Radical gender ideology has become an increasingly prominent feature of entertainment in recent years, with a Disney executive admitting last year that she injects "queerness" into children's programming.

One figure who helped start that trend was Rachel Pollack, an occultist, transgender activist, and controversial comic book writer who passed away last week. 

Pollack remembered as "a beloved writer of fantasy"

According to The Guardian, Pollack died at the age of 77 this past Friday with author Neil Gaiman tweeted out a statement from the activist's spouse.

"Rachel was a beloved writer of fantasy, but I prefer to describe her as a magical realist," Judith Zoe Matoff said in a Facebook post.

"She wrote these wonderful books of heightened reality and magical worlds where she would concretize metaphor," Matoff continued.

"Rachel and I bonded over many, many things, one of which was Jewishness, and despite being a bastion of the new age she was also incredibly Jewish. There’s an orthodox prayer that begins 'Thank you, God, for not making me a woman,'" Matoff explained.

An early member of the transgender movement

"I remember her telling me that after she came to following her surgery she said, "Blessed to you God for not making me a woman, but thrice-blessed to the doctor who did,'" the spouse recalled.

She was my friend for 38 years and I will miss her. Sending love to Rachel Pollack wherever her journeys take her. pic.twitter.com/N2d6O7wSup

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) April 7, 2023

Born in New York City, Pollack later moved to the United Kingdom and embarked on a career as an English professor.

London-based writer and cultural critic Roz Kaveney told the Guardian that Pollock was involved in transgender activism as far back as the early 1970s.

First transgender superhero

"There are many questions we are just beginning to examine," Kaveney stated. "Why is Danny La Rue a West End institution, when we get kicked out of our flats for wearing a skirt? Apparently it’s all right if you’re doing it for money, but perverted if you do it for personal satisfaction."

"Rachel was a crystallizing force in the trans movement and so many other areas. She was perpetually an inspirational figure, and was one of the first professional trans writers who had a career while out, and proved that it was possible to do that," he went on to add.

The Guardian stated that Pollock wrote the monthly Doom Patrol comic for DC Comics' Vertigo imprint between 1993 and 1995, creating the first transgender superhero.

The writer and artist also took an interest in occult topics and designed several different decks of tarot cards.