‘The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Gay Cis Males and Transgender Females’ was the title of the training session, which infers that these two groups have something in common with each other.

Transphobia is real man.

Thread.
As per usual I got the completely wrong end of the stick. I thought it was going to be some sort of support group for males in prostitution, but no, it was yet another trans activist training session.
Though tbf I think some gworls also had the same idea judging by some of the overheard conversations at the beginning.
This session has run several times over the last few months, often getting ‘sold out’. The one I tuned into had about 100 people on the call.

It’s run by Nola Brantley who heads up her own training company.

http://www.nolabrantleyspeaks.org 
In turn, Brantley is (at least part) funded by the Los Angeles child sex trafficking unit, though the title of this training session suggested nothing about child exploitation to me. Ultimately the content was not really about children, but identity politics.
Hands down this is easily the most inept and superficial training I have ever attended. Ever. In my whole life. It’s a low bar, but Brantley went well below it.
You read Brantley’s bio and you think ‘wow, she’s seen it all, she’s gonna have some insights’.

But no. Just fuckwittery, and half fuckwittery at that.

http://www.nolabrantleyspeaks.org/who-is-nola-brantley.html
Brantley had technical problems at the beginning of the session, which she cheerily put down to cell towers burning down amidst rioting.

Brantley boasted of her achievements and that she now runs over 25 courses on the topic of the commercial sex exploitation of children (CSEC).
Two of the courses focus on males and say so in the title.

Race is also referred to, yet words to describe females are completely absent, except in the blurb to the course ‘CSE of males’ which says the focus is all on ‘cis girls’ —
the only use of the word girl anywhere in her training directory.

http://www.nolabrantleyspeaks.org/cse-of-males.html
You might expect that a training session focussing on the sexual exploitation of young teenage boys would focus on the obvious: grooming by older men, family breakdown, drugs.

But no, Brantley spent the first FORTY FIVE MINUTES talking about the importance of pronouns.
Brantley showed us a grid of all the different types of pronouns that were out there; my favourites being yo, yos, yoself and ye, yer, yerself.

Brantley knew that pronouns could be overwhelming but encouraged us to familiarise ourselves with the possibilities
(thereby failing to take account of our individual pronouns).

She also advised us on how we could find out peoples’ pronouns. Amazingly this involved asking direct questions like ‘what are your pronouns?’ and she advised us that when we ask that question we should
expect responses like ‘my pronouns are ze and hir’.

After a lot of coaxing we were finally ready to go into breakout rooms where we could practice expressing our own pronouns (‘notice what comes up for you’) and asking others. It was ‘perfectly normal to feel strange’ when
talking about pronouns said Brantley, but that ‘we want to make it our new norm’.

The point of this, of course, was not to upset clients, because when your life is so crap you have to sell your body, you're number one concern is being misgendered during the therapy session.
Brantley told us using the correct pronouns could stop suicide attempts.

Brantley described herself as being LGBTQ throughout, but it wasn’t until the end that she revealed she was in a relationship with a ‘transman’.
Our first video was from a trans-identified female, who explained the difference between SO and GI.

Brantley told us we should sit with the gender unicorn for a while to find out where we are.
LGBTQ youth had far higher risk factors to be exploited in the commercial sex industry because they ‘face injustice at every turn’ though it’s naturally worse for blacks and latinos.

Transphobia was stopping kids from using the toilet for 10 hours.
Our next video was about Kai Shappley, a 6 year old Texan boy who has a Christian TA Munchasen Mom. Quite what this human interest story had to do with prostitution is anyone’s guess.
It wasn’t the same video I have shared, but in the one she did show, Mad Mom said that she had battled for two years to get Kai into the girls loos, but the school was standing firm.
Brantley put a series of slides with statistics on them, which unusually had sources on them (though the writing was too small to read) which all proved that LGBTQ people have everything worse.

LGBTQ pupils are verbally abused on school buses which adults overhear (surely
just the bus driver?) and yet they have to live with the knowledge that adults just ignore it. Brantley branded this as ‘silent participation’.

57% of LGBTQ students felt unsafe at school, Brantley opined.
Then there was a slide which said:
‘Transgender youth are at the highest risk of violence since they violate gender norms and tend to make the most money’ Dr Gwadz

Okey dokey, Dr Gwadz
Brantley moved onto risk factors in the courts - names and pronouns might not be used by lawyers. Family risk factors was conversion therapy - although this is outlawed in LA and many other states.
Another video.

This one very good looking 16 year-ish boy tells his parents he’s gay. Mum throws book at kid, dad shouts, boy looks sad.

Then Elton John, Bruno Tonioli and (I think) Jamie Foxx all turn up to say ‘we got you’ and other platitudes.
Brantley told us ‘it can be a very heavy video so definitely take a breath’.

More like a fucking snooze. Jeez.
The next video was from the Dr Phil show, featuring Arianna, his mom and his delightful friend Jodeci.
Brantley explained that sometimes it was better for trans youths to have a ruptured relationship with family and encouraged us to find some compassion for the behaviour of Arianna’s mom.
At this point I began wondering about the men who pay to have sex with children. Was Brantley going to mention them at all? They seem to be pretty essential to the topic of exploitation, since they drive the market.
Brantley preferred to focus on stressed out middle class mothers instead. In fact Arianna’s mom said she *didn’t* want her son to end up in prostitution, though Brantley thought this a family risk factor.
Things got even more confusing when we were shown a video about a teen boy who came out as gay and both his parents said they were fine with it.
Yet Brantley continued bombarding us with statistics which painted a bleak picture and implied that because young men, LGBTQ youth and transgender youth were all more willing to trade sex for a place to stay than girls, and thus they had it worse.
One study found that the average age of entry into prostitution was 17, yet Brantley preferred the work of Tina Frundt who had apparently suggested that most boys and transgendered youth enter aged between *6 and 10 years old*.

Which I’m sorry, that’s just bullshit.
Worryingly, when we got onto ‘pathways of entry’, Brantley said that some ‘Mamas or House Mothers’ weren’t traffickers, but nurturers and that we shouldn’t tar them all with the same brush.

That was a jaw dropping moment for me.
All adults involved in child prostitution are guilty of association - 100% will know it’s wrong, even from the point of view of the age of consent being broken (a phrase btw that Brantley didn’t use once).
The main thing Brantley wanted us to take away was to use the correct pronouns, understand intersectionality, don’t ask a transgender kid their real name (i.e. don’t find out if they’re a missing kid) and know where your gender neutral toilets are at your office.
1 hour and 30 minutes into the training session, and just before the end, Brantley felt that we all needed one last pronoun practice session, so we were once again sent off into our breakout rooms to practice.
The final video came from It Gets Better (there are a ton of videos on the website, all LGBTQ themed) and lots of celebrities and company names popped up to pledge their support. Powerful stuff. https://itgetsbetter.org/stories/ 
On a serious note though, this training consultancy is training social workers and presumably other emergency professionals in *child trafficking*. Los Angelean tax payer money is being spent on this. And the best that Brantley could offer was pronouns and corporate videos.
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