Article written for Carleton University’s J-School in the spring of 2021

[Unpublished]

Tik Tok has become the breeding ground for what’s being labeled as a new sexuality entitled, “super straight,” which has since received heavy backlash from social media users who argue that the concept perpetuates transphobia.

In early March, Tik Tok user Kyle Royce posted a video to the app announcing that he identified as super straight and created the term as a way to stop being labeled as transphobic for not wanting to date transwomen. “Now, I’m super straight,” he says in the now-deleted video. “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.”

Although Tik Tok has now deleted his account and previous videos, the term struck a chord with many users on the platform. It began to grow on Tik Tok and spread further to other social platforms, such as Reddit Twitter, and 4chan.

Accounts and community forums related to being super straight populated these websites, with members having created a flag to represent this identity online. However, many groups under this topic have now been removed, such as on Reddit, which banned its r/SuperStraight subreddit for “promoting hate towards a marginalized or vulnerable group.”

This ban occurred after it was reported that its members were developing the super straight movement into one of neo-Nazism. Many Twitter users have been able to capture screenshots before the ban of these forums, which present examples of far-right Nazism in connection to the super straight trend. Images of the super straight black and orange-coloured flag displaying the Nazi Party symbol SS, as well as of statements instigating an SS pride month, can be seen across Twitter.

With the growing presence of the super straight movement, transgender people and their allies are concerned that this trend is instilling transphobic notions online, which could translate to their gender identity being invalidated beyond the screen. Aida Kebick, a student at McMaster University, has struggled as a transwoman her entire life, saying, “It is exhausting to have your identity and existence in general be questioned and debated 24/7.”

“Trans people are often vilified in every aspect of our lives, but especially when it comes to dating, she says. Kebick says that once transgender people began to explain their hardships in relation to dating and relationships, those who identify with their gender assigned at birth “twisted our words to make it seem like we were calling everyone’s preferences transphobic.”

Kalix Jacobson, a non-binary student at Hebrew Union College in New York, says that while preferences in dating are acceptable, categorizing people on the basis of their being transgender is another story. “The idea of only dating someone because they are cis is problematic because it goes beyond genital preference into straight-up discrimination,” they say. “What’s not fine is assuming the parts of a trans person as basis to not date them.”

Jacobson also says that the definition of super straight has gaps that don’t make sense in correlation with what the movement is trying to demonstrate. “Under the super straight definition, men would be okay dating trans men because they’re ‘biological women,’ ” they say.

Transgender individuals continue to experience discrimination as a community and this evidence is revealed in the aspect of dating. In 2018, researchers conducted a study at Queen’s University, surveying 958 adults of varying sexual identities. When asked if they would consider having a romantic partner who’s transgender, 87.5 per cent of participants said they wouldn’t. Out of the 12 per cent that would consider dating someone transgender, 3.1 per cent were straight men and women, and were the least willing against other sexuality groups.