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Trans People Aren't Forcing Anyone Else to Transition—But This Heteronormative Cult Is

Trans People Aren't Forcing Anyone Else to Transition—But This Heteronormative Cult Is

Jeff and Shaleia Divine Twin Flames Universe
Image: Netflix

The Twin Flames Universe is facing accusations that its leadership forced female members to transition to male.

It’s a common story told by the Right: a woman looking for answers and happiness is convinced by a cult to transition into a man only to become sad and lonely.

The only detail they were missing is that the cult is run by cis, straight people, and that people are being convinced to transition against their wishes in order to uphold heteronormativity.

Two new documentaries, Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe on Prime Video and Escaping Twin Flames on Netflix dive deep into the Twin Flames Universe, a cult led by Jeff and Shaleia Divine.

The cult was founded and is based on the belief that each person has a “twin flame” who is like a soul mate for them and that only Jeff and Shaleia can tell a person who their twin flame is. What started out as relationship coaching soon turned into something more sinister, with the cult going as far as to encourage several female members who had shown no sign and made no mention of being trans to transition into men.

In each documentary, we’re introduced to several women who were told that they were “divine masculine” energies, and should transition to men. According to Jeff and Shaleia, each twin flame couple is made up of one divine feminine partner and one divine masculine partner, and even same-sex couples operate that way.

In the documentaries, former cult members say that after years of members not getting in relationships with the people who were supposed to be their twin flames, Jeff and Shaleia had a “revelation” and found out that within the group there were several couples who were real twin flames. Desperately Seeking Soulmate proposes the hypothesis that because the group was overwhelmingly female, the leaders needed to force some members to transition in order to match them up with other straight women in the group.

The Twin Flames Universe had guaranteed that every member of the group would meet their twin flame if they paid for classes and the only way they could do that was by forcing some women in the group to become men and pairing them up with cis-hetero women.

These relationships go further than just marriages arranged by a cult, forcing people to transition against their wishes and forcing cis-hetero women into queer relationships.

While the Right is concerned that trans people and Leftists are busy “transing” our kids and convincing cis people to be trans because it’s a “trend,” the only people who are actually doing it are doing it to make relationships into straight ones.

Conservatives love to call the trans community a “cult,” but once again, it is straightness and heteronormativity that is a cult being used to force people to be a gender they do not want to be and are not.

The people who are “encouraged” to transition do not seem happy. They honestly look more like pre-transition trans women than post-transition trans men. Both documentaries show clips of the people making videos for the cult where they talk about their transition and the struggles they’ve had to accept their new male genders.

Thankfully, it seems like most of the women who were told to transition got out of the cult, and for many of them, it’s because they were told to transition and knew that they were not men.

The only thing that the cult ends up proving is that gender is real and that you cannot force someone to be a gender they are not and still have them be a happy and successful person.

Escaping Twin Flames Universe and Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe are two of the most confounding and mind-blowing documentaries airing right now. You can watch Desperately Seeking Soulmate on Prime Video and Escaping Twin Flames on Netflix.

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Mey Rude

Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.

Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.