Tiffany Pollard is transphobic (and it probably won’t matter)
Mid-December, reality star and Gay Twitter icon, Tiffany Pollard, decided to top 2020 off by displaying an unbelievable amount of transphobia during an episode of Zeus Network’s One Mo’ Chance.
In a clip from the reality show, circulating Twitter just a few days before the start of the new year, Pollard can be seen attempting to insult female contestant, Tiffany Walker, by saying, “I feel like you have a situation and I do believe that you are a man,” among other things I don’t care to repeat.
Pollard has since come out with an “apology” of sorts, or at the very least an attempted defense of her actions. She states on video via Instagram, “I don’t have a transphobic bone in my body” before coming up with some weird reasoning where her denigration of a woman for potentially not having a vagina couldn’t possibly be transphobic because the woman is actually cis (or as Pollard describes her, “not transgendered”) and Pollard herself sometimes gets mistaken for a man.
Her response was almost as ignorant and upsetting as the originally circulated clip, but Pollard did manage to get one thing correct in her Instagram post. Both in the video and the caption, she rightfully identifies the LGBTQ+ community, including trans folk, as some of her most ardent supporters since the start of her career. “You guys always show up and show out for me,” she says toward the beginning of the video, “and the love is real.”
Tiffany Pollard, often referred to as “New York” from her Flavor of Love days, has been a staple of Gay Twitter’s meme culture for quite some time. Up until last week, the relationship has been mostly reciprocal; as Pollard became an LGBTQ+ icon online without much effort–her humor and outlandishness fitting nicely into the already-established niche of Gay Twitter’s meme culture–Pollard, in turn, became a vocal advocate for gay rights. She voted to eliminate Celebrity Big Brother contestant, Winston McKenzie, due to his homophobic attitudes; she hosted a reality show starring two gay men, pairing revenue earned from the series with promised donations to The Trevor Project; and she openly talked about feeling connected to the LGBTQ+ community as someone who grew up bullied and “misunderstood.”
You would think that the discovery of Pollard’s transphobic blindspot would ignite a swift expulsion of Pollard from LGBTQ+ circles, including the continuous dissemination of her memes on Gay Twitter. At the moment, that seems to be what’s happening. Type “tiffany pollard” into the Twitter search bar today (and maybe the rest of the month) and you’ll see that most of the discourse is dominated by those condemning her bigotry:
It won’t last.
Despite the backlash Tiffany Pollard is currently receiving and the loud outcry of people “unstanning,” give it a couple of months and her face will continue popping up in reaction gifs and videos across Twitter as if her transphobia had never been made public.
It’s already starting to happen; just a few weeks after the climax of backlash, put her name into Twitter’s search bar and mixed in with the condemnations you can note a steady return to ironic New York hype:
What awareness these users have of Pollard’s transphobia is questionable, but even that goes to show that the issue of transphobia hasn’t become a big enough deal to Pollard’s reputation that all who admire her are conscious of it.
In some ways, this is completely understandable and not all that unjustified. Pollard’s celebrity contains layers and the support she receives from fans (whether ironically or not) comes from a variety of factors: she was an icon on Black Twitter long before being co-opted for Gay Twitter, her outspoken and sometimes caustic personality has made her a covert symbol for boss-bitch mentalities, and, more than anything, New York as a character is still just exceptionally funny and entertaining to watch. Pollard’s apparent transphobia doesn’t negate any of those things and there’s an argument to be had that her failings on this one subject shouldn't dominate all public discourse surrounding her name hereafter.
Should “New York is a transphobic piece of shit” be the only sentiment found in a search of Tiffany Pollard’s name online? It’s not an easy question to answer; especially when Pollard’s response to the backlash has implied dangerous ignorance more so than malicious hatred, a complete “cancellation” of her legacy could read to many as an over-reaction.
The problem remains though that Tiffany Pollard memes are a staple of Gay Twitter, a sub-community of Twitter that has become the largest representative folks of LGBTQ+ communities have on mainstream social media. It’s LGBTQ+ accounts that most reliably circulate Pollard’s gifs, videos, and reaction images. Now that her transphobia has come to light, one could expect that circulation to be tainted with the revelation that continuing to support Pollard’s meme-status means supporting a woman whose public statements have actively undermined the experiences of those representing the “T” in “LGBTQ.”
As a supposed champion of LGBTQ+ equality, Tiffany Pollard’s transphobia is a big deal, but it’s not equally as big of a deal to everyone within the LGBTQ+ umbrella. While Gay Twitter may be the largest representation LGBTQ+ folk have on social media, it’s still called “Gay Twitter” for a reason: cis white gay men have essentially become the faces of all that is LGBTQ+, making the experiences of those with trans or gender-non-conforming identities somewhat of a back-burner issue within mainstream LGBTQ+ conversations.
Pollard’s bigotry and the chosen ignorance of it that will inevitably follow is a current example of this, but Pollard already isn’t the most egregious case of a woman retaining her “gay icon” meme status despite doing active harm to more marginalized members of the community. That honor falls to a woman even more ubiquitous for Gay Twitter meme culture: TV host, Wendy Williams.
There’s a bit of irony involved here. Social media sites, dominantly populated by members of the Millennial or Z generations, have become known for two primary things: 1) exhausting discourses in which someone is always being accused of some kind of inexcusable behavior or belief, followed by the righteous demand to exile them from communities or alter their platforms (labeled by middle-age comedians and right-wing pundits as “cancel culture”), and 2) memes.
The two things can and do coexist, but not without contention due to the mere fact that quite a lot of memes, even memes used by the more traditionally “woke” communities, are exceptionally problematic and very often not much is done about that.
Wendy Williams memes help set this precedent on Gay Twitter, with Williams being accused of multiple forms of problematic behavior including transphobia, with only brief periods of backlash and no present danger of having her memes pulled from steady rotation. She made jokes about the death of celebrity sex therapist, Amie Harwick, she victim-blamed Kesha following Kesha’s allegations of abuse and rape, she claimed Caitlyn Jenner isn’t a real woman because “she still has a member,” and much, much more.
One could argue that the use of memes needn’t prompt any dire moral crises. A meme is just a meme like a joke is just a joke and plenty of people believe that something’s mere ability to make someone laugh implies it must ultimately be harmless.
It’s an idea that doesn’t stand up much upon further inspection but it’s still not a totally unpopular one with the long history of memes (long in relative terms to the existence of social media) being evidence that many residents of the Internet have adopted this “just a meme” sentiment to at least some small degree. Just look at examples like “bed intruder,” “Harambe,” or “lovely Peaches,” three memes that have gained long-withstanding Internet popularity despite some degree of controversy or darker history when put into context. Even with Pollard and Williams put aside, Gay Twitter has also made activist, Rose McGowan, a regularly recurring face for reaction videos despite nearly all of the videos involved being related to McGowan’s work as a #MeToo activist and recounts of her experiences as a rape survivor.
I can’t say that this is wrong–I’ve personally used memes from Pollard, Williams, and McGowan at some point or another and will likely use some of them again (I literally can’t stop calling things a “cultural reset”)–but it’s still something we should be aware of, especially in cases like Pollard and Williams where the sizes of each woman’s platforms are almost directly related to their continued dominance in meme culture.
Wendy Williams isn’t just a TV host who happens to get turned into reaction gifs occasionally; many of Wendy’s viewers tune in to The Wendy Williams Show daily to see what the living, breathing meme will say or do next. Some even watch with the specific intent of creating a soundbite for any meme-worthy moment and contribute to the on-going memeification of Williams’ public persona, creating an endless loop where memes reinforce a platform which then produces more memes. It’s not dissimilar to Tiffany Pollard’s command over reality television; the love for her outlandish behavior on Flavor of Love turned her into a meme, which turned her into an icon, which then eventually led to more and more reality show offers (including Pollard-led spin-offs like I Love New York or New York Goes to Hollywood) up to her current casting on One Mo’ Chance where Pollard’s transphobia was given a microphone.
At the moment, Tiffany Pollard’s list of transgressions is a hell of a lot shorter than Wendy Williams’, but Pollard’s botched defense of her own transphobia doesn’t leave much hope for positive change on the subject to come.
Despite transphobia being an issue that affects many members of the LGBTQ+ community (not only those who specifically identify as trans, but also anyone with gender non-conforming presentations and identities), continuing the status quo of gay meme culture doesn’t leave much room for a more critical assessment of who can and should hold the status of gay meme icon, nor does that status quo seem all too concerned with what platforms are being endorsed for the sake of entertainment.
The search for the perfect reaction video will continue to leave trans people as collateral damage.