Trans Visibility Exposes Cis Fragility

This is not the story I planned to write today.

I intended to write about the distress I experienced yesterday, when I was misgendered as female for the first time in years. This was likely due to wearing a mask that covered my beard and a patterned headwrap that covered my balding scalp. But however innocent the mistake, being addressed as “ma’am” still stung, especially as it happened on the sixth anniversary of my legal name and gender change.

Self-portrait of the author, standing outside in the sun wearing a blue and white patterned headwrap, red and black eyeglasses with tinted lenses, purple cloth mask, purple hoodie, and blue T-shirt.

Today, that distress increased tenfold when I read a graphic death threat on the Wikipedia talk page of Valentina Sampaio, who is in the news for being the first openly trans model featured in the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. As a long-time Wikipedia editor who has given talks about trans representation and harassment on that platform, you’d think I’d be used to trans-antagonistic vandalism and hate speech by now. But the violent language in this particular threat left me physically shaking and in tears.

The edit, made this morning by an anonymous user, had been reverted by another editor by the time I read it, but was still visible in the talk page history. I reported the user and got them blocked and their edit suppressed from view. The page itself was protected from anonymous edits, but talk pages are very rarely protected, so anonymous and new editors frequently post…