I think one

of her first blog posts she just was basically coming out and saying that she thought like all trans masculine people like transition because of trauma or internalized misogyny, or she was very skeptical that anyone transitioned for any other reason than that. Their blogs weren't huge. Kai

had maybe a thousand followers. Devora had around 2000, but they were incredibly influential to the people who were following them. D-transition wasn't even a term that people were searching for on the internet then. In fact, the D-trans internet culture had seemed to be going nowhere, but now, with Kai and Devora savvy in dedication,

it started taking off. There's just a handful of us at first,

but then as we started talking about our experiences, like more people started like kind of joining on. I mean, some of them, you know, basically like converted to the form of like radical feminism we were selling and D-transitioned even.

Today Kai knows that what her and Devora were doing was incredibly harmful. They were single-handedly discouraging people from using hormones and pushing others to D-transition. Kai says that even though they were practicing conversion therapy, it was exciting, even intoxicating. We felt

like we were creating something new. We like felt like we were just like creating this whole new subculture and like we were coming up with like it's like yes, we were drawing on like, you know, these radical feminist theories, but we were also like making up our own. Like we were making up our own interpretations of them and applying it to our lives.

Essentially, they'd become experts in a theoretical field that they'd invented. In 2014, Devora received a consequential message. A group of TERFs had found her blog and started reaching out. Now, TERF stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. TERFs, a French group of feminism, argue that only those who were assigned female at birth can be women and are the only ones who can speak to women's oppression. They believe that trans people are either trying to escape gender oppression by being somebody who they are not or who are wearing womanhood like a costume. TERFs were excited by Kai and Devora's work so much so that they asked Devora to present her ideas at an annual festival called the Michigan Women's Music Festival, Mitch Fest. Devora insisted that Kai go to.