Jenn Ross is a Canadian software developer and “autogynephilia” activist. Ross is involved in the transkids.us hoax website, allegedly written by transgender youth. Ross made a gender transition around age 30, was about 35 when transkids.us went online, and turned 50 years old in 2019.
Background
Jennifer E. “Jenn” Ross was born November 11, 1969. Ross was associated with Algonquin College in Ottawa, Ontario and had computer businesses based in Toronto for many years. Ross’ online ventures have included IMN Internet Services, NetDesign Network Holdings, Inc., and Yallery.com. Ross has also served as Chief Technology Officer at GW Hannaway and Associates in Boulder, Colorado.
Ross’ vaginoplasty in the late 1990s was funded by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which means it’s very likely Ross participated in the regressive programs at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in order to get healthcare. Most adults in Toronto avoid CAMH and use private providers, leaving as the primary clientele those adults who enjoyed the humiliation of regressive CAMH policies. Ray Blanchard, a CAMH psychologist at the time, has written about the “male gender dysphorics, paedophiles, and fetishists” they see in their clinic. Blanchard has said about patients like Jenn Ross, “A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you’re creating.” That’s why anyone who could avoid CAMH went elsewhere.
Transkids.us hoax
While living in Boulder, Colorado, Ross was involved in developing transkids.us prior to its December 2004 publication. Like site owner and notorious troll Denise Magner (also known as Denise Tree and Kiira Triea), Ross is a Linux expert and makes a living as a computer technician and web developer. Magner was 54 years old when the transkids.us hoax site went live.
Ross was one of the key people who comprised 85% of all transkids.us visits prior to the site’s publication. Transkids.us had 122 visits from Ross’ Boulder ISP prior to December 2004, as well as traffic from the Amsterdam-based IP associated with one of Ross’ businesses.
To date, participants identified by name do not embody the self-identity which transkids.us allegedly represents (“homosexual transsexuals,” which they abbreviate HSTS). The front page of transkids.us states:
Our purpose in making this website is to make the voices of transkids, homosexual transsexuals, directly accessable. We prefer to speak about our lives and issues ourselves and we are not helped by having our lives and issues represented and re-interpretted by non-homosexual transsexuals whose histories, motivations, etiology and personal understanding of their transsexuality is different from our own. [emphasis mine]
According to the site, “transkids.us is written by hsts and is about homosexual transsexuality.” Proponents of this term claim this “type” of trans woman is “naturally feminine” from early on, and exhibits “early, extreme, and effortless femininity.” Sexologist Ray Blanchard claims there is a close relation between computer nerdiness and “autogynephilia,” a sex-fueled mental illness he created. In fact, Blanchard supporter J. Michael Bailey considers Jenn Ross’ occupation as a computer expert to be a key indicator that someone is not a “homosexual transsexual” under their taxonomy.
Trans people as a group vehemently oppose the term “homosexual transsexual” and its pejorative baggage, because it identifies trans people by their sex assigned at birth rather than by their gender identity. The term is mainly used by a few old-school sexology holdouts in Toronto and their supporters.
After Denise Magner died in 2012, “autogynephilia” activist Candice Brown Elliott took over the hoax site at age 55.
References
Collison, Ken (March 30, 1995) Tea Party Time: Tea party concert broadcast on the internet. Humber Et Cetera https://library.humber.ca/digital-archive/sites/default/files/coven/Mar30_95_Vol27_No24.pdf
Resources
“Transkids” (transkids.us)
Twitter (twitter.com)
Mastodon (mastodon.social)
Octodon (octodon.social)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
- https://linkedin.com/in/jennr/ [deleted]
- https://linkedin.ca/in/jennr/ [deleted]
Jenn Ross (jenn.com) [archive]
Jenn Ross (jennlog.com) [archive]
NetDesign (netdesign.com) [archive]
Yallery (yallery.com) [archive]