"The queer people have turned their back on me, and I'm queer, so that's very painful," said Tanya Tsikanovsky to LA Fox affiliate KMSP about the response she's gotten to recently coming out as a Trump supporter.
"I had like 50 unfollows right away," said Tsikanovsky about the first time she publicly posted about supporting Donald Trump on Instagram. As shocking as the response was to Tsikanovsky, it was also a shock to her friends and family. Tsikanovsky had been a lifelong Democrat. She had voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and even worked on the Clinton campaign in Iowa back in 2016.
Tsikanovsky said that up until recently, she was "absolutely that person who would say, 'If you're a Trump supporter, I don't want you in my life.'" Adding that "she regrets it" “That regret probably stems from Tsikanovsky now being a Trump supporter herself and experiencing the consequences of her actions.”
With all due respect... boo hoo.
Since voting for Trump, Tsikanovsky has noticed that she now feels unwelcome in many of the queer social environments she once inhabited, like her queer basketball team. “I think it’s disgusting someone can push me out of something [like this]. They liked me two weeks ago, and now they don’t, just because I voted for someone," Tsikanovsky complained.
The impacts of her vote have been immediate. "Ever since I publicly said I was voting for Trump, I am no longer welcome in the [LGBTQ+] social spheres they provide. If there was a birthday party I was invited to, I’m no longer able to attend," she said.
Tsikanovsky is failing to understand why so many people are choosing not to associate with her because she voted for Trump. “I’m not all of a sudden anti-gay now because I voted for Trump,” she said. Just a theory, but people may not want to associate with her because voting for a candidate is one way of expressing one's values and morals. Voting for a candidate who is very openly anti-LGBTQ+ might make it seem like you, even if you are a gay person, are anti-LGBTQ+. Again, just a theory.
Tsikanovsky's very nearsighted and self-serving statement that "I was a lesbian under the Trump presidency before and my rights haven’t changed" might also give some insight into why other LGBTQ+ people don't want to associate with her.
So what was the deciding factor for Tsikanovsky this election? "Israel," she said.
Tsikanovsky describes herself as "highly lesbian" and "highly Zionist" in her Instagram bio, but not necessarily in that order. It was the Trump campaign's unrepentant support of Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestine and the Palestinian people that turn this former Clinton campaigner into a Republican.
She said that it was the pro-Palestinian protests against genocide held on college campuses across the US this year that convinced her to support such a firmly anti-LGBTQ+ candidate. She said of the protests, "What was happening on college campuses was appalling."
"I want to bring humanity to this. The only way we can come together is if we sit together and have hard talks," said Tsikanovsky. However, until she's ready to sit and have the hard talk about how antisemitism and anti-Zionism are different things entirely, or how just because she claims that her life as a lesbian didn't change under Trump's first doesn't mean other queer people aren't at a severely heightened risk then and now, her pursuit of humanity will continue to ring hollow.
You can watch Tsikanovsky's full interview below (if you really feel like watching Fox News for some reason).