NikkieTutorials owes the world nothing
Tw: discussion of transphobia
Yesterday, Monday 13 January 2020, YouTube beauty community stalwart and mainstay icon NikkieTutorials uploaded a video to her channel titled ‘I’m Coming Out’, in which she revealed that she is transgender. Queer Twitter came out zealously in support and pride to welcome their sister into the fold, and rightly espoused her bravery and celebrated her identity.
However, there’s a rather large smudgy stain on Nikkie’s announcement. In the thirteenth minute of the 17-minute long announcement video, she revealed that whilst she had always wanted to talk about her transness on her channel, the time to do so had been decided for her by blackmailers and her choice in the matter forced. “I have been blackmailed”, she says, “by people who wanted to ‘leak’ my story to the press.” And you know what? That’s really, really, really not okay. Like, at all. In fact, it’s fucking disgusting.
‘Under my conditions’
Amid the plentiful comments of support and love are, of course, the transphobic trolls – prominent, too. The very first comment beneath her Twitter post containing the video link read “so wait, is she actually a man? I’m confused lol”, and beneath the YouTube video it’s much of the same; comments expressing surprise that they had never ‘clocked’ her (and frankly a huge separate ‘ew’ from me at awful ideals about ‘passing’ and expecting to be able to ‘clock’ trans people), expressing disgust that they had watched her all these years and felt ‘lied to’, and expressing outright confusion and total lack of comprehension of what transness is or means. Just five minutes ago when I googled ‘NikkieTutorials’ to find the video again for reference, the second search suggestion was ‘NikkieTutorials before’.
Nikkie’s public, online life is about to come a lot stickier and more toxic, and her private life ever more prodded and pried into – this she knows, as she explicitly asks her viewers to respect the privacy of her relationship. “I have always wanted to share this side of my story with you,” Nikkie tells her viewers; “I just wanted to do it under my conditions.” The sanctity of her online space and personal privacy is something that her blackmailers have forced from her hands, forever.
“The reason that the trans part of me never got to the light was because I wanted my channel to be about my art. I wanted my art to do the speaking.”
There are many, many points of contention here. First and foremost, is that no trans person owes you knowledge of their transness. It’s on a trust, by-comfort, need-to-know basis; if you are a trans public figure you have every right to withhold that information from your fans and followers; you are not ‘lying’ or ‘tricking’ anybody by not revealing that part of yourself, which is precisely what Nikkie’s blackmailers were accusing. If you are a private individual who is trans, you have every right to withhold that information from people in your life. Not every trans person is, wants to be, or has to be a beacon of visibility or activism. Not everybody is a Munroe Bergdorf, or a Jake and Hannah Graf, or an Indya Moore; these individuals are glorious humans to whom we owe a great amount of respect for their work and visibility, but most just want to live in the right identity, quietly and unremarked for it. Trans people don’t owe anybody anything.
None of your fucking business
This isn’t the first and won’t be the last instance where we have seen somebody’s gender identity weaponised against them. Transphobia is not just uncomfortable or disruptive; it can be literally life-threatening. “It was frightening to know that there are people out there who are so evil that they can’t respect someone’s true identity,” Nikkie says through suppressed tears. Only the person in question should hold the power to make the decision about going public. Threatening to out an LGBTQ+ person is about the shittiest thing you can do to them; the reasons for their not being out are myriad and personal, and often centred around safety. And even less complex than that, again, trans people simply want to live in peace.
Nikkie has been one of the most prominent and talented women in the YouTube beauty community for the past 11 years, and guess what? She still is, and will continue to be, only now she will be subject to scrutiny about her gender, her genitals, her “before”, her transition, her passing-ness, her withholding of information; for the first time in her public life, she isn’t just “that woman from YouTube”; most likely, she’ll now be “that trans beauty YouTuber”. She transitioned at age 19, whilst already on YouTube, before her viewers’ eyes, and it was still none of their business. Whilst it’s a part of her identity which she owns and is proud of, it’s one which has never been relevant in or featured in her YouTube career. “The reason that the trans part of me never got to the light was because I wanted my channel to be about my art,” Nikkie asserts. “I wanted my art to do the speaking.” That’s a specific choice she made, which has now gone disrespected and uprooted; where Nikkie chose previously to not be publicly defined by her trans identity, it has now been forced upon her to be so.
A new chapter
I am so pleased for Nikkie that she has been able to come out into an online community filled with welcoming queer people who will embrace her with open arms. Coming out is a beautiful thing, and in the video Nikkie tells of her supportive mother and community who rallied around her from the start – it’s just what any trans person deserves from their loved ones. But I am also so sorry to her that her coming out was forced; I am sorry to every trans person who has been prematurely outed; I am sorry to every victim of transphobic violence and vitriol; I am sorry that we live in a society which is still coloured so potently with transphobia and transmisogyny.
Defiantly, with this announcement, she opens a new chapter:
“Especially after transitioning and going through everything and closing that chapter, you don’t want to talk about it any more because you’re like “okay, that rough part of my life, I got through it, I survived, I did it, and now I can close it off”. But you can never truly close it off for good, and I am accepting that nowadays, and I am embracing that nowadays, because it’s time for me to be truly me for all of you. [...] At the end of the day, my story is beautiful. I’m proud of my story.”
Cis people; we need to be actively and openly supporting our trans siblings; we need to do better. Have some fucking respect.