News flash: The “super straight” trend on social media, where users claim a “new sexuality” which demands the same respect as those with marginalized sexual identities, is actually just blatant transphobia mocking LGBTQ people and their activism.
Over the last two weeks, (mostly cis) people on social media have started openly identifying as “super straight.” The movement, born on TikTok and popularized on 4chan, is a troll campaign by far-right agitators to invalidate trans people’s gender identities and justify blatant transphobia.
The phrase “super straight” was recently coined by TikTok user Kyle Royce. In a now-deleted video posted on Feb. 21 and re-uploaded to YouTube, Royce claimed critics couldn’t call him transphobic for refusing to date trans women — and refusing to acknowledge them as women — because he had decided that “super straight” is a new “sexuality” that should be respected.
The video racked up more than two million likes before it was taken down. In the weeks since, people have openly identified as “super straight” online to justify their transphobia and mock the struggle for LGBTQ rights. 4chan users on the /pol/ board — an incendiary discussion space notorious for its popularity with far-right trolls — discussed further spreading the “super straight” trend to “drive a wedge” within LGBTQ circles, Insider reports. Screenshots posted to Twitter show 4chan users explicitly linking the “super straight” acronym SS to the Nazi SS and pairing it with the Nazi salute, as well as co-opting language used by the LGBTQ community to call anyone who disapproves of the “sexual identity” a bigot.
Agitators adopted a “super straight pride flag” that imitates PornHub’s logo (and ironically, the logo of the gay dating app Grindr), and have used black and orange emoji to publicly identify as “super straight.” TikTok users have been adding the black and orange square emoji to their bios the way many LGBTQ users include the gay pride flag emoji to theirs, and have mocked important LGBTQ rites of passage by making fake “coming out” videos. Online vendors started hawking “super straight” apparel to further ridicule the LGBTQ pride movement by mimicking pride merchandise.
Amateur rapper Robert Charles’ 2012 song Super Straight, which repeats the phrase “I’m super straight” in the hook, has been coopted as the “pride anthem” for the movement. Trans creators, who already face substantial harassment on social media platforms, are now also dealing with comments littered with black and orange emojis.
Royce told Insider that the phrase was “never meant to be hateful,” and that “a lot of people have the same opinion” but are “too scared to say it in fear of the backlash and the misinterpretations.”
“I created it because I was sick of being labeled with the very negative terms for having a preference, something I can’t control, and getting labeled by the community that preaches acceptance with that sort of stuff,” Royce said.
As trans activists have repeatedly stated, not wanting to date a specific person who happens to be trans is not necessarily transphobic. What is transphobic, despite Royce’s paper-thin argument, is not wanting to date someone for the sole reason that they’re trans. Essayist and trans activist Brynn Tannehill wrote in the Advocate: “The belief that all transgender people are unattractive to you (when there are some undeniably very attractive ones), and that you could not have chemistry with them, or you religiously object to transgender people, and even when presented evidence to the contrary, is an expression of transphobia.”
The trend is still gaining traction on TikTok despite the platform’s efforts to ban hateful content.
Both Reddit and TikTok have cracked down on the campaign, Them reported on Thursday. Reddit banned r/superstraight for “promoting hate towards a marginalized or vulnerable group,” and TikTok blocked users from searching the phrase “super straight” or using it as a hashtag. When a user tries to search for the term, TikTok redirects to the Community Guidelines.
A TikTok representative told Snopes that the company banned Royce from the platform for violating its Community Guidelines regarding hate speech, but he managed to post a video on Thursday evening from his original account. In the video, Royce gives the camera a thumbs-up under a text box that says “I love and support everyone.” Other TikTok users voiced their support by commenting with black and orange emoji. A TikTok spokesperson told Mashable on Friday that Royce’s most recent video was taken down, and that he was banned from the platform again. TikTok did not explain how Royce managed to post after being already banned.
The TikTok spokesperson told Mashable that the platform had launched an investigation into the “super straight” movement, as well as blocked relevant keywords.
TikTok also issued this statement:
This influx of “super straight” content on TikTok sparked discourse that many trans creators found inappropriate and deeply offensive.
Devyn Jaide, host of the podcast “Awkwardly Queer,” expressed annoyance that the discussion around the “super straight” movement didn’t consider trans voices or points of view.
“Have y’all ever thought that trans people have our own preferences?” she said in a TikTok video posted Thursday. “Honestly cishet people are not really doing it for trans people either. You’re not really a prize. And why would a trans person want to date a cis person who has to do a whole bunch of mental Olympics to validate them wanting to date them or have sex with them?”
Eden Estrada, a model and YouTuber known as Eden the Doll, posted a similarly unbothered series of videos responding to the hate. In one, she replied to a TikTok video claiming Gen Z was trying to “force” straight men to date trans women: “Have you noticed it’s always the ugliest guys who have the most to say?”
In a second video posted Thursday, Estrada added that no trans women are “forcing” any men to be attracted to them.
“Your entire sexuality is based off of trans women, and yet I believe not a single one has ever paid attention to you,” she says in a reply stitched with a video posted by right-wing agitator teacherluke. “If my existence devalues your masculinity THIS MUCH then maybe you weren’t so masculine after all?”
The outrage sparked by the “super straight” movement is accomplishing one thing 4chan users wanted: sowing discord within the LGBTQ community.
Some prominent trans creators haven’t spoken out against the movement — conservative YouTuber Blaire White, who is trans, was criticized by other creators for posting a video referring to hyperspecific sexualities that fall under an umbrella identity known as microlabels as “less valid” than the “super straight” trend. Desi Fambrini, who is genderfluid and uses he/him pronouns, sparked similar frustration from other trans creators for taking a “both sides” approach.
“If we just accepted everyone holistically and didn’t argue about people and whether or not they should be attracted to somebody else, we wouldn’t even have this problem,” Fambrini said in a video with over 1.5 million views. When pressed to denounce the movement and faced with the “super straight” flag in his comments, Fambrini continued to echo the same sentiment: “I seriously think we could all get along.”
Other creators expressed disappointment in Fambrini for speaking on behalf of the entire trans community, and in the process, pandering to cishet comfort. Felipe Campano called Fambrini out for invalidating other trans people in the name of “positivity” in a series of TikToks, before finally giving up on having a productive conversation with him. Campano was especially upset by what they saw as Fambrini enabling transphobia and homophobia rather than use his platform to denounce it.
Campano told Mashable that there is no “middle ground” in discussions of queer activism and education. Queer people, they said, don’t owe homophobic or transphobic people education if those people aren’t willing to investigate it in the first place.
“If cishet allies want to learn about queer people, they should meet us at the starting line; we shouldn’t have to pull them up to the start,” Campano added. “My identity and oppression isn’t a debate. Implying I have to concede on that to have a productive discussion does a disservice to queer people everywhere.”
Many TikTok users took it upon themselves to drown out content by self-identified “super straight” creators, like adding fire emojis to the “super straight” flag to indicate burning it. TikTok users are also boosting trans creators to the top of memes popularized by the movement, like the song “Super Straight,” so their content is seen above videos endorsing the movement. Others are calling themselves “superphobic”— a play on homophobic to indicate a disapproval of people who identify as “super straight” — and the tag now has 7.9 million views on TikTok.
Image: screenshot via tiktok
Image: screenshot via tiktok
TikTok creator lateduress took it further, pleading with young men to not fall for the “super straight” movement’s radicalization tactics. In a video they posted tagged #superphobic, they explained that the campaign is “manipulating” teenagers into transphobia and endorsing Nazi symbolism.
“It’s sad to see so many young, vulnerable people being radicalized into this. You guys need to realize that you’re puppets,” lateduress said. “You’re being puppeteer-ed. They’re trying to radicalize you into far-right ideologies.”
Long story short? If you see someone openly identifying as “super straight” on TikTok, you might not want to congratulate them for “coming out” as a more hateful version of society’s default, preferred sexuality. Consider reporting them for violating the platform’s Community Guidelines instead.
*story by Mashable