Let’s Talk About Brianna Wu
Turns out the extravagantly wealthy mean girl scares easily.
Opinion by Aly Gibbs
Maybe you follow me on Bluesky and already know that I got into a little cross-platform spat over the last 48 hours. Before I can talk about that, I’d better explain who Wu is, and why she’s relevant (read: being made fun of) right now.
Brianna Wu is, historically, a software engineer and establisher of tech start-ups, though she isn’t particularly well known for either thing. She says she was “adopted into a family of extremely right-wing republicans who were hyper-political,” and that she “grew up on a diet of Rush Limbaugh, Fox and others to a ridiculous degree.” In an introductory post on Susan’s Place (a legendarily toxic, evil place for trans women to congregate online in the 2000s), Brianna said she grew up religious and bigoted, but claimed her worldview had shifted to tolerant liberalism after a violent assault left her badly injured.
After some failed attempts at making webcomics and developing video games, Wu raised her profile by crowbarring herself into GamerGate. Perhaps as a result of her experience interning for former Republican Senator Trent Lott, who had to resign from his office in 2003 because he loved the idea of restoring racial segregation so much, Wu entered into politics in 2018 by challenging incumbent Democrat Stephen Lynch for his position as representative for Massachussetts’ 8th Congressional District, and lost spectacularly.
In 2020 and 2023, Wu was appointed to leadership positions in two different Political Action Committees, despite having no demonstrable experience in the field and a short-lived history of political failure. By August of 2024, Wu had flipped entirely from centrist liberalism (back) to conservatism, advocating for Israel during its genocide of Palestine and repeatedly describing herself as a Zionist. She also advocated for pseudoscientific ideas like Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (describing being trans as a “social contagion”) and autogynephilia, while discouraging people from medically transitioning unless they “really, really, really, really have to.”
Her conservative grifting arc in full swing, Brianna Wu shared a stage with anti-trans activist Leor Sapir at Middlebury College in Vermont last year. There, Sapir explained his (dangerously incorrect) belief that trans suicide statistics were exaggerated or entirely fictionalized, which he also does for free on Twitter, while Wu smiled and nodded.
Last month, a bright young trans woman from that college, who was 21 years old and who had her whole life ahead of her, took her own life.
On Saturday, seeking absolution for her sins, Brianna Wu posted a lengthy pseudo-apology to her “trans sisters” on Twitter. It wasn’t a particularly good attempt at making amends, since she insisted that trans women don’t belong in women’s sports, described herself as a “biological man,” and said she believes “many of our most extreme ideas are bad.” Given the content of a tweet she made later that day, I assume the “extreme ideas” she dislikes are acceptance of nonbinary trans people, easy access to lifesaving healthcare, and hostility towards people who want us eradicated from the face of the earth.
Katelyn Burns (long a target of harassment from Wu) said, of this half-assed apology, simply, “Go fuck yourself.” I quoted Burns’ post and said it was on sight, should I see Wu in public, and she’s decided that’s a credible threat of violence that might just necessitate a police report.
Here and now, let me be clear: I’m not going to hurt you, Brianna. I have no desire to put my own freedom at jeopardy by kicking your ass. Furthermore, I do not know where you live, and I don’t leave the house much because the political climate in America has made it so that every trip beyond my front door fills me with dread and terror. Maybe you already knew that, seeing as you contributed to that climate quite a lot over the last few years.
I know that Brianna Wu’s “apology” was fake, and any desire she may express to return to our community is a lie. Just yesterday, she made a tweet suggesting that trans women who come out while dating or married to cis women are “wrecking their lives,” and railed against Zohran Mamdani as a liar and a “goddamned communist.” Don’t worry, though, she does think he’s sexy.
Brianna and I come from very different worlds. I was raised in poverty and have spent my entire life poor, and expect to die without ever advancing a tack bracket. Brianna grew up wealthy, was once loaned nearly a quarter of a million dollars by her parents to fail to make a video game, and literally has a collection of Porsches. Silver spoon doesn’t even begin to describe the insufferable level of privilege Wu has experienced her entire life.
That isn’t why I despise Brianna Wu, though. I hate her with every fiber of my being because she and her monstrous buddies in the conservative anti-trans grifting sphere have driven countless trans people to suicide, and have actively made the world a more hostile place for us so that they could enrich themselves.
No apology will ever do the trick, Brianna. You can’t make amends for the blood on your hands, and I hope that keeps you awake at night for the rest of your life.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
