Erika Kirk has been no stranger to online scrutiny in the months since her husband, Charlie, was murdered. When she appeared on “The Charlie Kirk Show” just five days after his memorial service, many people were surprised at how bright and bubbly she seemed. Her demeanor even caught the eye of professional body language analysts.
The attention continued in the weeks following, especially when she hugged U.S. Vice President JD Vance, lifting her shoulders up into his chest and placing her hand on the back of his head. She’s been accused of dabbing tearless eyes. And many people were weirded out when she talked about kissing Charlie’s corpse before it was cleaned up and mentioned the smirk on his lifeless face.
Erika Kirk as Miss Arizona (Wikipedia)
Many conservatives will say people should give a grieving widow the space to lament her husband’s tragic death in whatever way she feels best. And at a human level, there’s truth in that.
But what’s going on here is more than simply a human story. The Trump administration has been using Erika Kirk to promote their violence-laden agenda that is harming our neighbors. And she is not an innocent bystander. She’s fueling a lot of it by participating in political rallies, angrily talking about what “they” did to her husband in a politically loaded way without any nuance, and suggesting her husband’s death should strengthen the violent agenda of the Trump administration.
So it’s understandable that many on the left would watch closely and comment on her words and demeanor. They don’t want the unjust death of her husband to fuel even more unjust violence against others.
But in the months that followed, the people who were condemning Erika Kirk for the way she presents herself weren’t simply liberals out to get a conservative woman or liberals concerned about their neighbors. They were conservatives who were terrified of their neighbors, specifically their transgender neighbors.
So they began promoting a conspiracy theory that Erika Kirk is transgender.
Online accusations against boxer Imane Khelif
The Kirks as a transgender couple
They’re calling her an “invert,” which is the term such conspiracy theorists use for trans people. They’ve renamed her Erik. In a Facebook group called “Transvestigation Disclosure NOW,” members were examining old photos of Kirk’s time in the Miss Arizona pageant.
“That is a man,” one user claimed, “as most pageant winners are.”
Someone else said Kirk was a “filthy Luciferian.”
“Of course almost all models, especially agent models and Victoria Secret models are mostly (trans women),” another user added.
As Samantha Riedel noted in a piece for the award-winning LGBTQ publication Them, the transvestigators are examining “Kirk’s jawline, collarbone and thigh gap.”
And their conspiracy hasn’t stopped with Erika. Some of them have been including Charlie as well. According to one of the commenters, “That’s why Charlie Kirk seemed so feminine and emasculated because she was a transgender handler. That’s why he was so pretty.”
Right-wing ‘transvestigation’
While the idea of the Kirks being transgender may seem completely out of left field to many, you may have heard echoes of this conspiracy in the past.
In recent years, famous people they’ve claimed are transgender include French First Lady Brigitte Macron, John Krasinski, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Erin Darke. In the world of sports, they’ve recently gone after boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, as well as rugby player Ilona Maher. Their focus on trans people became so unhinged in 2023 that they claimed Dylan Mulvaney was born a woman, transitioned to male and then transitioned to female. In Mulvaney’s case, the transvestigators discussed such “body markers” as “shoulder to hip ratio. Leg and arm length,” and “the way their stride and strut presents itself.”
According to Quispe Lopez, in another piece for Them, “Their pseudoscientific tactics hinge on a transphobic or misogynist belief that if a successful person has even a shred of gender nonconformity, they must have gained that success through false pretenses or nefarious means.”
The transvestigators believe in “Elite Gender Inversion,” which Lopez says, “claims that many, if not most, famous people are secretly trans and part of a cultish cabal attempting to control the world.”
Their transgender-related conspiracy theories have been growing in popularity especially since 2017 and have spread such fear of transgender people that right-wing pundits and politicians seized on it as the strategy to close out the 2024 election, all the while claiming Kamala Harris was the one fixated on transgender people.
What it says about us
Like most of the conspiracy theories that have propped up the political right over the past decade, including everything from Pizzagate to COVID conspiracies, the transvestigators say we should “do our own research” to discover the truth for ourselves.
But why should I have to examine Erika Kirk’s jawline, thigh gap or shoulder-to-hip ratio? Wouldn’t that be kind of creepy? What would that say about me?
And even if I did discover Kirk was transgender, why should I care?
Given her platform, Erika Kirk does need to be examined and evaluated, not for her collarbone, but for her convictions. Examining her behavior and beliefs because you’re concerned she might harm your vulnerable neighbors is fundamentally different than examining her body because you want to dehumanize and control her.
“She benefits from the very transphobia these conservative conspiracy theorists wield against her.”
While these transphobic conspiracy theorists may think Erika Kirk is part of a woke global cabal, the reality is she benefits from the very transphobia these conservative conspiracy theorists wield against her.
What if the people in a cultish cabal bent on attempting to control the world are the authoritarians wielding fear? As I demonstrated in a recent episode of “Highest Power: Church + State,” these authoritarian Christians are the ones unapologetically claiming to be pursuing “total galactic domination” while demanding of God, “Give me India or I will die. Give me China or I will die.”
Our main concern shouldn’t be over what Erika Kirk’s “body markers” say about her gender, but about what obsessing over her “body markers” says about right-wing transphobia. Whatever one believes about transgender people, the reality is they aren’t part of a massive cultish cabal that controls the world. They’re the survivors of this cult. They’re actually one of the, if not the, most vulnerable groups of people on the planet.
So if your desire as a Christian is to be present in and among the least of these, it may be worth doing your own research until you accept the reality that the most vulnerable people in our society who are being oppressed are transgender people, not heterosexual, cisgender, white, wealthy men who need distinct gender binaries to see and take power.
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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