Mel’s collection of horrible Tweets will continue

Welcome to Ranch Baby, the personal newsletter project of journalist and writer Mel Woods where I share reflections on my work among other musings. For more posts like this, subscribe to the Ranch Baby newsletter for free!

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I received many questions about what came next when I announced my departure from Xtra Magazine a few weeks ago. After nearly six years at one publication, it’s fair to be curious why I’m leaving the relative stability of a full-time journalism job doing what I love. And it's also fair to wonder where I’m going next! I alluded ominously to something in the works, and really overused the phrase “irons in the fire” for a few weeks there.

But I will be vague no more. I’m happy to announce that this week, I officially start in my new position as an Investigator with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), where I’ll be focusing on researching, documenting and reporting on anti-trans hate movements in Canada. 

This is, unfortunately, a grimly apt week for me to start in this work. On Tuesday, U.S. officials announced the arrest of a 30-year-old American in connection to the school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., earlier this year. With any development in a case like this, public thoughts should immediately go to the victims and their families, who are being forced to relive the horrible tragedy once again in the media cycle. 

But discussion of the victims or their families immediately took a back seat to unprecedented levels of anti-trans vitriol from both public figures and media, after officials confirmed that, like the shooter was, Bryant is a trans woman.

I’ll be upfront: this development is really bad, and nothing good will come of this. In the minutes and hours following the news, the collective of far-right voices online sprung into action, weaponizing both the shooter and the accomplice’s identities to forward their own anti-trans narratives, calling for restrictions on gender-affirming care and the rolling back of trans rights. This development will only add to the anti-trans narratives sparked by the tragedy itself, and covered extensively in a report from CAHN this past summer. 

Really appreciate Jen and @thetyee.ca asking me to weigh in about the person arrested in connection to the Tumbler Ridge tragedy, and how the ensuing media narrative is both a symptom of the larger anti-trans hate movement and will directly contribute to its continued amplification.

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-10-08T15:48:21.680Z

I was happy (or as happy as you can be in the thick of a grim news cycle like this) when Jen St. Denis of The Tyee reached out to me to write a freelance piece about all of the anti-trans disinformation circulating online this week, just before my contract with CAHN started up today. You can read that full piece here. It is certainly a spiritual successor to much of my work at Xtra, including the piece I wrote the morning after the tragedy itself, and my GLAAD-nominated story following the death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. 

When I filed my draft to Jen this week, I included a footnote at the bottom labelled “For reference ….. Mel’s collection of horrible tweets,” full of several dozen of the most egregious examples of anti-trans hate I found on X in the day after the Tumbler Ridge update this week.

In my new role with CAHN, I’m going to be doing a lot more of this sort of work as a full-time, dedicated beat. The collection of horrible Tweets will continue.

The anti-trans hate movement in Canada is complicated, and overlaps heavily with everything from Christian nationalism to Alberta separatism. It is well-funded, and has tendrils tracing back to the U.S. And while several organizations and journalists regularly work to track and document anti-trans hate in the U.S., there hasn’t necessarily been this level of dedicated focus on what’s happening here in Canada, particularly coming from a trans perspective. I’m aware of the space I occupy as a public-facing openly trans journalist doing this work, and I’m grateful for CAHN to make that space to focus on it in a dedicated way. 

In the coming weeks and months, I’m hoping to fill gaps and work on connecting the dots around these movements, revealing key players, and working to combat hate through thorough journalism and analysis. I’m excited at the chance to work with the other folks at CAHN to draw connections between different kinds of hate movements in Canada, and hopefully bring some of the most influential bad actors to light. 

On a personal level, obviously this is going to be challenging work. But I also anticipate it to be very fulfilling. My mandate at Xtra was so broad in scope, covering everything from politics to pop culture and writing to video to social media and newsletters. In this new role, I’m excited to really focus and sink my teeth into a specific beat, and make some real change.

If this is of interest or relevance to you or your work, let’s connect! My new work email is mel@antihate.ca, and I would love to grab virtual (or real, if you’re in Vancouver!) coffee to talk about that state of anti-trans hate in Canada.

And of course, I welcome any tips or information you have to share about what you’re seeing and experiencing in your communities. 

On a professional level, I am still open to take on freelance work that doesn’t intersect with the direct mandate of my work with CAHN, and expect to still see me writing about Carly Rae Jepsen or yapping about reality TV in my side time in the weeks and months to come. So editors, get in touch! And of course, I still have a large feature coming later this year as a collab between Xtra and The Walrus.

I also will continue to use this space here with Ranch Baby to reflect on work I'm doing with CAHN and elsewhere, as well as publish one-off things that don't really fit anywhere else. So ... more to come soon! Thanks for being here!