“If they want to demand that society accept their horseshit identities, then it’s time we slip in one of our own,” wrote the post’s author. Snopes has debunked this as well, but what’s most chilling about this campaign is the planning and patience the organizers exhibited when putting it together. It fits nicely with other hoaxes that use rainbow flag imagery and inclusive language that support pedophilia.īut perhaps the most malicious campaign came in 2016, when a faction of 4Chan users attempted to create a false movement to include the letter “P,” for pedosexuals, into the LGBTQ+ acronym. “Minor Attracted Persons” is indeed a term some pedophiles have attempted to use to breach mainstream acceptance, but the flag appears to be a hoax that, again, was taken at its word.
They want to use the preexisting stigma against LGBTQ+ people to demonize us.Īnother recently debunked hoax was the “Minor Attracted Persons” flag that emerged in Pride season this year. These repudiations, while virtuous in intent, still give the trolls what they want. Shkreli asked people to spread awareness of “clovergender” on Twitter, and the call for volunteers on 4Chan asked for help to “troll SJW’s.”īesides the obvious goal of causing distress to queer people, the goal of “clovergender” proponents and of the Oregon Pride trolls is bifold: to get cisgender heterosexual people to associate the LGBTQ+ community with sexual predators, and to get the LGBTQ+ community to mount a genuine defense against the accusation that it is harboring pedophiles within our circles, thus, on some level, validating the assertion. Since debunked by internet sleuths at Snopes, “clovergender” is an invented identity meant to mock nonbinary people by claiming that some adults have not mentally matured past the age of 13 and therefore should be allowed to date underaged people. Take, for example, the attempt last year by a faction of the 4Chan community and pharma bro, fraud, and inmate Martin Shkreli to inject “clovergender” into online discourse. Jamie Bowman, president of the organization, says, “Several people sent me photos asking if it was the real thing.” The posters prominently featured a photo of 10-year-old Desmond Napoles, known as Desmond is Amazing in drag, who was the subject of debate thanks to professor and YouTuber Jordan Peterson saying on Twitter that Desmond’s drag was child exploitation. Last month, Central Oregon Pride organizers were targeted by an insidious campaign that distributed fake posters claiming NAMBLA was sponsoring the event along with the Human Dignity Coalition, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Bend, Oregon. But there isn’t, and it’s time we stopped meeting that propaganda on the trolls’ terms.
It’s an effective tactic if we accept the false premise: that there is a link between sexual predators and queer people. Internet trolls are aware of this violent tradition, and are taking advantage by spreading propaganda that, on first glance, resembles an embrace of pedophiles by LGBTQ+ people. The LGBTQ+ community has long been maliciously associated with pedophiles by people who wish to further stigmatize us.