The parent of a transgender boy who died in early October announced details of the funeral on Twitter. Transphobes on Twitter planned to attend the funeral stating “funnies must ensue”.
(I’m not calling it “X” the same way I’m not calling Facebook “Meta”)
I have been quietly following the story of this youngster’s untimely death by suicide as I have done with far too many other trans suicides – both young and old, strangers and friends. I have seen a lot of inhumane responses to trans suicide, but transphobes on Twitter organising to gate crash a funeral is a new low.
The invitation to join the funeral was extended online via a parent of the child who has found support from the transgender community following the death of their transgender son. It was then reposted via the Twitter account “ValidLs” – an account notorious for content aimed at supporting transphobes on Twitter by regularly reposting bad things happening to trans people and then laughing about it.
Alejandra Caraballo reports that ValidLs then asked in their Telegram group if anyone in the UK could “attend the funeral” – while using an anti-trans slur. Users then appear to seriously discuss whether they could make it to the location or not.
ValidLs has since been suspended from Twitter. No comment has been made as to why action wasn’t taken against this account sooner given its constant output of anti-trans content. Personally I don’t expect it to be banned for long as multiple other dedicated anti-trans accounts have already been unbanned.
Twitter has also moved to include warnings on tweets which read “I hate cis people” but not on tweets which read “I hate trans people” – mirroring Elon Musk’s position that “cis is a slur” and demonstrating the obvious anti-trans bias of the platform’s current direction.
Other anti-trans gimmick accounts such as “Trans Posting Ls” remain on the platform, some of which are Twitter Blue subscribers and therefore now in receipt of ad revenue for their content.
The revelry in trans suicide by transphobes on Twitter is not unique to specifically anti-trans gimmick accounts. As this month we also saw tennis legend Martina Navratilova also post a tweet celebrating the suicide of a transgender person. She deleted the tweet saying she had gotten the tone wrong.
It is a “meme” ie a funny joke to transphobes to reference the figure “41%” at trans people; which is cited from a 2014 study regarding trans suicides.
Anti-trans hate is growing rapidly and horribly inhumane behaviour such as this is becoming more and more normal to the people leading these movements. Don’t get me wrong, social media platforms such as Twitter have never been kind and inviting places for transgender people to exist on; there has always been transphobes on Twitter.
But we have weathered the storm and developed tools in order to find community, connect, network and better support each other in our fights for liberation regardless. Trans Twitter is often a truly beautiful place full of positivity, love and mutual respect.
Elon Musk’s openly anti-trans sentiments have only allowed transphobes on Twitter to further flourish and plumb the depths of their inhumanity towards us. They know that consequences for openly hateful ant-trans content will be few and far between, a slap on the wrists at worst. All while the consequences of anti-trans content on my community are the deaths of teenagers.
Disclaimer: out of respect for the families privacy I have attempted to avoid identifying information. I wanted to write and record what transphobes on Twitter are doing but I do not want that to be intrinsically linked to their son’s name forever. This is a story about transphobia, it isn’t their son’s story.
