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