I’m trans (I lived in San Francisco for 15 years and now I’m in New York City), and there is no doubt that like in so many other elections in the past, politicians are targeting a minority, amplifying the negative experiences and using it as propaganda to affect the election.

I have personally experienced many times, SOME trans people doing things that I consider to be completely inappropriate and often obnoxious. If you question them, they come after you with a flamethrower. Here are some examples. And keep in mind there are unreasonable people and assholes in every demographic, and trans is no exception.

When I was exploring transgendered surgery, I was surprised how so many people were pushing me into it. Nobody acted as a counterbalance to help me understand how difficult decision this was, and when I made that point to people I was screamed at. Every time. I even got into a huge argument with a famous transgendered surgeon when I wrote about this in my book. I ultimately decided that I couldn’t include her name in my book (I had her read it to get her approval.) She was being completely unreasonable and lying about what she said to me. It was only after multiple emails and me pushing really hard on her when she finally admitted to me what was driving her behavior and that she was unable to see things or my point of view…and I’m another trans person! (her painful memories were so bad, she was literally unable to see things from my point of view.).

When I tried talking to transgender people that my opinion was that you gotta be real careful about promoting this with children, once again I was screamed at . Little opportunity for logical discussion.

Same with transgender women in sports. Almost impossible to have a logical conversation.

I wrote a blog about autogynephilia, and a lot of trans women came after me. Even though I describe the multiple points of view, they only want to see it from ONE point of view. Their hatred of a certain class of trans women, because they aren’t just like them. I’ve taken more shit from other trans women, than anybody else.

I was an event at Burning Man where trans people and we’re trying to educate non-trans people. They started off by demanding that people use pronouns and went off on a 15 minute lecture about it. They didn’t even introduce themselves. The same people immediately lambasted me if I made a mistake with the pronouns. And I’m trans! I brought up in the event that they should probably be a little bit more understanding of other peoples perspective, and they barbecued me. Another example where you cannot question anything with SOME trans women, because they pulled out the trans card like they can never make a mistake.


Is this trans women’s fault? Well I think it’s mostly the fault of propaganda which takes isolated examples like this and amplifies it and uses it for propaganda. Is it the fault of people listening to the propaganda? These are complex questions. I can only speak about my personal experience, but I can say with a high degree of assertion that social media is a very very difficult place to have complex discussions. It’s hard enough in person!

Most trans women are fantastic people – they are courageous, determined, creative, interesting. Most of them do have a balance deal over this and don’t subscribe to a lot of this extreme behavior. I see social media propaganda as the single biggest challenge our country faces. Because if we don’t fix this, we are unable to have a good discourse on any complex topic. And this is clearly a recipe for a disaster of epic proportions.