Watch: Ts Madison Made a Teaching Moment Out of NeNe Leakes' Comments on Men Dating Trans Women

Transgender actress and "Drag Race" judge Ts Madison made lemonade out of Real Housewife NeNe Leakes' comments about straight men dating transgender women. Leakes is facing online pushback for her remarks, which have been perceived as transphobic.

Leakes "has drawn criticism online" for telling Madison "that she doesn't want to date a man who sleeps with transgender women," Entertainment Weekly relayed.

The two were talking on "The NeNe Leakes Show" when they "exchanged views on dating," EW narrated. Madison wondered if Leakes would date someone from among Madison's friend set, to which Leakes asked, "Do you only know gay men?"

Madison replied that she does not date gay men, but Leakes found that response to be "real weird," and sought an explanation, asking, "what do you mean you don't date gay men? Because if he's sleeping with you and sleeping with a woman, he's something."

Madison tried to get the conversation back on track, explaining that if a man "looks at me, and you, well – he likes women."

At that point, EW detailed, "Leakes pushed back, saying that she felt, in that scenario, it's 'because he doesn't know' that a trans woman is trans."

Sticking to the view that trans women are women, full stop, Madison shot back, "And if he does know, he likes women."

Replied Leakes: "What is he? He's bisexual?"

Madison then "explained that sexuality also includes pan people, who are interested in all genders, and that many men are pan," EW recounted.

Leakes spoke plainly: "I don't want to run into them, I don't want to date him. I need you to like Hello Kitty, all the time."

Madison was firm, noting that dating heterosexual men doesn't mean Leakes has never been with a man who, in the course of his history, might have been romantically involved with a transgender woman at some point.

"I know that women consider trans women men because we were born male," Madison said, "but there's a difference between being a man and male."

Leakes went where cis people tend to default – namely, to the subject of the physiology of the trans person with whom she was speaking. Commenting to Madison "you have your parts," Leakes allowed that a heterosexual man "could love you and think you're so beautiful and want to sleep with you," but then asked, "does he know it's there?"

Madison verified she's not ashamed of her body – "I'm not hiding it" – and Leakes doubled down, insisting she would not date a man who had dated a trans woman because, she said, "he's not telling me the truth."

Some comments on Instagram, where Leakes posted about the talk, took Leakes to task.

"Loud, Ignant and unwilling to learn," one person remarked. "Yikes".

Chided another: "I'm disappointed Nene. Lifelong fan, and really disappointed in the language you used towards TS."

"You owe Ts an apology and you need to unpack your transphobia," a third declared, while someone else posted, "You owe her and the trans community an apology."

Others gave Leakes props or took the chance to attack Madison.

EW noted that Madison made it clear on social media that she viewed the educational exchange as collegial rather a moment of conflict.

"Fighting with ne ne Leakes? Over MY identity?" she tweeted in response to a transphobic post.

"Two people sittin down discussing attraction and Dating was fighting?............. Uuuuuh okay."

Madison also continued the conversation on her X account, where she posted a clip of her conversation with Leakes as well as some "hard Facts" that gave a rundown on different sorts of sexual orientations and gender identities and encouraged the use of PrEP.

"Thank you @neneleakes for having me on your show," the post added; "this is a difficult conversation for a lot of people. Thanks for having fun with me," she said.

Watch the episode below.