What Do We Actually Want From People Who Change?

Ashley St. Clair, accountability, and the question I can't stop thinking about. #TransparentTuesday

Hi friend,

I’ve been fascinated by Ashley St. Clair’s TikTok content lately.

Now, if you don’t know who Ashley St. Clair is…honestly, that's probably healthy.

Ashley was a prominent MAGA influencer for years who started at the very young age of 19 to build a public platform creating incredibly problematic and harmful right-wing content. She was particularly known for her anti-trans rhetoric, and spent years helping spread ideas and narratives that caused a huge amount of real harm to marginalized communities.

Later on, she became known for becoming one of Elon Musk’s many overlapping “baby mommas,” a bizarre fact that thrust her into an entirely different level of media attention and public scrutiny, and put her on the radar of a lot of non-MAGA folks.

More recently, however, she's become known for something very different—over the past year, Ashley has done a complete 180 in terms of her political identity, and is now both taking accountability for the harm she personally caused, and telling her story and coming out strongly against MAGA politics.

Her content nowadays consists of her doing her makeup in “get ready with me” style videos, while also:

• Talking about the significant shift she’s made to her own political views and values.

• Sharing behind-the-scenes stories about the toxic and corrupt MAGA people, companies, and systems that she was privy to.

• Sharing her experiences inside MAGA spaces, describing them in ways that often sound remarkably similar to how former cult members describe leaving high-control groups.

• Describing what she now sees as manipulative, cult-like dynamics within the MAGA movement, including both how she originally got drawn in (at 19), and why/how she eventually got out. 

I have watched hours of this 27 year old’s content over the last couple of weeks, and personally I find her to be incredibly charming and likeable.

A lot of people don’t agree with me (and that’s fine!), but I find her political and policy critiques to be extremely intelligent, informed, and nuanced. And the fact that they’re delivered in equal parts “catty gossip-queen excited to spill the tea on shitty people,” and a “don’t fuck with my family” kind of momma bear ferocity makes her all the more charming to me.

I also really fucking love that, apparently, when Ashley started to criticize certain MAGA influencers and policies, Elon Musk offered her $40 million dollar to shut the fuck up… and she turned it down. 

The way Ashley tells it, she had absolutely no plans to tell the world her story until he pushed for that NDA. She says she was perfectly willing to think of herself as just another dumb pick-me girl whose voice didn’t matter until the richest man in the world told her that, actually, her voice was worth $40 million. 

So she turned that deal down, and is now a financially struggling single mom committed to telling her story to anyone who will listen. And while I love any story about an entitled man not getting his way, for an entitled man to accidentally empower a badass woman to step into her power and (hopefully) lead to his ultimate downfall? Chef’s kiss. But that’s just me.

To be honest, the most interesting part of this story to me isn’t actually about Ashley St. Clair herself, but rather everyone else’s reaction to her political change of heart—especially within liberal, leftist, and progressive circles!

The thing is, Ashley’s new content seems to be making a lot of folks on “our side” of the political aisle incredibly angry.

It’s not that they’re just skeptical or cautious, either, both of which I think are valid responses. And they’re not just saying they don’t believe her or find her disingenuous, although both of those are true too. 

But what’s fascinating to me as a viewer is that so many people whose political goals and I share seem to absolutely fucking hate this woman. 

The dominant response I keep seeing is some variation of:

• "You're a terrible person." 

• "You're nothing but a lying grifter.”

• "I will never trust or forgive you."

• "Just shut the hell up and go away, nobody cares what you think." 

To be clear, I do understand this reaction, to some degree. 

Trust is earned, after all, and Ashley only started the process of rebuilding trust very recently. It’ll take time, and I think a certain amount of skepticism and caution is healthy in this kind of situation.

When a person has spent literal years causing harm like she did, announcing that they've changed their mind and “take it all back” does not automatically entitle them to forgiveness, admiration, credibility, or trust. 

People who were directly harmed by this woman’s rhetoric especially never owe her forgiveness, attention, validation, or a second chance. (Although on that point—it’s interesting to me to see that trans people who watch her content tend to actually be a lot more willing to welcome her back and acknowledge her growth compared to other people!)

I am fascinated by the intensity of the reaction Ashley receives from many people on the left, and how actively angry they seem to be at the idea that she claims to have changed her mind at all. 

The comments I see most often aren't really expressions of caution, they're expressions of certainty. 

Certainty that she's lying. Certainty that she's grifting. Certainty that nothing she says matters. Certainty that no amount of accountability could ever be enough. 

The message I’ve been seeing often feels less like "I need you to prove you've changed," and more like "there is literally nothing you could ever do that would make me believe you’ve changed.”

As if people can’t change. 

In fairness, we've all watched public figures apologize and ask for forgiveness without taking real accountability or demonstrating real change, and it’s exhausting. We've all seen people rebrand themselves while continuing the same harmful behavior underneath. We've all seen individuals weaponize the language of accountability and growth without actually taking responsibility for anything. It makes sense to be wary.

But people do, can, and should change their minds about things, so watching this play out keeps bringing me back to the same question:

If someone genuinely leaves a harmful movement, what exactly do we want to happen next?

Because if Ashley's account is even partially honest and accurate, then she's describing something many progressives have been saying for years: that MAGA often functions less like a normal political movement and more like a high-control ideological community or cult.

Not everyone would agree with that characterization, of course, but it's a comparison I hear from people across the political spectrum on a regular basis, and as an amateur cult-anthropologist myself, it really fricken tracks.

And if that's true, then shouldn't we all be very interested in the stories of people who leave??

Who else can better help us understand what happened… both in terms of how they got drawn in in the first place, and then how, why, and what it took for them to finally break free?

What finally cracked their certainty, or changed their mind? Don’t we need to form a better understanding of what makes someone willing to question and reject the very same beliefs that once formed the infrastructure of their identity, community, livelihood, and sense of self?

Even if you don't trust the person telling the story, those still seem like fascinating and valuable questions for us to be asking.

After all, if the goal is reducing harm, then understanding why and how people change their minds about major political and ideological topics feels like important information.

Maybe part of what I'm noticing here is the subtle tension that exists in a lot of progressive spaces. 

We often talk about growth, learning, accountability, and doing better. We often emphasize that people are not born with perfect politics and that education matters. We encourage people to listen, learn, and evolve. 

But sometimes I wonder if people really believe in transformation more easily in theory than they actually do in practice.

Because real transformation is messy and gritty and uncomfortable.

Real transformation means someone who once believed harmful things no longer believes them. Real transformation means someone who once contributed to harm is trying to become someone else. 

People who have gone through these transformations by definition can not show up with a perfectly clean record!

I know because I’ve gone through my own journey, and had to unpack, reject, and disavow everything that I once believed… including the homophobic and transphobic views that I held growing up.

I know from experience what it's like to outgrow beliefs I once held with complete certainty. I know what it's like to look back at an earlier version of myself and realize that some of the things I believed, defended, or repeated no longer align with my values. I think most of us have had that experience in one form or another, even if the details differ dramatically.

Growth requires becoming someone who would disagree with who you used to be… and if that's true, then every person who changes significantly will eventually find themselves standing in an uncomfortable relationship with their own past.

The difference, perhaps, is that most of us get to do that privately. We look back on the foolish people we were at 19 or 22, and we cringe and shake our heads, barely able to even recognize that person. 

But Ashley has had to do it publicly.

That doesn't excuse the harm she caused, of course, and she’ll be the first to tell you that. But it does make me wonder whether some people on “our side” of the political aisle are asking for something impossible.

We often tell people who have caused harm that they need to take accountability, acknowledge what they've done, apologize, make amends, and commit to doing better. We say that growth requires honesty and responsibility.

But when someone appears to be attempting exactly that, many people respond by saying it doesn't matter because they'll never be trusted anyway.

And maybe for some people, that's true.

Trust is personal, and nobody is obligated to offer it.

But I wonder what it means about us that we’re so unwilling to believe in a person’s capacity to change.

Personally, my belief in people’s ability to change serves as the very foundation of my work as a coach—if I didn’t think they could change, I wouldn’t bother with this work. And this work is what allows me to witness people going through their own major transformations all the time!

Acknowledging the harm someone caused, while remaining open to the possibility that they are no longer the same person they once were, isn't only possible, but I think it’s necessary. 

Because if our answer to every former extremist, every former cult member, every former believer in harmful ideas is that they are permanently defined by their worst chapter, then I'm not sure what incentive we're creating for people to leave.

Why risk losing your community if the people outside it have already decided you'll never belong? Why tell the truth about what happened if nobody wants to hear it? Why take accountability if accountability changes nothing?

I'm not asking these questions because I think everyone should trust Ashley St. Clair. I don’t care if you do or don’t listen to or believe her. 

But I am asking because I think this conversation highlights something important about whether or not we believe in people’s inherent capacity for growth and change, and how we want to treat people who have done harm and are now trying to make amends. 

I don't know how we distinguish sincere growth from strategic reinvention with perfect accuracy. I don't know how much accountability is enough, or whether there are some harms that can never truly be repaired.

What I do know is that every person who leaves a harmful movement starts out as someone inside it.

And if we're genuinely interested in helping more people leave, then understanding those stories—and figuring out what comes after them—feels like a conversation worth having.

Big hug,

Jessi