In an interview with Piers Morgan, Macy says “I will say this and everybody’s going to hate me, but, as a woman, just because you go change your parts, doesn’t make you a woman. Sorry.” 

A lot of folks in the trans community had obvious issues with Macy’s sentiments and the immediate call for education began. Activists and artists like Ts Madison, Sunkee Angel and Cherry Boom took to their platforms to discuss the comments as well as a host of other folks both in and out of the community.

While some Cis women shared Macy’s sentiments there were a few like political commentator Olayemi Olurin who says “it has never been the case that a marginalized group appears and starts speaking about their issues and advocating for different ways that we could respond to be more inclusive that you don’t see a large push back.”

The bigger question is why was Macy speaking on the issues of trans women in the first place, and the answer is simple. An agenda to constantly shed a negative light on trans folks with a focus on trans women for the sake of fear-mongering by right-winged media.

With so many intersectional and personal topics happening from Brittney Griner’s detainment to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, why was it necessary to spend time telling the world that you don’t think trans women are women and narrowing your reason to the existence and function or lack thereof body parts? 

The obsession with having obtuse conversations surrounding trans identity cloaked in the excuse of “I just want to understand” is old.

Folks within the trans community have grown tired of providing resources that go unseen while harmful conversations, jokes, and sound bites that further embolden bigots and far-right sycophants are spread far and wide.

The angle seems to be clear and Macy Gray is the latest in a long line of celebrity women who feel it their duty to be overtly trans-negative joining the likes of Bette Midler, J.K Rowling, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

There seems to be a need to gatekeep womanhood as if trans women’s existence makes cis women obsolete and comments like Gray’s only affirms the false self-affirmations of TERFS (a feminist who excludes the rights of transgender women from their advocacy of women’s rights, or Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist). The conversation grows tiring and the performance of “learning from my mistakes” is just as rough. 

Furthermore, folks are entitled to whatever opinions they’d like to have, but that doesn’t absolve them of the consequences or opinions of others.