In Which I Take Apart The Post Where Brianna Wu Denies Being Transgender

Note: This post used to be on Medium.com until it was taken down for a rules violation, which I have not contested. I am rehosting it here and hereby release it for anyone to rehost wherever they please, just link back to this original to show where you got it.

I’m taking a trip down memory lane to take apart a long ago GamerGhazi post by Brianna Wu where HE (read one of my earlier Medium posts if you want to see why I no longer humor John Flynt’s wishes to refer to him by female pronouns) say he refuses to comment on the subject of his being transgender.

Brianna Wu: Why I don't respond when Gamergate accuses me of being tr...
This is a post I've been meaning to write for a long time now. Every single day, I have Gamergaters writing to call me…archive.is

(Original in italic, my comments in regular font)

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time now. Every single day, I have Gamergaters writing to call me transgender. Somewhere along the way, it became something they all seem to believe when the truth is I’ve never commented on it.

We don’t have to have your input. Your past has been reconstructed pretty well without any need for your input despite how much you’ve tried to bury it, right down to when it happened, the transgender forums where you were eventually expelled from, and from then on all the way up to the present.

If you aren’t transgender, I will personally pay you my life savings in apology, and I’m confident I won’t have to hand you a dime.

I’ve thought a lot about it. I’ve talked to friends like Katherine Cross, Christina Love and Samantha Allen about this. I think it’s a no-win scenario to respond to for a plethora of reasons.

The first and most obvious one is, there’s nothing remotely wrong with being transgender! If I were cis and I came out saying, “Oh my God, no! I’m not transgender! No, no, no!” that’s just reinforcing this stigma about being transgender that costs so many lives. I think transgender people are probably the most persecuted people on the planet, and I don’t think it’s helpful for cisgendered activists to inadvertently reinforce this.

I think transgender people are probably the most persecuted people on the planet, and I don’t think it’s helpful for cisgendered activists to inadvertently reinforce this.

See the bolded part? We have an admission up front this is an OPINION.

Secondly, anyone familiar with the subject knows there are many, many shades to being transgender! There are intersex people, there are non-binary people, there are deep stealth people. Ultimately, being transgender is a private, very serious medical issue that needs to be addressed as early in life as possible. I don’t think it’s helpful to anyone involved to treat it like a litmus test, where a person must come out publicly.

Ordinarily, I agree, and as a matter of basic decency, I agree with that for transgender people by default, but not with you, because you’ve presented yourself as a genuine (as in born cisgender) woman when you’re not. You’ve even gotten Wikipedia to repeat that lie for you and have gotten various websites to suppress information even hinting you weren’t born male as “deadnaming” (which is admitting it’s true, otherwise, your former identity would be “fakenaming” if false).

Basically, I don’t have a problem with you being a transwoman, I have a problem when you lie about being an actual woman and having been born as one when it can be proven otherwise.

Also, simple challenge for you: Would you mind if someone took your DNA and tested it to see if your chromosomes are male? No one needs your permission if it’s taken from a public place (like a paper cup you toss in a public trash can), and I’m sure a simple lab test could easily tell the world the truth, much like it would make Shaun King’s life easier if he would do the same on the subject of whether he’s black or not.

Thirdly, for anyone that’s publicly transgender — I’ve had friends that are out tell me about the pain it causes in it coloring everything that they do. I have a friend that’s a well known software engineer. She’s has people writing her all the time about how inspiring she is. She appreciates the sentiment, but she says it brings her back to the most painful period of her life. In becomes an adjective in front of that person’s name — coloring everything they do when the goal was to just feel like their true self.

You’ve just identified the crux of why people care: You’ve gone so far to deny it and have been so deliberately deceptive about it, especially given how often you claim to speak for all women (which you have not been in any way except on a cosmetic level for the past several years) that examination of your past reveals you’ve lied about quite a bit and still do to this day. If you had just admitted up front: “I’m trans, what of it”, and moved on with your life, I doubt hardly anyone would be bringing this up now, but because you went so far to conceal the sunrise, it should be no surprise when people point out the sun overhead despite your wish to conceal it.

The only winning move here is not to play.

But you did. You lied, you got caught, and you refuse to admit your deception.

I choose to not respond, because nothing I can say in response to this accomplishes anything worthwhile. And it’s my suggestion to others to not buy into transphobia by responding. It encourages something that should be deeply private to become a witchhunt.

When your entire history hinges on the lie you were born cisgender and it can be proven you are transgender, it became a matter of public interest because you went out of your way to deceive people concerning your feminist positions, as they were based on the lie you were born cisgender.

As Anita so eloquently said, transgender women are women period.

As in Anita Sarkeesian? To paraphrase some transgender women who DON’T deceive people and for whom I have greater respect (which is why I won’t mention their real or dead names), you have be trans to understand what a trans person has to go through, so by that premise, you have no right to speak about transphobia if you aren’t trans, since you don’t have any knowledge how terrible that really is for transgender women, a subject a REAL transgender woman would have more knowledge of, assuming you have been telling the truth about being born cisgender.

Further, Anita was provably born cisgender, so by the token of the very culture you are falsely appropriating (you were born cisgender, right?), Anita has no right to speak about the plight of being transgender, since she’s not herself.