Am I getting downvoted for being trans?

TLDR

Reading Reddit downvotes on your promos will drive you a little crazy, especially when you're trans and one comment made the hostility explicit. I've been around this enough to tell you the honest answer: you mostly can't know, and chasing certainty is a trap. What you can do is read the visible signals, push back where it counts, and build a promo setup that doesn't collapse when some strangers are bigots.

Is it actually transphobia, or just normal promo downvotes?

Here's the uncomfortable truth about Reddit: votes carry no metadata. Nobody can audit why a given downvote happened, not you, not the mods, not Reddit itself. So the question "am I getting downvoted for being trans?" can't actually be answered directly, which is exactly what makes it eat at you.

What you can do is look at the baseline. Promo posts get downvoted at scale everywhere - some of it is bots, some of it is users who downvote self-promo on principle, some of it is ban-evasion detection and spam filters doing weird things to scores. Before you assume anything about your identity, go compare your posts to non-trans creators' promos in the same subs at similar times. If everyone's sitting at 60-70% upvoted and you're the outlier, that's data. If everyone's getting mauled equally, welcome to Reddit promo life.

The one reliable signal of animus is visible: comments. A transphobic comment, like the one this poster saw, is actual evidence. Coordinated timing - your scores cratering right after you post in a visibly trans space, or the same accounts showing up across multiple posts - is evidence. Everything else is guesswork, and honestly, the ambiguity is part of the harassment. Trolls know you can't prove anything, and they know the uncertainty itself wears you down.

What can I actually do about it?

Separate the stuff worth acting on from the stuff worth ignoring. Overt bigotry - slurs, hate comments - gets reported and gets mods involved. Most adult promo subreddits delete and ban transphobes quickly, because it's their subreddit too and the vast majority of mods have zero tolerance for it. Screenshot first, then report, then block. Don't argue with the troll; arguing is the reward. You're not trying to change their mind, you're trying to get them out of your comment section and ideally out of the subreddit.

On the disclosure question - whether to put "trans" front and center in your promos - there's no universally right call. Posting in trans-friendly or trans-specific communities means your identity is context, not controversy, and often the audience fit is genuinely better. In general subs, you have to weigh discoverability against exposure to a broader, less curated crowd. That's a business decision as much as a personal one, and it's allowed to change over time.

Beyond that, work the levers that help regardless of motive: diversify your promo spaces so no single sub's mood determines your week, tighten your post timing and format, and track what actually performs instead of staring at individual vote counts. If a specific sub consistently feels hostile no matter what you do, you're allowed to just leave it. You don't owe every subreddit your presence.

And for the emotional side - decide in advance what your policy is. What you screenshot and report, what you delete, what you laugh at and ignore. Having that policy written down means you're making the call when you're calm, not at 1am reading a hate comment.

Where can I compare notes with people who get it?

Frankly, faster than trial and error: other trans creators deal with this exact ambiguity constantly, and the intel they share - which subs have active mods, which timing windows work, which moderation teams actually ban bigots - is worth more than any certainty Reddit will never give you. It also just helps knowing you're not imagining the pattern, because you're not. Trade tactics, not trauma-dumping sessions; keep it practical.

And when it comes to putting your energy somewhere that treats you well, I'll say it plainly: live cam platforms reward presence and personality in a way Reddit voting never will. XLoveCam is where I'd point any trans creator who's tired of anonymous strangers deciding their reach with an arrow - the interaction is real-time, the audience shows up on purpose, and you can build regulars who came for you. Want to test a new promo format that doesn't hinge on vote scores at all? What would your week look like if hate comments were the exception you screenshot and forget, instead of the thing you refresh for?