Amy Schneider, a transgender woman and engineering manager from Oakland, California, is already building quite the legacy over on Jeopardy! While this is largely in part to her impressive eight-time winning streak that kicked off during the middle of Transgender Awareness Week (and has already grossed her over $250,000 in winnings), another part of what makes Schneider such an endearing Jeopardy! champ is all the transparency, charm, and grace she displays after her victories — and her latest tweets opening up about her on-screen nod to the Transgender community are no exception.
Since securing her first win on November 17, Schneider has taken to Twitter nearly every night to walk her followers through both her strategies and feelings while playing the legendary game show. Through her tweets, Schneider has consistently shown a great deal of compassion towards her fellow Jeopardy! contestants, celebrating the success of former transgender champion Kate Freeman directly following her own Jeopardy! debut, and lamenting about how the worst part of the show is that, in order to win, “the other contestants have to lose” on November 25. On November 26, however, Schneider used her platform to talk about a subtle gesture she made on the prior day’s episode: wearing a special pin on Thanksgiving to honor the Transgender community.
“So, obviously the thing I hinted at yesterday was the trans flag pin I wore in today’s episode (not going to spoil anything else about the episode yet), so I wanted to explain a bit about why I chose to wear it,” Schneider began.
In the tweets that followed, Schneider explained the reason why she wore the Transgender flag pin solely on Thanksgiving, writing that while she fortunately doesn’t “think about being trans all that often,” she is aware that “Thanksgiving is a holiday that is all about family. And that can be hard for anybody who has been ostracized or otherwise cut off from their family a group which, sadly, still includes a disproportionately high number of trans people, especially trans youth and trans people of color.” Schneider then added that she felt it was therefore a good day for her to “show my membership in, and support of, a community that might be having a hard time right now,” before encouraging folks to find an “organization that helps LGBTQ people in need” to donate to this holiday season. Schneider then listed a couple of her personal favorites, Trans Lifeline and the Transgender Law Center.
So this holiday season, as you spend time with family and loved ones, and as you budget out your shopping plans, I would love it if you could find a way to donate to an organization that helps LGBTQ people in need.
— Amy Schneider (@Jeopardamy) November 26, 2021
Schneider will continue defending her remarkable winning streak on Jeopardy! tonight, at 4 PM PT on ABC.