I have to be honest, friends: when the news broke that a young trans woman in South Carolina had been arrested for repeatedly threatening to assassinate Representative Nancy Mace, my stomach clenched. Not because I’m a fan of Mace – please, I roast her on Twitter hard enough to need oven mitts – but because every violent word she screenshotted was another bullet aimed straight at the heart of our movement. According to state investigators, the 19-year-old posted, “I’m going to assassinate Representative Nancy Mace with a gun and I’m being 100 % dead-ass” and admitted she wrote it when questioned by federal agents. The court denied her bond, and felony charges for threatening the life of a public official are now pending.
Mace wasted no time grinding that red-state megaphone: “Trans activists have been threatening to kill me every day … yet not one Democrat has spoken up to say it’s wrong,” she told Fox News Digital, tossing in a dig about makeup wipes for good measure. The right-wing press applauded, comment sections erupted, and by sundown, the narrative solidified: the trans community is violent.
The Bullseye We Live In
If you’re trans in America circa Trump 2.0, you don’t need me to explain the bullseye on our backs. Nearly every week, a new bill is introduced that bans our access to health care, restricts our bathroom use, or denies our right to participate in school sports and public life. Over forty states have unified behind model legislation, attempting to legislate us out of reality. We scroll the headlines: another clinic shuttered, another bathroom ban, another Pride flag ripped down, and terror calcifies into white-hot rage.
That rage is justified. It is human. And it is politically dangerous if we let it leak out as threats or violence.
Why Violent Rhetoric Backfires
Threatening a member of Congress doesn’t make them rethink their anti-trans bill; it makes them famous. It gifts them a tidy anecdote to wave at donors and cameras: “Look how unsafe I am around these people!” It allows them to spin the entire queer-rights debate into a public-safety panic, and once the words public safety hit the chyron, we lose moderates faster than TikTok trends. Worse, it hands prosecutors a real, tangible crime that distracts from the waves of legislative cruelty raining down on us.
Let’s be brutally pragmatic: our community is too small to pass major legislation on our own. We need cisgender allies, lots of them, to hold the line in city councils, statehouses, and Congress. Those allies are already fielding hate mail for standing with us. When we throw violent threats into the mix, we don’t look like brave freedom fighters; we look like the caricature Fox News paints every day.
I Understand the Anger
Believe me, I get it. I’ve doom-scrolled until 1 a.m., fists shaking while far-right influencers misgender me for clicks. I’ve lost jobs, friends, and basic health-care access because of politicians who cash checks off my pain. On some days the urge to type “You’ll pay for this” burns hotter than a dragon’s breath.
But here’s the truth: violence, real or rhetorical, doesn’t vent the pressure; it pumps more gasoline into an already raging fire. For every threatening DM one of us sends, three more legislative grenades get lobbed in return. The opposition is begging for examples that let them say, “See? We told you they’re dangerous.” Why on earth would we help them?
The Historical Lesson
The history of civil rights is unequivocal: movements thrive when their moral superiority remains unchallenged. The LGBTQ+ struggle changed the course not through physical force but through actions such as ACT UP die-ins, Pride marches, and Harvey Milk’s conversation with neighbors while riding a city bus. Stonewall erupted, yes, but what changed laws was the sustained, organized, non-violent pressure that followed.
Our fight today is no different. The state’s power, cops, courts, and surveillance, outguns any individual’s keyboard threat. When we choose violence, we step onto terrain where the state is strongest and we are weakest. When we choose strategic, disciplined non-violence, we flip the script: suddenly lawmakers must explain why banning affirming care for teenagers is worth a federal lawsuit, why strip-searching athletes is good governance, and why they’re wasting taxpayer dollars policing pronouns instead of potholes.
What Non-Violent Resistance Looks Like in 2025
- Relentless Storytelling: Share our humanity online and off. The polls move when neighbors realize the trans kid down the street just wants to pass algebra and go to prom, not overthrow civilization.
- Legal Firepower: Fund the ACLU, Lambda Legal, TLDEF. Bills crumble when federal judges smell constitutional rot.
- Economic Pressure: Boycotts work. Ask North Carolina’s ex-governor how HB2’s bathroom ban fared once PayPal and the NCAA pulled millions out of the state.
- Ballot-Box Muscle: Register, canvass, vote. Ally lawmakers need wins; anti-trans lawmakers need pink slips.
- Digital Dunking, Not Doxxing: Drag bad ideas, not people. Satire, memes, and fact-checks shift culture; threats shift you straight into a courtroom.
An Invitation to My Angry Sibling
Sister, I’m talking to you, the one in that Greenville County jail cell right now. I don’t know your full story. I know enough to feel the heat that must have boiled over the day you pressed “Post.” I also know the prosecutor may use your words to lock you up for years, and Mace will use them every election cycle until 2040. You are not a monster; you made a catastrophic strategic mistake. I hope you get due process, competent counsel, and a community that doesn’t abandon you even as we condemn what you did.
Condemning violence does not equate to forsaking trans individuals who make mistakes. Restorative justice has to start inside our family first. If we don’t leave room for redemption, how can we demand society does?
To Allies Feeling Skittish
Maybe you’re a cis reader scrolling through this op-ed, thinking, “I want to help, but … these threats are scary.” Good. They scare me too. However, it’s important to understand that most of us react to hatred with open hands rather than closed fists. Hold us accountable when we mess up, yes, but don’t let the worst tweet from one stressed-out teenager erase your commitment to equality. Our liberation needs you now more than ever.
A Word on Trolling Without Threatening
Confession time: I troll Nancy Mace almost daily. I joke about her having no chance to win the upcoming South Carolina gubernatorial election. I verify the accuracy of nearly every assertion she makes, particularly in relation to the “Hold The Line” tag she employs, and I critique her inconsistencies with a level of intensity reminiscent of a RuPaul runway roast. However, I always refrain from crossing the line into violence. My block button stays frosty; my snark stays legal. You can clap back hard without handing the opposition a subpoena.
What We Lose When We Swing
Every violent outburst costs us:
- Media Narrative: Journalists love drama; an arrest makes juicier headlines than a peaceful protest. Suddenly the focus isn’t the bathroom ban—it’s our misconduct.
- Legislative Leverage: Moderate Republicans who might quietly kill an anti-trans amendment in committee now fear primary ads calling them “soft on violent radicals.”
- Public Sympathy: Parents of cis kids watching the evening news don’t see nuance; they see fear. Fear breeds votes against us.
- Internal Unity: Violence fractures coalitions. Faith leaders, medical associations, and corporate partners walk when a movement looks combustible.
Channel the Fire, Don’t Let It Consume You
Anger is rocket fuel. Aim it. Funnel it into precinct walking, court-watching, mutual-aid hormones funds, campaign donations, or art that lights up a thousand minds without burning a single bridge. If you need to scream, hit the gym, the karaoke bar, the comment section, just skip the criminal threats.
A Closing Plea
My beloved trans siblings, we are engaged in a fight for our lives and our rights. The other side wants nothing more than to paint us as predators, anarchists, and ticking time bombs. Let’s starve that narrative. Respond to hate with strategy, to cruelty with ironclad community, and to violence with the unstoppable power of disciplined, nonviolent resistance.
Representative Mace says, “Real men protect women.” I say real human beings protect each other. We protect each other by refusing to throw the first punch, online or off, and by refusing to let our anger cloud the long game: full equality, no exceptions.
So breathe. Log off before you post. Remember that every word we launch into the world has a boomerang curve. Let’s make sure what comes back is progress, not prison time.
We’ve survived worse than Nancy Mace. Together, strategic, loud, and resolutely non-violent, we’ll outlast this, too.
