“Too Angry”: The Price of Speaking Truth as a Trans Person in a White Feminist Space

published May 5, 2025

I was fired for being “too angry.”

Not for being dishonest. Not for being incompetent. Not even for being wrong.

I was fired for expressing anger—righteous, reactive, protective anger—in response to repeated harm. And because I’m a trans person, that anger was pathologized, policed, and ultimately punished.

When I raised concerns about unchecked bias and a repeated, dangerous misrepresentation of gender diversity in the work we were agreeing to market together, I was told:

“You keep saying ‘impact over intent,’ but intent is important!”
“You’re asking us to teach people calculus when they need to learn basic math.”
“Your feedback is accurate. I just wish you could’ve communicated it in a nicer way. You seem so angry.”

This is what tone policing can look like. This is what gaslighting can sound like. And it’s a common dynamic many marginalized people face when offering feedback in systems that aren’t set up to receive it well.

Tokenization ≠ Liberation

I was hired, in part, because of my trans identity. My lived experience was named as valuable—I was repeatedly celebrated as their trans-marketing "unicorn," until it became uncomfortable. Until I named harm. Until I expected people to live into their claimed values.

When I began to offer feedback about the mistaken and dangerous narratives in their body of work, unfortunately, the conversations followed a pattern many of us might recognize:

• Harm is named.

• The response centers intent over impact (repeatedly).

• There’s a request to "be nicer" in the delivery.

• The conversation shifts to the feelings of the person receiving the feedback alongside a claim that the feedback isn't the issue. There might even be tears. 

• Tone becomes the issue. Professionalism becomes a shield—"when you said you couldn't separate the personal from the professional, that was like a red flag for us," they told me.

If you’ve found yourself on the receiving end of a call-in or call-out (which are different things, according to Loretta Ross and her book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel), here are some things to consider:

• Are you focusing on defending your intentions instead of listening to the impact?

• Are you asking someone from a marginalized identity to explain it more gently while they’re still hurt?

• Are you asking someone from a marginalized identity to teach you how to "fix it quickly" as if we can simply make it all go away?

• Are you making it about your pain or discomfort instead of staying with theirs?

• Are you reacting—or getting curious?

These are questions I’m trying to learn to ask myself, too.

Allyship isn’t a title—it’s a practice. It’s about making space for hard truths, staying in the room, and tending to the harm rather than trying to avoid it.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. — Desmond Tutu

None of us gets it right all the time. But when we’re in positions of more power or privilege, we’re called to do better—not perfectly, but courageously.

What Safer Spaces Actually Require

Real safety doesn’t come from comfort. It comes from honesty, relationship, and the capacity to hold each other through hard moments. That includes making space for anger—especially when it’s the result of compounded hurt or harm.

Anger isn’t the problem. Avoidance is. Fragility is. The refusal to be uncomfortable is.

As Mia Mingus says:

Apologizing well is a fundamental part of accountability. It is a skill that we should all understand and practice consistently. You cannot take accountability if you do not know how to apologize well.

Many of us weren’t taught how to apologize well. I know I wasn’t. My default was once, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” And that’s what I heard, nearly word for word, from the people who fired me last week.

But that’s not accountability. That’s avoidance dressed up as empathy.

So what does real accountability sound like?

• “You’re right. I caused harm.”

• “I take responsibility.”

• “Here’s how I’m working to repair this.”

• “I won’t ask you to hold my learning process or my emotional reactions.”

These are skills we can learn. And they’re essential if we’re serious about solidarity. Full transparency: I’m learning them, too.

From Performative Allyship to Actual Practice

If you’re someone building an organization, community, or brand: please consider this an invitation, not a condemnation. The call is to us all—to deepen our practice. To move from stated values into embodied ones. To show up even when it’s hard.

And when we are on the receiving end of feedback, especially across lines of difference: this is an opportunity to slow down and ask:

What is this moment asking of me? Can I shift from defensiveness to curiosity? From self-protection to responsibility? What would allow me to do so? Do I need a pause? Space from the conversation to digest with someone else? How can I stay in the conversation—even if I need a break, and take responsibility, rather than seeking to avoid my own discomfort by denying someone else's experience?

Because if our values only hold up when things are easy, they’re not really values. They’re just PR.

We don’t need perfection. We need people willing to stay with the discomfort long enough to transform it.

The Courage to Trust Ourselves—and Be Responsible for What Moves Through Us

In moments like these, when things break down, we’re invited to remember: we are not the systems we’ve been shaped by. Still, those systems do move through us. White supremacy, transphobia, fragility, avoidance—these are patterns we’ve absorbed through culture and conditioning.

They aren’t necessarily our fault. They are our responsibility.

To be in community across lines of difference, we need to trust that we are who we say we are. That we are capable of staying open, learning, and making repair. That being called in isn’t a threat to our identity—but an invitation to grow into it more fully.

That takes courage. That takes self-trust. And that takes a willingness to believe that our capacity for relationship is bigger than our reflex to protect ourselves.

When we can hold that truth, we stop reacting—and we start responding. With care. With humility. With accountability.

Growth and comfort don’t live on the same block.
—Mia Mingus

This work isn't easy and we have to do it anyways.
—Michelle Cassandra Johnson

Beyond the Buzzword: Why “Safe Spaces” Aren’t Always Safe

Published August 8th, 2024; revised April 18th, 2025

It’s a phrase many of us hear a lot: “This is a safe space.”

And while the intention behind it is often rooted in care—a desire to create environments where people feel welcome, respected, and included—I’m increasingly aware, especially moving into 2025, that it’s not trauma-informed to promise that any space is inherently safe.

Because safety is personal. Each of us brings our own lived experiences, identities, and traumas into the spaces we occupy. What feels safe to one person might feel uncomfortable, disorienting, or even harmful to another.

For many trans and nonbinary people, for example, spaces that are labeled “safe” often still uphold systems, behaviors, or unconscious dynamics that exclude, tokenize, or harm us. Sometimes it's a lack of gender-inclusive practices. Other times, it's a refusal to name power dynamics, or a culture that prioritizes comfort over accountability.

This isn’t about dismissing the good intentions behind “safe spaces.” I truly believe many people mean well when they use that language.

And yet, when we make that promise—explicitly or implicitly—we risk unintentionally erasing the complexity of people’s lived realities. We flatten difference in the name of comfort. We silence necessary conflict. We prioritize a feeling over a practice.

So, what’s the alternative?

Credit to Michelle Cassandra Johnson, who was one of my first teachers on this topic: she taught me that safer spaces are the more honest and aligned aspiration.

Safer spaces don’t pretend to be perfect.
They don’t claim to be free from harm.
They acknowledge that conflict, rupture, and discomfort are part of the work of being in any relationship, and especially in relationship across lines of differences of identity or power.

What makes a space safer is the commitment to try—to take responsibility, to repair when needed, and to orient toward practices that reduce harm and build trust over time.

Safer spaces require care. They ask us to consider:

• Who holds power in this space?

• Who feels most at ease—and who is being asked to stretch, explain, or accommodate?

• What are we willing to do when harm happens—not if but when?

These are the questions that can guide us into deeper integrity. Because creating safer spaces isn’t a checklist. It’s not a bullet-point on a flyer. It’s an ongoing practice—personal and collective—that asks us to stay engaged, especially in relation to power, privilege, and oppression.

It asks us to be brave enough to move at the speed of trust, even when that trust has to be rebuilt again and again.

Reflection Prompts

I invite you to sit with these questions, whether you’re a facilitator, an organizer, a participant, or simply someone who wants to move through the world with more care:

• Have you ever been in a space that claimed to be “safe” but didn’t feel that way?

• What would creating a safer space look like in your community or workplace?

• What’s one commitment you can make to help build a safer space for trans and nonbinary people in the years ahead?

Want to keep this conversation going?

I write regularly about trans inclusion, collective care, and equity-informed marketing and business. You can sign up for my newsletter here or check out more articles and free resources.

Let’s build something better—together.