Days after Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services cite anti-trans group SEGM, their cofounder Zhenya Abbruzzese’s ‘detransitioner’ daughter Maia Poet says “tr-nnies” in a Twitter/X space and calls trans people “all mentally ill and stupid”, “petulant toddlers … in castrated grown men’s bodies”

Overview

[Content note: anti-trans slurs.]

  • Maia Abbruzzese, also known as “Maia Poet” (Twitter: @thepeacepoet99), is an anti-trans activist and pretends to be a detransitioner, having never undergone any medical intervention but still routinely self-promoting on the basis of the supposed body-horror of transitioning.
  • In 2025, Maia was discovered to be the daughter of Evgenia “Zhenya” Abbruzzese, the cofounder of the anti-trans advocacy group Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) (see section Resources at end of post).
  • Maia had previously filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Skrmetti (2024-10-15), citing a paper by her mother (Abbruzzese, Levine & Mason, 2023), but without disclosing their relation. Additionally, Maia only used the pseudonym “Maia Poet” in the amicus brief, at page 1a under “Appendix List of Amicus Curiae” (“Maia Poet, desister & section co-author”).
  • On 2025-03-05, SEGM’s 2021 article “One Year Since Finland Broke with WPATH ‘Standards of Care'” was favorably cited by the Trump HHS Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in their Center for Clinical Standards and Quality memo QSSAM-25-02-Hospitals.
  • In a Twitter Space on 2025-03-08, Maia discussed her history of working with her mother at anti-trans conferences, and described meeting significant figures in the anti-trans movement including Helen Joyce.
  • Maia identified Kinnon MacKinnon as having attended a Genspect conference: “Anyone can get a ticket to a Genspect conference or whatever…. And we’ve even had Kinnon MacKinnon, who is like the trans man who’s doing this like study on detransitioners, right. So he’s been at the conference.” (More on Kinnon Ross MacKinnon: Detransition, Retransition, and What Everyone Gets Wrong)
  • Maia admitted that “Poet” is a pseudonym she uses to distance her activism on Twitter from her private life: “the pseudonym ‘Poet’, this is something that I made for Twitter to sort of distance my private life from my activism”.
  • Maia characterized trans people as “all people who’ve legally changed their names to some fucking stupid cross-sex name because they’re living a LARP”, “and they’re all mentally ill and stupid”. She believes “trans activists are evil lunatics who are not very smart.” During the space, Maia described trans women as “petulant toddlers … in castrated grown men’s bodies”.
  • At one point, Maia says “trannies” and immediately decries “all of this stupid virtue signaling”.
  • Maia Abbruzzese’s monologue concludes with her assessment that “this was a really strategically bad move on the part of trans activists, targeting kids. And they will live to regret it.” Because trans kids already existed as trans kids, and they are not trans because of any ‘targeting’ by activists, this is a threat by Maia that trans kids will live to regret existing.

Today, Maia Abbruzzese now tweets that “people with gender & other delusions *who are an active threat to themselves &\or others* should be institutionalized”, on the grounds that “We need to stop treating trans as if it’s an untouchable category”, and “If non-trans people did the same things, they’d be institutionalized immediately.”

Tweet from Maia Abbruzzese: "I agree. Take the autistics out of loony bins, put them in assisted living facilities should they require it, and in their stead, people with gender & other delusions *who are an active threat to themselves &\or others* should be institutionalized until they are no longer threats We need to stop treating trans as if it’s an untouchable category. If you’re trans and you’re too unwell to not harm society or yourself, you deserve protection to heal (and society deserves protection from you). Not all trans identifying and transitioning people represent a threat to society, but many do. If non-trans people did the same things, they’d be institutionalized immediately. I’m advocating for trans equality. Why are so many people mad?"

SEGM, is this how you raise your children?

Transcript

[02:24]

MAIA ABBRUZZESE: Yeah, I don’t, honestly, I don’t really care. These are all people who- Look, my message is threatening to them. If my messages did not threaten them, they would not be doing this. So honestly, it just shows me that I’m powerful, and it just makes me more and more motivated to destroy these fuckers. […]

[04:49]

MAIA: No, no, no, it’s not that, guys. It’s really- you know what it is? They’ve- they’ve- the same person who doxed me, doxed my mom years ago. He has a hate boner for her, okay? These people only go after- there are so many GC accounts, so many, tons. But they only dox the ones who’s- who they actually feel threatened by. Who they actually feel has a chance of shifting the, like, the uh thought around this type of stuff.

So they- what’s honestly insane to me is that they, so, like- My mom was doxed years ago. Years. And I was doxed months ago and only recently did they put together the connection. I mean, same last name, like, same city. They literally could have put it together instantly, but clearly estrogen is rotting their minds, rotting their brains, making them slow. It’s like, honestly guys, you’re really slacking. Like everyone who means anything to me, or who has been to any of these conferences, by the way, knows that my mom is my mom. Every- like, like, like Sierra has met my mom, all my detrans friends know that, like- Helen Joyce, for Christ’s sake, knows both me and my mom.

Like, every single, all, anyone who- who is in any way important enough or, like, you know, interested enough in this cause to go to a conference, knows that my mom is my mom. Like, everyone. It’s like, a well, it’s a very, very well known fact. It’s just, like, seriously, like- The thing with these trans activists, they can’t stand, they can’t stand contending with ideas that they don’t like. So they- even though these same conferences are open to them, by the way, fully open to them. Anyone can get a ticket to a Genspect conference or whatever. Anyone can.

And we’ve even had Kinnon MacKinnon, who is like the trans, the trans man who’s doing this like study on detransitioners, right. So he’s been at the conference. I’m pretty sure even she knows this, okay. Like, these conferences, before I went public, like, I used my last name at these conferences. I didn’t, you know, the, the pseudonym “Poet” is- This is something that I made for Twitter to sort of distance my private life, you know, from my activism, knowing- I knew full well that this would eventually come out. I knew full well, because these people are vicious and because I was really popular in high school and college, amongst a bunch of different people who are all super woke.

I went to a super woke high school. We had queer history classes that you could take instead of world history classes, and we also had critical theory or critical race theory classes in high school. So I came from a super woke environment. I knew that the second that my story reached a single person who knew me before, all of them would be too woke to hold off on doxing me. I knew this, okay, but, you know, whatever. It’s like, am I going to tell the internet when I’m on my period? Am I? Like, it’s pretty insane that anyone expects me or anyone else to just like, dox themselves and their family members – otherwise, they’re being dishonest? It’s like, no, you trans activists were really slow to the game on this one.

And your, your little stunt is just really good PR because it just shows even more how insane and spirally and conspiracy theory-esque these people are. They’ve made up so many lies that are so easily disprovable. Not just about me or about my mom, but about literally every other person they’ve doxed. The same person who doxed me and my mom has also doxed many other clinicians in this space – including their fucking underage children. These people are vicious, they are ruthless. So I frankly don’t actually- and they’re all mentally ill and stupid. So if they call me a fraud, I genuinely don’t give a flying fuck. Because these are all people who’ve legally changed their names to some fucking stupid cross-sex name because they’re living a LARP. So they’re not being honest about their identities at all.

They’re changing their sex on all their documents. They’ve even, some changed their Social Security numbers or their, their identification to distance themselves from the fact they were born another sex. So I actually, frankly, don’t care what they say because I don’t take them seriously. They’re all, they’re all mentally ill, and like, you know. They, yeah, they just, they’re just mentally ill.

And so like, whatever they say, just kind of like whatever. I mean, it’s good PR, I mean, any, any, any exposure is good exposure. The people who hate me will continue to hate me, regardless of what these trans activists say about me. Like, that’s the truth. People who’ve made their minds up about me, who don’t like me, are just going to continue to dislike me. And the people who like me and find what I have to say to be valuable are going to continue to believe the same thing regardless of what trans activists say. Because they’re smart enough to understand that these trans activists are, are evil lunatics who are not very smart. Like you don’t pull this type of move, you just, you just don’t.

So it’s like, it just, yeah, like- I don’t, I don’t know. It’s not a thing of like, resilience or whatever, it’s just- Like, yeah, was I a little bit stressed about it in the beginning, sure. I was a little bit stressed about it in the beginning. But then I realized, you know what? Today is the day to turn lemons into lemonade. And I’m getting a ton of exposure. And you know what? These people are trying to knock me down. They are trying to get me to react in some way. They’re trying to, you know, they’re, they’re trying to elicit a reaction out of me, and I’m not going to give them that. I’m just not, they’re not worth my time. They’re trying to distract from the important advocacy that I’m doing, not just on this page. This page that I’m running is the least important aspect of my advocacy.

I, you know, I help parents, I write long-form content that is not just a bunch of, you know, rage bait and hot takes. It’s actually well thought out, well-reasoned, well-argued pieces that are reference materials for parents who are trying to help their kids through this, or for loved ones who are trying to help their kids through this. As well as broader commentary about the phenomenon, I make original arguments that, you know, I don’t see other people making, frankly, and I’m contributing something real to this movement.

They are trying to stop me by trying to bait me into some stupid flame war with them, so that they can be like, oh. look how cruel she is, look how transphobic she is. But at the end of the day, it’s like, we’re dealing with petulant toddlers in grown men’s bodies, in castrated grown men’s bodies. Their hormones are all over the place, they’re irrational, they’re clearly becoming slow.

Like they should have been on- like if, if one of them had been brave enough to confront ideas they didn’t like and go to this conference, they would have known. They would have been able to dox me before I even went public with my story. But like, honestly, the fact that it took them this long is just totally on them. They’re being lazy, they’re getting slow. They’re getting a little defeated. This is, you know, the last breaths of gender ideology. They feel their hegemony, their cultural death grip on our society just disintegrating.

And so they’re going to try this, and they have a huge mob behind them. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of- The fact that this is so popular literally just means, all it means, is that there’s a huge trans mob.

There are a lot of people who are very much indoctrinated, and they stick together, by the way. And our side doesn’t stick together. Our side wants to argue about stupid terms like, ‘oh, you’re not a real detransitioner, you’re a desister’, or oh, you’re not, you don’t believe the exact same, you don’t have the same feminist beliefs that I do, and so therefore you’re a grifter. Or, oh, you hold these free speech, controversial spaces where everybody gets to have a say, everyone gets to say what they want to say.

And this means that you’re kowtowing to the trannies, right? Our side has all of this stupid virtue signaling, and it’s, and it’s, and it, and we’re already small. Like, the thing is that most people in, in our Western societies agree with us. But most people who agree with us, agree with us because they’re reasonable. They’re not, like, mentally insane enough to get super involved in these arguments. They agree with us implicitly – but explicitly they’re not so passionate about it, because they’re like, yeah, this is common sense.

But the trans activists, they have a huge, huge mob and they’re all trying to fight to rewrite reality. They will always have a big movement because we’ve opened Pandora’s box and they’re all trying to collude with each other to create this like, new reality in which words, you know, have totally alternative meanings and in which there is no there’s no viewpoint in the future, you know, where there’s any kind of stable sense of reality.

It’s post-modernism at its core, because they’re the ones trying to rewrite basic, basic facts, and because they will always face resistance to rewriting our basic facts and definitions. They’re continue- they’re going to continue to like, have a big mob. That doesn’t make them right. That doesn’t make the claims that they make, that isn’t, doesn’t make their conspiracies right. That doesn’t make their tactics right.

It just means that they are vicious and they are mentally ill, and that ultimately they will bring about their own downfall. I mean, you fuck with enough mama bears who are trying to protect their kids, and you will start to lose your beloved trans rights. Perfect example of that, you know, January Littlejohn literally was talked about on TV by Trump. She was there and the school tried to socially transition her daughter. They socially transitioned her daughter without her consent. And now she is on the front line of running a movement to expose this absolute bullshit.

The dumbest mistake that these trans activists make from the beginning is that they started targeting children. Okay, parents can take the blowback, like parents can absolutely, like- If someone is mad at them for not ‘trans-ing’ their kid, parents frankly don’t really care that much. They don’t, because their mission to protect their kid is way more important than what anyone else says about it. Like it’s not- These parents who are skeptics don’t, like- they get- Either they get convinced by the suicide lie, or they have the mental fortitude to be like, wait a second. This doesn’t make sense.

Like, if you’re naturally a skeptic, you’re not going to go along with ‘trans-ing’ your kid. And there are plenty of parents who start out as skeptics, and then they believe the suicide lie, because they’re kind of too neurotic. They have that, like, kind of emotional thing about them where they basically get really wrapped up in their emotions.

But there are some parents who totally distance themselves. They don’t actually care about their kid’s emotions that much. They’re like- and they don’t really care about all of the scaremongering. It doesn’t impact them because they’re highly, highly rational. That’s the family I come from, highly, highly, highly rational. Those are the types of parents who protect their kids.

Everyone else who’s too neurotic ends up going along with ‘trans-ing’ their kids. And ultimately, if you’re the type of parent who’s too rational to trans your kid, because you ignore the emotional scaremongering, you don’t believe it, you’re whatever, it doesn’t impact you, it doesn’t compel your behavior. If you’re already that rational, like, another parent or even many parents saying, ‘oh, you’re horrible, you’re evil, you’re a bigot, how dare you not trans your kid?’ That’s not going to- that’s also not going to convince that parent into ‘trans-ing’ their kid, right?

So that basic understanding really shows us how stupid it is, like how strategically bad it is for trans activists to target kids. That’s kind of how this whole thing blew up and how people started being very, very skeptical, is when all of these kids started getting targeted. Like all these parents, you know- Note that like, the reason why no one even cared, really, about Jazz Jennings in like 2007, part of the reason why- The only like, the only people who were commenting negatively about what happened to Jazz in 2007 were religious conservatives. All these liberals were like, oh, these these people are crazy. They’re bigoted, you know, they, these people hate gay people.

And so they just dismissed the criticism outright. Liberals dismissed the criticism outright. And so it didn’t blow up as a culture issue until all of these liberal parents started having their feminine, normal, kind of quirky girls getting caught up in this. And then they’re like, oh, wait a second, this is a really big problem. Then, you know, it happened one by one by one by one. And then policies started changing in schools and institutions to try to collude with this and to hide this from parents. And from the moment, from the moment that any parent feels that their kid is being targeted, whether they’re on our side or whether they’re on the trans activist side, they will wage a war.

So this was a really strategically bad move on the part of trans activists, targeting kids. And they will live to regret it. That’s a fact.

Speaker 2: Well said, Maia, I agree with you.

Speaker 3: Okay, I got a slightly off topic question. So with all the trans men that you’ve met, how many of these motherfuckers went with the name Autumn or Skyler? Because that’s a big fucking one around here.

MAIA: You mean FTMs?

Speaker 3: Yes, that’s a big fucking one around here.

MAIA: Skyler? Skyler, yes, Autumn, no. Autumn is more like an MTF name.

Speaker 3: I was like, fucking like, every third fucking FTM around here goes with the name Skyler or fucking Autumn.

MAIA: It’s cause of Skyler Levine. You can basically figure out when these trans men came out, when they adopted trans identities, based on which names they pick. Because just like their identities are socially contagious and their gender dysphoria is socially contagious, the names they pick are also very socially contagious. Like if someone calls, if some FTM calls themselves Skyler, that probably means that they they came out as trans in the last years of the 2000’s or in the first years of the 2010’s. And then the names, the -den names, Aiden, Caden, Jaden, Braden, those names are like sort of 2013, 2014 to like 2017.

Speaker 3: It’s so unoriginal too.

MAIA: Oh yeah, cause they’re all copying each other. Of course it’s unoriginal.

Speaker 3: It’s like, and you look at them, it’s like half the time they just fucking, they all look the same too. It’s like absolutely fucking- I can’t think of more than like maybe three fucking FTMs that I’ve ever seen, even on the internet, that fucking passed.

MAIA: Yeah. I mean, some of them pass better than others. I don’t know, I mean… Um.

Speaker 3: Like, Buck is the only one I can think of where I had to look at twice. But Buck Angel is also incredibly honest about it.

MAIA. Yeah. I’m sure if Buck went to Israel, that Buck would have no problem passing. Like, the thing with Buck is it’s mostly, it’s mostly just the height. But, like, you know, I don’t know. Well, what really works in my favor in Israel, I think, is just that I was young, and so they were willing to believe that a 20 year old might be able to look like a 15 or 16 year old. But of course, the older you get, the harder it is for people to buy that. They kind of think twice a little bit more, but it didn’t seem to occur to basically any of these people unless they were like, you know, liberal Tel Avivis that I might actually be a woman. Because that’s how conservative and kind of traditional this culture is. They would never think that someone would do what I was doing. They would have never conceptualized of it.

With a man who’s wearing a dress, in those societies, that’s much easier for those people to tell, oh yeah, this is a man wearing a dress. It’s easier for them to tell that, even if it’s a super effeminate gay man. It’s that they’re better at passing than a woman who’s wearing men’s clothes, because it’s not as much of an eyesore. Like it doesn’t stick out in your face as much. And so it’s, I guess, easier for those societies to accept. That’s what really just allowed me to do this for so long, frankly, like without injecting toxic doses of testosterone into my body, you know, just roiding myself into oblivion, like- That’s the only way, is because I was really young, and so people could kind of suspend their disbelief because they just didn’t have a schema for what else I could, why I could look so young, right? Like that- But like for Buck, I feel like Buck would have no problem.

Speaker 3: Yeah. You’re gonna look fucking 15 for a while, Maia.

MAIA: Huh?

Speaker 3: You look young right now. You’re 25. You look like you’re 15.

MAIA: Yeah. I’m well aware.

Speaker 3: You’re going to look young forever.

Speaker 2: Don’t worry, that’s why I grow the beard, Maia.

Speaker 3: Just me doing a little bit of light teasing.

 Resources

Author: Zinnia Jones

Zinnia Jones (she/her), trans woman and community advocate in Orlando, Florida. Email zinnia@trans.cx.