Fact Check: Is Kyle Rittenhouse Transgender?

He’s not. But apparenty some far right wackos think Kyle Rittenhouse used to be a girl or something.

by Evan Urquhart

In Newsweek, which apparently still does responsible journalism sometimes, a fact check on a Twitter rumor that Kyle Rittenhouse is secretly transgender. (Newsweek’s fact checker says: He isn’t.)

According to the check, bylined Tim Norton, the rumor Rittenhouse might be a trans guy originated on a dodgy Twitter account, by someone who believes (or purports to believe for clout) that the trial of Rittenhouse for the murder of a mentally-ill man in the middle of an uprising against police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was staged, and that Rittenhouse is really a 26-year-old police officer, and not an 18-year-old idiot.

The article from Newsweek seems well researched and responsible. They’re warning their increasingly right wing audience against falling for obvious conspiracy theories, which is good, for an increasingly right wing publication.

The one trick they do seem to have missed is the context of transvestigation.

Transvestigation is a conspiracy theory that blends extreme transphobia with probable mental illness. Transphobes often say that they can always tell if a person was originally assigned male at birth or female. The truth, of course, is that no one can tell with perfect certainty. Trans people come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and so do cis people. Some cis people have “clocky” tells which make you think they might have been transgender. Some trans people have few such tells, or none of them. People in the grip of the transvestigation conspiracy theory seem to grasp this, and then it seems to break them. They see trans people everywhere, celebrities, politicians, even their own friends and family.

The mental health implications of this paranoid line of thinking often lead to people who don’t seem in very good shape and who could be dangerous. It’s hard to laugh at them, because it’s often clear they’re really hurting. If any such individuals are reading, please get help. Find someone you trust, to help bring you back into reality. Everybody isn’t trans. Just, some of us. And you won’t always know who. But that’s okay, we’re honestly just normal people.