please, for the love of god, get us off twitter
on transmisogyny in the smash community. apr 10, 2025
this past weekend, i traveled to Full Bloom 2025, a major Melee tournament in the midwest. while the experience was largely a positive one—i was able to see a close friend for the first time in a few months; i met several new friends; i helped to organize and run the Smash Sisters side event—the latter of these has been marred in the last few days by rampant transphobia on twitter. rampant transphobia on twitter is nothing new (it's honestly what the site is designed for these days), but seeing it directed at a photo of me and my friends hurt—not to mention that this particular wave is the largest and most overwhelming i've ever seen directed at trans women in Melee. however, what hurts even more is seeing members of the Melee community repeatedly and consistently ceding ground to the bigots online.
i don't want to mince words here: the Melee community has a serious transmisogyny problem. it's seen in the way the scene clings to twitter, even as more and more trans women plead for a more insulated space for community organization. it's seen in the hand-wringing over banning (or even talking with) men who make trans women uncomfortable. it's seen in the refrain that "transphobia hurts cis women in the scene too," as if the pain to trans women is not enough on its own to take action. it's seen in the way that discourse always seems to pop up around trans women in the scene being "too sexual" or "too annoying" or doing "too many drugs." these are all nuanced topics with room to discuss, certainly, but twitter actively discourages these types of conversations. everything is a quick, bite-sized argument; you're encouraged to quote-tweet dunk rather than engage in good faith.
something i noticed about this most recent wave of transmisogyny, spawning from a photo of Smash Sisters finals, is the uptick in harassers parroting the talking point "protect women's spaces." i shouldn't have to point out that nobody spouting transphobic nonsense on twitter is actually invested in keeping women in the scene safe, whether trans or cis. and yet, time after time, we see people try to pick apart this and other arguments logically, as if there is any logic in the first place beyond spewing hatred. these are not people in the actual community; it's the people who show up at events that we need to focus our efforts on talking with, understanding, and educating about their ignorance.
the larger problem here is with twitter as a whole, in my opinion. these cycles of discourse will not end until the community stops centering itself on twitter. if we want to foster real growth and positive change in the Melee scene, it is imperative that we carve out our own space for organizing and having discussion, rather than use the one being overrun by bigots and overseen by a fascist. whether that's moving to bluesky, reviving smashboards, or something entirely new, i don't know. but we cannot keep playing this game on the transphobes' terms. all that does is legitimize them as part of the community, even when we know they are not.
the fact of the matter is this: regardless of their tangible involvement in the community, the hordes of bigots on twitter are directly empowered by the site's owner to harass trans women. this extends directly into Melee and the broader smash scene through people like Technicals and accounts like Fox News SSB. this harassment is terrifying, demoralizing, and it directly jeopardizes the safety that trans women have within the scene.
this is not to say that the bigotry does not persist elsewhere online. Technicals has a fairly high-profile youtube channel (121k subscribers at the time of writing) where he amplifies this rhetoric in long form videos. at the very least however, moving off twitter is a significant first step to depriving these dangerous individuals of their influence. it's much harder to coordinate a transphobic harassment campaign on a forum space like smashboards, or even on a site like bluesky, where there are actual reporting features.
ultimately, my hope in writing this is that the Melee community will finally notice the microscope that trans women are placed under on a daily basis. it's exhausting; there's no reason a picture of my friends and i having fun should prompt a flood of weirdos to spout bullshit—and there's no reason for us to humor them further by engaging. we need a proper space for community, and we need to build it together. thank you for reading.