Blazing pink hair, Desmond Napoles waves a rainbow flag at the New York City Pride March, an act of resistance to a disinformation campaign seeking to link members of the LGBT+ community with pedophilia.
• Read also: LGBTQ+ communities: U.S. Supreme Court ruling could create toxic climate in Canada
• Read also: Target removes items celebrating the LGBT+ community after threats against its employees
In June, a faked image surfaced on the internet. She pretended that an adult participating in the Pride march in California was wearing a T-shirt with the face of 16-year-old Desmond and a worrying inscription: “Transgender children are sexy”.
In the original photo, published in 2021 by a Southern California newspaper, the man paraded in a completely white T-shirt.
The photoshopped image, which circulated on social media, sparked a barrage of hateful comments accusing the man of pedophilia and echoing a far-right conspiracy theory that members of the LGBT+ community psychologically manipulate children with a view to sexually abusing them.
Many netizens have called for the death or castration of the man in the photo.
“They used (the image) to portray Americans from the LGBT+ community as ‘predators’ and they used my face,” lambasted Desmond Napoles, stylist, model and activist, who told AFP to have felt “disgust”.
The person in the photo, identified by AFP as a middle-aged gay man from California, expressed his “astoundment” when a friend showed him one of the offensive messages.
“I am sickened by people who accuse us of being child molesters. This must stop,” he continued in a Zoom interview with AFP, requesting anonymity for his safety and respect for his privacy.
He also expressed his fear that the case would “get bigger”.
The flood of threats Desmond Napoles and the California man are facing highlights the real damage caused by the rise in anti-LGBT+ misinformation.
“Hate Speech”
This comes as anti-LGBT+ rhetoric intensifies in the country.
It includes, beyond the false allegations of pedophilia, an avalanche of laws against transgender people brought by conservative elected officials and targeted boycotts of brands, like that of Target supermarkets, which have supported LGBT + causes.
Last month, the United States Supreme Court also authorized for the first time certain businesses to exclude LGBT + customers on religious grounds.
“There has been a surge in hate speech that associates LGBT+ people with child abuse,” confirms Imran Ahmed, director of the US Center for Combating Online Hate (CCHR).
“Hateful people are spreading these lies simply to dehumanize and scare members of the LGBT+ community, and this is translating into an alarming rise in real-world violence,” he said.
The faked photo of Desmond Napoles first appeared on niche forum 4chan before circulating on Twitter and TikTok.
The photo “kept spreading. We didn’t know who was behind it or what was going on,” Desmond said.
“It’s heartbreaking”
To add to the horror, t-shirts and other merchandise featuring Desmond Napoles with the slogan ‘transgender kids are sexy’ have suddenly gone on sale online.
Dubious sites specializing in printing on demand, domain names registered abroad, advertise it.
Desmond’s mother, Wendy, says she spent hours asking these sites to remove the merchandise, with little success.
“I sent emails, saying, ‘You have a picture of my child on your T-shirt, and that’s unacceptable,'” she told AFP.
Many of these sites appear to be related as they have similar layout and advertisements and have the same contact details.
Asked by AFP, these sites, which according to some customer comments have also sold stolen works, did not respond immediately.
They illustrate efforts to profit financially from anti-LGBT+ misinformation.
The five largest accounts relaying speeches that link the LGBT + community and manipulation of children for sexual assault generated $ 6.4 million a year in advertising revenue on Twitter, according to a study by CCHR.
For Wendy, it is particularly hurtful that Desmond’s image has been used to incite hatred and “make people believe something that isn’t true.”
“They use it without thinking that there is a person behind the image that they can hurt,” she points out. “It’s heartbreaking.”