The trend has been going on for a while, but wildly, now the right seems to be eating its own.

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These “investigations” reflect an increasing and well-documented global hostility toward trans and LGBTQ+ communities, as well as women, said Jay Daniel Thompson, a senior lecturer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Victoria, Australia, who researches conspiracy theories and digital hostility. 

“Transvestigation is premised on stereotypes of trans women as freakish, deceptive and untrustworthy,” he told HuffPost. 

“These conspiracies target women in the public eye, seeking to demean those women and diminish their credibility,” he added. “This suggests that transvestigations are not just transphobic; they’re also deeply misogynistic.”

As we mentioned, armchair transvestigators frequently draw on phrenology, a racist pseudoscience, which explains why they have historically attacked Black women like Michelle Obama and brown women such as Imane Khelif. 

The mainstreaming of transvestigating reflects the broader rise of conspiratorial thinking over the past decade, too, Thompson said. In the age of social media, everyone sees themselves as a digital sleuth in their free time.

“Conspiratorialism is not new, but the fact that it’s become so ubiquitous these last 10 years reflects a combination of social upheaval and an increasingly interactive internet where information travels faster and wider than before,” he said. 

In some cases, people are just trolling and aren’t genuinely committed to their beliefs. 

“Often, you can’t distinguish ‘authentic’ transvestigations from those that are intended to stoke a fire through trolling or muddying the waters,” Webster said.

The negative connotations the far right attaches to trans identities are precisely why we don’t see as much transvestigating on the left, or among people who are more neutral or supportive toward trans people, said Samantha Lux, a trans activist and content creator.

“If you don’t view being trans as a bad thing, then what need would you have to ‘expose’ someone’s identity?” she said. 

The theories send a painful message to actual trans women, Lux said.

“Transvestigations further the narrative that being transgender is, in itself, deceptive,” she said. “It perpetuates the notion that underneath our transness, we’re really men in disguise ― and who uses disguises? People with ulterior motives. Being transgender is who we are, at the deepest level, our only motive is to live authentically.”  

As the queer website Pride.com noted a few months back, no one is “safe from the absurdity” of transvestigations these days.

The site pointed to the Facebook group “Transvestigation Disclosure NOW 2.0” as the source of many spurious claims about Charlie and Erika Kirk, as well as Sweeney, since at least 2024.

The viral tweet questioning Sweeney’s gender happened not long after she gained 30 pounds and underwent intense physical training for “Christy,” a biographical sports drama about the 1990s boxer Christy Martin. Some Sweeney fanboys were put off by her transformation, which may have inspired some of the “she’s a man” insults. 

Claims about Erika Kirk being an “invert” began almost as soon as her husband was killed last September, Them.us reported.

Conspiracists pointed to a video Erika Kirk filmed more than a decade ago, in which she described herself as a tomboy during childhood, as proof that she was born male. As Them.us noted, some even used the moment to posthumously “transvestigate” Charlie Kirk: “That’s why Charlie Kirk seemed so feminine and emasculated because she was a transgender handler. That’s why he was so pretty,” one person wrote.

While Owens hasn’t gone so far as to jump on the “Erik Kirk” bandwagon, she probably knew how it would rile up her fanbase when she shared the childhood photos of Kirk on her YouTube show.

“I find it telling that Candace Owens’ YouTube series Becoming Brigitte – which repeats the rumor that France’s first lady Brigitte Macron is secretly trans – has thus far received 5.1 million views,” Thompson said. “I suspect that for some folk, personal prejudices trump ― no pun intended! ― political affiliations and feelings of solidarity. It’s for the pursuit of clicks and revenue.” 

At its core, a transvestigation is used as a tool to strip credibility from women perceived as threatening to the status quo, which some on the right may argue Erika Kirk is doing now that she’s the CEO of Turning Point USA. 

As Lux said, “The far right explicitly wants women to pursue submissive lifestyles. It doesn’t matter how ‘pro-far-right’ a woman is; if she is in a position of power or success, she is not fulfilling the role they’ve prescribed her.”This article originally appeared on HuffPost.