How accurate are the facts that Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the far-right social media Libs of TikTok, made about gender in a recent viral interview?

On Feb. 22, Raichik sat down with The Washington Post’s reporter Taylor Lorenz for an hour-long conversation that went live on Saturday. Prior to Saturday’s written profile, Lorenz had previously covered Raichik in 2022.

Libs of TikTok has been long steadily posting social media videos and posts that are primarily from the LGBTQ community, “often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage,” Lorenz wrote in the piece, breaking down how deep and far-reaching the effect of Raichik’s anonymous account has. At the time of publication two years ago, Raichik’s X account garnered nearly 650,000 followers. Today, she is just shy of three million.

“Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers […] and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community,” Lorenz explained in the 2022 profile.

The conservative account founder was recently under fire following the death of 16-year-old nonbinary Owasso High School student in Oklahoma, Nex Benedict. They were beaten in school, a result of a longstanding experience of bullying around the time the Republican state Gov. Stitt signed a slew of anti-trans youth bills in 2022. Critics of Raichik blame her Libs of TikTok account for her reposts, which had previously targeted an Owasso teacher for his pro-LGBTQ stances and eventually resigned from the school as a result of online hate.

Meanwhile, critics of the recent hour-long interview note Raichik’s firm claims that are followed by avoidant explanations. On Saturday, X user @JordanUhl wrote: “If you’re going to show up to an interview wearing a shirt with the reporter’s face on it to try & troll them, you should at least be prepared to answer relatively straightforward questions about a set of ideas you’ve built your entire online persona around.”

Ari Drennen, openly trans LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, a nonprofit combating misinformation, also took it to X on Sunday. She wrote, “The thing that makes the Chaya Raichik interview so horrifically compelling is that she has ruined people’s lives for reasons she literally cannot articulate.”

In light of these inconsistencies, we fact-checked six of the most misleading claims that she made during her sit-down with Lorenz.

In talking about feeling protective of children from the exposure of the LGBTQ community and its “radicalization,” Raichik said, “there’s two sexes and that’s it. Anything out of that is just based on lies and nonsense.”

But the existence of intersex people alone is proof that sex does not exist within the binary of male and female. The binary of sexes themselves are not black and white, given various research on varying chromosomes between XY and XX. People who are intersex have a variety of conditions from birth where the reproductive or sexual anatomy do not align with the medical binary of female and male, whether it revolves around genitalia, hormones, chromosomes or other factors.

And despite historic efforts of doctors performing nonconsensual surgical interventions on intersex babies to align them into a binary, many come to a conclusion in their adulthood that the interventions were detrimental.

In the wake of the intersex community fighting for bodily autonomy, Raichik’s ideology can be harmful for reinforcing a longtime misconstrued notion about sex.

While Lorenz explained believing in personal liberty, she mentioned having cisgender peers who pursued rhinoplasty or breast augmentation while in school as means of gender-affirming surgeries.

Contesting Lorenz, Raichik said, “You’re comparing a boy being allowed to chop off his penis to a teenage girl getting a nose job?”

In a press release last year about misinformation about trans healthcare, National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), the country’s leading social justice advocacy organization self-described as “winning life-saving change for transgender people” stated:

“Like all medical interventions, surgical care is highly individual, and only undertaken after significant consultations with experts. It’s important to know that very young children do not receive surgeries or medications. Any surgical care for teenagers under 18 is rare and individualized. It is carefully examined under the supervision of medical professionals using standardized, evidence-based guidelines.”

Raichik’s notion that transgender youth pursue surgery is not only uncommon for those under 18, but also reinforces an inaccurate portrayal that such surgeries are harmful rather than carefully discussed amongst the trans person, a guardian and their professional doctors.

When asked what she thinks about trans people who are living happy lives, Raichik combated with, “The whole ‘trans’ is based on a lie, because you can’t change your gender.” She also adds that gender ideologies and ‘transgenderism’ are pushed onto kids.

For many, gender identity and gender expression develop early and stay the same over time, according to Harvard Medical School in a 2020 story about gender fluidity. However, there are cases where that might change—an experience that is common for those who are gender fluid. Transitioning, however, is different than gender identity itself because transitioning can take place at multiple points of a person’s life, the study explains.

Dr. Joshua D. Safer, an endocrinologist and executive director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York told The New York Times in 2018 that “No one knows for sure why body and mind sometimes do not match. But being transgender is not a matter of choice; it is not a fad or a whim.”

During the interview, Raichik cites an alleged report that there are studies “out of Sweden” that show trans youth are more suicidal after transitioning. Lorenz was quick to say that Raichik’s claim was untrue.

On April 25, billionaire CEO of Tesla and owner of X Elon Musk—someone Raichik describes in the interview as someone who is “saving free speech” in the nation, tweeted a similar claim about the increase of suicidality for those who had undergone trans-related surgeries. He even referenced the same 2011 study done in Sweden.

But the findings relied on attitudes of trans people from 1973 to 2003. In 2021, a study published by JAMA Surgery found gender-affirming surgery to be a source of improved mental health for transgender and gender-nonconforming people, with significant stress reduction, psychological distress reduction and even reduction in tobacco addiction.

Despite the need for continued research, out of 23 studies last year, a majority indicated a reduction in suicidality following gender-affirming treatment.

Raichik mentioned a story of a parent of a nonbinary child who likes a drag TV show, and ended up meeting a drag queen who helped them get gender-affirming clothes.

“It leads a kid up on a path where probably they’ll end up in a hospital getting some of their body parts chopped off,” she said.

But plenty of research shows that a nonbinary identity—which does not conform to either man or woman gender identities—is nothing new, especially within the scope of pre-colonial history. In some Indigenous communities, Two Spirit is a gender identity outside of the gender binary that is respected amongst natives.

“Two-spirited people have existed since time immemorial and have filled special spiritual roles as healers, ceremonial leaders and visionaries,” wrote Anishinaabe director and producer Victoria Anderson-Gardner in August for the National Film Board of Canada “Since two-spirited people are seen as blessed with both masculine and feminine spirits, they are more spiritually gifted. Thus, they are honoured for their insight and what they have to offer to their communities.”