With bright pink hair, Desmond Napoles waves a rainbow flag at the New York City Pride March, an act of resistance to a disinformation campaign aimed at linking members of the LGBT+ community to pedophilia.
• Also read: LGBTQ+ Communities: US Supreme Court ruling could result in toxic climate in Canada
• Also read: Target removes items celebrating the LGBT+ community after threats against its employees
In June, a fake picture surfaced on the Internet. She pretended that an adult attending the Pride march in California wore a T-shirt with 16-year-old Desmond’s face and the worrying caption “Transgender kids are sexy.”
In the original photo, published by a Southern California newspaper in 2021, the man strutted in an all-white T-shirt.
The photoshopped image, which circulated on social media, sparked a flurry of hateful comments accusing the man of pedophilia and reflecting a far-right conspiracy theory that members of the LGBT+ community are psychologically manipulating children to sexually abuse them.
Many netizens have called for the man in the photo to be killed or castrated.
“They used (the image) to portray LGBT+ Americans as ‘predators,’ and they used my face,” Desmond Napoles, a stylist, model and activist, told AFP he felt “disgusted.”
The person in the photo, identified by AFP as a middle-aged gay man from California, expressed “surprise” when a friend showed her one of the offending messages.
“I’m disgusted by people accusing us of being child molesters. This has to stop,” he continued in a Zoom interview with AFP, demanding anonymity and respect for his privacy for his safety.
He also expressed his fear that the case would “get bigger.”
The barrage of threats Desmond Napoles and the Californian have faced highlights the real damage being caused by the rise of anti-LGBT+ misinformation.
“hate speech”
This comes as anti-LGBT+ rhetoric mounts in the country.
These include false accusations of pedophilia, an avalanche of anti-transgender laws enacted by conservative elected officials, and targeted boycotts of brands like Target supermarkets that have supported LGBT+ causes.
Last month, the US Supreme Court also authorized certain companies to exclude LGBT+ customers on religious grounds for the first time.
“There has been a rise in hate speech linking LGBT+ people to child abuse,” confirms Imran Ahmed, director of the US Center for Combating Online Hate (CCHR).
“Hateful people spread these lies just to dehumanize and scare members of the LGBT+ community, and this is leading to an alarming rise in violence in the real world,” he said.
Desmond Napoles’ fake photo first appeared on niche forum 4chan before circulating on Twitter and TikTok.
The photo “continued to spread. We didn’t know who was behind it or what was going on,” says Desmond.
“It’s heartbreaking”
To add to the horror, T-shirts and other merchandise featuring Desmond Napoles and the slogan “Transgender Kids Are Sexy” suddenly went up for sale online.
Dubious websites that specialize in on-demand printing of domain names registered abroad advertise it.
Desmond’s mother, Wendy, says she spent hours asking these websites to remove the merchandise, to no avail.
“I’ve sent emails saying, ‘You have a picture of my child on your shirt and that’s unacceptable,'” she told AFP.
Many of these websites appear to be related as they have a similar layout, similar ads and share the same contact information.
When asked by AFP, these sites, which some customers commented also sold stolen works, did not immediately respond.
They illustrate efforts to monetize anti-LGBT+ misinformation.
According to a CCHR study, the top five accounts that spread discourse about the LGBT+ community and the manipulation of children for sexual assault generated $6.4 million in advertising revenue on Twitter each year.
For Wendy, it’s particularly hurtful that Desmond’s image was used to incite hatred and “make people believe something that isn’t true.”
“They use it without realizing that there is a person behind the picture that they can hurt,” she points out. “It’s heartbreaking.”