Transphobic TikTok users are labelling their sexuality ‘super straight’

Cast your mind back to last summer, when TikTok trends were as simple as making Dalgona coffee or learning the “WAP” dance. Now, after a year of coronavirus lockdowns, it seems these wholesome trends have turned sour. First, the #AutismChallenge – originally intended to raise awareness – was co-opted by people mocking the disorder. Then, this week, the video-sharing platform became host to another insidious trend: the #SuperStraight ‘movement’.

If you’ve been scrolling through your FYP – where 10 minutes turns into 10 hours – you’ve likely come across the ‘super straight’ hashtag. It’s referencing a supposed new sexual orientation, which, obviously, isn’t actually new – it’s just transphobia going by a different name. Urban Dictionary eloquently defines it as “where you are straight and only attracted to real women if you're a man and real men if you're a woman, meaning that you don't date trans people because you are either born a boy or a girl and nothing can change that”.

As the derogatory label continues to garner support across the app and encourage anti-LBGTQ+ rhetoric, Dazed outlines how the aggressive movement started and explores the worrying momentum it continues to pursue.

HOW DID THIS ‘SUPER STRAIGHT’ TREND START?

For those of you who have the misfortune of being on Straight TikTok, you may be familiar with Kyle Royce. In a video filmed inside his car on February 21, the TikToker asked: “Who else is super straight?” The since-deleted clip – which has been re-uploaded across YouTube and TikTok – sees Royce tell the camera: ‘Yo guys, I made a new sexuality, it’s called super straight.”

“Since straight men like myself get called transphobic because I wouldn’t date a trans woman. They’re like, ‘Why? That’s a female’. ‘No, that’s not a real woman to me.’ So now I only date the opposite gender, women, that are born women,” he continued, “so you can’t say I’m transphobic now because that’s my sexuality.”

The video – which included the hashtags #sexuality #funny, and had over two million likes before it was deleted – has since moved over to 4chan, a platform notorious for its neo-Nazis and far-right trolls.

WHAT ARE ‘SUPER STRAIGHT’ PEOPLE INTO?

Essentially, inequality. Those who identify as ‘super straight’ appear to be heterosexual cisgender people who believe everyone is assigned their gender at birth – basically, they’re into transphobia but with a new label. Supporters of the trend are forming a hate-filled community via the hashtags #SuperStraightandProud and #StraightPride, the latter of which is a slogan that gained momentum in the late 80s and 90s as a tactic against LGBTQ+ visibility.

Since Royce posted his original video last month, the trend has garnered support across both Reddit and Twitter. One user tweeted: “I’m finally gonna do it, I’m coming out of the closet as #SuperStraight.”

HOW ARE THEY REACTING TO CRITICS?

With endless trolling. Posts on Twitter and Reddit include the mocking jibes, “Super Straight September” petioning to qualify for a month of awareness, and, “when are we organising a Super Straight Pride parade my fellow supers?”Others are campaigning for the removal of the ‘T’ in LGBTQ+ by sharing the hashtag, #GetTheTOut – they supposedly want it to be replaced with LGBS.

In response to his initial video, Royce has taken to TikTok to defend his early remarks and mock his critics. “I thought y’all said Super Straight isn’t legit,” he ‘joked’ in one video, “but how can you be Super Straightphobic if it isn’t real?” His ‘supporters’ have also accused others of being ‘superphobic’ by not accepting their preferences. 

The discriminative ideology has further evolved on 4chan, where users are linking it to neo-Nazi propaganda, despite some Super Straight suggesting a lack of affiliation. The now-removed thread on the platform’s political discussion board, /pol, saw the logo of the Schutzstaffel (SS AKA Nazi’s) added to a mock Pride flag. The thread also contained a slew of transphobic remarks, which intended to divide the LGBTQ+ community and encourage hateful speech towards trans people.

Advocates of the ‘super straight’ trend are continuing to produce trolling videos on TikTok, including an original sound by an artist called Lilcockpump, who allegedly hails from Virginia, but whose identity remains unknown. “Some songs are meant to make you laugh and others are meant to make you think and feel,” the artist says on Spotify. The lyrics to his song, titled – you guessed it – “Super Straight” poetically go: “I’m super straight, please do not hate me, I was born this way.”

Demands to remove the onslaught of ‘super straight’ discourse on social media are being emphasised with the hashtag, #SuperStraightphobicAndProud. And, just when you’d think it couldn’t get any more insane, the ‘super straight’ community has started to use a black and orange flag with a picture of male and female sex symbols interlinked to represent the movement. The irony of this short-lived malicious moment? Those are the colours of Grindr.