Eli Erlick, another central outlier

According to his own website, “Eli Erlick is an internationally-awarded writer, activist, and public speaker” who co-founded “An organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans students through collective action”.

He’s an American trans-identified male, a 25-year-old student who describes himself as ‘openly queer’ (ie heterosexual) and is the ‘she/her’ du jour for publications such as The New York Times, Teen Vogue and many LGBT youth organisations.

Despite these credentials, he has zero concern when a lesbian’s career is threatened and he clearly doesn’t like women generally, though he does enjoy mocking them. Of course, he’s a fervent advocate for the medicalisation of vulnerable children.

He’s also an abuser and a sexual predator, according to accusations made by several women.

There are many posts like this, accusing him of abuse and sexual assault.

In December 2018 the editor of LGBT website, INTO, removed an article written by Erlick and apologised for its publication.

The site cut all ties with Erlick and the editor in chief, Zach Stafford, made a formal statement:

“We were made aware of concerning allegations made in the past regarding the writer. Given the seriousness of these allegations, I personally spoke with the writer and immediately launched an internal investigation. INTO was not aware of these until Monday after publishing. And the writer will not be contributing to INTO for the time being.”

Several young women have written accounts describing how Erlick groomed and abused them.

What this poor girl described in a Facebook post is classic abusive behaviour.

“I didn’t report because I looked up to my assaulter all throughout high school. She was a role model to me and I initially felt special when finding out she wanted to have sex with me. I didn’t report because my assaulter is a trans youth icon and most folks would rather look away than accept the harm this person has inflicted on not only me but multiple others… I didn’t report because I believed in my assaulter. I believed it was an accident… I bled all over the bed and I felt sick and humiliated. My assaulter comforted me… My assaulter is Eli Erlick.”

Another young woman, Danie Yun Diamond, wrote a heart-breaking blog post about suffering similar sexual and emotional abuse.

Danie, who was from a Korean background, described herself as “A disabled, mentally ill non-binary QTPOC [queer trans person of colour]” at the time of writing about her experiences.

Danie described having a relationship with Erlick during which she was gaslit and manipulated and subjected to the most appalling emotional and sexual abuse. She also wrote about the trauma she suffered subsequently.

Danie published screenshots of the private Facebook messages between herself and Erlick. These communications occurred after their relationship ended and Danie had found the courage to confront him. Initially, it seems that Erlick accepted culpability and promised to withdraw from trans youth activism, as Danie had requested, to seek counselling.

However, this did not last long.

“Eli has exhibited the classic mentality of a rapist and abuser… She began to spin an elaborate web of lies, using theory once again to twist the abusive power dynamic of our relationship to paint me as the abuser and rapist, and attempt to discredit me using my mental illness to paint me as unstable.”

Erlick is the co-founder and executive director of an organisation called Trans Student Educational Resources. Danie worked for the organisation and was part of its private Facebook leadership group and one of the admins of its public page. Danie described what happened when she confronted Erlick about their relationship.

“Her response was to begin removing me from TSER’s facebook page admins, the private leadership group, and the leadership page on TSER’s official website, cutting me out of the group and burying my involvement and contributions.”

Alex Sennello, also a co-founder of Trans Student Educational Resources, posted Danie’s account of Erlick’s abusive behaviour in the TSER private leadership group. “I have held my tongue and fell in line for far too long.”

Erlick reacted by admonishing Sennello, denying the abuse and accusing Danie of ‘transmisogyny’ and making ‘false accusations’.

Tragically, it seems that since finding the courage to speak out publicly, Danie has taken her own life.

What may strike you about the social media posts regarding Erlick’s behaviour and the accusations being made, is that they mostly refer to him with female pronouns. These people have been groomed since childhood to accept people at their word, and to participate in a shared hallucination that a male sexual predator can actually be a woman, and his female victims can actually be men, if that’s how they ‘identify’.

Even more heart-breaking is that the girls accusing Erlick of abuse do the same.

Look at the tweets above. Young people pleading with the leaders of their own community to stop protecting and extolling someone who is accused of being a sexual predator, but anyone on the outside would have no idea that what’s actually being discussed is a man assaulting young women.

Because when we hear ‘she and ‘her’, we relax, lower our defences, lose our inhibitions. ‘She’ does not pose a threat, ‘she’ is not a danger.

To apply the word ‘she’ to an abusive male robs us of the language and comprehension we need to expose him.

When we use someone’s preferred pronouns, when we play along with gender identity, we enable an ideology that allows predators and rapists to distort reality. The truth is that an abusive male can groom and assault vulnerable young girls and nobody can properly talk about it.

Kids like this are in danger, and they’ve lost the ability to call for help.