How TikTok Platforms Transphobia
There are subtle and coded ways in which transphobic ideas make their way into the fastest growing social media app in the world
In April 2021, Lulu Ntuthela went to a nearby drinking spot with a friend where he met a man, went home with him and by the next morning was dead and buried in a shallow grave in the man’s backyard. According to reporting done by Checkpoint, Ntuthela met Luvuyo Jonas on a night out after which they mutually agreed to go back to Jonas’ house where it is assumed that they engaged in some version of sexual intercourse. Jonas was reportedly intoxicated that night and became enraged the morning after when he ‘realized’ that Ntuthela is a man.
This rage drove Jonas to murder Ntuthela in cold blood after which he buried the body in a shallow grave in his backyard and attempted to burn his blood-stained blankets, sheets and a mattress. Ntuthela’s family reported him missing and Jonas’ family also chose to report him to the cops telling the police that they suspected he has done something because his room smelled like blood and he has burnt his mattress. Ntuthela’s body was later discovered by the police in that shallow grave.
The portion of this story and certainly the part that is pervasive across many stories of the killing of queer femmes and transwomen is the justification that Jonas gave for killing Ntuthela. He said he was ‘drunk’ and was ‘tricked’ into taking Ntuthela home under the false pretense that Ntuthela is a woman. And because he was ‘tricked’, he then felt justified in killing him as he felt violated. Jonas’ thinking is not new, different, fringe or out of the ordinary. The overwhelming majority of cases where transwomen are killed, the perpetrator in the case will site how they were ‘tricked’ by this person and hence were justified in killing them.
The idea that transwomen or femme queer people are tricking straight men is clearly an excuse used to mask their transphobia and deal with the shame of being attracted to transwomen and queer femmes. But what does this have to do with TikTok?
Over the past two years there has been a steady rise in the popularity of femme queer creators on South African TikTok. The most popular of these creators are; Banele ‘Moghelingz’ Ndaba, Kamohelo ‘Kamo WordWide’ Pule, Oratile ‘Coachella Randy’ Masedi , Kagiso Mogola and Nkulukelo ‘Nkuley’ Masemola. TikTok has a ‘stitch’ and ‘duet’ function in which one person can create a video alongside someone else’s video (duet) or have someone else’s video start and then add their own video at the end (stitch).
It is important that to note that all the creators mentioned earlier were assigned male at birth, this is only mentioned because it is important in this context. Although they now identify across the queer spectrum, the common feature is that they are all femme presenting on TikTok. This is not just in terms of mannerism or voice pitch but they go the extra mile of wearing makeup that is usually associated with women, long hair and clothing that is generally deemed to be ‘women’s clothes’.
When you open the stitches and duets of these creators, you come across a disturbing trend of straight men who say that if they met one of these creators in a club or drinking spot and they were drunk they would take them home. Some mention something along the lines of if there were no ‘women’ willing to go home with them at the end of a night out they would ‘settle’ for ‘someone like this’ provided they are ‘drunk enough’.
What these men are admitting to is being sexually attracted to transwomen and femme gay men but adding an important caveat that this attraction only exists because they are being ‘tricked’ and that they would only act upon this attraction if they were ‘drunk enough’. There is very clear correlation between the rhetoric that transwomen and femme gay men are tricksters and them ending up dead. The fact that the men who kill transwomen and femme people justify their actions by saying they were tricked is reason enough to fight to end this kind of rhetoric.
Going back to the stiches and duets that are created in response to the videos posted by the creators mentioned earlier; these creators have large followings that in aggregate exceed a million. What this means is, if someone duets a video made by one of these creators, the algorithm will feed the video to many more people because of the popularity of the original video. And because the algorithm promotes these videos (along with all other stiches and duets that don’t have the same harmful messaging), TikTok is actively platforming transphobia.
It is acknowledged that the dangerous videos created by these men where they accuse these popular femme creators of tricking them does not violate any of the TikTok community guidelines. Because the language is so heavily coded and requires a cultural competency to decode the messaging, there is no way TikTok can police such messaging. Even if one tries to report these videos, the person who would be reviewing the complaint would likely see nothing wrong with the content and would thus have no justification to take it down.
The issue we face is complex and multi-layered; on one hand is a harmful message that has literally resulted in the deaths of many transwomen and femme people. On the other is an app that promotes such messaging that is a tacit threat that is so coded that it virtually can never be policed.
