LGBTQ people finding hatred in social media

In a recent interview with The Blade, West Hollywood’s first ever queer, Iranian Mayor, Sepi Shyne, explained that social media platforms need to treat online hate speech as real threats that can lead to real violence.

“We also have to reconsider our laws about what is considered inciting violence,” Shyne said, “because those laws didn’t consider social media at the time. When those laws were created, they were about people saying things in person and then asking whether or not it is probable that violence will ensue from that interaction. But now we have people on social media saying horrible things that do lead to violence.”

In addition to violence, another serious threat are those who know how to walk the fine line between what is considered first amendment rights and that defined as illegal harassment. These people are aware of those types of laws mentioned by Shyne, and actively harass and traumatize LGBTQIA+ youth to a certain point but without straying into unlawful territory.

“There is a major box chain store known across the country for its inclusivity,” Garrett told The Blade. “It is known for having a specific section for pride, rainbow shirts, rainbow bracelets, things of this nature. In the last forty-three days we have had four reports of teen trans people who have been in this store shopping in that particular merchandise section who have been verbally attacked by adults. It is almost as if these people were stalking that section of the chain’s locations to harass people who were looking at those items.”

Garrett explained that these adults avoided being charged with hate crimes by never physically assaulting or touching their targets.

“I think these people know just how far to go without going too far which tells me that they are actually putting training into this. I’m not a cop. I could be wrong. But it’s almost just too coincidental that in all four of these instances, people never physically threatened or touched, or did anything actually illegal. They were just making comments and being disruptive and possibly stalking.”

Garrett also made the connection between these verbal attacks and a particular TikToker who made it his public mission to stake out the queer section of this chain with the intent of “hunting down LGBTQIA+ people.” These videos did get removed initially, but resurfaced at a time coinciding with documented four attacks.

One of these four victims is being featured in an article in the Advocate.

“The harassment was so severe that she attempted suicide after the interaction. Someone was following her around the store, saying that she was ‘one of those freaks who was trying to sleep with children,’ calling her a pedophile and a groomer. This was a 17-year-old child. This man followed her out of that store. Like I said, we have had four kids who have called, and one who actually attempt suicide as a result of that attack. The other three were in acute crisis and they had to be met by a psychologist immediately,”

Garrett said.

Sadly, there is only so much organizations like the Rainbow Youth Project can do for these victims.

“I am happy to say that while her situation was very serious and very dire, she is doing well but she is very isolated. Her parents do not allow her to leave home without one of them or another adult that they know so that whole family is really suffering from this entire 10 to 15 minute interaction. It is trauma,” he added.

As Republican state legislators continue to pass bills stripping LGBTQ+ rights into law in GOP-led states, many parents turn to Rainbow Youth Project for things like gender affirming care, which they cannot attain in their home states.

“The second program taking up a substantial amount of Rainbow Youth Project’s resources is the transgender non-surgical gender affirming healthcare assistance program. The program advises and assists young individuals who are underinsured or uninsured by setting them up with physician consultations and continuation of care. Like their mental health program, this assistance is nationwide, benefitting states like Oklahoma where gender affirming care is illegal. In October, the program was assisting twelve youths. Now the program assists 174 youths and has a waiting list of 223,” Garrett noted.

Despite all the help and advocacy they provide for targeted queer youth, RYP itself is not safe from virulent online hate speech and threats of violence.

“We have been called groomers and pedophiles,” said Garrett. “We had an accusation a few weeks ago that we were running a sex trafficking ring of children. We also have been accused of performing surgeries on children. These allegations are absolutely not true. We offer suicide prevention and mental health help. We do not perform surgeries on children, but Moms for Liberty and [the anti-LGBTQ+] Libs of TikTok attacked us, and said that we were indoctrinating children. People read that, and then they attacked us even though these are lies. They don’t take the time to research what we do or how we do it, but they attack us because they believe what they are seeing online.”

“Lance (RYP’s founder) does not take any bullshit. He served a ‘Cease and Desist‘ to the guy on his job hours after the tweet about sex trafficking posted. He also turned it over to the attorney general in the state of Minnesota where if you make an online statement that you cannot actually support, it is a crime. It’s a misdemeanor, and Lance actually told him in the letter, ‘I have reported you to the attorney general for the state of Minnesota and we will prosecute you.’ He removed the tweet immediately. We need to track these people down and serve them with these notice of intent to file litigation against them .”

Eric Nathan, a private investigator specializing in cybercrime, told The Blade that in many cases it is almost impossible to track down most cyberbullies, unless they link their handles directly to their personal emails, which many know not to do.

“Last year we had so many bomb threats that we had over 24 pride events that we had planned in June for young people that we had to cancel,” said Garrett. “We had to cancel every single one of them because the threats were so strong and they were coming from Libs of TikTok and Moms for Liberty people. It was just too risky to expose children to that.”

The online hate not only threatens youthful victims and supportive organizations, but misinforms parents who then are too frightened to seek assistance for their LGBTQ+ children.

“As you might or might not know, 50% of LGBTQIA+ kids who seek mental health help cannot get it. 20% of those kids cannot get it because their parents will not consent. So when we are dealing with parents trying to get their consent for treatment, the biggest barrier is fear because of what they have read online,” said Garrett. We hear things like, ‘I read on Facebook that you’re going to transition my son. You’re not going to be happy that he’s gay you’re not going be happy that my daughters is a lesbian. You want everyone to be trans now. You’re going to teach my son that he is trans and not gay when you take him to counseling.’”

“But all of that false narrative is coming from the information that is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok that they will not remove. It’s all lies, and it’s all misinformation, and they know that, but they will not remove it and that is exactly what happened with Tony Vallejo. Moms for Liberty started feeding his mom so much nonsense. They were sending pictures of mastectomies and telling her, ‘If you take your son going to counseling, they’re going to tell him he’s trans and they’re going to start doing surgeries on him.’ This woman was so convinced that if her son participated in mental health help, that they were going to put him in genital mutilation surgery.”

As in the cases of the children they help, hate against RYP often turns into physical actions.

“We have had to have all kinds of security measures since last year just going to these extremes to protect staff. Our staff has left the office and found zip ties on their car doors. Our staff has received death threats.”

“At one point, our founder was getting in his car in front of our office and a phone call came in that said, ‘you can tell him that I just saw him get into his black car with his black and gray duffel bag. He was on his phone.’ Then the law enforcement had to get involved and had to try to find out where the threats were coming from and it’s all from stuff that they are starting online.”

As in the cases of cyberbullying they deal with every day, social media platforms continue to be unhelpful in the face of hate says Garrett.

“We submitted all the tweets that were threatening us to Twitter, and they responded by suspending our founder and president’s accounts. Eventually we got them back, but that was the response. We had threatened Twitter with a lawsuit, and that was their response sort of telling us not to push it.”