Transphobic trend ‘super straight’ has links to the far-right and neo-Nazis
In a new transphobic TikTok trends, users are claiming that refusing to date trans people is an “orientation”. (TikTok/ kyleroyce)
“Super straight“, the new transphobic trend that claims refusing to date trans people is a sexual orientation, might have been the handiwork of neo-Nazis.
Since a TikTok user declared he is “super straight” the term has spread at a breakneck speed.
A Twitter hashtag, as well as a slew of dedicated accounts, has since been launched, jamming up countless timelines with hatred in the process.
But Twitter sleuths have suggested that the hashtag was intentionally created to further fuel the flames of transphobia, with ties to a 4chan board popular with the alt-right.
Remember that the #SuperStraight hashtag is an anti-trans OP.
It was birthed several days ago from 4chan and Kiwi Farms, both noxious holes of anti-trans and disinfo content.
If you see it, don’t get confused. It’s the same anti-trans bullshit the far-right consistently pushes. pic.twitter.com/iEAwn3gn22
— AntiFash Gordon (@AntiFashGordon) March 7, 2021
According to screenshots from a since-deleted thread on /pol/, a board long used as a megaphone by neo-Nazis, users leapt at the chance to “spam” super straight all across Twitter.
A mock pride flag was included by one user. It featured the logo of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Nazi special police, against a black and orange colour scheme.
The SS Bolts are considered by the Anti-Defamation League as a hate symbol.
The playbook, the user described, is to “red pill zoomers”. To “red pill” someone, a reference to The Matrix, means to show someone an unpleasant “truth”.
“Use the left’s tactics against themselves,” the user continued, “call them bigots for not accepting super straights. S**tpost on social media [and] hit mainstream status.”
Another user noted that the method has already earned plaudits from Kiwi Farms, a forum used as a drawing board by internet trolls to plot online attacks and doxing.
Indeed, alt-right users quickly congratulated themselves for “making super straight an actual thing“, while one 4chan user even beamed with pride as they claimed to have gotten “50” trans users banned from Twitter after posting purposefully provocative content on the hashtag.
For all the gender critical accounts who shared #superstraight and got it trending…
This took 5 minutes on Google. It's a far right troll campaign from 4Chan to get you to associate with Nazism.
Slow. Hand. Clap. pic.twitter.com/zHUWTnWWqq— David Paisley (@DavidPaisley) March 7, 2021
They implored users to “make [a] super straight account, start using hashtags, get lots of t****y hate”.
Another user described how the hashtag is “mainly if not 99 per cent made of anonymous or bot accounts”. They also stressed that “super straight” is not an original creation by 4chan: “Twitter is trying to pin SS on 4chan,” they wrote.
Users of /pol/ mounted a sprawling cyber attack against the LGBT+ community last year, framed as a counter-protest against Pride month.
What does ‘super straight’ mean?
The trend is framed by some 4chan users as a crooked workaround to excuse and legitimise transphobia, as one anonymous user described: “A person who is ‘super straight’ will not date a trans woman under any circumstances.
“A man or women who claims to be super straight can’t be declared prejudice as that is merely their sexuality.
“Straight people who date trans gender are straight. Straight people who refuse to date trans gender [sic] identify as super straight.”
The vastly anonymous users have lamented how straight people “can’t just be ‘straight’ in clown world” while others summed up being super straight as being “normal”.
Where did the transphobic trend come from?
Kyle Royce, a TikTok user with nearly nine million followers, is the self-described “Original Founder of Super Straight”.
His since-deleted video, uploaded 21 February, drew two million likes, he claimed in a GoFundMe raising funds to cover his monthly bills.
Since uploading the video, Royce “received an insane amount of backlash and death threats”, he wrote on the crowdfunder. It has so far raised $250 at the time of writing of its $100,000 target.
Royce also alleged he himself took down the original video due to death threats being sent to his mother.
By 28 February, a definition appeared on Urban Dictionary, a crowdsourced online dictionary for slang. A forum for so-called super straights swelled to some 16,000 users on Reddit after its creation 1 March.
Royce’s video was later shared by a Twitter user called “Super Straight Revolution” on 3 March, bringing it to a more mainstream audience.
The LGBT+ community has sought to respond with efforts to remind people that “super straight” is just another word for being transphobic.
To all the people who think #superstraight is a thing please what this tiktok
You may understand why superstraight is fucking transphobic pic.twitter.com/jtcpWm91ca— that guy with a sombrero (@ABlideran) March 6, 2021
