Most young people view Tik Tok as a platform of entertainment where they can chill by watching short videos that sometimes can be hilarious, useful or weird. Others use Tik Tok as a platform to promote their business or… to spread propaganda, which in this case is a super straight movement. In this piece, you will find out why the new “sexuality” is toxic.
Who started the super-straight idea?
According to the article published by the Atlantic, Kyle Royce, 20, from British Columbia, Canada, is a founder of the super straight movement/sexuality that emerged in February. Back then, a guy uploaded a video on Tik Tok, where he said: “Yo, guys, I made a new sexuality now, actually. It’s called “super-straight,” since straight people, or straight men as myself––I get called transphobic because I wouldn’t date a trans woman,” then he added. “You know, they’re like, “Would you date a trans woman?” No. “Why? That’s a female.” Then Kyle Royce continued to spread the hate speech. “No, that’s not a real woman to me. I want a real woman. “No, you’re just transphobic.” So now, I’m “super-straight”! I only date the opposite gender, women, that are born women. So you can’t say I’m transphobic now because that’s just my sexuality, you know.”
When the video went viral, it received criticism, especially from the LGBTQ community and then it disappeared, as people had been marking it as infringing rules of the platform. However, one week later, video magically resurfaced, and the Atlantic points out that one of the possible reasons for Royce’s video coming back to life was the review of human content moderators. Surprisingly, then the video became even more popular.
How have people responded to the video?
Conor Friedersdorf, who wrote the article at the Atlantic, managed to interview Kyle Royce to find out the young man’s motives for making the scandalous video. “When I asked what his intentions were on a spectrum from 100 percent earnest to 100 percent trolling, he had trouble answering. Nowhere seemed quite right, said the author. “He was trying to accurately convey his dating preferences and truly felt frustrated by others’ criticism. But he was also trying to make a point by co-opting a norm of LGBTQ activists: that one’s professed sexual or gender identity is unassailable.”
According to Pop Buzz, Tik Tok reacted to “super-straight” content by banning this type of hashtag as a “hate speech and hateful ideologies”, also permanently blocking Kyle Royce from the platform. The website also noticed that “super-straight” is equivalent to SS, relatable to the Nazi military police called ‘Schutzstaffel’ in German.
Far-right groups decided to keep the phrase and push it to be included in the LGBTQ community. They also began to create and publish hateful memes and initiate petitions, but social networking sites like TikTok or Reddit began to take action against the toxic content. However, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have not yet made any moves to banish the new “sexuality”.
Various content creators on YouTube decided to educate their followers and published videos of why the “super-straight” movement is harmful. For example, D’Angelo Wallace described “super-straight” as “super lame” on his video “Super-Straight” TikTok exists, and it’s as bad as you think. There he commented: “If we’ve learned anything from this, I think the lesson is clear. No. There’s no lesson here, where there’s no funny way of summing it up. You all are just fully ridiculous”.
Trans YouTubers such as Jammidodger and Samantha Lux also shared their opinions. In a video, The Super Straights Are Super Not Okay, Jammidodger expressed his dissatisfaction with the new “sexuality” by saying: “Basically, it’s just a new term for transphobe.”
Samantha Lux also found “super-straight” being outrageous in her video Super Straight or Super Transphobic? There a Trans woman said: “There’s literally no point identifying as “super-straight” other than just being a d***.”
Even though a couple of months passed after an offensive video made by Kyle Royce became viral, tensions still remain on social media. A few people on Twitter recently shared their thoughts:
https://twitter.com/Wowzapasta/status/1383106949865111553
Another person added:
https://twitter.com/Aoi_iqq/status/1385283152436936710
Despite how ridiculous the “super-straight” movement is, there are a few things that we can learn from the situation. Firstly, as social media users, we have to take all visible information with a grain of salt. Secondly, we can notice that online platforms started to treat hate speech content more seriously, but there is still a long way to go. Lastly, simple respect sometimes means knowing when to shut up or prevent someone from posting degrading and damaging stuff for themselves and other people.
