Following the tragic events in Las Vegas last month, as the gun debate reached new heights of intensity, I joined the fray. Though in favor of increased gun control, I spoke out on Twitter in support of transgender people being able to arm ourselves in self-defense — because, I felt, our newly heightened levels of visibility have led to increased levels of violence against us.

One of my tweets took off. What resulted was a multiday, multi-pronged onslaught of harassment from not only gun-control activists but groups who target transgender people. Ultimately, after days of doing nothing while other users hurled slurs and made threats, Twitter finally took action: It suspended me for 12 hours after I said one of those users was “garbage” for trying to incite further harassment.

If this was an isolated incident, this could be written off as a mistake. But it isn’t just that Twitter makes it easy for users to abuse certain targets with impunity. Pushing back — as the actress Rose McGowan found just days after I did — routinely invites suspensions from the Twitter safety team. This pattern of harassment followed by punishment is particularly acute for transgender users, who are often targets for abuse and for whom the abuse can have serious consequences.

During own my particular experience of Twitter harassment, I tried, in good faith, to use the tools the platform makes available to its users to stop abuse. When someone crossed the line into what I considered abuse — calling me, for instance, a “tranny” or “mentally ill” — I would report the tweets in question. Each time, Twitter ruled they’d violated no rules — each time with no further explanation provided.