- Current "
Jeopardy !" champion Amy Schneider is on a 23-game winning streak. - After posting an interview with GLAAD, her
Twitter account was tagged in transphobic responses.
Current "Jeopardy!" champion Amy Schneider is now a 23-day winner, with a total of over $855,000 in earnings so far. She's in fourth place on the list of all "Jeopardy!" contestants with the most consecutive games won, and has broken the record for most consecutive games ever won by a woman. On New Year's Eve, with the new record on her title, Schneider tweeted out a response to transphobic critics.
"I'd like to thank all the people who have taken the time, during this busy holiday season, to reach out and explain to me that, actually, I'm a man," Schneider wrote. "Every single one of you is the first person ever to make that very clever point, which had never once before crossed my mind."
The tweet is now pinned to her profile, where she has 45,000 followers.
A few days earlier, on December 28, Schneider was interviewed by GLAAD (an organization dedicated to "accelerating acceptance for LGBTQ people") about her journey to the "Jeopardy!" stage and her experience as a trans woman with the publicity that comes with the popular game show.
Tweets about the interview from both Schneider's profile and the official GLAAD Twitter account were peppered with responses from people making transphobic comments.
—GLAAD (@glaad) December 28, 2021
In the interview with GLAAD, Schneider was asked what it's like to be more publicly visible now. She said "it's been pretty cool" getting recognized on the street or in a grocery store.
Later on in the video, GLAAD asked about the November 26 episode where Schneider wore a trans flag pin during the game.
"I didn't want to make too much about being trans, at least in the context of the show," Schneider had written on Twitter. "I am a trans woman, and I'm proud of that fact, but I'm a lot of other things, too!"
"Once I had been on for a few episodes, I felt the need to acknowledge it in some way," she told GLAAD in the December interview. "Because I didn't want a bunch of people on the internet wondering if I was trans and trying to find out. That would feel weird. And then I didn't want it to seem like something that was secret or that was shameful or anything or that I was unaware of the significance of it."
She continued: "I knew that trans 'Jeopardy!' fans were watching my episodes extra-carefully, just as I did with previous trans contestants, and so I wanted to acknowledge them."
—Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) November 26, 2021
"Thank you for doing that," the interviewer replied. "Because I think at GLAAD our mission is that representation can accelerate acceptance and allow us to find possibilities in other people, so I know you are that for many people."
Schneider created a Twitter account in October of last year, mere weeks before her first appearance on the game show. Her handle, @Jeopardamy, highlights how the theme of the account is often just "Jeopardy!" Her standard weekly content includes long threads about her "pre-game" or "post-game" thoughts, answers to questions about strategy, and background about how she came to her love of trivia.
New episodes of "Jeopardy!" air weekdays on ABC at 7 p.m. local time.