Trisha Paytas made thousands from her ‘coming out as trans’ video even though she denied she would profit from it
Trisha Paytas in her ‘transgender coming out’ video. (YouTube)
American media personality and YouTuber Trisha Paytas made $8,000 in ad revenue from a controversial video in which she came out as transgender, despite repeatedly claiming that she had not made money off of it.
The Celebrity Big Brother star’s YouTube video, ‘I am transgender (female to male)’, was widely criticised for what people perceived as Paytas’ exploitation of the trans community for clicks and money.
In an episode of the H3 podcast that Paytas appeared on, host Ethan Klein exposed that Paytas had, in fact, made thousands of dollars in ad revenue from the video.
“Now that you’ve made $8000 off this video, how do you feel?” he asked, according to Popbuzz. Trisha replied: “I mean, it’s fine!”
“You’ve been going around saying in your defence and on television too that, ‘I don’t make money from this so why would I do it?'” Ethan later pressed. “I just think that it kind of undermines that whole argument that you’re doing this just to tell your story but clearly you made 8,000 bucks from it.”
The video has been watched more than 3.5 million times.
Backlash to it centred on Paytas’ saying that she finds they/them pronouns – used by many people in the trans community – confusing, and her contradictory statements that she “one thousand per cent thinks she’s transgender” while also “a thousand per cent” identifying with the gender she was assigned at birth.
Paytas also requested that people still use she/her pronouns for her, despite now “identifying” as a gay trans man.
Defending herself against the criticism, 31-year-old Paytas said her video was “not meant to be funny” and that she was “overwhelmed by the amount of backlash” her video received.
“I’m sorry if I offended people with my language and the way I said things. I’m so new to all of this… I’m sorry if my confusion or my vocabulary discredits me in any way, but I could never mock a community that I’ve loved and that has loved me, has been so open and accepting to me,” she said in the 8 October apology video, which has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.
In an October 23 TV appearance, Paytas spoke again about the backlash and insisted that she wasn’t making any money from the videos.
They were demonetised by YouTube for their LGBT+ content, she insisted, and she also demonetises all her scandal videos.
But in an interview with Ethan and Hila Klein on the H3 podcast, Ethan questioned this.
While Paytas initially doubled down on insisting that she hadn’t exploited the trans community for clicks and wasn’t making money from the video views, Ethan pointed out that when he watched it ahead of her appearance on his podcast, he was shown two adverts.
Ethan asked her to download the YouTube Creator Studio app and check her analytics – and it turns out her video had been monetised, and she’d made $8,000 from her coming out as trans video.
Trisha Paytas has previously come out as a lesbian on YouTube, also claiming at that time that she wasn’t doing it for clicks.
