TRANSGENDER PEOPLE are typically associated with left-wing politics, but a vocal few have become breakout celebrities among the political right. Buck Angel, one of these new faces of right-wing gender discourse, has acquired increasing attention for his incendiary advocacy against other trans people. Angel gained fame as a pornography star and left-wing activist. He is perhaps the last person one would expect to align himself with white supremacists and Trump-supporting Republicans. His vocal calls to ban transgender youth healthcare, criminalize trans women for using women’s rooms, deport undocumented migrants, jail student protesters, and end diversity initiatives may be shocking in the context of his trans identity. Nevertheless, Angel’s narrative charts an increasingly common path into far-right circles.
I interviewed more than 110 transgender people with far-right views for my forthcoming book, Belonging Through Exclusion: Understanding the Transgender Far Right, which examines the motivations behind their beliefs and what actions could prevent others from joining them. I attempted to avoid writing about celebrities, but Angel stood out. While I worked on the book, Angel released a fifteen-minute-long video claiming I was a pedophilic child groomer and calling for my arrest because I had suggested that people with access to hormone therapy share their medications with those in states where trans healthcare is banned. “We got to start really pushing back on these people,” he told his audience. “They are not healthy for our community. They are not healthy for our youth.”
Like Andrew Sullivan, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alice Weidel before him, Angel represents a growing class of LGBT people who build communities around their right-wing politics. Paradoxically, they support politicians, policies, and ideologies that aim to nullify their basic rights. However, they are not unprecedented. Early 20th-century figures like National Fascisti secretary and trans man Victor Barker, novelist and fascist sympathizer Radclyffe Hall, and Nazi spy Violette Morris were acting against LGBT interests long before Angel was born. More recently, Caitlyn Jenner, Peter Thiel, and George Santos have become some of the best-known Republicans in the U.S. These figures demonstrate that identity doesn’t always correspond to ideology. And they are only a few celebrities among countless lesser-known figures.
There is limited information on the demographics of transgender members of right-wing groups, but there are a few notable trends. The more than 110 subjects I interviewed for Belonging Through Exclusion were overwhelmingly white and older than the average trans population. A majority were trans women, and only two were nonbinary. They were less religious than the general population and more evenly distributed throughout the U.S. than expected. As for the general political beliefs of the lgbtq+ community, there is similarly insufficient data. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality found that only two percent of trans people were Republicans. By 2022, a large Washington Post / Kaiser Family Foundation poll found the number had risen to ten percent, suggesting that Angel is part of an ongoing trend.
How did the trans community get here? An atmosphere of dissatisfaction looms over the transgender public as liberal politicians continuously fail to improve their situations. Many trans people feel abandoned by and alienated from mainstream liberal politics. Both U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer of the center-left Labour Party and U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris avoided the word “transgender” on the campaign trail despite ongoing conservative anti-trans rhetoric and legislative attacks.
Instead of turning to the left, as most trans people do, those like Angel viewed right-wing groups as the only alternative. They are part of what political theorists Daniel HoSang and Joseph E. Lowndes call the “multicultural far-right,” a growing cohort of minoritized people selectively incorporated into a nationalist framework. Right-wing leaders are aware of the West’s demographic changes and know they must adapt to survive. Part of their plan is deporting “undesirables” and making Western nations less hospitable. Another is building a more diverse coalition that incorporates disaffected members of marginalized groups traditionally associated with liberalism.
Angel doesn’t represent all right-wing trans people, but his ideological transformation is in line with common tendencies in transgender far-right politicization. We may better understand the basic trajectory of the transgender right by following Angel’s self-reported experiences of exclusion, identification, and belonging,
Exclusion
Angel’s political journey took decades. Typically, the first step on this path is a feeling of social exclusion, such as shunning or shaming from those on the left. Most right-wing trans people were not born into a far-right milieu but were deeply influenced by the harsh policing they experienced in left-wing spaces. As Angel puts it: “People go where their voice is being heard.” As countless restorative justice and abolitionist thinkers have argued, ostracizing dissenters from political communities simply pushes them into new spaces where they can continue their harmful behaviors.
Angel’s contentious relationship with the trans community, particularly trans women, goes back many years. He infamously outed Matrix director Lana Wachowski as transgender in a 2006 Rolling Stone interview after his girlfriend left him for her. In 2013, Angel launched a surgery fundraising website that The Advocate described as a “pyramid scheme.” The most prominent critics of the website, including author Emi Koyama and journalist Parker Molloy, were trans women. He went on to several other industries, including cannabis and sex oils. His reputation never recovered.
In the late 2010s, like many members of the transgender right, Angel began to justify his gender identity using biology. He believes gender dysphoria—distress over the disparity between one’s internal sense of gender and sex—is a rare disease that legitimizes his identity, while other trans people who don’t experience dysphoria or require medical interventions are not truly transgender. This is called “transmedicalism” and is generally received negatively within the trans community. The belief in transmedicalism typically excludes nonbinary people and trans youth, who are not deemed worthy or deserving of healthcare or self-identification.
Angel’s tone drastically changed after influential trans woman, video essayist, and cultural critic Natalie Wynn (known by her online handle Contrapoints) briefly featured him as a voice actor in a 2019 video on the philosophy of Western æsthetics. Angel’s association with transmedicalism led to immediate, overwhelming public shaming, shunning, and disavowal. The video marked one of Angel’s last collaborations with a left-wing creator. Wynn did not defend Angel and instead denounced his beliefs. “Some people have taken my association with [Angel] as evidence that I am secretly a transmedicalist. … I want to let you all know, first of all, that I am not a transmedicalist, I have never been a transmedicalist, and I will never be a transmedicalist,” said Wynn, mocking the confessional McCarthyite tactics used within the trans community to root out perceived traitors.
Angel felt the community unfairly rejected his opinions during the controversy. “Some people within the nonbinary communities react in anger to anything they feel is a threat,” he complained to Newsweek. “They do not have dialogue; they use scare tactics; they create a mob mentality. In some ways very fascist in thought. They do not like it if you have a different opinion and will try to shut the conversation down.” These feelings of exclusion only intensified as he lashed out against the trans women who refused to defend him.
Misogyny can be a powerful tool of mobilization. Angel’s conflict with trans women appears to be a central motivation for his right-wing beliefs. Some right-wing ideologues fixate on Jews, some on migrants, others on trans women (among countless other categories). There must be an out-group for the in-group to exist. Most public attacks against trans people are specifically aimed at trans women, who are easy and “fashionable” targets. Trans activist-author Julia Serano named this phenomenon “transmisogyny.” In interviews, right-wing trans men and women alike reiterated these ideas, often repeating the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of trans women controls the transgender movement. Angel adopted transmisogynist rhetoric to comprehend, justify, and mediate his exclusion from trans spaces.
Angel began expressing related concerns about the increasing number of trans people in the early 2020s. This crescendoed when he collaborated with the trans-man-led anti-transgender group Gender Dysphoria Alliance Canada on its notorious “Trans Men Fight Back” statement in 2021. The conspiracy-laden declaration claimed a group of queer trans women are coercing people into trans identity for sexual pleasure and pharmaceutical company profits. “Children are being taught a false narrative in the media and in public schools, which is confusing them … in order to protect the egos, fantasies and capitalist desires of [trans women],” they wrote. Their account of trans politics, predictably, was not well received, and the five white, right-wing trans men quickly took down the statement.
In a period of a few years, Angel went from being an influential progressive to one of the world’s most vocal right-wing transgender celebrities. His rhetoric supports the political right’s “divide-and-conquer” strategy through the application of respectability politics, misogyny, and exclusion. In return, he has received funding, gained social influence, and even become an “Outspoken Ambassador” for the Log Cabin Republicans. These key events provide ample grounding to understand why he began to align himself with right-wing ideals, but this was only the first part of his political transformation.
Identification
Angel did not collaborate with right-wing groups until after the Natalie Wynn video controversy, which led to the most significant turn in his public persona. He soon began working with conservative media figures such as Andrew Sullivan, though not identifying himself with the right explicitly. At the same time, his self-descriptions changed to match his newfound community. Generally speaking, identification is not only a political process for most trans people on the right, but also a transformation in how one describes and actualizes their gender identity.
Angel’s views are wide-ranging and not always aligned with the right, often placing him in a more liberal position than the company he keeps. His positions form a scatterplot of ideologies, ranging from endorsing mass deportations to advocating cannabis legalization. Over time, Angel has identified as a Democrat, liberal, libertarian, Trump supporter, and Republican, but none of these labels neatly describes his ideology.
Most far-right transgender people I interviewed did not identify with the far-right itself, no matter how fascistic their viewpoints. A few (correctly) identified as neo-Nazis, alt-right, or white nationalists. But the majority, including those with overtly white supremacist views, believed they were moderate. Angel went even further: “I’m just an actual old-school liberal at heart,” he explained in 2022. Interestingly, he often repeats the mantra “the right has become the center,” which embodies his political self-perception. After feeling excluded from the left, members of the multicultural far right often justify their beliefs by claiming that the right is the new moderate.
Trans identification with right-wing politics often comes with a shift in describing one’s own gender identity. Angel, like many other far-right trans people, identifies as transsexual, not transgender. Thus he differentiates himself from leftists and “fake” (his word) trans people, by which he means those who identify as trans for political purposes or do not have gender dysphoria or a desire to transition medically. “Now we have trans with no gender dysphoria, no need for mental health care, self ID, affirmation therapy. … That says to me on some level, some form of indoctrination,” he explained to Fox News in 2022. Angel’s amorphous self-descriptors helped to rationalize his transition to the right-wing commentators on Fox. His self-descriptions meant he could align himself with the group most likely to harm him, protecting himself at the expense of others.
Angel’s identities mapped directly onto his descent into right-wing politics. In 2010, he identified simply as a man. “For me, I am a man and that’s what I’m trying to say to the world—my genitals do not define me,” he told The Guardian. Until the late 2010s, he typically identified as a trans man, titling his best-known “docu-porn” series Sexing the Transman XXX (released from 2010 to 2015). He then shifted his rhetoric, telling Andrew Sullivan in 2021: “We are not men. We are trans men. We are not women. We are trans women.” By 2023, he had redefined himself again: “I am not a man, I am a transsexual man. … My biology never changed.” This appeared to package his narrative in accordance with the recent right-wing slogan “human beings can’t change sex.” In 2024, his self-description mutated into “a biological female who was diagnosed with dysphoria.” His self-identification neatly aligns with the unraveling of transgender rights in the U.S.
Angel’s transformation in identity may seem odd, but gender identity, like politics, is never fixed. Trans people are just as capable of falling into right-wing ideas of gender as anyone else, and Angel’s approach to creating a new community was successful. He found a new space of belonging on the right.
Belonging
Today, Angel continues his crusade against transgender healthcare, protections, and well-being. His provocative content has led to international press, new business ventures, and paid speaking engagements. Angel reports that his alliances with far-right celebrities have cemented his feelings of belonging, even as his new comrades want to end his healthcare, gender recognition, and representation in the media.
Angel expressed cautious delight upon Trump’s 2024 election. “You all deserve this shit coming down on you!” he told left-wing activists while celebrating the win. After Inauguration Day, he commended the various anti-trans executive orders as “sanity” and “common sense.” His videos circulated among right-wing pundits to justify their disdain for trans people. Angel is a useful figurehead for the political right’s gender debates. His identity shields the right from criticism. Angel becomes their “trans friend” (also see: “gay friend” and “Black friend”). This status provides his collaborators with cover from accusations of anti-trans prejudice.
Angel’s brand now centers on banning transgender care for young people and trans women. He follows the right-wing “big pharma” conspiracy theory alleging that doctors are forcing children to become trans against their will. This seems in stark contrast to his belief that trans identity is solely a medical problem. However, he does not seem aware of the contradiction. “The only thing I care about is the kids! The adults can cut their arms and legs off and be beach balls; I don’t really care,” he explained in an interview. He considers minors transitioning “an abuse of something that saved my life.” It should go without saying that these conspiracy theories are just that. Detransition is extremely rare, and there is no evidence that “big pharma” is pushing gender-affirming medicine on trans people.
This leads to the fundamental question: Is it all a grift? Are members of the transgender right only espousing these beliefs to gain money and influence? Are they merely provocateurs? Of course, we cannot know their deepest motivations, but the effect is the same either way.
In Belonging Through Exclusion, I explore dozens of activist, psychological, and scholarly approaches to shifting beliefs from the far right to the left, which I call “transpoliticization.” This method is based on a holistic set of strategies that examine why people join the far right and how this information can be used to change their beliefs. Against conventional advice that far-right politics should be met with moderate solutions, activists like Verónica Gago and Kai Cheng Thom offer thoughtful methods for working directly with the political right toward common leftist causes. They demonstrate that there are ways to prevent right-wing ideologies from emerging in our communities by bringing them in rather than pushing them out.
Angel’s political transformation is exemplary, not exceptional. Almost every trans person I interviewed had feelings of isolation, rejection, and dehumanization. One neo-Nazi recalled: “What does a white nationalist who happens to be a post-operative trans woman and lives deep stealth, really look like? It’s definitely not a monster under the bed, that’s for sure.” Her words haunt me. Like Angel, she grew up with left-wing politics. Her everyday racism resulted in her exclusion from the queer and trans community, which led her to the neo-Nazi movement. Leftists dehumanized her as a “monster” until she felt she had nowhere to turn but the far right. Once there, her peers intensified her beliefs until she became an outspoken white supremacist. It’s not necessary, or appropriate, to allow people with such beliefs to go unchallenged, but the tendency to exclude these figures can foster a right-wing culture of self-victimizing beliefs.
Perhaps it is impossible to transpoliticize individuals like Buck Angel. However, knowing how to work with such people may prevent the next far-right transgender celebrity from attacking our movement, our well-being, and our humanity.
Eli Erlick is the author of Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 (Beacon Press, 2025) and the forthcoming Belonging Through Exclusion: Understanding the Transgender Far Right (Chicago).
