Jill Foster, a Daily Mail journalist, confirms on Twitter what we already surmised: UK anti-trans journalists collude in secret WhatsApp groups.

This isn’t limited to the UK. In the US, anti-trans writers including one of the most prominent “just asking questions” jerk-off, Jesse Singal, demonised trans women in a private discussion forum that had been running for over eight years. The forum wasn’t exclusively dedicated to anti-trans activism, but it was a significant component of the discussions there. As Jezebel noted, participants included:

New York Times best-selling authors, Ivy League academics, magazine editors, and other public intellectuals—in short, a lot of important people who influence public discourse through their written work.

There’s a cliché that for bigots, every allegation is a projection – so for example there are endless cases of right-wingers shouting “groomers” at LGBT+ people and then hitting the headlines for sexual assault or having hard drives full of illegal pornography. And the allegation of a secret and sinister trans lobby is the same.

There’s a sinister lobby, all right. But it’s not one that trans people are invited to or welcomed by.