The Monster You Made: How Transphobia Fuels Violence

It’s been over a year since the arrest of 18-year-old Andrea “Alex” Ye in Montgomery County, Maryland, but I only recently came across this disturbing story, and it’s one worth revisiting, especially for what it reveals about how online subcultures, identity, and cruelty can intersect in the worst possible ways.

In April 2024, Ye was arrested after the FBI discovered a 129-page manifesto outlining plans to carry out a mass shooting at Wootton High School, the school Ye had once attended, and nearby Lakewood Elementary. Investigators say the document, which Ye initially described as a “fictional story,” detailed strategies for carrying out a school shooting and expressed a desire for infamy. Searches of Ye’s home uncovered violent drawings and online chats glorifying mass shooters.

Prosecutors took the threats seriously, and Ye was charged with making threats of mass violence, a felony carrying up to ten years in prison. In May 2025, Ye was sentenced to ten years with all but twelve months suspended. The judge ordered strict conditions, including psychiatric treatment, probation, and a ban from returning to the targeted schools or using Discord, where Ye had communicated with others who shared an interest in school shootings.

Ye, who is transgender, reportedly struggled with mental health issues and had been hospitalized in 2022 after threatening to “shoot up” the school. Officials said Ye had a long history of violent statements about fame and revenge, but there’s another piece of this story that can’t be ignored, one that transphobes will twist to fit their narrative.

Let’s be clear, people will use this case as “proof” that trans people are inherently unstable or violent. They’ll hold Ye up as an example to justify their fear and hatred. But what they’re deliberately ignoring is that Ye’s trans identity didn’t cause this crime. What seems far more likely is that Ye was targeted and bullied for being trans, isolated from peers, and eventually found acceptance in one of the darkest corners of the internet: the so-called ‘true crime community,’ or worse, the Columbiner subculture.

It’s something I’ve noticed for years. A disproportionate number of LGBTQ+ teens gravitate toward these spaces. These kids often feel rejected, mocked, and unsafe in the real world, so they turn to online communities that promise understanding.

Unfortunately, those communities sometimes glorify the very violence that destroyed lives at Columbine and beyond. The myth that the Columbine shooters were bullied has become a recruitment tool, and the irony is cruel. Kids who actually are bullied are being drawn into a community built around a lie, and that lie is now becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So congratulations, transphobes. In your crusade to ostracize and demonize trans kids, you’re helping create the very outcomes you claim to fear. You’re driving them into isolation, into subcultures that normalize violence, into believing that revenge is the only way to be seen.

I’m not excusing Alex Ye’s actions or intentions. But if we keep ignoring the role that bullying, exclusion, and dehumanization play in these stories, especially for LGBTQ+ youth, then we’ll keep seeing more tragedies like this one. The real danger isn’t being trans. The real danger is what happens when a society decides that some people don’t deserve compassion until after they’ve done something unforgivable.

(Sources)