Understanding Scams: The Parallels with Gender Identity Ideology

The Dangers of Deceptive Practices

The Consumer Association Which? has explained in its December 2025 issue that most scams, regardless of type, have a recognisable set of elements. Whether it is phishing, romance, investment, or impersonation scams, all follow a similar structure designed to manipulate victims psychologically in order to gain access to their finances. To protect individuals, consumer advice organisations, banks, building societies, and many other institutions advise us that we can better protect ourselves if we can spot the common factors in a scam.

ScotPAG cannot help but notice that what constitutes a scam is spookily similar to the processes that have allowed the successful infiltration of gender identity ideology into all our institutions. Gender identity ideology has indoctrinated children through its insertion into schools. It has manipulated parents into consenting to harmful medicalisation of their children. It has misled and misinformed leaders of public institutions into adopting bogus policies and training schedules. It has convinced, persuaded, and manipulated naive politicians into doing the bidding of powerful and aggressive activists.

It is fair to state that scams are a blight on society and on all decent and right-thinking individuals. However, a scam that seeks to harm children and families, remove the rights of women and girls, abuse women and girls, hound and remove from their jobs any individuals who disagree, and shut down reasonable discussion and debate is nefarious in the extreme. This is what gender identity ideology has achieved so far. For evidence, dear reader, you need only look to ScotPAG’s most recent blog.

The Key Elements of Any Scam

Initial Contact: The Hook

Scammers often reach out via unsolicited approaches such as email, phone calls, and online platforms. Gender identity activists want to reach children, so they must use reasonably sophisticated approaches. What better than to use governments in power to provide a route into their goal? This is precisely what LGBT Youth Scotland and Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) have done. Schools are very handy targets, as there are no pesky parents immediately available to intervene! The SNP government has provided helpful credibility to the activists progressing their dogma. It is crucial in any scam to use trusted institutions, such as government agencies, to provide assurances. If that government facilitates you to write gender identity ideology guidance for schools, so much the better! See the Scottish Government's guidance written by LGBTYS.

Building Trust

Scammers reel individuals in with fake concern for their wellbeing and by rewarding them. To access children, the establishment of government-funded youth groups to ‘support’ children allows activists to spread and embed their ideological message in schools and community resources. The use of attractions such as badges, flags, and leaflets with colourful cartoons serves to entice children and is used in exactly the same way as any other scammer’s ‘reward’.

Creating a Believable Story and Too-Good-to-Be-True Offers

Scammers create relatable stories to convince their victims of their genuineness. They use empathy and shared interests to reel in victims and exploit their emotions to bypass any possibility of rational thinking on the part of the victim. It is easy to scam children because they are so suggestible. Vulnerable children, especially those who feel isolated, are very attracted to being shown adult attention and presented with the opportunity to be part of something they have been led to believe is ‘cool’. Youth ‘support’ groups work very well in achieving this goal.

Emotional Manipulation and Sense of Urgency

Scammers induce panic or pressure to force an action from the victim. They often pressure their victims to ‘Act now!’ or ‘Do this to prevent losing your money!’ Activists promoting gender identity ideology behave similarly. They have repeatedly informed parents that their child will be at risk of committing suicide if they are not affirmed to transition from their natal sex. Activist groups such as Stonewall and LGBTYS have made false claims, stating that children will feel happier and will be ‘their true selves’ if they transition and change their sex.

Request for Action

This is the main purpose of any scam: the payoff stage. In most scams, victims are asked to provide money, personal information, or account details. Where gender identity ideology is promoted, the payoff is the child stating that they want to become the opposite sex. The child insists on affirmative measures and tells their families and friends there is no other alternative. The ultimate aim of activists is to ensure that the child or young adult is convinced that becoming ‘trans’ will address how they are currently feeling. It is in the activists’ interests to seek new recruits to the so-called ‘trans’ population, as this will help validate the feelings of older adults who already claim to be ‘trans’. Gender identity ideologues have an agenda based on self-interest, which has nothing to do with the best interests of children.

Irreversible Payment or Disclosure

With the majority of scams, money is extracted via hard-to-trace methods, or information is stolen, leaving the victim isolated with nowhere to complain or seek resolution. Similarly, children who have been groomed and affirmed into thinking that they can change sex are likely to proceed to the irreversible harm of being treated with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and, in extreme cases, ‘gender-affirming’ surgery. Once on that medicalisation route, it is increasingly difficult for the child or young adult to get off that path. We know from both the Cass Report and from detransitioners themselves that professional support mysteriously evaporates when doubts creep in and the child or young adult wants to return to their natal sex.

Requests for Secrecy: Instructions Not to Tell Family

Scammers often demand secrecy from their victims to prevent verification and to avoid being found out. Similarly, gender identity ideology activists often tell children to keep their situation hidden from their family. In some cases, children and young adults are encouraged to break family contact. The Scottish Government guidance Supporting Transgender Children in Schools advises schools that there will be situations where it is best to avoid contacting parents regarding their child’s transition to the opposite sex.

Poor Quality or Suspicious Details

Scammers can often be spotted by their grammar and spelling errors, and their lack of records and information when questioned. They can also be identified by their evasive answers. In the case of gender identity ideology, the robustness of research quoted by activists is consistently poor, and claims are based on no credible data. They have misquoted the law and have misled public bodies about the meaning of the law.

Refusal to Verify Information: Avoiding In-Person Meetings and Independent Checks

Scammers, once identified, hide and refuse attempts to meet the victim and their family, often becoming aggressive when confronted. Gender identity ideologues have been very good at calling for ‘No debate!’ They excel at name-calling: ‘bigot’, ‘terf’, ‘Nazi’, ‘right-wing’, ‘fascist’, to name but a few slurs. What they refuse to do is expose themselves to any form of reasonable discussion and debate. Like all scammers, they want to hide when they are at risk of being found out.

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The Broader Implications of Gender Identity Ideology

Our era has embraced the biggest con of all: that we can change sex. Society has committed the harm of telling its children that this is a real possibility. Society has allowed a small group of individuals to convince service leaders and politicians that men can be women. It has mangled language to imply that including men in women’s spaces is inclusion instead of a safeguarding problem. There are only two types of sex: male and female.

The Importance of Recognising Sex Reality

It is critical for the survival of a civilised society that sex reality is recognised and re-established as essential for all purposes. One might argue, what does it matter what individuals call themselves? It doesn’t always matter, but when individuals become activists who lobby successfully to change the implementation of laws, influence those in positions of power, remove the rights of others, and cause harm through their threatening behaviour, lies, and undermining of society, that is an entirely different matter.

Conclusion

In conclusion, recognising the parallels between scams and the tactics employed by gender identity ideologues is crucial. By understanding these deceptive practices, we can better protect our children and society as a whole. Awareness is the first step towards safeguarding our values and ensuring that discussions around gender identity are approached with caution and critical thinking.

References

Scams and wellbeing report

Classic warning signs

Carolyn Brown

ScotPAG Convenor

The author would argue that scamming could also be equated with The *Dentons document (titled "Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth"), produced in 2019 by the global law firm Dentons in partnership with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and IGLYO (an international LGBTQ+ youth organisation) which recommended attaching transgender rights reforms to broader, more popular LGB equality measures to avoid public scrutiny and lobby discreetly to "depoliticise" the issue, and reduce or remove parental involvement in gender recognition processes. The tactics aimed to be deliberately low-profile and aimed to embed gender identity policies into laws and institutions. It also recommended behind-the-scenes advocacy rather than open public debate