Measurements
Counts taken for the Bot Traffic Monitor in October 2026. Only counts were collected: no post text, usernames or account IDs were stored, except where a hand check is described, and those posts were read and not kept.
What a count can’t show
- A count includes people quoting a phrase to object. On Bluesky, hand checks found most posts using anti-trans terms were pushing back. On Twitter the share has not been checked.
- Phrases have other meanings. “Groomer” is mostly pet grooming on Bluesky; “TRAs” matches the Spanish word “tras”; “gaping wound” is mostly about injuries.
- A count is not a count of people. One account can post many times; reposts are counted separately.
Twitter API post counts, English (lang:en), original posts only (-is:retweet) unless stated. “Before 8 Oct” covers the roughly 40 days from late August 2026.
| Search | Posts a day | Notes |
|---|---|---|
(troon OR troons) |
median 2,554 before 8 Oct (1,713 to 4,321); about 3,300 on 12 to 18 Oct | Reposts about 2,600 a day; repost share 25% to 56% |
("no such thing as trans" OR "no such thing as a trans") |
median 147 before 8 Oct (72 to 243) | Reposts about 10 a day |
"gaping wound" |
about 36 (9 to 90), 13 to 20 Oct | Mostly not about trans people |
"gaping wound" with a trans term |
about 2 (0 to 4) | Too rare to track |
| Wound phrasings with a trans term or “dilate” | about 17 (3 to 45) | Still mixes in unrelated uses |
The first two are tracked daily, with 50 days of history, by the Bot Traffic Monitor’s “anti-trans” group.
Bluesky
Exact daily counts from Bluesky’s public search, 1 September to 17 October 2026 (each day read in one request, which returns every post when there are fewer than 100).
| Search | Pre-strike mean a day (15 Sep to 7 Oct) |
|---|---|
| “women’s sports” | 82 |
| groomer | 41 |
| “protect women” | 35 |
| AGP | 24 |
| groomers | 21 |
| “gender critical” | 20 |
| “gender ideology” | 15 |
| “trans ideology” | 6 |
| “what is a woman” | 6 |
| “biological male” | 3 |
| “adult human female”, autogynephilia | 2 |
| “gender ideology” in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese | 0 to 5 |
| troon | about 10 (12 to 18 Oct) |
| “no such thing as trans” | about 1 (12 to 18 Oct) |
Hand check, about 50 recent posts per term, read and not stored:
| Search | Posts using the anti-trans framing |
|---|---|
| groomer | 0 of 47 (pet grooming, abuse call-outs, fandom; 2 pushed back against the slur) |
| “women’s sports” | 1 to 3 of 50 (about 25 fans, about 15 criticising the framing) |
| “protect women” | 0 to 2 of 48 (about half mocking the “protect women” crowd) |
| “TRAs” | 0 of 50 (Spanish and Portuguese “tras”) |
Ideas for further measurement
- Count “groomer”, “gender ideology” and “protect women” on Twitter, where the rhetoric mostly is (about $0.03 for a week, $0.05 for 50 days each).
- A paid hand check of what Twitter posts using each phrase actually say (about $0.25 per 50 posts), to estimate how much is the rhetoric and how much is pushback.