“Kiira Triea” aka Denise Magner was an American computer programmer, hoaxer, and troll. Magner was one of the worst transgender internet trolls of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, using many fake names and accounts to attack perceived enemies.
Magner was a key “autogynephilia” activist, primarily through the transkids.us hoax site and through collaborations with academic fraudsters Alice Dreger and J. Michael Bailey.
Like many “autogynephilia” activists, Magner was an eccentric hoarder living in desperate poverty. Dreger and Bailey are notorious for exploiting these kinds of people, who seek validation and attention from those they see as authority figures.
In this section:
- Biography
- Fake names and accounts
- Lies told in GenderTalk interview (2000)
- Arrest and conviction (2007)
- Obituary: a lifetime of lies (2012)
Background
Magner falsely claimed to be born as late as 1964 in published interviews and writing. Magner was born September 2, 1951.
Magner claimed to have been a patient at Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in the mid-1970s, having genital surgery at age 14. Magner was not at Johns Hopkins at age 14. Magner did not have surgery at age 14. Magner did not know or interact with unethical sexologist John Money’s victim David Reimer in any way. There is no independent evidence that Magner was ever even at the Johns Hopkins clinic or the Psychohormonal Research Unit. It’s entirely possible Magner cobbled together this biography from relative Nancy Henley, who earned a Ph.D. there. Magner made countless other bogus biographical claims. Magner later tried to scrub these from the internet when the lies piled up so deep they began to contradict each other.
Magner died of cancer on November 2, 2012 at age 61.
Trolling
Magner used a multitude of aliases and sockpuppet accounts during decades of trolling. The primary ones were:
- Denise Magner
- Deni
- Denise Tree
- Kiira Triea (pronounced “KEER-uh TREE”)
- Ariika Aeirt
- Janelle Laren
- Reykja Kirby Sigurdson
- Stephanie Alexandra Velasquez
- Gisle Benediktsson
Gender critical activism
Magner has been cited as evidence by those opposed to trans rights, including an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court:
Transgender advocates seek to expand sex to include a host of subjective criteria, such as a person’s “brain gender” and the child-rearing they receive,42 “social activities,”43 and even “[w]ho one dates.”44 One amicus asserts that gender is “fluid” with a “continuous dimension of masculinity/femininity”45 But these ideological factors cannot define what it means to be male or female.46
This was submitted by anti-trans groups that include:
- The American College of Pediatricians
- The Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture
- The Christian Medical and Dental Associations
- The National Catholic Bioethics Center
References
Cowan, Zagria (September 13, 2010). Kiira Triea (1951 – 2012) intersex/HSTS activist, guitarist, Linux geek. A Gender Variance Who’s Who https://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/09/kiira-triea-1951-2012-intersexhsts.html
-https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-107/113231/20190822134020283_18-107%20Amici%20BOM%20National%20Medical%20and%20Policy%20Groups.pdf
Bailey JM, [Magner D] (2007). What many transsexual activists don’t want you to know and why you should know it anyway. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 50, 521–534. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2007.0041
Triea K, Diamond M, Reiner WG (2009). Results from a pediatric surgical center justify intervention in disorders of sex development. J Pediatr Surg 2009 Sep;44(9):1863; author reply 1863-4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2009.04.038
Resources
In this section: