My understanding is that she has medically transitioned. I believe she stated that at one point, but it isn’t worth searching.
Are far as acceptance goes, my sense is just the opposite. When her transition was in progress there was considerable backlash. Many thought it was a publicity thing. Her medical transition may have toned that down a bit, but I think there is still a lot of negative sentiment. Inside the trans community she was thought to be exceedingly clueless and nothing has happened that would contradict that opinion.
As far as what happened on the program, I think when the rest of the folks realized that she had essentially zero understanding of the situation for many trans folks, they became very frustrated. They had the expectation that she could be positive thing for our community, but the reality was 180 degrees off. Check the information about the cast. They are all pretty accomplished people in spite of the odds against trans people in general. I think they were perfectly justified in the thought that she would just join in and be a part of things, but quickly that turned out to be an unfulfilled promise.
The parallel for me is realizing several years ago that the LGB part of the community was largely clueless about trans folks and didn’t have much interest in finding out. That seems to be changing in recent times. Perhaps people are realizing that attacking the trans community is a precursor to attacking them.
Speaking specifically about M>F trans folks, what isn’t very well understood by many is that the world looks very different when you enter it from a female perspective. Holding onto privilege and trying to function from that viewpoint will not go well. For some it takes a long time before the light bulb goes off. Females are conditioned to work with and around privilege. If privilege is what stands between you and what you want, it becomes a matter of outsmarting it or circumventing it. I think the root is the fact that many trans women find it hard to give up privilege because they don’t understand that they have it. You can’t fight what you can’t see…
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