The Lil Nas X Controversy is Ridiculous, Not Transphobic

The Transgender Therapist
4 min readMar 21, 2023

We can’t afford to alienate allies.

Twitter, fair use

My fellow trans siblings. I have a message.

Lil Nas X is not the enemy. In fact, he could not possibly be any further from being the enemy.

On March 14th, Lil Nas X posted the tweet above, playfully noticing the resemblance that he and the woman in this photo share by saying “The surgery was a success.” Inexplicably, this got twisted into him being transphobic. A clear reasoning behind this thinking, aside from “It’s hard to be trans, and people are targeting us!” — which does nothing to explain why one should be offended by this tweet in particular — has not been presented. One Twitter user even suggested that he pay money to make up for his supposed misstep. Lil Nas X responded in a way that you might call…colorful.

Twitter, fair use

I can’t really blame him.

In a time where there are hundreds of bills being introduced in the US that seek to strip away trans rights and make trans children signficantly more at risk of suicide, this is what we focus on. Interestingly, some have used the point about rising anti-trans legislation to claim that his tweet was harmful…

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The Transgender Therapist

Queer, white trans man living in the Pacific Northwest with a grudge and a sharp tongue.