Yep, it sucks! This is one reason why I suggest having segmented creative identities, at least until you're sure how you want to market yourself. Because it's definitely true that you can gain a lot from marketing your trauma and identity (though - this is a risky industry! It's also possible you expose yourself and end up with nothing but exposure! I'm not 100% convinced that the Be Your Own Brand approach to the creative industries has reliable ROI, especially for something like tv writing), but imo, unless you know you want to commit to that, better to test it out under a pseud & you can wind it down if it makes you uncomfortable + shield yourself a bit from weirdos.

But I also think................ there's not such a market for trans writers that not outing yourself will kill your career. It just changes how you do your branding. There are plenty of cisgender people who are resilient for other reasons, there are ways to selectively edit examples to 1. be anonymizing (which doesn't just protect you, it protects people you know) and 2. control what you put out there about yourself.

Honestly, in an ideal world navigating this is something that LW's program should be ideally set up for. I think there are ways to have this convo w/o coming out to the instructor like, "hey, I want to work on activating my voice and building a personal brand, but I've had some struggles I'm not comfortable making public" or whatever.