Trans Academy : a measured response (cw for nsfw themes, intersexism, misogyny, transphobia, and probably more.)
This is a revisting of this post made in June of 2024
For context, I am an intersex multigender plural person. I spent approximately two months in the Trans Academy discord server after semi-frequently spending time in the community's VRChat counterpart for a decent chunk of time. This post is being made to share my experience.
An Overview of Trans Academy Incorporated
For anyone unfamiliar with the Trans Academy and who they are/how they operate, here is what is written as their Mission:
"Trans Academy is a Non-Profit 501c3 committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and educational virtual environment that empowers the transgender community and their allies. Our mission is centered around providing peer support, voice lessons, vocational skill training and networking, resources to navigate gender identity, and opportunities for meaningful connections. We aim to create a supportive space where members can engage in empowering conversations, access valuable resources, and celebrate the diversity of gender identities. Our focus is on uniting and championing every gender identity, ensuring a respectful and diverse setting that is conducive to learning and personal growth."
They're a charity that's based out of Las Vegas, Nevada, and formally received tax exemption status in the middle of 2023. Their 990-N lists VRChat's Head of Quality Assurance as their principal officer, meaning that VRChat itself, in some capacity, has full managerial oversight of Trans Academy as a non-profit.
Now, this isn't a bad thing by default. I think it's good that VRChat as a company has some presence and power within the Trans Academy organisation. It means that VRChat, on some level, has some awareness of how TA operates.
TA made approximately $21.6k USD in total revenue in the year of 2024. They make most of their money through direct donations via Tiltify campaigns, direct payments through PayPal, and donations received through Twitch during their livestreams. A majority of the income they receive is spent on paying the instructors they contract to teach things like voice training courses and so on.
They are a legitimate organisation that is recognised by the IRS, however the community and userbase that this organisation cultivates (and thus the moderation team that recruits new mods and "staff" members they recruit through it) does not reflect the values that this nonprofit proports to uphold.
This community is available to users 13 years old and older. This is a good thing, because trans teens need a space to build community. However, the efforts that the discord staff members make in order to protect both minors and adults are very sub-par at best, and neglectful at worst.
Users will regularly flirt with one another - regardless of age - and uses phrases like "Good girl / good boy / good [noun]" as a way to affirm each other's gender identity and alleviate each other's dysphoria. This is very reckless and inappropriate, especially considering how hard they attempt to police the use of anatomical names of body parts that are integral to the conversation of trans people at times. The manner in which they call words like "vulva" and "penis" as "crude slang" is bizarre and unnecessary.
Discord users will just as equally trauma dump in channels that are not meant for that, even while other users are engaged in an entirely separate conversation, as a way to steer the attention to themselves. I understand needing an outlet, but spilling your guts out in the general channel of a server with more than 18,000 members is unproductive and inappropriate, and you would think that a server with as large of a staff team it is would make any effort to moderate and contribute to the community they represent. Instead, they hide in their staff-only chatrooms and avoid any responsibility to hold members accountable for their actions unless it might become a PR nightmare.
Which is why I'm writing this post.
Misogyny, Intersexism and Monogenderism
In my time at the Trans Academy, I've noticed an incredible amount of both fetishism and misogyny directed at women in the discord server, ironically from binary trans people more than anyone else - even trans women. Discord members would regularly idolise misogyny and sexism as a "transition goal" to achieve. They regularly would express the desire to be cat-called and sexually harassed because it would be "affirming their gender." As someone who is regularly victimised by sexism and misogyny on a regular basis, I find that to be a ridiculous thing for transfeminine people to say, especially in a space that is meant to build community and a space to learn about how they interact with gender. Listening to my peers espouse such disgusting rhetoric about how being a girl would make people like them more, while experiencing the exact opposite in my physical adult life, is gut-wrenching and infuriating to me.
I would also witness talk of people fighting over HRT with one another. Whenever a user such as myself would talk about their experiences with HRT, someone who hadn't gotten access to it would behave with such childish hostility that it almost seemed like people who have been able to take any step towards transitioning don't deserve to have that access if someone else doesn't. The discord server treats being trans as some sort of depression and poverty cult when it doesn't need to.
The amount of intersexism that is present in that discord server should not be ignored either. Education around intersex conditions is so limited in general, but you would hope that a community such as the Trans Academy would have a better understanding of the nature of being intersex and would provide educational resources for people who are unaware, which seems to be a majority of the server's userbase.
I can recall an incident in which a trans woman had said that trans women should be able to claim that they are intersex as a way to protect themselves from transphobia. They claim that relying on such a "disguise" harms no one, and that intersex people are at no risk of harm. This person had said that "lying to save lives is a moral duty," and that throwing intersex people under the bus causes no harm.
Perisex trans people in the Trans Academy would regularly express hostility towards intersex people, as if we were winning some weird competition of who could transition faster or who was further along in their transition compared to other people. It's like they think we were born trans, or lucky to have access to gender affirming care (even if it was without our consent) regardless of why we received it. In their minds, intersex people are "trans without transitioning," and they've manufactured a reason to be envious of intersex people and will regularly use us as talking points to prove that trans people should be taken seriously and respected.
The Trans Academy acknowledges the existence of nonbinary and multigender people.... only somewhat. Binary trans people would frequently assume that non-binary people were just binary trans people who haven't fully figured themselves out yet. As if being nonbinary was just another label for questioning and therefore not trans. While it's true that some binary trans people have also called themselves nonbinary prior to recognising that it doesn't fit them, it's not true for everyone.
I consider myself multigender including transfemme and transmasc. This is due to my intersex condition. However, users in the server would regularly police and invalidate my experiences with my gender due to how well they assume I "pass." I never divulged too much personal information about myself, thankfully, so they only operate under the assumption that I'm the type of trans person that people should try to become as they transition. While that's flattering, it comes from a place of distain, anger, and jealousy.
On the rare occasion that I would talk about being my history of being mistreated and fetishised by both cis and trans people, the overwhelming response I would get would be "I wish I had that problem." Their reasoning for this was that they assumed that transitioning would magically improve their social and dating life. While I can somewhat empathise with that struggle of feeling like no one would ever give you the the time of day, what I don't appreciate is my experiences being fetishised, objectified and sexually harassed on the basis of my gender and gender expression from trans people who, I'd thought, would be respectful and sympathetic to the struggles of another trans person. I suppose it was wrong of me to expect any sort of decency and respect in a discord server. We live and we learn!
I've been active in trans spaces for about 10 or so years now. Since then, I've watched queer and trans individuals fight for the respect that they deserve and achieve so much for our community while unfortunately being set back time and time again by people who don't want to bother putting in the work to treat us like normal and respectable human beings. The trans community has grown so much and it has become one of the most incredible spaces that I've had the pleasure of being apart of. It's a space that everyone deserves to feel welcome into regardless of the details of what makes you queer or what makes you trans. Being trans is something that should be celebrated at every turn because doing anything less is undermining the nature and the dignity that our community deserves.
The Trans Academy had such a bright and promising future. It did all the right things in its younger days and I'm glad that people have been able to find the comfort and validation they seek in that space.
However, my heart breaks for those who thought they were walking into their first safe haven only to be disrespected and ridiculed by the very people they were promised would support them.
The Trans Academy needs a serious wake-up call to the harm that they're perpetuating, and I pray that reform can be made to protect the future of the trans community in the way they promised they would.
