Virginia Weaver, Senior Staff Writer

Microwaved Beef is a column by Virginia Weaver that reflects on flashpoints from the last few years in the culture wars. The rapid pace of contemporary discourse makes it easy to forget critical moments that have defined our social and academic lives for the last few years. Microwaved Beef brings those moments back into the spotlight.   

In late August 2022, popular trans actress Hunter Schafer liked an Instagram post by user piggytaiwan and commented a series of exclamation marks on it to emphasize her agreement.  

Piggy Taiwan’s post reads, with brackets containing editorial notes for clarification: 

I hope all of the people (enbies [non-binary identified people]) who fought to have trans identities no longer considered a medical condition that requires dysphoria are happy because you’ve won. The red states are beginning to agree with you. HRT [hormone replacement therapy] and gender affirming surgery are no longer deemed medically necessary for adults in Florida and it’s not going to stop there. That means more trans people will have to pay for their transitions out of pocket, forcing more of us into sex work. Y’all just couldn’t stand to let binary trans people be the voice of this community. You had to dismantle all of the guidelines around being trans to fit your narrative so you could feel valid and then you demonized t[r]ans people who challenged your ideals and called them truscum/transmedicalists. What you don’t understanding is that binary trans women and men don’t have the luxury of playing around with what it means to be trans the same way you do. You challenge gender ideologies from the safety of a cis body that requires no medical treatment. We have to play the game and live by the guidelines that cis people have created for us because that is how we survive. You’re not helping. You’re not dismantling the gender binary. You’re not expanding the minds of cis people. You are making them hate us. For the last time I am begging non binary people to take a seat and let binary trans people and more specifically black trans women be the voices of this community because they are the ones at risk. 

By liking and commenting approvingly on this post, Schafer had waded into a years-long conflict among trans people over what it means, or should mean, to be trans.  

piggytaiwan’s post references some of the main concepts in the ideological conflict between transmedicalists and their more dominant opposition. Transmedicalists, those who believe that being trans requires having gender dysphoria, stand opposed to those who believe gender identity alone determines transgender status. Opponents of transmedicalists often refer to them as “truscum,” short for “true transsexual scum,” to suggest that they have a lofty view of themselves as the only true trans people. Opponents of transmedicalism have no widely adopted term for their ideology, but transmedicalists dubbed them “tucutes,” short for “too cute to be cisgender,” implying that being trans is merely an aesthetic choice for them. 

The conflict between gender identity ideology and transmedicalism reached its peak intensity during the 2010s. One of the most famous advocates for the transmedicalist position was—and remains—YouTuber and podcaster Blaire White, who has stated much the same stance as piggytaiwan’s on many occasions, such as during a debate hosted by VICE in 2019.  

Hunter Schafer’s foray into this conflict in 2022 came long after its mid-2010s peak. She was microwaving beef by commenting on piggytaiwan’s post. It is impossible to know how aware Schafer was of the truscum vs. tucute conflict when she first responded to the post. Nevertheless, for anyone who had known of the conflict prior to 2022, the backlash to Schafer’s comment was predictable. In a widely shared response to piggytaiwan’s post, spurred by Schafer’s engagement with it, activist Erin Reed argued that transmedicalists were facilitating the rollback of trans rights. Outlets such as Out Magazine published negative responses to Schafer’s support of piggytaiwan’s post. Leah Bitsky, writing for Page Six, quoted and reflected some of the significant backlash to Schafer’s like and comment. According to a post by Instagram account piggytaiwanbackup, piggytaiwan’s account had been suspended just a few days after Schafer’s fateful comment. 

A few weeks later, as recounted by Mey Rude for Out Magazine, Schafer responded to the controversy over her Instagram like and comment. She commented on her own post of photos from the waning summer:  

also, while we are here- i hold absolutely no hatred towards non-binary folks- i agreed with another t-girl’s post in which she pointed out an in-balance in the visibility and space-taken up between non-binary folks and binary trans women (particularly those of color and/or those who have resulted to sex work as a means of survival) that i think deserves attention/re-evaluation (as far as resources and platforms go) within the LGBTQ+ community. i am not a trans medicalist, and my ideology around transness does not align with transmedicalism, nor a disdain toward nb identifying people ❣️ 

Hunter Schafer’s career on screen has continued unabated, despite her brief bout in the gender wars. In recent months, at the time of writing, she has received press attention for speaking out against President Trump’s Executive Order 14168, which had reverted her passport’s gender marker to male. Perhaps by 2022, let alone 2025, the truscum-tucute conflict had become too distant a conflagration to damage a rising star of Schafer’s magnitude.