The tweet was simple but surprising. It said, "I just saw @thejeffreymarsh on Fox News. The context [of the Fox News segment] was supposed to be 'liberals are so weird!' but it was honestly refreshing to see such a friendly face. . . ."
I was on my way home from the grocery store, and I had my reusable tote in my left hand, phone in my right, walking down the sidewalk and scrolling through Twitter. It was a sunny California day, and I felt free and easy. Then I saw the tweet, and I thought, Oh no, my poor inbox.
One of my TikToks had been featured on Fox News a few months before. I got hate emails then. My video had played at around four o'clock Eastern time, and I don't know if that show was popular, so the hate messages had come and gone without a deluge. People who had seen Fox News reacted to the video, but it was nothing compared to what I assumed was about to happen.
From the tweet's timing, I knew that I had been in the A block on Tucker Carlson Tonight. On cable news, each show has four or five blocks. Block refers to the segments between commercials. The A block is first, D or E is last. And in general, they go in order of importance. If it bleeds, it leads, as they say. So, you put your most important, "sticky" material first. Producers of cable news put the most engaging material in the A block. That was me, I guess.
A Fox News producer had decided that one of my TikToks was exciting. As a result, my TikTok played on Fox News during one of the most-watched moments of the week. Tucker Carlson's show, A block. At the very least, it was a viral time to be on TV, or should I call it "hate TV"? My inbox reflected the prime-time placement. Here's an example of an angry email I got; it's a direct quote: "STOP TARGETING YOUR F*CKING VIDEOS TOO KIDS LET KIDS BE KIDS YOU F*CKING F*GGOT."
Death threats filled my inbox over the next few days, and people on TikTok stitched my TikTok with their hate. A stitch occurs when a TikTok user takes an original TikTok and puts their video next to it-they can watch the original video and comment simultaneously. They then post their commentary on my video to their account. For example, a woman had made a video that got over 300,000 likes where she was watching my TikTok, sitting still, and simply loading a gun.
She was watching my TikTok, sitting still, and simply loading a gun.
And like the TikTokers, Fox News viewers had reactions to my work! A reporter from Rolling Stone reached out to me and asked if she could interview me. I had posted some of the hate I was getting. And I had written about how that hate ballooned out of control. The reporter thought this was an essential milestone in the historic ways society demonizes LGBTQ people. And she also wanted to write about the general way that far-right extremists demonize people on the left.
My original TikTok was for kids. Here's a direct transcript:
"Hey, kids! It's possible to be like me and be happy. In fact, it's great to be like me and be happy. It's okay to like dresses, to like sparkly things. It's okay to be a little different than what people want you to be-than what people expect you to be. And (I'm old) and I grew up without any examples of people like me. And so I really, really wanted to tell you it's possible to be like me and then grow up and be happy. It's possible to be like me and grow up and be surrounded by wonderful friends, to be really, really fulfilled in your life, to have a good, long, happy life, and to . . . yeah, be joyful."
To me, telling kids that they should be themselves and that they have the right to be happy doesn't seem like a controversial message. But Fox News, now for the second time, thought my statement was controversial enough to feature my TikTok on air. So, my delightful and sexy and kind husband, Jeff, and I had to have a deep discussion. I remember going to him, a little afraid of what he might say, and he ended up telling me something that would change my life forever. It was one of the most profound things anyone had ever said to me. The conversation was about death-specifically, mine. If my inbox was filling with death threats, if my work was causing Fox News to demonize my life, soul, creativity, and nonbinary people in general, was it worth it? To the extent that I was in danger, I wanted his opinion about what we should do next. He surprised me a little bit by saying, "Make another video . . . Make more videos." As I'm typing this out on my computer, my eyes are starting to get a little teary because of his love for me.
Jeff continued, "Your mission is too important. Your path in life is too valid to change. I want to keep you safe, and I love you very much. I want to support you through the stress that these death threats cause so that you can deliver your strong, beautiful message to even more people." It broke my heart and filled my heart at the same time. I could barely take in how he could reflect unconditional love to me in such a dark situation. I'm not afraid to admit that I was deeply unsure of what I should do at that moment. There have been many times throughout my whole career when I've been on the brink of deciding to pivot.
That day, Jeff's love kept me on track. But those beautiful words weren't the most important, profound thing he said to me that day. And that wasn't the part of our conversation that lives in my heart today. That wasn't the part that reverberates in my mind with crystal-clear memory. I had started our chat because I was under so much stress. I began to talk about how I might change my videos to make myself safer. How could I shift things? How could I word things differently? Should I change what I wear? Make myself less "LGBTQ looking"? What could I do about myself and my presentation or the words in my captions to make it less likely that extremists and hateful people would attack me?
You may have seen it coming. Jeff looked at me, his eyes crinkling with a smile. He said, "Don't you think . . ." (I love whenever he says "Don't you think" to me.) "Don't you think that they will use your words against you, take your words out of context, and use your words for their agenda no matter what you say?" Of course, he was right. And it's a crucial question. So, here I was at another crossroads, getting a life lesson in what it means to cling to what other people think of you. I was getting the "spiritual studies class" about trying to control the narrative of what other people think of me. It was prime time! On national television! People talked about how I am some monster-about how I am a danger to children. The Mister Rogers image I was going for shattered dramatically.
If you were traumatized as a child, one of the hardest things you can experience is to lose your narrative of yourself. We were highly incentivized as kids to present the "best" image of ourselves. That's how we stayed safe and in Mom and Dad's good graces. It felt like life and death to be seen by them as a good kid. Us traumatized kids often want to please everyone; we want to control how we are seen in specific ways. If we lose that carefully crafted narrative, we feel unsafe and that we've profoundly failed. I lost my own story on a national scale that day. Fox News was trying to accuse me of being a danger to children because I had a video that started with, "Hey, kids!" This kind of accusation has floated around LGBTQ people for decades, so it's not new. And I can remember being a kid and needing to fight that kind of stereotype. But I think a reporter from Rolling Stone wanted to interview me about this exact situation because accusations like that have become more intense over the past few years. Nowadays, people are accusing not just LGBTQ people of predatory behavior. If there was a way for me to learn that I shouldn't care what other people think about me, I can't imagine a more powerful lesson than being defamed like that on national TV.
Of course, Fox News's suggestions and insinuations about me are wrong. I know deep in my heart why I made these videos and what I was hoping to do. However, their segment was almost the opposite of the truth. During this incident, I felt like I was a kid again, seeing my parents accusing me of "making them late on purpose" or causing them harm or "doing something just to hurt them." The whole thing was a magnetic snap back to being six years old and not knowing why adults would accuse me of bad intentions. But this was on an enormous scale. Toxic parents will treat their children like adults with sinister motivations. And this Fox incident felt just like how my home felt growing up.
By the way, I decided to make videos for kids for a very selfish reason. I wanted to heal my six-year-old self and my sixteen-year-old self. I wanted to reach young people with the message I never heard: It's okay to be exactly how you are. Making those videos was my way of reaching back through time to hold my hand and say, "Jeffrey, I love you. It's okay. All of who you are is beautiful." And so when people started accusing me-hundreds of thousands of people-of being dangerous, it was quite a shock.
The first video I did for kids was a huge success before the right wing and Fox News ever saw it. After I posted it, for the first two days or so the responses were all about parents sharing their experiences and posting videos showing them watching my video with their kids. I got parents putting my face next to theirs with their kids on their lap, everyone watching me as a family. It filled my heart with joy. It was a dream come true. What Jeff (if you haven't figured it out yet, yes, we're Jeff and Jeffrey) had said to me helped me remember that initial joy, and he helped me remember the point of the work that I do. My fulfillment is imperative. It is essential that I am happy with my work and myself. I must be full of myself in the best way possible! I must have joy and kindness in my life. I must be proud of how I'm changing the world. These things are much more important than trying to control the way others think of me.
Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey Marsh. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
