My friend is a trans woman, 26, living in small town Georgia. She's been out for three years, got fired for it. She lives with her deeply religiou' family who are going out of their ways to be as mean to her as they possibly can. Lots of brothers and sisters; I'm getting a "quiverfull family in a huge compound" vibe, without knowing for sure.

A couple examples: They refuse to use her chosen pronouns, and insist on using her dead name at all times, insisting that she is a man in drag, not a woman. This Christmas, at the table, her grandmother gave all the females, except her, makeup boxes. The conversation was all about what a rambunctious boy "he" was, mingled with throwing the worst parts of the Bible at her. She tried to flee the group, and her cousin chased her down to drive the nail in further. They make family gatherings where everyone has to listen to hourlong sermons of the most hateful preachers they can find online, two on Tuesdays.

Her own father has told her time and time again that their faith "can't be compromised for [her] worldly desires." And yet, she's so deeply invested in making them accept her—and getting them to call her by her chosen name and use her correct pronouns—that she will not leave them. She has offers of people wanting to take her in, offers of people willing to give her gas money, Greyhound fare, whatever, hell, even drive the bleeping way from neighbouring states, yet still she will not accept help.

She's talking suicide and how she can never leave, can never get a job, can never have friends, can't get the help, hormones therapy and surgery or, hell, just the respect, care and affection she deserves and desperately needs. She knows about trans hotlines, talks to them regularly, she knows about organisations in Atlanta. She has trans online friends—the only friends it seems she really has are online. Yet all we seem to accomplish is make her anguish worse, not better, and solidify her decision to make it her life mission to try to convince people, who have proven every day for years that they are unworthy of her company, that she is worthy of theirs.

How can anyone get through to her? How can we best help her? She's 4500 miles from me; I cannot get to her directly.

Anonymous Liberal Lecturing Youth

Let me guess: You've never met this friend, have you? In person? Face-to-face?

And you've never managed to get her on the phone either, ALLY, right? And you've never had a video chat via Skype, have you? I'm guessing this "friendship"exists only on social media platforms, in private email exchanges, and in message rooms. Maybe you've seen a few of pictures. But they're blurry and you can't really tell if they're the same person, can you? And seeing as you’re aware of the exact mileage between the two of you, I'm guessing you met this woman on a dating app. (Those tend to tell you exactly how far you are from the person you wanna bang, even if you’re on the other side of the world.) I’m asking these particular questions and making these particular guesses, ALLY, because I think you’re being catfished.

Take it away, Urban Dictionary:

Catfish: Someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.

Why would someone pretend to be a trans twentysomething who clearly needs help, spend hours online convincing good people to offer help, and then refuse all help? For attention. For kicks. To pass the time. To scam people. Because they feel entitled to sympathy and attention and don't think their actual plight, whatever it might be, is interesting or sexy enough to attract much of either. Who the fuck knows?

But this much we do know, ALLY: If you’ve never met or spoken with this person—if it's all been texting and social media and one or two blurry photographs (and an anime avatar, right?)—this person may not be who she says she is.

Ask your friend to Skype or talk via Snapchat. (The latter is less invasive, but you’ll still be able to verify she’s a real person). If she can't or won't Skype or Snap with you, ALLY, there's your proof. If she does Skype/Snap with you, great. Doesn't mean she isn't catfishing you, of course, but at least then you can beg her—one last time—to accept the help and the resources already offered to her. If you know people who can help her in Atlanta, connect with them and create an escape plan. But the decision to accept or reject your help is ultimately hers, ALLY. If she decides to stay in Biblefuck, Georgia, surrounded by cruel makeup-case-withholding grannies and nail-driving cousins, well, then she's made her choice: She's in a terrible situation but doesn't want to be helped or she's lying and doesn't really need help. (People do lie about shit they shouldn't lie about.)

Honestly, ALLY, I hope your friend is fake—because otherwise someone is out there, suffering terribly, all because she's self-destructively invested in winning over an idiotic/barely-credible collection of Southern Gothic grotesques. But even if she's real, ALLY, you can't force someone to accept your help. If you can't help help her—for whatever reason—there are surely trans and gender-nonconforming people in your own community who could really use some help and might be willing to accept yours.

UPDATE: From the Dept. of FFS: My response to ALLY is being held up as evidence of my alleged—my routinely and falsely alleged—transphobia.

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Skepticism is not hatred. I am often skeptical—deeply skeptical—when responding to letters from straight and gay people. (Somehow my skepticism in those cases is never been held up as evidence of heterophobia or homophobia.) And, yes, I am aware that trans people are subjected to higher rates of violence—physical, economic, and familial—than other groups. It's appalling, it's unjust, and anyone who actually follows my column or listens to my podcast has heard me condemn anti-trans violence. (Here's a recent report on the hardships trans Americans face—a report that would've gotten more traction and play in the media if these idiots hadn't decided to shit the bed by lodging bullshit charges of transphobia against Kim Peirce.)

As for my specific advice to ALLY, I suggested that their friend—who sounded like an online-only friend—might be catfishing them. I wasn't the only person who thought that might be the case. People do lie. People have lied about being raped. People have lied about being gay bashed. To suggest that no one could possibly lie about having a shitty family—an appallingly shitty family that they refuse to detach from—is absurd. I also allowed for the possibility that ALLY wasn't being catfished and that their friend might, indeed, be in the dire situation described and I encouraged ALLY to offer help and to make a plan with others to get her help. ("If you know people who can help her in Atlanta, connect with them and create an escape plan. But the decision to accept or reject your help is ultimately hers, ALLY.") And I concluded by encouraging ALLY to look around for trans and gender-nonconforming people in their own community who might need help and be willing to accept it. Because that's how we transphobes roll.

Full disclosure: I heard back from ALLY, who informed me that they believe they're not being catfished and shared some proof. ALLY also took me to task for my response. But ALLY slapped me around for a perfectly valid reason: they didn't think my response was helpful. And because I'm always willing to take my legit lumps—that's how we Catholic boys roll—here's ALLY's letter:

Would it have killed you to ask for further info? No, she doesn't have an anime cutesy picture. No, her profile wasn't created within the last two months. Yes, she seems to have a reasonable number of friends, contacts and posts about other things than gender dysphoria. I was kinda hoping I'd be able to link her to an answer you'd give to push her over that "If you won't help yourself, no one else can" hump, but your answer is so asinine that I don't have the heart to do that. All in all, 3/10, not sure if I would write again. But thank you for trying.

I wrote back to ALLY...

Sorry about whiffing this one. it just seemed like cat fishing could be a possibility. But, yes, I should’ve written back to you. (Writing LWers back isn't always possible, though.) But, again, someone who refuses help can’t be helped. So the rest of my advice—admittedly only about 20% of it—stands. If she won’t accept help, if she won’t get out, there’s not much you can do from 4500 miles away. The only thing I would add, if i were talking to her directly, is the same thing I’ve said to other trans people (and gay people and lesbian people and bi people and poly people and kinky people) with deeply shitty families: the only leverage you have over your family of origin is your presence. if they won’t treat you with respect, don’t be a presence in their lives. In other words: get the hell away from them and stay the hell away from them.

And ALLY wrote back to me...

You are right, of course. None of us can really help her if she will not help herself. Which is half the reason why I wrote to you in the first place—to send her the link to your, "Hey! Take the bleeping outstretched hand already, you silly girl!" response. Only you would have chosen more elaborate words, I'm sure.

UPDATE 2: Someone in the comments suggested I wouldn't question a gay boy with a similar tale/shitty family. Yeah, no: Friends of a gay boy being abused by his family wrote me in 2015 and asked for my help. I asked them for proof that what they said was true, I got them on the phone and interviewed them, I asked them to send me documentation, transcripts, and letters of admission from the university the boy got into and his shitty, homophobic family was trying to prevent him from attending. I did all that to make sure it wasn't a scam—to make sure he wasn't catfishing. So, yeah, I would treat a gay boy with the same skepticism. In fact, I did.