A book reading this week featuring Rose McGowan quickly turned ugly when a trans woman challenged the actress and author on her transmisogynist statements on RuPaul’s podcast, "What's the Tee." McGowan quickly responded by telling the trans critic, activist Andi Dier, to “shut up” and then asked her, “What have you done for women?” She then launched into a tearful rant over being labeled "cis" and referencing her vagina in what some have labeled "a breakdown."

McGowan’s privilege-flaunting rant was full of transphobic dog whistles, including her rhetoric implying that a trans woman like Dier has done nothing for women, which leads to the further implication that trans women are not women. It’s also common for anti-trans activists to disavow the label cis and position themselves as women, while claiming that trans women are a separate gender entirely, using the grammatically cringeworthy label "transwomen." The McGowan rant reeks of this trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) ideology, and her quick descent into transphobic clichés when challenged backs up her critics’ claims that she is a transphobe.

Dier agreed to an exclusive interview with them. to talk about why she decided to challenge McGowan and what she hopes people can take away from the encounter.

Did you go to the event with the intent of confronting her on her transphobia or was it more spur of the moment? What was going through your mind when you first spoke?

I've done this before with Bernie Sanders. This was planned. But only because I happened to be canvassing with Working Families Party in front of the same Barnes & Noble earlier that day. It felt like a sign. What she said has been gnawing at me for months. And I was really scared. I almost backed down. It is only my trauma and bipolar that lets me feel a level of emotion I cannot ignore. I knew the audience was going to turn against me, too.

How did you know the audience would turn against you and what was it like hearing them vocally support a woman who just told you to shut up?

I've seen this before. We are so blinded by our privilege and mass consumerism, we will ignore a fucking genocide on our soil. I'm telling people this is the next AIDS crisis. They still defended her. Yet those same people will mourn the dead of AIDS when it's packaged in some book or DVD they can buy. They will ask themselves, "Why didn't we stop this? Why didn't we do more?" Just to do the same shit all over again.

[Watching them turn against me] was triggering, to be honest. But two cis women of color followed me out, they hugged me and gave me validation as I cried. I showed them Sylvia Rivera's speech, as they educated me on a police bombing in Philly during the civil rights movement — we bombed black people (the group MOVE) for wanting to get out. This is what my own privilege has blinded me to. An entire city — of people — was literally burned down by our government. But it is those women that give me hope that the revolution is not lost. Our liberation is linked.

What was it about her comments on RuPaul's podcast that bothered you?

The fact that not only did she suggest that we don't live life as a woman, experiencing what women go through. But there was hint that we deal with less shit. The only difference between Rose and I getting harassed on the street is that where her experience can end in sexual assault, mine has a likely chance to end in sexual assault followed by murder. This is especially true for trans women of color. I mean — fuck, I was almost shot in the Bronx for what started as a catcall.