Instagram supports bully calling for the suicide of a transgender lesbian Dana Pham Follow Mar 1 · 5 min read

Last Friday morning, I woke up to the following message in my Instagram inbox: “Kill yourself”. All it took was for that one message to affect me for the whole morning and afternoon. It’s different to when someone tells you that they’re going to kill you. At least they’re more straight-up with their intent, and it presents itself as a clear-cut case for reporting to the police. I wasn’t sure if “kill yourself” is reportable to the police, and it’s a cowardly way of saying “I want you dead, and I’d prefer you make that happen, not me, so that I can wash my hands clean”. Right after I received that message, I hit back with “Make me”, not knowing what else to say.

They then unleashed a torrent of voice messages that were misogynistic and homophobic in nature, throwing the words “bitch” and “faggot” around willy-nilly, and demanding that I take their video phone call. I ignored, was then called a coward ironically, accused me of getting “everything [handed] to [me] on a silver plate”, then blocked me after I responded with “Don’t assume you know my life experience”. Like any reasonable person, I found the abuse to be unhinged, posted a screenshot of the abuse on Instagram, only for Instagram to then advise me that my post “goes against [their] community guidelines on bullying or harassment”.

I’ve appealed Instagram’s decision, with no response since. I posted the screenshot to take a public stand against social media bullying, so why does Instagram instead support a bully calling for the suicide of me, a transgender lesbian? Put simply, it’s because I joined a livestream lesbian panel, Les-Talk, with “gender capitalist” Rain Dove and Arielle Scarcella. That made me the #WrongKindOfTrans, irrespective of my social and political views.

Arielle who? Arielle Scarcella is an influential lesbian vlogger and LGBT activist, whose YouTube channel has over 645,000 subscribers. She is critical of the push for transgender self-identification laws that are open to abuse by the Jessica Yanivs of the world, and critical of the accusation that lesbians who don’t prefer to date trans women are transphobic. But other than that, she’s trans friendly, and actively advocates for trans people. But according to some in the LGBTQIA community, that’s not good enough, and as such, she remains a transphobe in their eyes. I agreed to disagree on that, each to their own, until Les-Talk was removed from the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras’ list of featured events for 2020, due to protests against her invitation as a guest panellist.

An online petition was launched in mid-February by Johnny Valkyrie, demanding Arielle be removed and replaced “preferably by someone of intersectionality.” Johnny is a drag performer most notorious for an incident at the Brisbane National Library a month earlier. He hosted Drag Storytime, and was confronted by protesters from the University of Queensland National-Liberal Club, who got doxxed in retaliation. The doxxing resulted in one of the protesters, openly gay student Wilson Gavin, committing suicide the next day — I think I now fully understand what Wil was going through in his final moments. As part of Johnny’s campaign to deplatform Arielle and the organisers of Les-Talk, other guest panellists pulled out, and in their places, Rain and I were invited to join the Les-Talk panel.

Rain is non-binary (“gender capitalist” style), and I am a lesbian trans woman, but that wasn’t good enough for “intersectionality”. I’ve received the following criticism on social media:

“How can you share the stage with that transphobic piece of trash? (Arielle Scarcella). The previous panellists all bailed on this show for good reasons.”

“Standing up on stage with a known transphobe, who has very publicly put our identities up for debate (or out and out denied them), then stating it’s a great opportunity to have a robust debate/discussion… well… you do the math.”

“Dana agreeing to be on the show instead of refusing, allows the show to go ahead and a transphobe gets mic time.”

Despite the criticism, I attended the non-Mardi Gras endorsed panel, both fellow panellists were pleasant, and we had some great conversations. It was livestreamed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92lThlZbXJY. You be the judge, but I don’t think that livestream warranted a “Kill yourself” message the morning after from a trans rights activist. So why did I do it? Why did I put myself at risk of vicious bullying? I felt that it was a great opportunity to have a robust debate/discussion, which is better than sitting in my own echo chamber. The three of us shared the stage equally, but that didn’t matter to the deplatformers, because apparently lack of respect for someone for having a different opinion is the new norm. I’d do it all over again, because cancel culture needs to be cancelled. I will not bend my knee for cancel culture, because in the words of Martin Niemöller:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

At the time of blogging, I had started to follow up the cyberbullying matter with the police. In any case, why are some people extreme on social media? Because they can it seems, and it’s easier to do so behind a smartphone screen, or a computer screen. Why do these same people see only two extreme camps to a debate or discourse, about society or politics, without acknowledging nuances? In my experience, it’s because of lazy thinking, because thinking about complicated issues is hard work. Hard work however, tends to be rewarding in the long run, and I don’t know how else to convince these people that building a bridge in debate and discourse, is worth it.