My first thought on reading Caleb Hannan’s Grantland feature— about the trans woman inventor, Dr. V, that he all but hounded to suicide—was that I knew her. “Nobody knows my life but me,” she said sternly to the man who had been investigating her, and that is true. Even so, I think a lot of trans women can relate to much that emerged in this profile of thorns that Hannan used to frame Dr. V. (A comprehensive look at this case, with further details, can be found in The Toast’s link roundup.)

Everything that Hannan used to discredit her or slander her—her caginess about her past, her forthright demeanour and idiosyncratic style, her gloriously fabulous self-perception, and her ...