Transgender actress Tommy Dorfman posted video of a Delta Air Lines employee ‘intentionally misgendering her,’ and having watched the video I’m confused because she seems to think that she’s the one who comes out looking to be in the right in this exchange.
Dorfman identifies as a transgender woman, and is best known for playing Ryan Shaver in the Netflix drama 13 Reasons Why.
According the the passenger, who was flying from New York LaGuardia to Atlanta, agent “Tristan” was ‘transphobic’ and ‘threatening’ – following another employee who had misgendered them as well.
when you try to advocate for yourself at @delta and are met woth even more transphobia and threats of being arrested at laguardia. tristan, the employee, said that he was fine with me posting this, didnt realize it was condescending to flag a human rights violation after another employee misgendered me incessantly.
While the actress says the employee’s failure to use their preferred pronouns was intentional, Tristan denies this and is just trying to do his job in the face of passenger hostility.
You’re being condescending, and if you want to continue, I’ll have Port Authority escort you out the building right this moment if you want to play that game with me. Which if you’d like to continue three days before Christmas, I really don’t mind.
In the video we do not see Dorfman, and hear only the masculine-sounding voice of the passenger.
The funniest thing about this “misgendering” video is that this he/she filming thought it made the Delta employee look bad pic.twitter.com/I29NMpTSzU
— JVT (@jvtentertains) December 26, 2023
According to Dorfman the Delta agent called the Port Authority, “two police officers actually showed up ~ 10 min later and spoke to me and my partner about the incident.”
Meanwhile, Delta says,
We’re aware of the video and looking into the matter, including reaching out to our customer to understand more about what occurred.
The key point, I think, is that the agent wasn’t focused on the passenger’s pronouns and had no reason to know what they were ex ante. The employee clearly didn’t intend to ‘misgender them’. They were dealing with them with their pronoun of “passenger.” Tommy Dorfman did not raise the issue respectfully, asking to be referred to in another manner. Instead they do come off as disrespectful to the Delta Air Lines agent just trying to do his job.
This Delta employee kept their composure and handled things, clearly, as a New Yorker.
What is it that Tristan did wrong? NOTHING. The self entitlement of Mr/ms/whatever Dorfman is ridiculous. The agent cares about doing their job not some weird out of place political agenda. Delta give Tristan a raise.
As a former airline employee and advocate for the LGBTQ community, I find fault with the actress (I don’t think there is a gender-neutral term for that trade). If the agent was using the term passenger, then they weren’t misgendering them. This is a actress that was triggered and probably having a bad day but was taking issue with something they need to just let go. The agent made no error at all. Agents, especially at the airlines, are very cognoscente of the LGBTQ community, and very open minded. For the actress to take issue with the term “passenger” as being not gender neutral is totally idiotic and makes the whole LGBTQ community look bad. Take a chill pill and move on.
Calling misgendering a “human rights violation “ is laughable. You can call someone any inappropriate, horrible or obscene thing you want to and it is not a human rights violation. Showing disrespect to a customer could have employment consequences, but Tristen was doing his best with the bad position he was placed in by the customer. Let it go and move along.
To Eric: as a matter of well established medical doctrine, humans can, and do change their sex. Having said that, this particular passenger was just obnoxious and looking to pick a fight – trans, or not!
The Delta red coat should trim his beard. He probably thinks it looks good but it’s overgrown
If you are a President running for re-election and pandering to vocal groups with newfound political power, this “misgendering” being a “human rights violation” insane verbal interchange makes sense.
Enough with the pronouns already. Why don’t we all just say ‘hey’. Does the actress need free media coverage?
Pronouns are NOT mandatory. Identify as you choose to, I don’t have to back up your life’s confusions
To Samir: no, humans cannot change their sex. It’s encoded by DNA. They can change their gender expression though, which is not the same thing.
That said, good on this Delta employee for not giving in to the pronoun police or the rainbow mafia. I’m gay myself, and even I think we’ve gone too far in catering to these people’s narcissistic and fetishistic tendencies.
We need ignore these people and stop giving them the attention that they crave.
@Union this: The gender-neutral term for actor/actress is simply actor.
All the other trans-phobe commentators:
It is simply polite to address people the way they would prefer to be addressed. That includes people who hate the first name their parents gave them and prefer their middle one, the Williams who prefer to be Bills, the people with doctorates in music theory who insist you address them as Dr. even at the family Christmas party, middle-aged women who abhor being called Ma’am, and people who think their gender is different than the gender you think they should be.
Sure, you don’t HAVE to, but actively refusing to just makes you an *******.
Christopher, the difference is that when I call someone William instead of Bill, they say “You can just call me Bill”. Then we both carry on with our day. I’ve never once called someone William and had that person throw a tantrum or melt down on social media. If they did, I would consider them just as mentally ill as the individual who posted this video. It’s not an issue of identifying as trans, it’s an issue of mental stability and emotional maturity.
Let’s see how unhappy Delta passengers get when agents start calling husbands “Mam” and wives “Sir”.
Chill people – if someone has a preferred pronoun, there’s no harm in honoring it.
@Tom Marinar….politicians pandering to extremists is a huge problem….on both sides, no one worse than the right embracing blatant dishonesty (no one actually believes Trumps election lie do they?)overt hatred towards others, conspiracy nonsense taken to a whole new level….the list goes on and on…..Tommy Tuberville’s stunt is the tip of the iceberg of the potshots the right has taken to undermine our military during these potentially dangerous times……..Marjorie Taylor Green is sadly the face of the right now. The Republican Party today has failed miserably at supporting a strong military and economy and is now all about creating havoc.
My pronoun is Pragmatist….use that or I’ll have to cancel you 😉
Kudos to the Delta agent. Maybe he should just refer to Passenger Middlesex.
Thought both gate agents did well.
If you’re not sure, start with they/them in all cases, until/unless you’re corrected. It’s neutral and not (or certainly not as) offensive as being misgendered with the other two. Being misgendered evokes a lot of unpleasant feelings. Try it as a mental exercise. I certainly wouldn’t appreciate repeatedly being called she/her.
Can’t wait to see how Delta handles this. They dug thier hole and are now completely immersed in the DEI, ESG blah blah blah nonsense. Will they finally take a stand for normalcy or continue to propagate?
@David – if you consider this Delta digging themselves a hole, you should dig a little deeper, yourself.
This is nothing but a ploy for publicity, as perpetuated by articles like this.
I am under no obligation whatsoever to use someone’s “preferred pronouns.”
So sick of people thinking everything is about them.
There is nothing wrong with his (male) body–the issues are all in his head. Society has no obligation to cater to this type of mental illness.
People who choose to mutilate their bodies to feed their delusion and denying reality should not get special rights.
In 10 years, when this fad is over (it’s is a fad, if it weren’t then the % of population identifying as TG would be constant over time, but it has spiked the last few years), there will be a huge wave of devastated lives and suicides when reality finally wins.
Dorfman is an insufferable A-H. Clearly, they are simply desperate for attention, but it backfired and now they deleted their video.
I don’t think there’s enough context to know who is really at the wrong here. From short clip I was able to find it appears to me that both were having a very bad day already. There was no reason for the employee to bring out the big guns by threating to all port authority.
If you have a longer video that led you to believe the actress is in the wrong please share it with us. From the 20 second or so video I found from The Hill, although it seems the actress might have taken it too far, I also think the employee went even further and was disrespectful to her. It sounds like he did it purposefully (especially considering the misgendering allegedly happened many times).. but again.. we need more background on the issue…
While I have family who are lesbian or gay, and I’m center left politically, I gotta say, this sort of crap is why it can be difficult defending some people on the left. This a-hole was locked and loaded and ready to be offended. The gate agent was merely doing his job. There are plenty of ignoramuses on the right who are just plain disrespectful of other people’s rights, but this Delta agent isn’t one of them. It’s always best to pick your battles, folks.
Jake – unless you are really androgynous looking I doubt anyone would call you “her”. However if someone is clearly a biological male they need to get over it if someone addresses them as sir. Sorry it isn’t all about the feelings of a small group of messed up people
Sometimes I imagine if we are invaded and all these easily offended people have to take up arms to survive, they would not have time nor the capacity to experiment with their sexual orientation the moment they are in fear for their lives.
They have way too much time on their hands and live a life “pretending”
The Delta employees are clearly not “transphobic”, they’re “transannoyed” and to identify them something other than their preferred adjective is a human rights violation. Person filming this needs to be removed from the building for this violation.
“There are plenty of ignoramuses on the right…”
“There are plenty of ignoramuses on the right and left…”
There, fixed it for you.
People like this give the community a really bad reputation. You will find that most so-called homophobia and transphobia and so on are actually people just fed up with all the attention seeking and reverse discrimination and other set up attacks (such as the gay couple who specifically sought out a religious cake shop that they knew they could create controversy and legal issues with when they were denied a gay themed order).
You will find that very few people actually have a problem with their choices and identities. Even the people who are against the idea themselves, still understand other people’s freedom to make their own choices. What you find is that people are fed up with somebody else’s choices and freedoms to make them, encroaching on their own beliefs and values, as well as the created/ looking for a fight style attacks against them by the bad apples of this community.
@Eric he wasn’t condescending, he was just doing his job. I’ve seen gate agents with way worse attitudes, where as he stayed calm and professional.
These gate agents have a major job: to get the flight out on-time. Having a passenger go on a long tirade about their pronouns at the desk puts the flight (and later ones) at risk of a delay
This is why only names first and last are really the part of the ID and ticket, not the gender. Those people need to get a life but they just live for creating drama.
Good for the agent not to take crap from a drama instigator.
Great job to the Delta ticket agent! This a…hole of a passenger needed to be escorted out of the airport and even better out of the city. Stick HIM in downtown SF maybe HE will feel more at home there.
how is this a HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION??
oye.
After realizing this was Ms. Dorfman, its time I update my follows/likes on social media.
Can we go back to 1998 when being gay was fun and we weren’t associated with this…. whatever it is.
Christopher Raehl Needs to work as a ticket agent during the holiday period and then see if his rambling dialogue of etiquette works.
There won’t be any shit unless passenger starts some shit.
I wish I had been the one that said this to him.(Tommy).
Since when is it proper etiquette for this freakshow to be filming an airport employee doing their job?
As for pronouns, Ive been speaking English properly for 5 decades. I will not trade my higher intelligence and grammar to satisfy a freakshow.
With only one Delta employee in the picture, unclear who was being referred to, with which pronouns, and when. Also didn’t help I inadvertently opened 2 links on this page, so on replay the “actress” Tommy Dorfman’s diatribe was overdubbed by a Tampax ad audio suggesting changing up her tampon size: Maybe one size for her big mouth and another for “her” pretend vagina? But, seriously, the Delta employee had no need to play the “Condescending” (race?) card either, so . . . a “Tampox” on both their “mouthses”?!
My adult daughter has a friend I’ll call ‘Alex’ who was born male, then decided he was female, and now is in a continual battle with him/herself over gender. It’s really, really difficult for me to remember to call masculine-looking Alex with full makeup ‘them’ as it’s a plural and a desecration to English as I was taught, but I guess if Alex feels he/she has both (or neither?) gender in one corpus, then ‘them’ may well apply.
This Delta agent really kept his cool.
@Alex: You’ll note that I prefaced my comment with “To all the other transphobe commentators”… yes, if you get misgendered, the appropriate response is to correct and move on. I was commenting on all the trans-phobe commentators who insist they get to decide what other people’s gender is and address them by whatever pronoun they choose as opposed to simply addressing people the way they prefer to be addressed.
@CMorgan: I wouldn’t be being an ****** to people, so no dialogue necessary. (But also, being a ticket agent has no relevance to the commenters who will only address others with the pronouns they assign to other people rather than simply addressing people the way they’d prefer to be addressed.)
@kimmiea: They/them are and always have been used as both singular and plural.
“Someone left their phone here, where are they?”
“Someone left their phone here, does anyone know them?”
When people say, “We shouldn’t use they because it’s plural and that’s bad grammar”, what they’re really saying is, “I don’t want to use people’s pronouns, but I also want to make it look like it’s their fault rather than my fault, and someone gave me this excuse, which I will ignorantly repeat because I’d rather advertise that I don’t understand English grammar than be a decent person to others.”
Cheers to Tristan!
Perhaps the individual taking the film should adopt the a “wanna-be” pro noun. Wanna-be Insta-Tok whatever, Wanna-be A list actor, Wanna-be bully.
Great job by the agent…
Should have said…”Please step out of line as I’ve a flight to get out on time. You are currently interfering with my job for which I can request authorities ..We can discuss this matter once the flight leaves” That would change the attitude and direction of the conversation VERY quickly.
If you look and sound like a guy or a girl, a busy agent is not deliberately disrespecting you by referring to you as he or she. A busy agent is not interested in you personally at all! They just want to answer your question and move you along.
I had never heard of Tommy Dorfman. Perhaps, the frustration stems not from the GA not knowing the pronouns but failing to show the expected awe. Wikipedia tells me Tommy Dorfman has used they as a pronoun (starting 2017) before using she (in 2021). I presume that grade school teachers used he without complaint. Maybe the GA missed the memo. Perhaps those who are so afraid of suffering such a human rights violation might start wearing a name tag with pronouns. I want to use the pronoun you want me to use, but I do make mistakes. Why assume it was meant as an insult?
Mr. Dorfman is clearly a Racist (it’s funny that the knife can but both ways).
Kudos for the super professional and calm Delta Agent who was harassed by this mentally unstable and racist Sir. Handled like a champ.
In terms of “shouldn’t the gate agent have known”, from Dorfman’s Wikipedia:
1) Born male, named Tommy
2) 2016, marries a man, refers to himself as a gay man
3) 2017, comes out as nonbinary, goes by they pronoun
4) 2021, divorces husband, refers to self as bisexual
5) 2021, comes out as trans, goes by she pronoun, keeps “Tommy” as name anyway
6) 2022, comes out as lesbian
During this whole time, keeps name as Tommy, no obvious change in appearance if wearing winter clothes.
How would anyone expect a gate agent you’ve never met to be able to keep up? Dorfman in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 doesn’t even agree on what to call Dorfman! All respect to anyone who wants to live their personal live however they want, but millionare actors filming random service workers for “misgendering” given the history above – come on now.
@David because the assumption allowed Dorfman to post a video such that millions … yes millions ..have heard of him/her/them/ whatever
Millions. Well most are not reacting like Dorfman thought but at least the name was spelled right …. the pronoun not so much
But millions. I was an unknown and now i am famous.
15 seconds Tommy Dorfman just ended.
Next
Lesbian? He seems like a very confused man.
The delta agent did nothing wrong here. He was doing his job, and show no “phobias” to anyone.
Dorfman is out for fame and fortune.
I have really long hair for a man, I have been called ma’am before…..by mistake! No video required, no harm done, no hurt feelings, apologies were made, all was forgiven.
Get over yourself dorfman
Once again dorkman ended up looking like a fool desperate for validation.