Photo illustration by Matthew Cooley.Illustration photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images, 2; Jason Davis/Getty Images
Megan Hunt had a bad feeling at first, but it wasn’t.
The Nebraska senator was approached in May about participating in a documentary titled. need a villageThe show will air in August and will explore “the issues facing children and parents in the trans community and how they relate to our future as a society,” according to an email shared with I was told that I was going to focus on it. rolling stone. Hunt, who has a transgender child and has advocated for trans rights in the state legislature, also attended.
But after some skepticism and research, Hunt discovered that the film was related to right-wing influencer Robbie Starbuck just days before his interview. She was just the latest member or ally of the trans community that right-wing activists used vague explanations, careful omissions, and other deceptive tactics to persuade her to join their projects.
Hunt was appalled that Starbucks was involved in the film, warned in a tweet On Wednesday, he warned others to avoid attending. “If they contact you, please do not respond,” Hunt wrote. We don’t need more deceptive anti-trans movies because we could be putting ourselves in danger. “ she explained Starbucks as “far-right freak hut”.
Former music video producer and director Starbuck ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022. He was removed from the Republican primary in Tennessee because he did not meet his nominee’s eligibility requirements. Like many right-wing commentators, he frequently posts about his gender identity. Earlier this month, Starbucks received a legal notice from actress Megan Fox, accusing him of harassing her sons for wearing feminine clothing.
Starbucks: ‘The new transgender ‘healthcare’ industry is so boring’ tweeted last week. “It’s not kind of you to endorse the delusions of people who struggle with mental illness. You’re making them more delusional,” he said at Starbucks in April of this year. tweeted He told Elon Musk he was “making a documentary” and demanded an interview with the Twitter owner.
by email to rolling stone, Starbuck acknowledged that he is “currently working on a documentary and partly hosting it,” adding, “It touches on transgender issues, but it’s not just about transgender issues. ‘ added.
Hunt was made aware of Starbuck’s involvement in the film through a Tumblr post by trans activist Eli Erlich. Last February, Erlich exposed how the right-wing website The Daily Wire used deceptive tactics to recruit transgender people, including her, to participate in anti-trans films. bottom. what is a woman Walsh’s production team used pseudonyms and set up a shield organization titled “The Gender Unity Project” to hide the project’s association with the Daily Wire. The film premiered in June 2022 and was rebroadcast for free on Twitter earlier this month to great cheers from the right wing.
Erlich was immediately skeptical when he was contacted about joining in May. need a village. “Someone called Morgan K contacted me,” Erlich said. rolling stone. “I’m still dealing with backlash for exposing Matt Walsh, so I’m pretty skeptical of any documentary that doesn’t even reveal who the producer is.”
email address provided rolling stone According to Eric, the request is shown to have come from a woman named Morgan Kelly. “We want to tell the true story of the battles transgender youth face and the activities that surround it. It also touches on how they are doing,” Kelly wrote in an email.
When Erlich asked for details, Kelly made the documentary comprehensive and positive. “We have a lot of transgender youth and their parents showing and discussing their experiences, including doctors and drag queens who have been examined,” Kelly wrote.
Kelly declined to name the production company producing the film, citing a non-disclosure agreement, but wrote that she could say nothing about the documentary’s distribution other than that it was “one of the leading streaming services.” rice field. She provided Erlich with the name of director Matt Rogers, who was allegedly working on the film. (Rogers did not respond to a request for comment.) rolling stone. )
Starbucks involvement came to light by accident. Kelly contacted Erlich using her address, a generic email containing the name of the film, but her Calendly invitation to schedule an interview was the same as the campaign’s website, Starbucks. It came from an address associated with your personal domain.
Eric refused to participate.Starbucks had blamed her Last August, she was accused by the Alabama Attorney General of leading a “drug trafficking ring” after announcing that she would help provide hormones to transgender people in states where gender-affirming medicine is banned. rice field.
Sen. Hunt was approached for a new documentary on May 22, the same day as Eric. She was initially unfazed by Kelly’s request for an interview. Hunt has recently been inundated with media requests after her and her colleagues’ filibustering of the Nebraska Legislature’s anti-trans legislation has attracted significant media attention. “When I got the email, I was probably getting 30 or 40 different press requests in a day,” she says. “When it came to interviews and things like that, I said yes as much as I could.”
Hunt and Kelly quickly agreed on an interview date in mid-June, and Kelly offered to fly Hunt to Nashville for the shoot. Hunt offered to bring his 13-year-old son, who is transgender, after Kelly said the filmmakers were going to spend time with families affected by the anti-trans legislation recently passed in Tennessee. .
As the interview date approached, Mr. Hunt grew more anxious. “I literally had a bad feeling, ‘Is this legal?'” Is this safe? ” she said, noting that her concerns were exacerbated now that she had volunteered to include her own son. “As a mother, just be a little bit careful about that sort of thing.”
She started googling but didn’t find much. She looked up the name of the documentary and added modifiers like “transgender” and the name of the woman who contacted her, but found no trace of the film or its production. “I thought maybe I would see someone talking about it on an IMDb page like pre-production or in a trade publication. The information must be there somewhere.”
All she found was Erlick’s blog. “She read what she was saying about it, and I was like, ‘Hmm, this sounds pretty much the same thing,'” says Hunt. “Then I went to check my email and sure enough, the calendar invite was coming from Robbie Starbuck’s girlfriend’s URL…so I was like, ‘Okay, let’s stop.'”
“Morgan, could you please tell me who is the director of this film and who is funding it?” I will definitely cancel,” he added in a follow-up minutes later.
In response, Kelly sent back a lengthy reply trying to defuse the situation. “I believe your email is about Robbie Starbuck’s involvement,” she wrote, claiming Starbuck was “only half the documentary hosting team.” Kelly claimed that an anonymous woman participating in the documentary “would be expressing her views that differ from Robbie’s.”
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m doing something involving him,” Hunt replied.
Kelly did not respond to multiple requests for comment. rolling stone.
On June 13, the day Hunt ended the interview, Daniel Acino received an email from a woman named Megan Cole. Cole asked Asino if her family, including a nonbinary 10-year-old, would be willing to participate in the documentary. identity rising. Acino was already cautious about such requests. Her family had been subjected to a violent harassment campaign in 2022 by prominent right-wing figures such as Matt Walsh and TikTok’s Ribs, and she felt uncomfortable with the message.
“I went back and found Eli’s post,” Asino says. rolling stone. “I noticed a similar wording, looked up the phone number, and found it was based in the Nashville, Tennessee area. That gave me a clue.”
The email, which came from a different sender, was similar to the one sent to Hunt and Erlich, saying, “The award-winning director is working on this documentary as his next project for release in August.” was advertised. Acino requested more information about the project, but he became a ghost.
rolling stone Called the number Cole provided in an email to Asino.she hung up when she was informed that she was talking to rolling stone.
Starbuck wouldn’t say whether Kelly or Cole are employees of the company, but confirmed Kelly’s claim that women with different perspectives were involved in the documentary. “We intend to have diverse perspectives represented,” Starbuck wrote. “Two activists who posted about the project on social media grossly misrepresent the subject matter.”
Erin Reid, an independent journalist who covers transgender issues, said the vague nature of the outreach emails was intentional. “This is one of the favorite tactics of the right,” she said. “The idea is to lure unsuspecting advocates, allies, donors and transgender rights advocates into effectively tricking them into an interview.”
“We witnessed this at Family Planning using Project Veritas fetal tissue records, which were later found to be heavily redacted,” Reid added. “I would like trans people to interview as many trans people as possible and edit them out of context into specific clips, with the goal of finding the one person saying that. We’ve seen time and time again being targeted by fraudulent documentaries, meaning you know it’s not right, and you amplify it.”
Reed warns to be very careful with anyone who approaches him with an offer to appear in the documentary. “Make sure she keeps cool about herself and does double due diligence,” she says. “There are a lot of people trying to use trans people for political gain.”
Starbuck insisted that the documentary was not the kind of project with “unethical editing” and that “no one on either side of the political side was offended by the interviews”, adding that “it was fair to each individual.” And we are taking an honorable approach.” On the other hand, the “social media riot activists” who refuse to speak out about the documentary “clearly have no confidence in their position,” he argues.
Hunt said he was outraged by the sheer lack of transparency about who was behind the documentary and, given Starbucks’ very public role in the far-right’s all-out assault on the rights and dignity of transgender people. Like its transgender allies, it was understandably skeptical of anything resembling fairness. American. “They didn’t even tell me who it was,” she said. put yourself in a dangerous place. “
