The Fire and the Mirror:
Trans Rage, Moral Clarity, and the Fight for Our Future
[October 2025]
There is a fury rising in the trans community. And it is righteous.
We are living through a coordinated global assault on trans people. Our bodies and rights are politicized, pathologized, and debated by pundits, lawmakers, influencers, and even medical professionals who speak over us while pretending we are not in the room. In the United States alone, over 500 anti-trans bills have been introduced in the last few years. Our access to healthcare, to public life, to safety and dignity, is under siege. We are mocked by media. We are attacked in the streets. We are murdered—especially Black trans women—at horrifying rates. And when we speak up, when we shout, when we protest, we are accused of hysteria or aggression.
So yes. We are angry. And we have every right to be.
But with this anger—this survival-born, hard-won, holy anger—comes a responsibility, one I’ve felt keenly as a trans man navigating both queer and non-queer spaces since I came out in 2013. I’ve seen firsthand how easily anger can become the only emotion we trust. I’ve felt the seduction of saying, burn it all down, when the world seems to be saying, you don’t belong here.
I’ve also felt something harder to admit out loud: relief when a mass shooter isn’t trans (even though statistically speaking, 99% of mass shootings are done by cishet dudes). That particular breath I hold when I first see breaking news, hoping the name isn’t someone like me, isn’t someone who’ll be used as a cudgel against the rest of us. Hoping we won’t be scapegoated again. Because I know what happens when one of us breaks—how the media leaps, how the politicians pounce, how the conversation is suddenly not about why someone broke, but about what we all allegedly are.
That moment of relief doesn’t mean I condone violence—of course not. It means I understand the cost when a single act of destruction gets pinned to our entire community. And I grieve for all the people broken by a society that would rather punish than understand them.
I also remember the first time I saw the phrase “die cis scum” in a queer space, around 2015. At first, I thought it was a bad joke and people were saying it ironically the way we make "gay agenda/trans agenda" jokes ironically. Then I realized it wasn’t a joke and people were deadass serious. Then I raised a hand and said: Hey… this might not be the direction we want to go. Since 2020, I've told people they shouldn't use violent, threatening language against JK Rowling or other anti-trans activists. And each and every time, I was called a Pick Me. A bootlicker. A traitor. A “fash collaborator.” Not for being conservative (I’m not), or for tone-policing (I wasn’t), but for saying: dehumanizing language is dehumanizing language, no matter who says it.
I understand why it started. When you're constantly punched down at, it's tempting to punch up—or sideways, or even preemptively. It’s tempting to treat “cishet” as synonymous with oppressor, even though there are cis and straight people who fight and bleed for us, who stand beside us in truth and love. It's tempting to let anger turn everyone outside our bubble into an enemy. And when someone like Charlie Kirk dies, it’s tempting to joke, to celebrate, to say, “Good riddance.” I get the impulse.
But I also believe this: we are more than our pain, and we must be more than our rage.
Because every time we mock death, every time we dehumanize others—even our enemies—we give our adversaries what they want: evidence that we are dangerous, unstable, cruel. That we cannot be reasoned with. That we are monsters.
And that has consequences.
It becomes easier for them to justify violence against us, censorship of us, and legislation targeting us. It undermines our alliances. It weakens our moral standing. And more importantly—more urgently—it corrodes us. The human heart cannot thrive in a wasteland of bitterness, even if that wasteland feels like home.
This is not “respectability politics.” Respectability politics is about changing yourself to appease the powerful. I’m not asking anyone to shrink, to compromise their truth, or to make themselves palatable for bigots. What I am asking is that we keep hold of our own humanity while fighting for it. That we remember anger is a tool, not a compass. That we can be fierce without being cruel.
There is a reason the most effective civil rights leaders understood this. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was hated by white moderates and feared by the FBI, preached non-violence not because he was soft, but because he was strategic and principled. Harvey Milk, who was openly gay in a time when that alone was revolutionary, never lost his capacity for hope or compassion even when facing death. Bayard Rustin. Sylvia Rivera. Marsha P. Johnson. Audre Lorde. These were not docile figures—they were radicals. But their power came not only from rage—it came from love, from vision, from clarity of purpose.
We are living through a coordinated global assault on trans people. Our bodies and rights are politicized, pathologized, and debated by pundits, lawmakers, influencers, and even medical professionals who speak over us while pretending we are not in the room. In the United States alone, over 500 anti-trans bills have been introduced in the last few years. Our access to healthcare, to public life, to safety and dignity, is under siege. We are mocked by media. We are attacked in the streets. We are murdered—especially Black trans women—at horrifying rates. And when we speak up, when we shout, when we protest, we are accused of hysteria or aggression.
So yes. We are angry. And we have every right to be.
But with this anger—this survival-born, hard-won, holy anger—comes a responsibility, one I’ve felt keenly as a trans man navigating both queer and non-queer spaces since I came out in 2013. I’ve seen firsthand how easily anger can become the only emotion we trust. I’ve felt the seduction of saying, burn it all down, when the world seems to be saying, you don’t belong here.
I’ve also felt something harder to admit out loud: relief when a mass shooter isn’t trans (even though statistically speaking, 99% of mass shootings are done by cishet dudes). That particular breath I hold when I first see breaking news, hoping the name isn’t someone like me, isn’t someone who’ll be used as a cudgel against the rest of us. Hoping we won’t be scapegoated again. Because I know what happens when one of us breaks—how the media leaps, how the politicians pounce, how the conversation is suddenly not about why someone broke, but about what we all allegedly are.
That moment of relief doesn’t mean I condone violence—of course not. It means I understand the cost when a single act of destruction gets pinned to our entire community. And I grieve for all the people broken by a society that would rather punish than understand them.
I also remember the first time I saw the phrase “die cis scum” in a queer space, around 2015. At first, I thought it was a bad joke and people were saying it ironically the way we make "gay agenda/trans agenda" jokes ironically. Then I realized it wasn’t a joke and people were deadass serious. Then I raised a hand and said: Hey… this might not be the direction we want to go. Since 2020, I've told people they shouldn't use violent, threatening language against JK Rowling or other anti-trans activists. And each and every time, I was called a Pick Me. A bootlicker. A traitor. A “fash collaborator.” Not for being conservative (I’m not), or for tone-policing (I wasn’t), but for saying: dehumanizing language is dehumanizing language, no matter who says it.
I understand why it started. When you're constantly punched down at, it's tempting to punch up—or sideways, or even preemptively. It’s tempting to treat “cishet” as synonymous with oppressor, even though there are cis and straight people who fight and bleed for us, who stand beside us in truth and love. It's tempting to let anger turn everyone outside our bubble into an enemy. And when someone like Charlie Kirk dies, it’s tempting to joke, to celebrate, to say, “Good riddance.” I get the impulse.
But I also believe this: we are more than our pain, and we must be more than our rage.
Because every time we mock death, every time we dehumanize others—even our enemies—we give our adversaries what they want: evidence that we are dangerous, unstable, cruel. That we cannot be reasoned with. That we are monsters.
And that has consequences.
It becomes easier for them to justify violence against us, censorship of us, and legislation targeting us. It undermines our alliances. It weakens our moral standing. And more importantly—more urgently—it corrodes us. The human heart cannot thrive in a wasteland of bitterness, even if that wasteland feels like home.
This is not “respectability politics.” Respectability politics is about changing yourself to appease the powerful. I’m not asking anyone to shrink, to compromise their truth, or to make themselves palatable for bigots. What I am asking is that we keep hold of our own humanity while fighting for it. That we remember anger is a tool, not a compass. That we can be fierce without being cruel.
There is a reason the most effective civil rights leaders understood this. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was hated by white moderates and feared by the FBI, preached non-violence not because he was soft, but because he was strategic and principled. Harvey Milk, who was openly gay in a time when that alone was revolutionary, never lost his capacity for hope or compassion even when facing death. Bayard Rustin. Sylvia Rivera. Marsha P. Johnson. Audre Lorde. These were not docile figures—they were radicals. But their power came not only from rage—it came from love, from vision, from clarity of purpose.
What About Stonewall?
Whenever someone like me speaks out against celebrating death or calling for violence, someone inevitably throws back, “What about Stonewall?”
Let’s talk about it.
Yes—Stonewall was a riot. Yes, it was catalyzed by police brutality, systemic oppression, and righteous rage. And yes, trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were there, along with drag queens, street kids, lesbians, and gay men who’d been brutalized for decades.
But the truth of Stonewall is more complex than a Molotov cocktail meme. It was not a call to arms in the way people like to imagine on Twitter.
The first night wasn’t premeditated—it was a spontaneous explosion of pain and fury after yet another raid on a community that had been pushed too far. And even then, there were tensions. Not everyone was cheering. Not everyone wanted escalation.
Some people helped start fires.
Others helped put them out.
Both were queer.
What came after the riot was organizing—not just rage. The reason we know Stonewall wasn’t just a chaotic street brawl is because the people involved turned that moment into a movement. They marched. They held teach-ins. They made art. They built coalitions. They took care of each other. They channeled the fury into purpose.
To invoke Stonewall only as a defense of violence is to miss the deeper point. Stonewall wasn’t about revenge. It was about survival. It was about saying no more to a system that treated us as disposable. And it lit a fire—but that fire didn’t burn down the world. It lit torches that others could carry. It lit the way forward.
If all we do is point to Stonewall to justify cruelty now—mocking deaths, calling for violence against “the cis,” dehumanizing people who haven’t hurt us—we’re not honoring that legacy. We’re twisting it.
Stonewall’s lesson is not “hurt them before they hurt us.” It’s that even the most marginalized can demand dignity and create change when we rise together—not to destroy, but to rebuild.
We should carry the spirit of Stonewall. The courage. The resilience. The refusal to back down.
But let’s not reduce it to a punchline or a free pass for cruelty.
We deserve a future that honors our past without getting stuck in its shadows.
Whenever someone like me speaks out against celebrating death or calling for violence, someone inevitably throws back, “What about Stonewall?”
Let’s talk about it.
Yes—Stonewall was a riot. Yes, it was catalyzed by police brutality, systemic oppression, and righteous rage. And yes, trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were there, along with drag queens, street kids, lesbians, and gay men who’d been brutalized for decades.
But the truth of Stonewall is more complex than a Molotov cocktail meme. It was not a call to arms in the way people like to imagine on Twitter.
The first night wasn’t premeditated—it was a spontaneous explosion of pain and fury after yet another raid on a community that had been pushed too far. And even then, there were tensions. Not everyone was cheering. Not everyone wanted escalation.
Some people helped start fires.
Others helped put them out.
Both were queer.
What came after the riot was organizing—not just rage. The reason we know Stonewall wasn’t just a chaotic street brawl is because the people involved turned that moment into a movement. They marched. They held teach-ins. They made art. They built coalitions. They took care of each other. They channeled the fury into purpose.
To invoke Stonewall only as a defense of violence is to miss the deeper point. Stonewall wasn’t about revenge. It was about survival. It was about saying no more to a system that treated us as disposable. And it lit a fire—but that fire didn’t burn down the world. It lit torches that others could carry. It lit the way forward.
If all we do is point to Stonewall to justify cruelty now—mocking deaths, calling for violence against “the cis,” dehumanizing people who haven’t hurt us—we’re not honoring that legacy. We’re twisting it.
Stonewall’s lesson is not “hurt them before they hurt us.” It’s that even the most marginalized can demand dignity and create change when we rise together—not to destroy, but to rebuild.
We should carry the spirit of Stonewall. The courage. The resilience. The refusal to back down.
But let’s not reduce it to a punchline or a free pass for cruelty.
We deserve a future that honors our past without getting stuck in its shadows.
People Can Change (And Some Already Have)
I believe—still, stubbornly—that people can change.
We live in a time where it's easy to despair. Easy to believe the loudest bigots are lost causes, and the systems that embolden them are too deeply entrenched to break. But history tells a more complicated story. So does life.
Because while some people double down and harden into cruelty, others—sometimes the very same people—find their way out.
Take Christian Picciolini, once a leading Neo-Nazi skinhead recruiter in the U.S. As a teenager, he fell into white supremacism because it gave him identity, belonging, and purpose when he felt alone and powerless. He eventually left the movement after forming human connections with people he’d been taught to hate—most notably a Black man who treated him with compassion and dignity. Today, Christian runs the Free Radicals Project, helping others exit extremist ideologies. He gives talks around the world, sharing what led him in—and what led him out.
Then there’s Adrianne Black, the trans daughter of a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and the godchild of David Duke. Adrianne was the rising star of white nationalism. But when she went to college and started talking to Jewish and non-white classmates, she slowly realized she’d been living in a lie, and she eventually came out a a trans woman as well. Her story—told powerfully in The New York Times and Eli Saslow’s book Rising Out of Hatred—shows how gentle persistence and exposure to difference can melt even deeply embedded hate.
Former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper is another example. Raised in a cult that picketed funerals and spewed hatred at queer people, she eventually walked away after years of dialogue on Twitter—yes, Twitter—where people engaged her with both firmness and humanity. She now speaks out against extremism and helps others find their way out, too. Her TED Talk, “I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here’s why I left,” has helped thousands.
These people were once the enemies of progress. They now work toward healing.
There are organizations devoted to this work:
One of my personal heroes is Daryl Davis, a Black musician, author, and speaker who spent decades sitting down with members of the Ku Klux Klan—not to validate them, but to confront them with his humanity. Through calm, persistent conversation, he asked them a simple question: “How can you hate me if you don’t even know me?” Over time, more than 200 Klan members left the organization because of their interactions with him. Some gave him their robes as a symbol of change. Davis didn’t compromise his dignity to reach them—he didn’t coddle them. He held his ground, told his truth, and looked them in the eye. His work wasn’t about appeasement—it was about disruption through undeniable presence. It’s a reminder that hate often withers in proximity to the people it targets—if those people are safe enough to stand there, and strong enough to speak.
I’m not saying we owe anyone forgiveness.
I’m saying transformation is possible.
We must protect ourselves first, and we must fight tooth and nail for our rights. But we can also make room for the hope that some of the people who hate us now won’t always.
That maybe the teacher who parrots TERF talking points will have a trans student who opens her eyes.
That maybe the father who threw his kid out will one day come to his senses, and come to the door.
That maybe the TikTok troll becomes the TED speaker. The stone thrower becomes the ally.
People can be radicalized into hatred.
But they can also be transformed by empathy, art, love, loss, education, shame, grace, and time.
We don’t have to rely on that hope.
But we don’t have to bury it, either.
Because the most revolutionary thing we can say in a world that profits from division is this:
You are not beyond reach.
I believe—still, stubbornly—that people can change.
We live in a time where it's easy to despair. Easy to believe the loudest bigots are lost causes, and the systems that embolden them are too deeply entrenched to break. But history tells a more complicated story. So does life.
Because while some people double down and harden into cruelty, others—sometimes the very same people—find their way out.
Take Christian Picciolini, once a leading Neo-Nazi skinhead recruiter in the U.S. As a teenager, he fell into white supremacism because it gave him identity, belonging, and purpose when he felt alone and powerless. He eventually left the movement after forming human connections with people he’d been taught to hate—most notably a Black man who treated him with compassion and dignity. Today, Christian runs the Free Radicals Project, helping others exit extremist ideologies. He gives talks around the world, sharing what led him in—and what led him out.
Then there’s Adrianne Black, the trans daughter of a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and the godchild of David Duke. Adrianne was the rising star of white nationalism. But when she went to college and started talking to Jewish and non-white classmates, she slowly realized she’d been living in a lie, and she eventually came out a a trans woman as well. Her story—told powerfully in The New York Times and Eli Saslow’s book Rising Out of Hatred—shows how gentle persistence and exposure to difference can melt even deeply embedded hate.
Former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper is another example. Raised in a cult that picketed funerals and spewed hatred at queer people, she eventually walked away after years of dialogue on Twitter—yes, Twitter—where people engaged her with both firmness and humanity. She now speaks out against extremism and helps others find their way out, too. Her TED Talk, “I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here’s why I left,” has helped thousands.
These people were once the enemies of progress. They now work toward healing.
There are organizations devoted to this work:
- Life After Hate, founded by former extremists, helps people leave white nationalist movements.
- Parents for Transgender Equality, part of the Human Rights Campaign, includes many parents who once rejected their kids and now advocate fiercely for them.
- Faith in America and FreedHearts are Christian orgs that work to dismantle religious bigotry toward LGBTQ+ people, especially trans youth. Many of their leaders were once part of the harm.
One of my personal heroes is Daryl Davis, a Black musician, author, and speaker who spent decades sitting down with members of the Ku Klux Klan—not to validate them, but to confront them with his humanity. Through calm, persistent conversation, he asked them a simple question: “How can you hate me if you don’t even know me?” Over time, more than 200 Klan members left the organization because of their interactions with him. Some gave him their robes as a symbol of change. Davis didn’t compromise his dignity to reach them—he didn’t coddle them. He held his ground, told his truth, and looked them in the eye. His work wasn’t about appeasement—it was about disruption through undeniable presence. It’s a reminder that hate often withers in proximity to the people it targets—if those people are safe enough to stand there, and strong enough to speak.
I’m not saying we owe anyone forgiveness.
I’m saying transformation is possible.
We must protect ourselves first, and we must fight tooth and nail for our rights. But we can also make room for the hope that some of the people who hate us now won’t always.
That maybe the teacher who parrots TERF talking points will have a trans student who opens her eyes.
That maybe the father who threw his kid out will one day come to his senses, and come to the door.
That maybe the TikTok troll becomes the TED speaker. The stone thrower becomes the ally.
People can be radicalized into hatred.
But they can also be transformed by empathy, art, love, loss, education, shame, grace, and time.
We don’t have to rely on that hope.
But we don’t have to bury it, either.
Because the most revolutionary thing we can say in a world that profits from division is this:
You are not beyond reach.
Nietzsche warned us long ago: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” We must gaze wisely. Because there is a difference between confronting horror and letting it shape you. There is a difference between fire that illuminates and fire that consumes.
If our fight becomes about dominance instead of dignity, revenge instead of liberation, we lose the very soul of what we claim to protect. We lose the mirror in which we see each other as fully human—not just comrades, but siblings in struggle, friends, lovers, teachers, caretakers, dreamers. We lose the thread of joy and softness and play that makes queerness beautiful in the first place.
And I will not let that go. I will not pretend that death is a victory, or that cruelty is strength.
What I will do is keep fighting. With fire in my chest, yes—but also with gentleness in my hands. With care for those who can’t fight today. With anger as fuel, not as rot. With the conviction that we deserve to be here—not just to survive, but to thrive, to make art and music and soft fuzzy plushies and homemade soup, to live long enough to grow old, to make terrible puns and fall in love and hold each other through grief and say yes to life, again and again.
Let the world call that weak if it must.
I call it trans liberation.
