For the first time in a decade, the seemingly invincible transgender movement is on the run. In the United States, the Trump administration is purging gender ideology from government institutions and issuing a string of executive orders targeting everything from sex change surgeries for minors to LGBT indoctrination in schools. Europe’s medical institutions—in Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and France—are pushing back against “gender affirming care” for minors or banning it entirely. Populists in Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany have caught the mood and are increasingly unequivocal in their condemnations of aspects of gender ideology. Leaders in Hungary and Poland, of course, were ahead of the curve.
To ensure that recent victories and the frequently unstable positions of politicians bending to public opinion are permanent, it is essential to understand the key sources of the transgender movement’s power.
One of those sources, surprisingly, has been consistently ignored not only by mainstream journalists—who have been selling the fiction that the transgender industry is a grassroots powerhouse rather than establishment astroturf—but also missed by most opponents of gender ideology: Donor cash. Jennifer Bilek, an investigative journalist who has been tirelessly following the money for years, stands out as one of the few reporters who provides a unique context for the rise of gender ideology. Any understanding of this “movement” is, in my view, incomplete without reference to her work.
Much of her investigative research is detailed in a bombshell book published in 2024, Transsexual Transgender Transhuman: Dispatches from The 11th Hour. At this key moment in the fight against gender ideology, Jennifer Bilek detailed her discoveries for europeanconservative.com.
During the first few weeks of his administration, Donald Trump has launched a full-scale attack on LGBT ideology. Your journalism has revealed the extent to which the transgender industry has been bankrolled by incredibly wealthy donors who have poured huge amounts of cash into this industry. Who are these donors, and what kind of financial clout do they wield?
In my reporting, I have focused on a handful of billionaires, bankrolling the institutionalization of gender ideology.
Tim Gill, a gay man living in Colorado, and Jon Stryker, a gay man living in Michigan, feature prominently in my work. In 1994, Tim Gill, the founder of Quark, Inc., a computer software corporation, sold his company and used the money to create the Gill Foundation, the largest LGBTQI+ NGO in America. Gill is friends with Jon Stryker, who founded the second most significant LGBTQI+ NGO in 2020, leaving his position as founding board member at Greenleaf Trust, a wealth management firm.
Together, Stryker and Gill have poured over a billion dollars into LGBTQI+ rights. Jon Stryker founded the Arcus Foundation after the AIDS epidemic was quelled in America, and after gay marriage was legalized.
Simultaneously, Gill and Stryker set their sights on support for a new constituency: Transvestic fetishists, who adopted female attire and mannerisms for erotic arousal, and transsexuals who appropriated female sex characteristics with medical technology, as new sexual minorities needing human rights protections. Gender identity was added to their LGB acronym, adopting the term ‘transgender’ for a fetish of adult men.
The Pritzker family is one of the richest families in America and features very prominently in the funding and institutionalization of gender ideology. Jennifer (James) Pritzker, once a family man and a decorated member of the armed forces, now claims to be a woman. He has made gender ideology a high note in his philanthropic funding through his Tawani Foundation, a philanthropic organization with grants focusing on Gender and Human Sexuality. His Tawani Foundation partners with Squadron Capital, an acquisitions corporation, with a focus on medical technology, medical devices, and orthopedic implants.
He has funded WPATH (an activist organization promoting hormones and surgery as “treatment”), Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and gender clinics for children. JB Pritzker is James’ cousin and the governor of Illinois. He is co-founder of the Pritzker Group, a private investment firm that invests in digital technology and medical companies, including Clinical Innovations, which has a global presence. JB Pritzker has initiated grade school curriculums for his state which teach children they can ‘transcend their sex’ with medical technology and has recently made Illinois a sanctuary state for children claiming a different sex.
His sister Penny Pritzker served on President Obama’s Council for Jobs and Competitiveness and Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She was national co-chair of Obama for America 2012 and national finance chair of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. To say she was influential in getting President Obama elected would be an understatement. Obama made “transgenderism” a pet issue of his administration, holding a meeting at the White House (the first ever) to highlight advancements for so-called ‘transgender’ people.
Together with the rest of the family they have funded millions of dollars to many universities across America, and at least one in Canada, conspicuously, many with gender clinics. All these funders fund other LGBTQI+ organizations, law centers, media, and other organizations that drive the ideology into the culture.
There are many other funders, but since the network is immense, I try to get people to focus on some key philanthropists and oligarchs, so they understand what is happening. George Soros’ Open Society Foundation created a legal guide for “transgender” children. Warren and Peter Buffet have gifted millions to the LGBTQI+,andJoan and Irwin Jacobs, two longtime ACLU supporters whose estimated worth in 2017 was $1.23 billion, also have heavy investments in LGBTQI+.
Jeff Bezos, and Marc Benioff of Salesforce, have funded enormous sums of money to gender clinics, and have investments in the technological reproduction sector. David Bohnett, another wealthy gay man, funneled a whopping $32 million into creating The Bohnett Foundation, funding LGBTQI+ activism, after selling his social network company GeoCities to Yahoo. There are also many international law firms, corporations, and money management and technology firms pumping millions of dollars into, and otherwise supporting, the indoctrination of society with gender ideology.
These funders often go through anonymous funding organizations such as Tides Foundation, founded and operated by Drummond Pike, another gay man invested in LGBTQI+ rights. Large corporations, philanthropists, and organizations can send enormous sums of money to the Tides Foundation, specify the direction the funds are to go, and have the funds get to their destination anonymously. Tides Foundation creates a legal firewall and tax shelter for foundations and funds political campaigns, often using legally dubious tactics.
Soros and Gill are two major gender industry funders who generated millions of dollars to get Obama elected, and Stryker was one of the top five contributors to Obama’s campaign. Under Obama and President George W. Bush, the federal government also funded the Tides Foundation with $82.7 million, which in turn donated $47.2 million to LGBTQ issues over the last two decades.
