Mamdani's Achilles Heel

The DSA's Transgender Platform for Children Could Upend Mamdani's Victory

Jul 16, 2025

I want a solid working class movement. I want a movement so cohesive and so oriented to the fullness of life for every living thing that imperialism, capitalism, militarism, genocide and all attendant ills necessarily wither away.

Who would benefit? The beneficiaries would be all those on whom bombs fall—workers in poultry plants and strawberry fields, factory farmed cows and chickens, ecosystems and border lands, the peoples of Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, and Alabama’s Black Belt, Africans, Indigenous everywhere, Whites everywhere, straight, gay, transgender, Trump supporters, woke Democrats, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, Buddhists, atheists.
Every living thing on whom bombs fall would benefit.

Democratic Socialists of America
The Democratic Socialists of America [DSA] positions itself as a movement for the working class. It's platform says, it is “ﬁghting to win a world organized and governed by and for the vast majority, the working class.”1 It goes on to say that it is in favor of "feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships." I'm in favor of those things, too, as I think my record shows.

But I'll move on to pointing out troublesome identity language in its platform: it wants "the end of state recognition of the gender binary" and for "trans minors to access gender aﬃrming care without parental consent."2 Just for now, I want to overlook the mammoth scientific, medical, and social problems with these statements.

Instead, I want to seriously question why the language is in the platform at all. To what end? Why is it in the platform of an effort to form a solid working class movement at all? The goals in these planks do not embody even a hint of the possibility of advancing the cause of blue-collar and other workers. All it can possibly do is alienate large segments of the very people on whose behalf the DSA says it is organizing. Alienating large groups of people is a curious way to go if what you want is a strong challenge to our corporatist state. Willingly alienating large groups of the people you say you are advocating for is puzzlingly arrogant.

It is a tactical error and would be even if the claims made were true. Which they are not. Even if, at the level of theory, children were capable of consenting to medical interventions including penectomies, mastectomies, and puberty blockers, at the level of reality they are not. Most parents, including working class parents, know they are not. Yet, the DSA proposes not only that children should have access to these interventions but that they should be allowed by law to have them without their parents’ consent. Again, these are planks in the DSA platform. Read the planks on gender here.

How does any of this advance working-class solidarity? How does any of this advance the goals of a strong workers’ movement which should include the goals of dismantling our caceral state, free trade agreements, and exhorbitant military spending for endless wars? How does any of this advance the goals of winning national health care, stablized rent, and safe jobs for good pay and benefits? It doesn’t. It serves only to undermine these goals.

Which prompts me to ask somewhat rhetorically, “What exactly is it the DSA wants? Who influenced its platform?”

My history with the DSA

A number of years ago, I was seriously considering running for the U.S. House of Representatives’ seat in Alabama's 5th district. This is the district for the city of Huntsville, Alabama in Madison County. Several people contacted the national DSA about supporting me. None of us heard back from it. I went to its website and was not surprised at the organization's lack of interest in me. The primary qualification seemed to be identity: black, Latino, woman, black woman, gay, lesbian . . . . It indicated its support for a man who was blind. There is nothing inherently wrong here. The problem is that being blind does not make one either an ally or representative of the working classes.

Frustrated with the liberal political groups in Huntsville, I attended several meetings of my local DSA group hoping to find some sort of political home there. I remember two things in particular. One was that among the members was a friend of mine who had organized in Chicago back when he and others were trying to dismantle the Daley machine. He had been with the Young Patriots [YP], i.e. poor whites who had left the endemic poverty in Appalachia for the promise of good jobs in Chicago. The YP had formed a coalition with a group of Puerto Rican street gangs called the Young Lords and with the African American Black Panthers. Combined, the groups became the original Rainbow Coalition.

The local DSA members showed no interest in his bona fide organizing experience. Deer in the headlights no interest.

What its members did seem to care about was organizing to take down Huntsville's one and only Confederate statue. I tried to protest that I didn't see how focusing on that silly statue (which was well hidden behind a large holly tree) would advance working-class issues, e.g., Alabama being a right-to-work state, and a source of cheap labor for companies outside the South, or forming alliances with poor white and/or working-class Republicans in the area. My protestations fell on deaf, uncomprehending ears.

Meanwhile, I had been organizing, without success as it turned out, to stop Madison County from honoring ICE detainer requests. ICE, deportation, and detainer requests are, I think, bona fide working class issues. The statue came down. The County’s cooperation with ICE which, by the way, was entirely voluntary, continued.

Zohran Mamdani

It's wonderful that Mamdani was able to outrank Cuomo to become the Democratic party’s 2025 nominee for mayor of New York City. I am totally in favor of much of what he says he wants: community grocery stores, free public transportation, rent freezes, and so forth. Even if some of these are not achievable in a single mayoral term, it is important to articulate a strong vision for the city and its working classes.

The problem I have with Mamdani’s campaign is the highly inflammatory and unnecessary identity planks in his platform. They are virtually the same as for the national DSA. It includes "$57 million for gender-affirming care for transgender youth" (and adults, paraphrased for brevity).3 This is a huge misstep if what you want is working-class solidarity.

Those of us who have followed transgender people and their issues for any length of time realize what a whopping problem this could be just as it is—for transgender voting adults alone. The threats embodied in these planks have the potential for being the Achilles Heel which causes Mamdani’s campaign to self-destruct.

The current narrative among liberal Democrats contains these elements: children know who they are and don’t make serious mistakes in judgment, children are capable of consenting to irreversible surgeries and procedures, gender is unstable, men have a right to invade women's spaces including boxing rings and bathrooms, and people who disagree with these points of view are transphobic. The adult transsexuals who have a significant online presence are concerned that their dysphoria has been coopted and politicized in ways that harm children. As Buck Angel (F-M), an elder transsexual with a solid online presence says, “They made a mistake when they came for the kids (paraphrase).” In fact, Buck Angel and other adult transsexuals with significant online presences including Blair White (M-F) and Marcus Dib (F-M) are so angry they have been pushed to what we call the political right.

Buck Angel
If you don't follow older trans people like Buck Angel you should. Some of the points they stress is that they were adults when they transitioned. They were not children. They were uncomfortable living their lives in the bodies they were given to the point that their lives were miserable.

Buck Angel says over and over that as a child he had a loving, stable home and was an ordinary tomboy. As a teen, he concluded he was a lesbian and lived as a lesbian for a while. Yet, he was still so unhappy that he turned to alcohol and hard drugs, becoming an addict. After years of therapy, he sobered up, then began to transition. He had a double mastectomy and takes hormones. He did not get bottom surgery. After transitioning, he pumped iron, got tattoed up, and made a name for himself in the adult entertainment industry, i.e. pornography. He is married to a woman, and together they have a teenaged son. He is happy. Yet, he also insists that he is still a woman biologically and always will be. He stresses, too, that his desire has been to move, unnoticed, through the world as a man, unrecognized at any level as a female. Below is a before and after picture.

Buck Angel is leading the fight among trans adults against those who, as he says, are coming for the kids. He reserves special ire for those who encourage children to transition including adults who claim they are transsexual, therapists who follow a practice of “affirming” anything a child says concerning his/her supposed gender dysphoria rather than conducting a careful inquiry, and doctors who perform surgeries without meaningful cautions to their young patients and their parents. Above all he is rightfully angry with supposed transsexuals who use tried and true strategies of pedophiles to lure children to them, including dressing in childlike ways, using childlike voices, and feeding children the idea of alienating from their parents. Their strategies are not quite the same as offering children candy or a puppy to get into their van, but they are too close to be ignored.

Blair White

Blair White famously said once, “There’s no such thing as a trans child, just like there’s no such thing as a vegan cat. We all know who’s making the lifestyle choices.” She says that the acronym LGBT no longer makes sense to her.4

Marcus Dib

Marcus Dib’s most watched video is about Jazz Jennings, the youngest person ever to transition. The recklessness of her mother and doctors is obvious.

Buck Angel has 181K subscribers and 884 videos on his YouTube channel. Marcus Dib has 171K subscribers and 324 subscribers. Blair White has 1.52M subscribers and 442 videos.

Buck Angel, Blair White, Marcus Dib and other adult transsexuals passionately argue that the popular narrative is causing actual trans men and women more harm than good. They very much are offended by such grifters as Richard Marsh and Lilly Tino who bear uncomfortable resemblances to pedophiles in that they prey on young children via TikTok.

Richard Marsh
Richard Marsh is not interested in walking through life, unnoticed, as a woman. With his voice, his manner, his makeup, and his dress, it seems to be appealing to very young children. They seem to be his target audience. Pay particular attention to his advice to children to distance themselves from their parents. And remember that the DSA says it wants gender-affirming (transitioning) care for children without their parents’ consent.

Watch this piece from Buck Angel and see if you think allying with him will help or hurt a working class movement.

Lilly Tino (Nicholas Sylvan Contino) and a Possible Achilles Heel
This is where the Achilles Heel comes in. Lilly Tino’s modus operandi is to dare people to be shocked by him. He causes a disturbance wherever he goes loudly accusing waiters of mis-gendering him, for example. His goal is not to move through the world unnoticed. Not by a long shot.

Tino's stomping ground is Disney World. He makes no effort to hide the fact that he is a man who sports a Betty Boop hairdo and Mickey Mouse ears. He taunts waiters at Disney World, while videoing himself, for "mis-gendering" him, then complaining to management about being misgendered. Let's keep in mind that waiters are part of the working class as I understand it. He makes videos of himself talking about his supposed surgeries in the presence of children at Disney World. He talks about having his "cake pops" removed (a childlike reference to his testicles) while holding up cake pops and about turning his penis into a vagina while holding up a hot dog and slicing it down the middle.

Contino may have gone too far, though.

He went into the women's restrooms at DW and took selfies. In the background of his selfies are young children, who did not give their consent to be photographed, and put their images put on TikTok. There were women in the bathroom in his selfies who likewise did not give their consent. Not only is his invasion of spaces reserved for women and children offensive and dangerous, it is contrary to Disney's stated policy banning selfies in restrooms.

The state of Florida is investigating Contino. He faces 6 months in prison and a $5,000 fine. If I know about this, many, many others do, too.5

If you really want a solid working-class movement, you need to listen to Buck Angel (63 years old and a parent), Marcus Dib, Blair White, and other bona fide trans people. Try not to talk over them, as Buck says. Listen to them. Learn about the people they say are grifters who are harming them. Investigate people like Richard Marsh, who advises young children to distance themselves from their parents. Watch a couple of his videos. Ask yourself whether you would leave your young child or grandchild alone with him for even 5 minutes.

Then, ask yourself whether gender-affirming care for minors is love in action or whether it is child abuse per se. Then ask yourself whether DSA and Mamdani's positions on it are innocent and well-meaning? Or are they politically cynical and ill-informed?

In my opinion, if you want a solid working-class movement, you'll run like hell from gender-affirming care for minors.

Ellin Jimmerson

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