I want to make one thing very clear because when the Adam Gaffen scandal happened, some transphobic people tried to blame trans people for what Adam had done. They equated all the lying and catfishing Adam had done with trans women writing sapphic fiction, and I strongly resent and reject that notion.
To the best of our knowledge, neither Adam nor Sean are trans.
We’ve combed all of Sean’s social media, and nothing points to him being anything but a cis man who deceived everyone about his identity by posting photos of a woman, claiming to be her. (By the way, I’m using he/him pronouns for Sean because that’s what he’s doing in his social media and blog).
In fact, in one of his blog posts, he makes a comment that is both misogynist and transphobic, so if he were trans, that would mean he has a lot of internalized transphobia to work through.
Of course, we can’t rule it out entirely. Only Sean can know for sure. Whether or not Sean is trans isn’t the issue, though.
The trans women who are part of our community as writers and readers are not deceiving anyone. They don’t claim to be women; they are women. For some, it might not be safe to be fully out, but none of them go around posting pictures of someone else and claiming that this is them. They live their lives as authentically as is possible while still trying to stay safe.
If Sean were trans, he would have every right to write sapphic fiction under a female pen name and to interact with people as a woman.
If he were struggling with his gender identity, I would have supported using his writing as a tool to explore it. I have friends who only through writing sapphic fiction came to understand that they are not as straight or not as cis as they assumed themselves to be. I think a lot of writers can empathize with that. My writing certainly helped me understand my own identity as a queer woman better too.
So I wholeheartedly embrace anyone who wants to write sapphic fiction, may they be straight or queer, cis or trans, male or female or nonbinary. I don’t want to gatekeep who gets to write sapphic fiction. I want the doors wide open and support everyone who loves sapphic fiction.
The only people I want to keep out are those preying on the community, those who think it’s fun to play games with people and build friendships based on lies and deception.
What Sean did went way beyond a writer possibly exploring their gender through their writing or their pen name. Sabrina lied about everything, not just their gender. Their age. Where they live. Their girlfriend. When photos were taken and by whom. If Sean were trans, he would be a mid-fifties trans woman from Arizona. But he interacted as a 30-year-old woman living in Carlsbad. It was all one big fabrication, and that’s the issue.
So please, don’t add more harm to the community by trying to turn this into a trans issue. It’s not.
The issue isn’t an author’s gender; it’s their harmful behavior—lying and deceiving people for years, undermining the trust within our community.