Victimhood and Identity
Lilly Tino, transness, and the myth of the “model minority”
This essay contains content related to anti-trans rhetoric, misgendering, deadnaming, and sexual violence. Please take care of yourself.
We are letting virtue signaling get in the way of actual progress.
The Democratic Party is the leading force of non-confrontational, passive-aggressive, over-promising and under-delivering, virtue signaling bureaucracy. "Unhoused," "person with a disability," "folx” – this language is wokeness without the woke1. You can invent as many new words as you want, but will you actually provide this "unhoused" person with housing? Will you advocate for more accessible buildings and infrastructure? Do you care enough about this person's personhood – not just the part of their life that you can politicize – to treat them as you would any other human being?
Virtue signaling does nothing for the oppressed. It makes bystanders feel better about themselves.
There are good lines, obviously, that we draw. Slurs, outdated language, insults. We don't say these things for a reason. We say "little people" because that is what most little people prefer. We say "transgender" because "transexual" is, for many but not all, outdated. (And "transgenderism" is an invention of Christian nationalism.) We (read: white people) don't say the N-word.
We don't need the lines that don't matter. They alienate people and take up more time than they're worth.
Policing language isn't where this ends; policing behavior is much worse. I've seen an influx of posts on X, Threads, Reddit, etc. of cis/het people scared to wear a pride flag because "What if I offend someone?" There are people out there that believe that a straight (or assumed straight) actor playing a queer character on TV is "queer-baiting." Some people think that if you dislike Taylor Swift you hate women.
We assume the absolute worst of people, especially online. “Mean world syndrome” was a term coined by Dr. George Gerbner in the 1970s. He described a cognitive bias where people, through exposure to both fictional and real violent content, begin to develop increased anxiety, fear, and pessimism.
We need to give more people the benefit of the doubt. We need more media literacy. We need reading comprehension.
The recent Lilly Tino situation2 on TikTok is a result of this. Virtue signaling allows self-identified “allies” to feel better about themselves, but their allyship is entirely conditional. As soon as being an advocate becomes inconvenient, they run for the hills.
Lilly Tino is a transgender woman who creates content on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms. Recently, she has come under fire for her behavior online, and most recently, her bathroom selfies at Disney World. In a TikTok she posted on 10 June, she says this:
“Let me remind you that literally every celebrity you’ve ever enjoyed on screen has, at one point, taken a bathroom selfie… And it’s not just celebrities; any woman you ever meet has likely taken a photo in a public bathroom. Why, you ask? Because we look cute and we want to document it… People judge trans women differently depending on how well they pass… I know that I don’t pass, but passing privilege is a real thing… [Non-passing trans women] should be able to take bathroom selfies, too.”
She includes photos of bathroom selfies that celebrities like Billie Eilish have posted to support her point. However, the examples she provides are different from the photos she took; there are no other women in the background.
For many years now, the ethics of filming or photographing strangers has been a hot topic. Street interviews and video edits of people going about their daily lives are as popular as ever. Kurtis Conner and other creators argue that it is unethical to film strangers without their consent:
“A pretty sizable percentage of content creators will do pretty much anything for likes and attention… The one thing I’ve noticed that people will do, on TikTok especially, they’ll just film strangers for their own video without the stranger’s consent… This trend of filming people without their consent has grown in frequency and severity over the past few years.”
Conner discusses a video of a man in Time Square trying to get strangers to high-five him. The man taps a woman he does not know on the shoulder, and another person who he approaches can be seen crying when he finally leaves them and one of their friends alone. Conner says, “We don’t know what people are going through or how they’re going to react.”
Toward the end of the video, Conner discusses the 2023 “main character trend” on TikTok, saying:
“‘I turned them into main characters’... You just filmed people and then posted them. That’s it… Filming adults without their consent is crazy, but this person was filming children as well… If filming strangers isn’t going to stop, which it won’t, but if it’s something that’s unavoidable, I think we can all agree that people should stop filming children. Especially children who aren’t yours.”
It’s hard to tell if any of the strangers Lily Tino photographed were children, but it doesn’t matter; she did not ask these people for consent to be photographed and then posted for her 411,400 and 139,000 TikTok and Instagram followers, respectively.
The outrage over this situation is warranted. I agree that Lily Tino should no longer have a platform if she is going to behave like this. There is currently a petition to ban her from both Disney World and TikTok with over 20,000 signatures.
However, the controversy has sparked a quickly-growing trend of transmedicalist and transmisogynist videos and comments on various platforms. In a TikTok posted on 9 June, creator @ryleebreadmukbangs says that she doesn’t believe Tino is actually trans.
“I don’t just mean, ‘oh, they’re acting kinda weird,’ I mean, straight up, if you look at any of the stuff to do with them medically transitioning, it doesn’t make sense… I’m trans, and I have bigger boobs than them at nine months of hormones than they do at three or four years. What’s up with that?”
The creator, who is trans herself, argues that because Tino seems not to want bottom surgery, she must not be transitioning. A commenter adds:
“HIS name is NICHOLAS CONTINO and HE is Cosplaying, NOT transitioning. He's 100% rage bait at this point. Lily Tino is just a character he plays. I'm SO glad one of the women he caught on camera in a Disney bathroom is looking for a lawyer to sue!! Plus both Disney AND Florida have rules and laws against recording people in bathrooms (reasonable expectation of privacy in those spaces, they don't count as "public" per say in a court of law)”
Gender affirming hormone therapy affects every person differently. Common results that can be expected from estrogen include breast development, a decrease in libido and changes in sexual function, slower scalp hair loss, softer skin, less muscle mass, more body fat, and less facial and body hair growth. Many of these changes can be very affirming for transgender people that choose to start hormone therapy and often decrease psychological distress and gender dysphoria.
Dosage and genetics play a strong role. Trans women and nonbinary people on estrogen therapy can often expect their results to reflect those of cisgender women they are related to. For this reason, some trans women who do not experience significant breast development may choose to undergo breast augmentation as well.
The medical aspects of Lily Tino’s transition are personal, and therefore it is her decision whether or not to share them.
So does a trans person’s actions warrant such extreme questioning of their identity?
No, they do not.
The myth of the “model minority” has been used in America for at least a hundred years. It has been used to distinguish “good” people of color from “bad” ones. The repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the wake of WWII painted Chinese-Americans as “good,” whereas Japanese-Americans were “bad” and eventually sent to internment camps.
During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, this myth was perpetuated by right-wing commentators and politicians. Surely, if George Floyd was a “good Black person,” he wouldn’t have been killed?
This kind of rhetoric is dangerous. If George Floyd was white, his brutal murder by Derek Chauvin would not have created such controversy. It would have been immediately recognized for what it was: extreme and unnecessary violence.
If Lily Tino was a cisgender woman, she would not be misgendered for doing what she did. Cisgender women who promote “Biblical femininity” and patriarchal gender roles, while widely regarded by feminists as bad people, do not have their womanhood questioned. Cisgender women who commit sexual assault or harassment do not have their womanhood questioned.
Could Lily Tino be a predator? Maybe. She has never been charged or convicted for an act of sexual violence or exploitation3, but in addition to her bathroom selfies, she posted a TikTok detailing how she used the bathroom at Disney:
“I peed standing up, which is something I’m sometimes a little self conscious about with the sound. Like, ‘oh, is there someone peeing standing up there?’ But you know what, I peed standing up and it was fine. I washed my hands and I left.”
A trans TikTok creator @lexibunni.official posted a video critiquing this post, saying, “Why are you making a video explaining in detail about how you handle your business in the bathroom [and] how you did it? It just seems so bizarre.”
Another clip of Lilly Tino has resurfaced recently, as well. In it, she is talking to someone who is allegedly a minor about their sexual preferences and activity. She uses words like “banana,” “eggplant,” and “watermelons,” which in the context of the video are likely referring to genitalia or breasts.
“Oh no, Shelbert’s mom is listening. Now I am talking entirely about groceries… But you like, you know, bananas, mangos, grapes, vitamin C. Jesse likes watermelons, two of them? Of course. Now if you had to rank the watermelons on a scale from A to B to C to D, you know, or even double D…”
In a TikTok posted on 18 June, Tino addresses many of the claims made about her online. She disputes that claims that she has a child, was married and stalked her ex-wife, was arrested on counts of harassment and stalking, and was fired from a previous job due to sexual harassment. She says that these claims are false and they have no evidence behind them.
Tino also shares more about the livestream clip above, saying:
“This is a bad one, y’all. There is a video that goes around of me from about a year and a half ago when I was streaming and talking to people in my Discord. During that stream, we were making dirty jokes vegetables. The person I was talking to in the clip was named Shelby. Shelby was playing along, and at one point Shelby said that her mom was listening. And I pretended to be embarrassed, and I brought the mom into the joke, and it was really funny.
“To be clear, Shelby is a 25-year-old woman, or was at the time of the video. She had a full time job at a major American airline. She had a partner that she lived with and her mom lived with her and her partner. Shelby was a grown adult.”
She says that people are spreading these rumors for likes and attention, which “isn’t fair to you, the viewer, or to me.”
At the end of the video, Tino addresses the rumor that she is faking her transition:
“There are some trans people out there that call me ‘he’ and call me by my old name, and they say that I’m hurting the cause. Like really? Really? If you don’t believe that I [did] get FFS, look at the video I posted a few months ago. It’s undeniable.”
The context that Tino adds with this latest TikTok helps clarify some aspects of the controversy, but not all of them. Why did she decide to take photos in a Disney bathroom with other people clearly visible in the background? Why did she post a TikTok detailing how she uses the bathroom? Why did she post a TikTok explaining how vaginoplasty works while eating a corndog at Disney?
Why does she seem to claim and act as though her account is family friendly, while promoting her OnlyFans4?
Could these clips and Tino’s bathroom selfies be classified as predation? Maybe.
Can women, both cisgender and trans, be predators? Absolutely.
The myth that all trans women are men pretending to be women to invade women’s spaces and commit acts of sexual violence is a popular one in the anti-trans movement. It has sparked a slew of anti-trans bathroom laws across the country limiting the bathroom an individual can use to their sex assigned at birth. Not only does this put trans people at risk of violence, it sets a dangerous precedent for the ability of transgender people to exist in public at all.
Are all trans women predators? No. But are some trans women, like Lilly Tino, predators? Yes.
Predators will be predators regardless of how they identify. Almost ninety-nine percent of sexual assaults are perpetrated by men, with an estimated 463,634 victims over the age of 12 affected every year. But that still leaves just over 450 instances, on average, that are perpetrated by women. Women, by nature of their womanhood, are not inherently or only victims. Being a trans woman, or any woman, and a predator are not mutually exclusive.
Like it or not, Lilly Tino is a trans woman. Invalidating the identity of a transgender person because they commit a crime is not allyship – in fact, it is the exact opposite. It promotes the myth of the model minority and, just like virtue signaling, gets in the way of progress. If only “good people” can be trans, nobody can be trans. Where is the line between “good” and “bad?”
To racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic people, any minority is a bad one.
This article was updated on 23 June, 2025 to include one of Lily Tino’s latest TikToks disputing some of the claims made about her on TikTok and other social media platforms.
Some people do prefer these words to refer to themselves or their community. I do not like them personally because of my own experiences and the experiences of people in my life.
This is an ongoing situation. I will update this article at my own discretion and may publish a separate article if there are any major developments.
I have found various comments claiming previous allegations of workplace harassment, sexual harassment, and coercion. In none of these instances was legal action taken against Lilly Tino. I am still in the process of verifying whether or not these allegations were ever made. So far, I have only found this clip from OnlyFans creator Collie Bean alleging coercion.
Lily Tino does not include her OnlyFans link in her TikTok bio, but does on her Instagram.