despite anxieties over my appearance, I apparently passed anti-trans muster and made it through security into the sold-out event to dine alongside 100 or so people sipping cocktails and loading limp romaine lettuce and chicken piccata onto their plates. A mix of young and old people, mostly white with some Asian Americans, were in attendance, including a former candidate for Congressional District 14 in the East Bay, Tom Wong.
One would think that an event like this, hosted in this sapphire-blue city embedded in the forehead of a blue state, would handle its politics with a softer, more euphemism-laden touch.
Nuance, however, clearly wasn’t on the menu.
“If you are a man in the Democrat Party, your highest value men are the ones who wear dresses,” said Dennis, eliciting some faint giggles. “We appreciate masculine clothes for our men. And we’re the only ones who are fighting against this.”
“They’re afraid of us,” said Garfield-Jaeger during her 10-minute talk, which cast the American therapy community as “brainwashed.” She is an advocate for conversion therapy, a practice denounced by the American Psychiatric Association in 2007, and claimed that therapists are now trained to manipulate parents. “This is not medicine,” she said. “It’s transgender destruction.”
In the coda of her presentation, meanwhile, Friday displayed a photo of a trans person’s bare chest, healing after top surgery, and pointed to the self-inflicted scars on the person’s arms. This person “paid the medical community to do the last self-harm to (them),” she said. Later, Friday claimed that gender affirmation was a cloaked system of eugenics. “Most of these kids have mental illness … so they’re being sterilized,” she said.
All pretense of this being about children fell off when Friday proposed banning gender care outright, but settled for outlawing it for anyone under 25, for “pragmatist” reasons. Folks in the crowd yelled that anyone under 25 shouldn’t vote, either.
I cut my beige chicken piccata into increasingly tiny pieces, swallowing it as demurely as possible while listening to my tablemate talk about San Francisco politics. He wasn’t a true believer in this Ron DeSantis-style culture war stuff, he said. We talked about the Kehinde Wiley exhibit at the de Young Museum, and he said his only objection was that they could have included some more reference images, which I couldn’t disagree with. He said the Brussels sprouts were surprisingly good, and I couldn’t disagree with that, either.
When the lights dimmed and the wide television screens behind the bar flipped from tranquil fireplace loops to a documentary on the “trans tsunami,” the lemon-and-cream piccata sauce turned sour in my throat.
I didn’t even mind when a server took my half-full plate when I looked away; I couldn’t keep eating even if I wanted to. My stomach flipped when the screens played TikToks of young trans people and the crowd reacted in scorn. “Ew!” someone shouted. “Groomers!” someone behind me muttered.
While Sierra, the de-transitioner, regaled the crowd with stories of blood blisters and botched surgeries, I nibbled on a stale chocolate chip cookie and listened to the audience make retching sounds. When she finished her talk, she was rushed by several fans, cooing in awe as if she were Taylor Swift.
As the night wore on, the crowd got drunker — and louder.
During a Q&A session at the end of the event, the speakers gave the audience the moment they were waiting for. An attendee asked them, “Who are the powers of interest behind transgender indoctrination, and what is their end goal?”
“The end goal is really dark,” said Garfield-Jaeger, and the crowd hissed and whooped in anticipation of the revelation. “Trans humanism, pedophilia … destroying the family, our culture and our society. Marxism.” The crowd went wild.
I went home, stripped off my wig and pearls, and threw up.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the name of a speaker.
Reach Soleil Ho: soleil@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hooleil
As a former restaurant critic, I don’t get to go to dinner on assignment much anymore. But last week, I spent a grueling few hours in the private back room of a restaurant in North Beach, listening to a crowd gnash their teeth about “parental rights,” and the Trans Conspiracy to Destroy the American Family, while noshing on very dry garlic bread.
Hosted by the San Francisco Republican Party, the event was billed by the group’s chairman John Dennis as “a reasonable conversation for parents who have concerns.” Speakers included Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, a Bay Area-based former social worker and a leader in the right-wing organization MOM Army; Erin Friday, a San Francisco attorney who spoke about rescuing her child from “transgenderism”; Sierra, a woman who formerly identified as transgender; and Brie Hanni, the San Mateo County chair of the ultra-conservative Moms for Liberty and Moms for America organizations.
Organizers claimed that this was the first GOP event on this topic in California, so I attended to get a sense of how deep into the anti-trans rabbit hole the local wing had descended. Because as anti-trans politics play out in the wider United States, it’s clear that the “parental rights” angle is simply a prelude to banning gender care for adults. In the past year, lawmakers in several states, including Missouri, Florida and Arizona, have followed up on bans on treatment for minors with bans on gender care for adults. I wanted to know: Are local anti-trans activists willing to go that far?
The event was tightly locked down “for safety reasons.” You weren’t told the location until you paid the $20 for the event, or $55 if you wanted in on the buffet dinner (which my morbid curiosity insisted that I did). The alleyway entrance to the restaurant, American Bites, had two layers of security.
I learned from my restaurant critic days that a costume can only do so much to obscure your identity, but I nevertheless spent the day leading up to the event hunting around the city for things to wear. I hit up my fellow queers for accessories and suggestions for clothes that reminded them of the churches they grew up in.
This wasn’t your everyday infiltration, so I tried to look convincingly straight and cisgendered. As a food critic, I hid myself to gain a fairer representation of dinner service for readers; this time, I have to admit that I was worried about being fingered as a member of the “trans cult.” My hair is too queer; my garish button-down shirts, definitely queer.
Despite anxieties over my appearance, I apparently passed anti-trans muster and made it through security into the sold-out event to dine alongside 100 or so people sipping cocktails and loading limp romaine lettuce and chicken piccata onto their plates. A mix of young and old people, mostly white with some Asian Americans, were in attendance, including a former candidate for Congressional District 14 in the East Bay, Tom Wong.
One would think that an event like this, hosted in this sapphire-blue city embedded in the forehead of a blue state, would handle its politics with a softer, more euphemism-laden touch.
Nuance, however, clearly wasn’t on the menu.
“If you are a man in the Democrat Party, your highest value men are the ones who wear dresses,” said Dennis, eliciting some faint giggles. “We appreciate masculine clothes for our men. And we’re the only ones who are fighting against this.”
“They’re afraid of us,” said Garfield-Jaeger during her 10-minute talk, which cast the American therapy community as “brainwashed.” She is an advocate for conversion therapy, a practice denounced by the American Psychiatric Association in 2007, and claimed that therapists are now trained to manipulate parents. “This is not medicine,” she said. “It’s transgender destruction.”
In the coda of her presentation, meanwhile, Friday displayed a photo of a trans person’s bare chest, healing after top surgery, and pointed to the self-inflicted scars on the person’s arms. This person “paid the medical community to do the last self-harm to (them),” she said. Later, Friday claimed that gender affirmation was a cloaked system of eugenics. “Most of these kids have mental illness … so they’re being sterilized,” she said.
All pretense of this being about children fell off when Friday proposed banning gender care outright, but settled for outlawing it for anyone under 25, for “pragmatist” reasons. Folks in the crowd yelled that anyone under 25 shouldn’t vote, either.
I cut my beige chicken piccata into increasingly tiny pieces, swallowing it as demurely as possible while listening to my tablemate talk about San Francisco politics. He wasn’t a true believer in this Ron DeSantis-style culture war stuff, he said. We talked about the Kehinde Wiley exhibit at the de Young Museum, and he said his only objection was that they could have included some more reference images, which I couldn’t disagree with. He said the Brussels sprouts were surprisingly good, and I couldn’t disagree with that, either.
When the lights dimmed and the wide television screens behind the bar flipped from tranquil fireplace loops to a documentary on the “trans tsunami,” the lemon-and-cream piccata sauce turned sour in my throat.
I didn’t even mind when a server took my half-full plate when I looked away; I couldn’t keep eating even if I wanted to. My stomach flipped when the screens played TikToks of young trans people and the crowd reacted in scorn. “Ew!” someone shouted. “Groomers!” someone behind me muttered.
While Sierra, the de-transitioner, regaled the crowd with stories of blood blisters and botched surgeries, I nibbled on a stale chocolate chip cookie and listened to the audience make retching sounds. When she finished her talk, she was rushed by several fans, cooing in awe as if she were Taylor Swift.
As the night wore on, the crowd got drunker — and louder.
During a Q&A session at the end of the event, the speakers gave the audience the moment they were waiting for. An attendee asked them, “Who are the powers of interest behind transgender indoctrination, and what is their end goal?”
“The end goal is really dark,” said Garfield-Jaeger, and the crowd hissed and whooped in anticipation of the revelation. “Trans humanism, pedophilia … destroying the family, our culture and our society. Marxism.” The crowd went wild.
I went home, stripped off my wig and pearls, and threw up.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the name of a speaker.
Reach Soleil Ho: soleil@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @hooleil
