Former transgender influencer Oli London speaks out against the sexualization of children
Former transgender influencer Oli London calls out the entertainment industry for promoting content meant to "provoke outrage" and "push sexualization."
Detransitioner and social media icon Oli London criticized the entertainment industry for trying to ‘normalize’ minors undergoing gender transitions, in order to "weaken society."
London is a social media influencer with over two million followers between TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on surgeries to look like a Korean woman. After living as a trans Korean woman for six months, London transitioned back, saying the changes he decided to make to his physical appearance weren't the answers to his problems.
"I'm lucky I didn't go through the full body modification, but I suddenly completely changed my face and I do regret a lot of things that I've done," London told Fox News Digital.
London said he underwent surgeries to try to look and feel better, which would make him happy for a few months, but he said he would go back to feeling unhappy with himself.
"I transitioned, I was living as a trans woman for six months and I thought that was the reason I was unhappy, and then I still wasn't happy," he said. "I was considering more surgery, more extreme body modifications. Then I got to a point where I was thinking, ‘Is this really me?’ ‘Is this who I want to be?’"
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"People keep telling me I'm better as a woman, I look better, I'm more feminine, but it doesn't feel like me," he added. "That's when I really started to question myself and I realized I just want to get back to the real me the way I was born."
London said his story isn't unlike that of many transitioners and detransitioners, but he draws a distinction between his story and that of adolescents who have undergone similar surgeries to address their gender dysphoria.
"I'm an adult," he said. "Obviously, I blame myself, but I fell for that kind of indoctrination that this is totally normal."
"Society as a whole was saying how easy it is to transition, that if you feel you're confused about who you are, it's because you're trapped in the wrong body," London said. "So I fell for that."
London believed a huge proportion of kids who maybe wouldn't have wanted to transition a decade ago, now think it is "cool" or "trendy" because of TV shows like RuPaul's Drag Race or TikTok influencers like Dylan Mulvaney, who push the idea that children struggling with their identity "can get validated," "get attention" or "get love and compassion" if they "just decide to transition."
He said social media, the education system and medical institutions are responsible for pushing this ideology.
"In the West, in particular in America, the entertainment industry, Hollywood is trying to normalize this, and I think the reason behind it is to confuse kids and almost weaken society and keep people fighting over pronouns," he said.
"People should be coming together and learning about American values," he added. "Instead, people are being divided."
London has been a harsh critic of British singer-songwriter Sam Smith, whose recent music video sparked backlash across social media for its sexual nature and lack of age restrictions, which he believes are promoted by the entertainment industry to "provoke outrage" and "push sexualization."
"I think there's some people in the entertainment industry ... There are people in positions of power that want to normalize this behavior," he said. "We're seeing more and more people trying to push to rename pedophiles to minor attracted people (MAPs).
London also attributes the medical industry's embrace of gender-transition surgeries to greediness.
"As an adult, you're free to make your own decisions, but I think we're seeing the rise of this because firstly, it's big business for these pediatric clinics … there's a lot of money being involved," London said.
"Society pushes many young people these days to undergo gender reassignment surgery, facial feminization, to take hormones or puberty blockers, because know it's seen as a quick solution to fix the problem," he added. "But, you know, it's a temporary fix."
"I think the same is true with many cases of kids being pushed into transitioning," he said.
London pointed to the fact that 1.6 million people in the U.S. 13 and older now identify as transgender, according to a study conducted by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. In addition, 18 percent of people who identify as transgender are 13 to 17 years-old, while children ages 13 to 17 make up 8 only percent of the U.S. population.
"Youth ages 13 to 17 comprise a larger share of the transgender-identified population than we previously estimated, currently comprising about 18% of the transgender-identified population in the U.S., up from 10% previously," the study concluded.
"
"It's an incredibly harmful trend that we're seeing and that's why I feel it's important to call out people like Sam Smith because now he's obviously doing something to be shocking," London said. "It's great attention to him. He's been trending for four days now."
London said the music video this gives Smith's young audience, who are "very impressionable," the idea that these "shocking sexual fantasies" are "normal."
"The whole Sam Smith music video is basically it's like watching a porn video it's so explicit," London said. "You actually have Sam Smith mocking Christianity. Instead of doing a baptism, someone is urinating in his mouth, which is a sexual fetish for some people, which is shocking."
"How low can you go? How desperate can your music video be?" he added.
The music video also features Smith dancing with the camera focusing and zooming in on the lower parts of his body while he dances in a "sexualized tone," London said.
"You have these people clad in leather underwear and bondage writhing around the beds, doing highly sexualized and suggestive poses, which is like kind of bondage BDSM," he added. "Sam Smith has a lot of young fans … and is always trying to push his non-binary personality … to provoke outrage and to generate headlines."
London said he believes "highly sexualized" content on social media should "at least" have an age restriction to prevent a child from accessing what he believes to be pornographic content, like Smith's music video.
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As a member of the LGBTQ community, London said Smith's message is "harmful" because it gives people the impressions that this represents all people who identify at LGBTQ.
"They think all trans people, all non-binary people are like Sam Smith, that they're all into these sexual deviances, which is simply not the case," London said.
"People see Sam Smith and they think he represents the LGBT community," he added. "I just think it's very degrading to show LGBT people in that light when you could do a more positive video that's more uplifting, maybe a love story, something romantic to be about self-acceptance."
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London is writing a book, "Detransition," which is slated to be released in the fall of 2023, which he said will look at society's push to transition children and the lasting harm it has on kids.
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