Who goes transphobe?

Luke O'Neil

04 Aug 2026 • 9 min read

by Sandy Ernest Allen

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go transphobe. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in California, in Iowa, and in New York. I have come to know the types: the born transphobes, the transphobes whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become transphobe.

I promise this entire essay won’t just be me riffing on Dorothy Thompson’s iconic Harper’s essay Who Goes Nazi?. And some are probably already thinking to themselves, well, “Nazi” and “transphobe,” these are the same; the Nazis were transphobes. Yes, I am aware.

Perhaps you too think of the image above, of Nazi book burnings at the Institute for Sexual Research.

And yes, maybe like me you’re pausing to think about another irony, the Harper’s of it all, and how thoroughly that magazine in particular, alongside many others, failed to clock the rise of fascism as it’s come back around again.

How if anything Harper’s itself … went Nazi.

For trans folks such as myself, the now-infamous Harper’s letter was an obvious anti-trans dogwhistle, and a harbinger of a broader media onslaught to come, signed by a who’s-who of intellectually unserious jerks, many of whom have made it their brand to bully trans people. As trans people (especially in media) we are perpetually aware of our more prominent antagonists.

One thing to keep in mind: Transphobia itself is a delusion. People who’ve fallen for this sort of hateful nonsense aren’t worthy of anyone’s respect, not as intellectuals at least.

On Bluesky, I use an account labeler that warns me when someone was a “Harper’s Signatory.” I admit it always makes me chuckle when I see it pop up.

Amongst media-aware trans people someone who signed the Harper’s letter is shorthand for this person didn’t give a fuck. This is someone who didn’t care, as fascism rose, whether I lived or died. Who maybe even joined in with the fascists in encouraging my demise. The flames were rising, threatening us, and they eagerly fanned them.

For a trans person such as myself, this assessment regarding who goes transphobe is mostly a matter of safety. Cis people who haven’t yet awoken to what era we are living through, right now, are dangerous — whether they’re merely clueless or actively malicious.

Cis people who still do their Wordles or who still like Harry Potter? I cannot trust them. They are a threat in the sense that a drunk behind the wheel is dangerous or a sleepwalker stumbling towards a staircase is dangerous. Willfully or not they may cause actual harm.

Let us look around the room.

There is the gentleman who is still on X for some reason. A self-described liberal or even leftist who knows all the correct things to say, he nonetheless remains watching the garbage fire burn, making whatever excuses or not even bothering to do so at all. One suspects he really just enjoys it there, enjoys the high of the second hand toxic fumes, enjoys the fight and being around it. He misunderstands himself as being impervious to rightward influence, even though that’s clearly what being on this platform has done to him (as his credulity towards transphobic talking points betrays).

To him the stakes of this fight have never been real, and he has failed to process the premise that the “first they came for” poem was a warning. If this kind of guy says some transphobic rhetoric and trans people react, he laments that he’s under attack. Free speech! he cries. Maybe he accuses trans people of ganging up on him, unaware seemingly of the absurdity of his own position. He who, by virtue of his privilege, is quite oblivious. He who has never felt any actual threat.

Then of course there are the just-hateful types, the ones who’ve become fixated on making trans lives hell. The bigoted politicians and fifth place collegiate athletes and the like. Alongside them are the supposed “science journalists” who launder anti-trans misinformation to the wider public while cherry picking data and feigning concern for children, and the male commentators who’ve suddenly become oh so opinionated about fairness in girls and women’s sports.

In general, this type of transphobe has no other interest than being a transphobe. He’s a schoolyard bully yelling an epithet. He’s also the adults standing by doing nothing as the epithets are yelled. These are people with no actual conscience, as best I can tell, who do not stand for anything. In this sense I cannot relate to them.

The third category I do wonder about. It is the individuals who abet the previous two groups, even if they ostensibly don’t agree. These types even side with the transphobia against their own interests, in the sense that transphobia is merely a tool for enforcing patriarchy, another form of sexism. I think of the cis women for example who’ve made it their careers’ focus to spread anti-trans misinformation about bathrooms or whatever, which clearly winds up hurting many more cis women by mere numbers, in addition to trans and gender non-conforming people.

Why these types behave as they do one can only guess. Perhaps it’s just for the paycheck or the approval of their managers or billionaire bosses. In general, I find this the most depressing category, in terms of who goes transphobe. (And I’d point towards Steven Thrasher’s new book The Overseer Class.)

Perhaps such types consider themselves “apolitical.” They might say they’re just doing their jobs. But I’d assume these types don’t spend much time actually thinking.

This sort of transphobe is going with the herd perhaps. Transphobia is popular so they engage in it too. They may or may not actually like or dislike trans people. They may or may not know a trans person or two in real life (whom they may think of not as "trans" but just as “Susan in accounting”). These are types who have decided to not see their own complicity in the big picture. Sometimes, regardless of their other actions, they’ll even hang a flag or boast about knowing a trans kid.

Sometimes cis people online will jump into my replies effectively boasting in this same way. Look at me! I’m one of the good ones! They’ll do so often in response to me lamenting about transphobia itself. I’m a good cis person, they'll counter, as if this is helpful at all. They’ll do so seeming to misunderstand me as being interested in hearing from the likes of them. If I reply back to such types, they then almost inevitably flip out at me. They’ll get upset, they’ll call me names, they’ll scold me like I am a child. One senses such reply-people are just spoiling to fight a random trans person.

Or else they’re so insecure that they easily drown in their own shame when an actual living breathing trans adult dares to respond to whatever they’ve interjected to brag about in my direction. These types, again, don’t actually want a trans person to respond to their assertions. They don’t want to imagine they aren’t already perfect. They don’t want to have to admit any growth left to do on their own part. They don’t want to learn nor recognize their own limitations, given their privilege. To me this is all simply childish.

I asked my mental health professional recently what the fuck to do about all this, about the quantities of people online who are attempting to spar with me. Like I’m some jacked guy in a bar the drunk insecure dweebs feel the need to pick fights with.

This is all in addition to the fact that this country’s two major political parties are either actively trying to kill me or doing nothing to stop the other one. Many supposed “liberals” and “centrists” and “apolitical” sorts will even pay lip service to supporting LGBTQ people, as they meanwhile throw trans folks under the bus.

The ones who scare me the most, candidly, are those who have decided they’re fantastic allies because they’ve got a trans kid or partner, or because they’re a doctor or therapist with trans patients, regardless of their actual behavior.

It’s the queer friend group who abandoned that one trans person amongst them the moment they started hormones. It’s the cis doctors at the ostensibly trans-affirming practice who fired their trans colleague the moment Trump took office a second time. It’s these types, again, who scare me the most in terms of who goes transphobe. Those whose betrayals have been so intimate and so wretched.

I don’t enjoy meanness myself. I was raised amongst tons of bullying and cruelty and anger and mistreatment. Always but especially these days I find it painful inside if I am mean, or angry, even momentarily, even in ways that “don’t matter,” like if I’m swearing at a printer or because I dropped something on my toe.

In general I wonder about the bored cis people who spend their time picking fights with trans strangers like myself online, or who pen us hateful messages. I worry about how much such people have bought into the notion that trans people are some problem worth their energy. I worry that such people just need more interesting things to do with their own time, with their one and precious human life.

In other words, I think transphobes need better hobbies. Find a pottery class or a book club or a bird watching group, and leave us trans folks in peace, I often think, you fucking assholes, you fucking weirdos, stop being obsessed with what’s in other peoples’ pants. Unless you’re about to have consensual sex with someone or you’re someone’s healthcare provider (and even then, maybe not), it’s probably none of your business what somebody else’s genitals are like.

As I sometimes repeat, if you, whoever’s reading this, told a transphobic joke back when, or if you laughed at the end of Ace Ventura, or if you once believed in some bullshit regarding trans girls playing sports, or if you fell for some transphobic misinformation, that doesn’t make you a bad person. Ultimately what matters is what you do now, once you wake up and realize what’s been going on.

Do you remain stubbornly on X, drinking at that Nazi bar, insisting against reason you don’t have a problem? Or do you finally get up and leave?

It’s fun — a macabre sort of fun — this parlor game of Who Goes Transphobe? And it simplifies things — asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go transphobe. They may be someone who’s not online at all, a luddite, off the grid, or someone “who doesn’t follow politics,” …. or they may be the opposite, perhaps they’ve got MSNBC on 24/7. Either way, when it comes down to it, some people will stand up for their trans coworker or neighbor — you’ll never make transphobes out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved wealth by smelling out the wind of success — they would all go transphobe in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go transphobe. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t got anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go transphobe. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.

Sandy Ernest Allen is an author and journalist who has been published by Esquire, The Cut, Eater, and This American Life. He writes a self-care focused newsletter called What's Helping Today.

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