Trans rights advocates released thousands of live crickets, and I mean, alive crickets during a “Gender-Critical Conference” in London, hosted by the LGB Alliance. This organization is known to be trans-exclusionary and doesn’t believe, per their website “We advocate for the prioritization of sex-based rights over gender ideology. ” On the outside, it seems like a good thing, but then you realize the organization aims to exclude transgender and gender-nonconforming folks from their advocacy. I can write an entire article on this “advocacy group” another day, but today I am focusing on what happened during their conference in London.

The LGB Alliance was holding its annual conference and had some notable anti-trans speakers including J.K. Rowling (why) and Jamie Reed. J.K Rowling was the opening for the event and was given applause after saying, “Lesbians don’t have penises.” As a lesbian (I’m also asexual but we will ignore this part for a second), I have no problem dating transwomen, they’re gorgeous. This also shames any lesbian who happens to be intersex and who still has male genitalia, if the doctors didn’t remove them without informing the parents. This is an entirely different can of worms, I will not be getting into. In response, Rowling went onto X and posted, “Did any of those releasing insects in an attempt to sabotage the @AllianceLGB conference have a split second of sanity in which they thought ‘Am I proving every critic of gender identity ideology right? Is trying to disrupt a meeting of gay people a tad homophobic?’” (J.K. Rowling on X: “Did any of those releasing insects in an attempt to sabotage the @AllianceLGB conference have a split second of sanity in which they thought ‘Am I in fact proving every critic of gender identity ideology right? Is trying to disrupt a meeting of gay people a tad homophobic?’” / X (twitter.com)

The crickets were released right before Jamie Reed went to speak and a journalist named, Michael Baggs released a video of the crickets in the conference room on X, writing, “Someone released a box of crickets in the LGB Alliance conference hall. Alexa play Despacito.” (Michael Baggs on X: “Someone released a box of crickets in the LGB Alliance conference hall. Alexa play Despacito https://t.co/lnCZRCTkey” / X (twitter.com)

I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall or one of the crickets released, to see everyone’s reactions when they realized the room had thousands of more visitors than they expected. The organization responsible for the crickets is known as “Trans Kids Deserve Better” a UK-based group aimed to protect trans kids from hatred and advocate for them. They posted a satirical video of one of their members in a cricket costume outside of the conference saying, “Our sources at the scene tell us that the talk by Jamie Reed on taking away trans healthcare was stopped by these brave bugs, with thousands of six-legged friends hopping about in protest.” (Check them out here). The group said six of them released six thousand crickets total into the conference room before Jamie’s talk.

We love our chirping allies. Honestly, don’t target our transgender friends and youth, and maybe the crickets wouldn’t need to get involved. So far, the LGB Alliance hasn’t responded, but I will update in the commentsnts when they do.