This letter to the editor is a response to LGBTQ Nation opinion writer Faefyx Collington’s Tuesday, April 15, 2025, column.

Faefyx Collington is, like me, gender nonconforming and surely wants the best for our community. Unfortunately, their “Trans people need allies – even imperfect ones” is less a defense of imperfect allies than a call for the kind of appeasement that only makes things worse.

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The make-no-waves approach Collington favors is exemplified by Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE). The first transgender person elected to federal office, McBride famously responded to being the target of Republican bathroom bills by saying she “did not come to Washington to fight about bathrooms.” She advises fellow Democrats to pivot away from transgender controversies by labeling them distractions from economic issues.

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It’s an approach that has been popular with centrist party bigwigs who have already moved the freshman into caucus leadership. It’s certainly well received by Collington, who claims the political “utility” of McBride’s strategy has been “borne out” in Utah and Montana, but Collington provides little evidence to support an assertion that seems absurd on its face and in the facts.

No matter what Collington says, neither McBride nor her passive approach influenced Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) when he vetoed H.B. 11. That bill, barring transgender girls from school sports, was vetoed in 2022, before McBride became a national figure and trans rights advocates were still almost universally unapologetic. Indeed, real credit belongs to the forceful, humanizing advocacy of Equality Utah, out gay State Sen. Derek Kitchen (D), and Sahara Hayes, a queer woman who openly advocated for transgender rights and against H.B. 11 while it was still being debated. Hayes was running for the state assembly when Cox decided to veto the bill, and she won that race saying H.B. 11 and her marriage to “a trans” person was “actually a big reason why I ran for office”, that it made her want to stand “directly… in the line of fire.” That unapologetic path to victory is hardly the compromising style that Collington tried to credit.

Unfortunately, Democrats have increasingly fallen for the Collington-McBrde model. Many who once championed us have been running scared since 2016. This intellectual malpractice reached its zenith in 2024 and 2025. Like many trans people, I stayed loyal but nervously silent as Kamala Harris ran. She had formerly championed trans equality, but now avoided even the word “transgender.” When pressed, Harris would only say, “I will follow the law.” Seeing such weakness, it’s hardly surprising that Trump spent hundreds of millions on ads portraying Democrats as obsessed with trans issues. Voters believed the ugly picture Republicans painted, many saying they were tired of Democrats pushing “trans rights down their throats.”

In the aftermath of the election, congressmembers like Reps. Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX) took the wrong lesson. Like many voters, they accepted the false Republican framing, saying, incorrectly, that Democrats had gone too far and spoken too much about transgender rights. Campaign consultants for Harris agreed, saying they had shelved well-crafted responses because they “didn’t poll well,” as if fecklessly letting your opponent define your position would do any better.

In a November 2024 article on this same subject, Collington claimed that such obfuscation is necessary because if a lawmaker like McBride were to “fight back virulently” they would never “win reelection,” even in deep blue Delaware, that they would be cast as “championing their own interests” over those they were “elected to represent.” The example set in deep red Montana suggests otherwise, demonstrating that the best approach is always bold and direct. 

Montana state Reps. SJ Howell (D) and Zooey Zephyr (D) entered an onslaught of transphobia when they were elected in 2022. They met it head-on. Howell, who is nonbinary, and Zephyr, who is transgender, consistently spoke out against anti-trans legislation. By sharing personal experiences, they humanized gender nonconforming people and the harms inflicted by discriminatory laws. In April 2023, Zephyr spoke so fiercely in opposing a ban on gender-affirming care that she was censured and barred from the assembly floor. Howell and Zephyr suffered the slings and arrows and lost many votes, but their courage built more than kowtowing ever could.

Despite being a Republican stronghold that Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2024, Howell and Zephyr bucked the national transphobic tide to win reelection on the same ballot. They returned to the Montana State House with hard won, bipartisan respect that paid off for queer Montanans. In December, when a Republican proposed a bathroom rule aimed at excluding Zephyr from capital restrooms–a stunt specifically modeled on the one Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had just imposed on McBride–the measure failed. It failed because three Republicans joined Democrats to vote it down.

One of the Republican defectors all but admitted that Howell and Zephyr had gained the moral high ground when he justified voting with the Democrats, saying the rule would only have made “people famous” and–sounding much like the defensive McBride–it would merely distract the legislature from the “effective conduct” of “business.” 

Then, over the last five weeks–as other red states followed Donald Trump’s national transphobic crusade, passing dozens of anti-trans measures–queer Montanans won three big votes. In rapid succession, enough Republicans joined the Democrats to defeat bills that otherwise would have outlawed drag, stripped custody from parents of transgender kids, and imposed severe penalties for providing gender affirming care to minors. Observers overwhelmingly credit these successes to the sustained and uncompromising work of Howell and Zephyr.

I don’t know how Collington associated those victories with the McBride-style of accommodation; they offer no proof, and the facts paint a very different picture. Perhaps Collington, like many well-meaning progressives, values comity so much that they’ve forgotten how to fight. What I know is what every successful civil rights champion from Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Alice Paul, Gandhi, King, Mandela, to Dolores Huerta, Shirely Chishom, Harvey Milk, Sylvia Rivera, and John Lewis has taught; no one will see our humanity or give us rights we don’t have the courage to demand, proclaim and take for ourselves.

Stephanie Wade is a transgender woman from Seal Beach, California. She served her country as a Marine Corps infantry officer and as a congressional aide from 2019 to 2021. She is co-chair of the Lavender Democrats of Orange County and an Equality California board member. The opinions stated here are her own.

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