We made this Jon Ronson anti-bingo card a few weeks ago when we heard he was going to cover the trans issue. It’s all the things we knew that Jon—as a believer in gendered souls—would never touch.
But this dishonesty by omission is even more despicable when you consider that he covered Michfest without once mentioning the murder of one of its founders (nope, not a founder, an attendee, for some reason I have that locked in as a fact when it’s not) along with her partner and her son, by a trans-identified male, Dana Rivers.
From Kara Dansky’s post on the murders.
“Dana Rivers was born David Warfield. In 1999, he claimed that he was a woman and underwent surgery to persuade others that he was, in fact, a woman. At the time, he was a high school teacher. He openly discussed his fetish with his teenage students and was subsequently fired. He sued, and the case settled.
Just after midnight on November 11, 2016, police received reports about gunshots being fired at a home on Dunbar Drive, in Oakland, California. When they responded, they found Rivers drenched in blood and running from the doorway of the house. He was in possession of knives, ammunition, and metal knuckles. The house was on fire. Inside the house, the police found two women whose bodies were riddled with bullets and stab wounds. They also found a young man laid out in front of the house who had been shot to death. Rivers has been charged with numerous serious and violent offenses, including murder and arson.
The victims: Patricia Wright and Charlotte Reed, a married lesbian couple, and Toto Diambu (known as Benny Diambu-Wright), their 19-year-old son.
Previously, Rivers had been active in “Camp Trans,” a campaign against the rights of lesbians to hold the women-only annual festival called “Michfest” on private land (the campaign succeeded in getting Michfest shut down in 2015). Patricia and Charlotte were regular attendees at Michfest.”
So how does an investigative journalist miss what is perhaps the most devastating, painful, but most of all, newsworthy aspect of Michfest?
It’s because gender ideology has made of Jon a fraud, a propagandist, a useful idiot. He’s now blocking every woman who dares to take issue with his whitewash. But if you’re not blocked, please do pass on for me my disgust at how he has betrayed himself, his profession and the women in his life. He is a disgrace.
All the investigative journalists you’d expect to be having a field day with this… it’s just such a disappointment. It’s mostly silence or this sort of shit! I feel gaslit. I really do.
I hope Nolan investigates does a follow up.
I heard it and basically the guy he centred it on was the one that pushed his way in and ruined it for everyone but he was never actually challenged about why he wouldn't just leave women to have something of their own to enjoy. Completely skipping over the tragedy of the murders was unbelievable.