For the past week, I’ve been getting dogpiled by the audience of a content creator whose election discourse I quite lightly criticized. However, at the end of it all, this TikTok creator and owner of a brand called Shop Tunnel Vision would dismiss me as the “ultimate ID Politic Villain” and argue to her audience that I was simply a Democrat sent by the CIA in favor of the DNC. That’s right, Kat Blaque, the Democrat; a laughable concept to most who are familiar with my content. While this discourse annoyed me, like previous discourses, I’ve learned a lot and have many observations. I felt it would be productive to spell some of those out, so here we go.

Donald Trump is our president, and he ran on the platform of explicitly targeting the transgender community and our access to gender affirming care. In addition to that, he’s built alliances with white nationalist groups who have cells in every state, in every major city. Just today I saw a video of a masc lesbian in Tucson, Arizona (where my parents used to live) being escorted out of the bathroom because they thought she was transgender. The same day, I saw that Arizona Republicans advanced a bill that would allow for execution by fire squads and gas chambers. As we speak, immigrants are being loaded into camps and even those with legal citizenship are experiencing the tangible reality that they may indeed be deported. As our de-facto president, Elon Musk, goes onto stage and does a “roman salute” after thanking trump voters for “saving civilization”, it’s very clear to me that we are headed for a genocide. One that many will turn a blind eye to, and even overtly support. As I’ve written about a few times on here, I have been preparing for this for quite some time. I spend my days wondering if anything I’ve done will last beyond me. I’ve never particularly cared about my legacy until it seemed quite tangible to me that I may not die of old age. As people in his cabinet state that they would like to “eradicate trans people from public life”, it’s not conspiratorial for me to see the writing on the wall. For that reason, I felt a certain way during the election cycle when I observed people who aren’t going to be as targeted as I express indifference to the threat of a Trump presidency and dismiss the only tangible path we had to defeating Donald Trump; Kamala Harris.

Contrary to many people’s racist assumptions, I am not a Democrat. I’d actually say that most of my family doesn’t identify as Democrat. Sure, many of us vote for Democratic candidates, but that’s largely because we have a good perception of the overt ways that the right have been, for decades, attempting to remove the impact of The Civil Rights Act. It’s been long established that if the Republicans weren’t so racist, many black people would vote Republican because of our trend of social conservatism. I’ve lived and socialized in predominately white conservative communities since I was very young. I’d say for the past 8 or so years that I’ve been in the city, I’ve never known more left leaning people. When I first moved here, I started dating a few dudes who were in the DSA. After a lifetime of dating conservative and conservative-adjacent men, I wanted to date someone who’d actually care about me. But perhaps because these men were white, something stood out to me.

One guy I tried to date took me to a protest where a black mother was speaking out about her child being gunned down by the police while they were unarmed. During her impassioned, tear filled speech, the guy I was dating and his DSA buddies scribbled sayings in chalk, I’d say less than 100 feet from the mother as she gave her speech. I can’t remember the poppy leftist phrases they scribbled, but I know that if I were speaking passionately about racialized violence and the loss of my child’s life, it would be easy for me to see what they’re doing as a lack of empathy. It would be easy for me to recognize that they weren’t particularly invested in my son. The dude I was dating grew up with money and had deep resentment for some of the people he grew up around. For him, leftism was rebellion. For me, it’s a path out of a caste system that requires I exist at the very bottom. There’s a reason they felt they could fuck around specifically at that moment.

Madeline Pendleton is someone I followed many years ago as a person who admired her brand and its principles. Honestly, I wish I had limited my following of her to Instagram or a platform other than TikTok. I say that because while I appreciated much of the socialist content she posted, I’d also become perceptive of the fact that Madeline has a bit of a pattern of getting into it with black women; and that was on full display during Kamala Harris’ last minute presidential run.

As someone who had already been comprehending their own genocide, there was a part of me that understood the excitement people had for Harris. In many ways, she represents a perfect foil to Donald Trump. Harris has worked in every branch of the government; she’s clearly very intelligent and has a record of being a champion for the LGBT community. She’s the product of an interracial relationship and in many ways embodies the modern woman that Trump and his ilk are trying to stifle…. but at the end o f the day, she’s a Democrat. Like most politicians operating in this two party system, she is going to speak out of both sides of her mouth. When Kamala lost, some Democrats blamed trans rights, that Harris wasn’t particularly aggressive about protecting; even saying that she will “follow the law” of the state. The Democrats have run on the platform of not being Donald Trump for far too long. While I think Harris’ campaign was impressive in that it managed to gain so much support so soon, I also think that the Democrats, while marginally better than the Republicans, would still be my foe at the end of the day. I have no love for them and I’ve often said that if you ever see me advocating for a presidential candidate… that’s not me. That’s a Cylon.

I say all of that to say that while I am no fan of Kamala Harris, I see the tangible reasons why vulnerable people would want to vote for her. For that reason, I did not publish content during the election that would otherwise discourage people from voting for Kamala Harris. That’s actually why I almost never post election content; I’m weary of the ways my platform can impact other people and have never believed in telling people how to vote. Your vote is yours and I suppose I come from an area where it’s quite odd to speak about who you voted for (but again, I was raised in a conservative area and I’m sure that had something to do with it).

During the election cycle, I saw a lot of content from Madeline Pendleton targeting the Democrats and their voters. Madeline, like many, took issue with Kamala Harris’ stance on Israel. While Trump planned to “finish the job” and establish a resort town on the bodies of dead Gazans, Kamala called for a ceasefire and ultimately, a two-state solution. Neither of these outcomes are desirable, but they are materially different. Many people on social media have just discovered that for 70+ years, there has been an ongoing genocide in Palestine. In truth, the “conflict” is much older, but today, Israel is supposed to represent a bastion of European civilization to be contrasted against the barbarism of the Middle East. And it’s for that reason that many simply want to do away with the Palestinians.

My partner of 4.5 years (Edward) is Palestinian. His father used to play soccer for Palestine and he was apparently pretty good at it. So good that he was shot by an IDF soldier, as a show of power. According to Edward, his father soon made plans to leave the country during a time when he still could do so. When asked I asked Edward who his father voted for, he said “Kamala,” and both of us followed suit because he recognized, as I have, that the genocide will happen either way and will not be undone overnight. It’s an uncomfortable decision you make when you live in the empire. If you vote, you’re essentially forced to choose the “lesser of two evils” or one of the third party options, which never win. This is partially why I don’t always see it as productive to act like making one of those choices is necessarily reflective of someone’s character. To me, voting is the butt plug of politics. It’s there, and it’s useful, but hopefully it leads to something else. In a very similar way, Palestinians voted for Hamas. Many Palestinians have opposed their actions and ideology, but they recognized that they were their main path to liberation. And for that reason, many have believed that all Palestinians should die for how they chose to vote in an environment where they only had one tangible way out. My position has always been not to punish those people for being forced to make an uncomfortable choice. One many of us who’ve experienced oppression are often forced to make to survive. When I told my partner about Madeline’s content, he said, “That’s so white”.

Much of Madeline’s content during the election surrounded the idea that the Democrats were “evil”. She would share that a company approached her to create content that encouraged people to vote Democrat and broadcast to her audience of over a million people that if they saw someone creating content in support of Kamala Harris, they were likely paid to make that content. The result of that post was that many black women who created pro-Kamala content were accused of being “shills for the DNC”. When she shared the name of the company and people were able to look the company up, it resulted in many people dogpiling the list of creators, who were primarily black women and attacking them for being paid to make content for the Democrats. The insinuation was that their support was disingenuous, indifferent to genocide and even advocating for it.

To me, this was a big nothing-burger. Content creators should be paid handsomely for their time and many content creators genuinely support Kamala Harris and still oppose the actions of Israel. Many of these black women were outspoken about that, but largely because of Madeline’s content, they were dogpiled by her rabid fanbase, who didn’t seem to understand that these companies aren’t paying influencers for endorsements, but for doing the work they’ve already done. The idea that these companies are paying these creators to superficially support Kamala Harris is not only unfounded and conspiratorial, but it’s just not how these campaigns work. These companies do not need to pay random content creators to pretend they support Kamala Harris. Most of the time, these companies pay creators to make content about policies and to communicate certain political issues. This content isn’t a money-maker for most who create it, but it is hard and often thankless work. Content creators have the ability to create content that effectively communicates certain ideas and I think that expertise is worth paying for. What Madeline tried to suggest was that these creators were being paid for their endorsement, and she failed to recognize that not every video published by a person who was supporting Kamala Harris was being paid for, and that its rather bog-standard for them to pay for creators to make content, but not really in the way she was suggesting.

Additionally, one of the issues I believe the left isn’t very perceptive of is the fact that for decades now, the right has deeply and heavily invested in promoting right-wing content and giving it an air of authority. As a long-time content creator who interacted with these people, I’ve seen the cameras get nicer, and the sound get better, the studios get built and the shows get green-lit. Billionaires invest a lot of money into right-wing content that defends capitalism and excuses the actions of the state. And we see that right now, Trump is asking for social media figures to help him establish state media, which will function as a propagandizing tool to manipulate the populace. They’re well aware of the power of social media and its impact, and to be frank, creators like myself aren’t likely to be approached by the Democrats, nor are we likely to be funded by billionaires. I’m too far left for the Dems. I got invited to the White House once; it was chill, but I kept my Doc Martens on.

While I had already unfollowed Madeline during this time because of her praise of North Korea, I still managed to see her content in my feed, along with her snide and shitty comments underneath black women’s videos even as someone who understood the substance of her disagreement and technically agreed, it was strange to me that she chose to focus so much of her energy and time onto responding to black women in a particular way. A way that often mimicked the very anti-blackness that most black women were afraid of Kamala experiencing. 

During the election cycle, I sat through a lot of videos about how Kamala Harris wasn’t particularly intelligent, didn’t have any solid plans and could barely articulate her points. This was quite odd to me because when I observed Kamala Harris, she was very obviously incredibly intelligent and well-spoken, especially when put up against Donald Trump. Kamala has objectively accomplished more and was far more qualified for the job than any other candidate. But even though she didn’t make her race or gender central to her campaign, there were people on both the left and the right who believed that she was predominately riding on those qualities. They naturally assumed that if they saw black women supporting Harris, it was purely because they were black. And perhaps in a way that’s true in the sense that black women, because of our experiences, tend to be more community-minded, which to many people, should be the focus of the President. I don’t doubt that many DID vote for her because she is a black woman, but I know that she didn’t run on that and I personally voted for her because like 92% of black women, I properly understood the threat of Donald Trump. I was in my last year of stealth when he came into office and many years before that, I had existed during a time where legal protections did not exist for transgender women such as myself. I do not want to go back.

When I was a teenager, I came out as Gender Queer, but despite my androgyny, my body was developing in a rather feminine way. I didn’t quite understand why older men started giving me so much attention, but as I reached hiring age, I started going out and trying to find work. Being a trans kid meant that I was almost immediately dismissed when I tried to pursue work. It probably didn’t help that I was one of the only black people in the community. But these men wanted to give me money. I found an artist in LA who’d hire me as his assistant. I would run away and dress how I wanted to dress in his studio where I’d often work late into the night. I was the “good” kid, and my parents didn’t check in on me that much. Too busy with work; and I didn’t wanna go home. One night he gave me a drink, and soon after, I woke up in his bed the following day. Knowing that I’d had my one of my first sexual experiences, but was not conscious for it. I worked for my groomer and first rapist for about a year and a half after. He was the only person giving me money; I needed it back then. I wanted to run away to LA and move out as soon as I turned 18. My father was bigoted, and my mother submissive to him. I wanted out. Men were my path out.  

I started doing sex work because I needed access to hormones. I self-medicated from sketchy pharmacies I found online; getting my dosages from Yahoo groups. While my body was feminine, I knew that if I didn’t start, it wouldn’t remain that way. In California, you have to prove that you are on hormones the legal way. I wasn’t quite there yet; I couldn’t afford the therapy I was required in order to qualify for hormones. One therapy session costs about the same as a month of under-the-table HRT. At 19, I became a cam girl. I never sold sex, but I was signed to a relatively popular transgender porn company that I’d do webcam work for. It was incredibly degrading. I’d get paid pennies to do things I did not want to do. Eventually, I just started relying on men. Men gave me money and I lived to please and cater to them. I shifted my persona to satisfy them, losing a sense of what I wanted to do for myself. When I eventually got into a relationship that was monogamous, that stopped. By then, discrimination protections were added to the books, and it was no longer legal to discriminate against a transgender person. But I had already started to build my platform online and that helped me eventually reach a place of financial independence. I went full-time on Youtube in 2015 and decided to leave my partner who’d kept me behind the Orange curtain for 6 years; no plans to move to the city. When I dumped my ex and moved to LA, it was the first time in my life that I felt truly empowered. The first time in my life that I objectively did not need a man. By that time, I’d managed to go through the official process and changed both my name and gender marker. I finally felt functional after 27 years of life.

I’ve had to endure a lot. Survival is in my spirit, and that’s largely why I did not want for what Trump is currently doing now to happen. While I can recognize that I may be, in many ways, safe as a “passing” trans woman whose documents are changed, who lives in California. I am incredibly worried about trans folks in red states who are going to be rapidly put into a position where they have to do what I’ve done to survive. This is the natural result of removing employment protections, forbidding us from using public restrooms, and making it legal for companies to deny services to transgender people. There will always be men eager to pay trans women money to exploit them. There will always be the underground of trans care. The girls before me had pumping parties and street mones. If you were a trans woman in the 70s or 80s and you didn’t come from money, your options were sex work, drag, stealth or not transitioning at all. Back then, you virtually had to pass as cis to be trans. I had to medically transition so that I could properly assimilate into femaleness and thus prove to society that I am truly a woman. It’s a process that I look back at and see as rather archaic and it’s a path that many no longer need to go through because of the progress our society has had, which is part of why there are “more” trans people these days. Care was more accessible and more people were able to be themselves. I think that’s a good thing. A thing worthy of protecting. 

When I saw my feed responding to one of Madeline Pendleton’s comments underneath her video about whether or not she regrets her vote because of the impact anti-trans legislation and Trump’s promise to level Gaza saying, “I’m literally trans, and have Palestinian relatives”, I decided to respond to the now-deleted comment sharing my experiences as a person who survives because of my access to gender-affirming care. I detail my experience with exploitation and simply asked that people like Madeline Pendleton who do not rely on gender-affirming care, simply “read the room”. Madeline’s content, whether she meant for it to or not, had the impact of shaming people who voted for Democrats. I never argued that she necessarily swayed the vote; as in all reality, the Republicans got most of the vote because we are a more right leaning than some realize. She, along with many other so-called “leftists,” chanted the phrase, “a vote of Kamala is a vote for genocide”. And from where i’m sitting, it was impossible for me not to recognize that it’s pretty easy to feel that way when you’re a white person who isn’t medically transitioning for whom this genocide will not target.

It was always fine to me that she voted for Claudia De La Cruz, the socialist candidate. After all, she’s in a blue state. What I took issue with was the lack of empathy she demonstrated during the election cycle. While she would eventually walk some of these comments back and state that she understood why certain people would vote for Kamala, to me that didn’t really ultimately matter. The impact of what she’s feeling is felt, and those of us who aren’t in a parasocial relationship with her aren’t likely to focus on her content enough to get every updated view of her stance. All I saw from my end, from her, not creators speaking about her, was the equation of Democrats and those who vote for them as evil. None of that needed to be said to advocate for the socialist candidate. Keeping in mind most of my reaction to this is based in my own sensibilities about voting and using your platform. Whether Pendleton is perceptive of this or not, Claudia De La Cruz, if elected, would still be complicit in genocide as the leader of the most violent imperialist country in the world. That’s in the job description. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize it, but it was very silly to believe that in a country that supports Israel as much as we do, suddenly, our relationship with them would dissolve in this election. 

This post, of course, dissolved into a mess. 

My video reached just under a million views and it would eventually be brought to the attention of Madeline Pendleton. In her first video that she made about it, she said that she “doesn’t watch videos by small creators” in reference to me, and made a point of saying that she didn’t see my video, but did see a video about my video made by one of her mutuals; a white person. In her video, she responded to some of the growing discourse around my video. Despite spending the best part of the past 2 decades advocating against transmedicalism, many, mostly white, queer folks interpreted my video as “transmedicalist”.

Transmedicalism is the idea that one must go through gender-affirming medical care to “truly” be transgender. For the reasons I laid out here, I’m staunchly opposed to this idea, but I do think there are tangible differences between a person who lives with gender dysphoria who requires HRT to make their lives liveable, and a non-dysphoric trans person may not exactly understand the degree of distress those of us who have dysphoria experience without access to hormones. At 34 going on 35, I’ve been on hormones now for 16 years. My body has adjusted to that and it’s what i’m used to. On weeks where I’m late on my shot, I notice the various, only perceptible to me, changes in my body’s functionality. It’s not a great feeling. Knowing that, I have empathy for those who vote for Kamala in order to defeat Trump, who ran on removing their care. And this is what got me called “transmedicalist”. 

Madeline made a point of saying that she avoided watching my video because she believed it would be bad for her mental health, which of course, paints my video in an incredibly antagonistic way. My video never attacked her, it wasn’t rude, it wasn’t mean, it wasn’t made with the desire to take her down. It was simply a video where I, upon my initial understanding of her comment and the context in which it was made, wanted to point out that our situations are incredibly different, and that’s why I can’t afford to act like Trump isn’t a threat to me, and marginalized people generally. It’s easy to dismiss why some would vote a certain way when you aren’t as impacted by these things.

Because of Madeline’s framing, I received a bunch of harassment from her audience, which focused on Madeline’s intentional misinterpretation. What made this very frustrating is that Madeline would start to delete content, and then deny that she said these things. Like I said, she had already deleted the original comment that I was responding to (which she claims was simply her correcting someone on misgendering her as a woman, which I think is her right). This is a well-documented pattern of hers. It was something I observed during the election. She’d say something crazy, then people would respond to it, then she’d delete it and outright deny she said anything. Then start posting content that made everyone who disagreed with her look silly because she’d say that they were, in some ways, in agreement with each other. I never disagreed with her vote, nor her socialism nor her criticism of the Democrats. She’d know that if she watched my video, but her reaction caused me to recognize that I’ve seen this pattern before.

To me, Madeline represents a particular archetype I’ve engaged with quite a bit. An archetype that I now refer to as a “Pendelton”. In the vast majority of trans-specific spaces I’ve been in, there’s always a white, usually afab, usually non-transitioning person who is entirely resistant to centering anyone other than themselves and their experience with gender. Madeline is a Non-Binary person who uses all pronouns; and for the record, I think that’s incredibly valid. However, we have extremely different experiences and will factor into society quite differently.

If Madeline was in Arizona, she can walk into the women’s restroom and not have the fear of being caught and put into a gas chamber if she’s caught being a trans person in the restroom. I’ve never had a problem using public restrooms because I “pass”. In a way, this is a privilege, but passing privilege is a sort of temporary privilege. When I was stealth, I had to ride a very very fine line. I had to perform a certain way and that was my survival. Sure, I can get away with it, but if I get caught, depending on the state, that may have severe consequences. A Pendelton type likes to ignore these tangible differences and tends to quite defensively respond to fairly neutral discussions of these differences. I had many white non-binary people express anger at my video, which simply stated that while we may both be under the trans umbrella, our chance of surviving a Trump administration is very different.

Pendletons tend to dominate conversations and focus on “validity” while excusing or dismissing the value of trans people who medically transitioned and want to speak about their differences. It’s an odd reaction that stands out to me and it’s something I’ve interacted with many times over. Their reactions have the impact of essentially discouraging transitioning people from discussing their experiences. It’s clear that they tend to perceive a description of these experiences as a trump card of sorts. It’s a bizarre reaction to a request for empathy and understanding. From my observation, the vast majority of trans spaces prioritize the far more common Pendleton types over those of us who medically transition and deal with the complexities of transitioning gender. They will say “listen to black trans women” as a way of promoting themselves as authorities with good politics, but will see the discussion of intersectionality and how black trans women experience oppression as a waste of time that takes from them. We exist as deities and icons in those spaces, but our voices are rarely heard or centered. I estimate that if Madeline Pendleton were in community with trans people, she’d be familiar with my content (as we are close in age) and more intimately familiar with the tangible position trans women who existed before legal protections actually went through and would perhaps express herself differently. 

My only point through all of this has been that she should have more empathy in expressing herself. What fascinates me is that she has a million followers but still feels like she must make certain statements. You get the impression that this was an absolutely necessary thing for her to express and post. Like someone made her make the content she made during the election; but would then deny she ever made it.

There’s an incredible lack of tact and her persona shifts between platforms. Her Twitter is far edgier than her Tiktok and it doesn’t matter how many times she can say the Democrats are evil, she will still deny that she ever said that, even though millions of people saw it. Before watching my videos, Madeline started to spread the idea that the only reason I would make videos about her is because I was trying to make money. This was very upsetting because, as of now, I have made $151 on TikTok. That’s ten dollars more than before all of this started and this is actually my lowest earning in the past few months. I make much more money elsewhere. I had this conversation because I cared. I wanted to help expand her perspective because I’m personally impacted by it. While I gained a lot of followers from it, as a social media veteran, I’ll tell you that TikTok followers carry much less value in terms of how you translate that into money. Which is part of why I’m fascinated by Madeline’s over-blown ego around her followers. With respect, I am a much larger creator with a much more extensive career. It’s not a competition to me. It’s been very hard to stomach so many people reacting, not to me, but to a white person’s approximation of my position that another white person then criticized.

While Madeline refused to engage with my first video (something I didn’t ask for or really want) because I was a “small creator” and it would be bad for her mental health, she went on to respond to much smaller creators… who were white. She stitched several videos by smaller white creators who spoke to her in a much more aggressive tone. This is a tone I’d struggle to take as a person who’s been raised around white conservatives. I have a default of niceness because I learned from a very young age that white people do not like confrontation, especially from someone with dark skin. They often have this sharp anxiety around me, as if they are waiting for me to be aggressive and angry. So I tend not to raise my voice or speak with anger because I assume that would mean they’d be more willing to hear what I had to say. But Madeline refused to watch my video and is still ranting about me as I type this on livestream. In her livestream, she’d describe me as “the ultimate ID politic villain” sent by the DNC to tear her down. She argued that she’d never go up against a black trans woman, because she’s not stupid and she doesn’t want to “dunk” on me to make me “look bad”… this is a very bizarre reaction to my first video. And from there, it became fairly clear to me: 

Madeline Pendleton, like many white people, has a strong racial bias that has remained unexamined, and that’s at the core of all of this. 

I do not doubt that Madeline keeps a quiver full of black people who agree with her in her vicinity, but in many ways, she’s still the sort of person who grabs her purse tight when walking by a black person on the street. Sure, she’s a socialist, but like many white people, she hasn’t quite unpacked whiteness and these patterns that she gets into; honestly because they were socialized within her. It’s incredibly hard to not fall into the tenants of whiteness when you haven’t examined them. It’s my observation that white leftists who tend to hate “identity politics” are simply white people who are truly afraid of examining their whiteness and understanding what that actually means. It’s why they can’t help but do things that many properly see as bigoted. If you go down that list, you’ll notice a lot of things fit: paternalism, deference for the written word, defensiveness, either/or thinking, fear of open conflict, individualism, and right to comfort, etc etc etc. All things she very clearly displayed in this interaction that she has never quite questioned of herself.

What I perceived in this interaction is that she was incapable of processing that someone can disagree with them without attacking them.

If you’ve followed her for any amount of time, you see her engage in discourse with white people who disagree with her and it’s not hard to get the sense that she’s more willing to hear out a white person over a black person. When she discovered that Ian Carrol of Cancel This Clothing Company had Nazi sympathies, she demonstrated an extreme amount of consideration for his position. She handled him with more respect than i’ve ever seen her give a black creator. There’s a reason she always imagines that black creators are attacking her and believes the only reason I’d ever say anything is that I was paid off by the DNC to specifically target her. It’s clear, even from this post, that Madeline sees this all as a game. A game for her to win that I didn’t know I was playing.

Really what she’s saying in her live is just a justification for her not to engage with what a black person is saying. If you believe that you are so above every black person that you will always win every argument against them, and thus think you should not engage with them, that’s just racism. Her fans will struggle to get this, but as a long time content creator, I could certainly deal with her directly responding to my even toned, non aggressive, non confrontational video discussing our differences. To me there’s no tangible difference between saying that she “doesn’t want to dunk on me” to saying that she doesn’t believe in listening to me at all. Because that’s what happened. It’s paternalistic to frame me, a 34 year old woman who’s been harassed for a very long time, who’s still making content, as someone who simply can’t take it. It stands out as racist purely because when she decided to listen to someone about it, she made sure they were white.

Despite my very publicly stated stances, Madeline has continued telling her audience that I am upset that she didn’t vote Democrat. You won’t find a video of me saying that, but that’s her story. That’s her narrative; her audience of a million simply believes her. It’s truly quite bizarre. The Democrats don’t want to work with me because…I’m not a Democrat. There’s a reason she received a hefty offer from the Dems, and I got one little non-partisan (but probably Dem) offer. Whiteness affords Madeline a degree of authority that allows her to amass a million followers despite her bad behavior and controversies. She wants to make this about me disagreeing with her socialist vote, when I’ve always argued that it’s about empathy. And she demonstrates that lack of empathy when she chooses to dismiss my video, the actual source of the discourse, in favor of white creators who often didn’t correctly represent me. Plainly stated, allowing a white person to define my character is a clear communication that you have a preference for white content creators; which may be why she’s completely unfamiliar with me despite the fact that I’ve created content about these issues for a very long time.

After about a week of being dogpiled by her audience, she sent me this message.

A message worded in a way that would seem to suggest that she wouldn’t attempt to dehumanize me. I received this message on the morning of the same day she would compare me to the “one-legged solo poly hijabi” meme that was quite popular among right-wingers. This reinforces the point I’ve made many times over about white leftists like Madeline Pendelton. To me, they are functionally the same as a conservative. It’s very clear to me that many of these particular, terminally online leftists have no real desire to build community. They want an exclusive book club that meets at the café. Like the dude I dated scribbling in front of a traumatized mother, it’s all about rebellion and edge. It’s not much more than that. I spend most of my time offline doing community organizing, which requires meeting people where they’re at. My group has grown quite a bit; people’s positions and ideas shift especially when they feel welcome; and I am incredibly thankful that I’ve been able to create the community I desperately needed. 

One of the unintended side effects of all of this has been that many TikTok content creators have come to my defense. And many of them shared with me that my content helped them find themselves. I received so many comments from non-binary people who appreciated the work I’ve done to stand up for gender-expansive folks during the height of the popularity for transmedicalism. I saw trans person after trans person after trans person share that they came out as trans because of me. Apparently…I’ve raised an entire generation of transgender people. I genuinely had no clue. I recognized that I’ve made the work I’ve made, but I didn’t really see the impact. It hadn’t registered to me just how many trans people have seen my content and my community as a place where they feel seen and understood. There were people that I followed, who I admired in my way, and who came out to celebrate me, and it honestly healed me in many ways. I tend not to have a complex about my work, which I always see as imperfect and needing improvement. Even as I planned the exciting things I was working on, this discourse, while annoying, made me realize that my work would indeed live on long after I was gone. 

To me, this entire conversation was about moving forward and communicating our goals and needs differently so that they can actually take root. You gain nothing from outright dismissing the needs of the marginalized and shaming them for what they do to pursue their own survival. Unfortunately, the right is already very aware of that, which is part of why so many left leaning people, voted for Trump this time around. Class reductionism naturally leads to a lot of people towards ignoring bigotry. And while, sure, these things are simply tools that capitalists use to manipulate us, their impact is real and none of these people conduct themselves as people who’ve unpacked that very caste system that places me at the bottom, them at top. We don’t need to be reminded of that caste system during a time where we are all scared, but I fear that for some on the left, it’s all they have. That will be an impediment to progress for as long as we decide to coalition build with the people like Madeline Pendleton.