Lilly Tino is often criticized for playing the victim, taking pictures in bathrooms, and misrepresenting trans people. But she denies any blame.
Lilly Tino is known for her controversial content and is accused of painting a bad picture for the trans community. She, however, thinks all criticism is rooted in transphobia and does not see her behavior as the problem.
Who Is Lilly Tino?
Lilly Tino or Lilly Contino is a 33-year-old trans TikToker with 445k followers. She was assigned male at birth as Nick Contino and transitioned in 2022.
She herself stated that her fame began on LinkedIn as she posted a "coming out" picture of her on all of her social media in early 2022 and many people commented on the picture. It received a lot of negative attention but she liked the traffic it got. She says she "took the momentum and ran with it."
She started posting on TikTok, calling herself a "trans food critic" and going to different restaurants to test and review their food. So far, so good. She began going viral with a video posted early 2023. In it, she gets misgendered by a woman in a Cheesecake Factory establishment. The woman was very transphobic and harassed the influencer. When the video blew up, Lilly received a lot of support from all over TikTok. It now has over 17 million views.
@lillytino_ A self-identified TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) threatened me at the @cheesecake factory. I happened to be streaming at the time and caught the encounter on camera. This happened at the Union Square location in San francisco
original sound - lillytino
Controversies
After seeing the attention, virality and support that video garnered, Lilly repeatedly tried to recreate the situation. She would film herself sitting in restaurants and cafes and would snap at wait staff and restaurant workers if they referred to her as "sir". She often said it felt "like a knife to the heart". The workers always apologized and some offered some kind of compensation but Lilly called them transphobic, even turned back food and left bad reviews. These videos have gotten her more negative attention than the support she had hoped from her first one.
@lillytino_ USE GENDER NEUTRAL LANGUAGE
original sound - lillytino
Another video that got her a lot of angry viewers was one where she explained why Kurt Cobain was probably trans and one where she dresses as Ms. Rachel to teach kids trans topics, both of which infuriated people from all kinds of communities, including the trans community.
@lillytino_ Ms. Lilly teaches pronouns!
Kids & Toys - FASSounds
Most notably, Lilly continuously makes videos sitting in public talking about her gender-reaffirming surgery using food items as metaphors for genitals. One example is her telling her audience of "removing her cakepops" while holding cakepops at a cafe at Disneyland, a child oriented place. She also takes a corn dog in Disneyland and says "I plan on taking my corn dog and turning it into, well... an inverted corn dog." Other times she uses fruit like oranges and bananas and keeps using language a child can understand. One time a mother heard this, felt uncomfortable and mentioned it in a review in a restaurant in San Francisco.
@lillytino_ Thats a spicy tortellini
Italian Folk Dance - Benet Walsh/John Hymas
Also, Lilly has made posts on TikTok of her taking mirror selfies in women's bathrooms and rating them on how "trans friendly" they are. This is considered a legal violation, and women who appeared in those photos have asked for them to be removed for privacy reasons.
Criticism
Lilly Tino has generally received a lot of negative attention due to her videos. Much of that criticism comes from the trans community itself. Many think Lilly makes trans people look bad and sets a bad example with her controversial behavior, which right-wing activists can use to paint their transphobic picture. Some even accuse her of faking being transgender or being a right-wing troll who has dedicated her life to making transgender people look bad.
Others on the other hand think that Lilly is truly transgender and misgendering her is transphobic. They say she is not responsible for what right-wing people do with her content.
She herself does not see that her actions like describing genital surgery in Disneyland using language kids can understand or taking pictures in women's bathrooms make others feel uncomfortable, as her debate with Dean Withers shows. She says she does educational content about trans topics and calls every kind of negative comment, even those not relating to her being trans, transphobic. She claims she only has good intentions.
But if she really did have good intentions and her content was not designed to get negative attention and ragebait people, then why would she continue doing all of this when she has been called out and the negative sides to her behavior have been brought to her attention?
It is true that anti-trans people use these examples to just be transphobic and that is awful. And it is true that people who don't think she is "passing" as a woman misgender her on purpose, which is transphobic. (Just because you don't like someone, you don't have to disrespect them and their identity like that.) But there is also a lot of valid criticism here. It is not about her talking about trans topics around kids or educating about gender surgery but about her talking about genitals around kids and in public, and it is not about her as a trans person going into women's restrooms but about her taking pictures of the restrooms, a protected place, and is not about her feeling uncomfortable for being misgendered but about her making the wait staff feel uncomfortable and playing the victim card and exaggerating the whole thing for views. If anyone did these things, they would be criticized – regardless of them being trans or not.
Her origin story lays out what she thinks about negative attention: it is still attention and it gets her clicks. So this is probably why she keeps making controversial videos. Because people give them attention – and she does not care what kind of attention she gets as long as she makes clicks and money, so she designs her content to perform the way she knows how: by being controversial.
