The year of 2017 did not get off to the best of starts for trans and gender nonconforming people. 2017 wasn’t even five days old when a dangerously savage smear campaign raised its head from the bowels of the internet. It’s not the typical kind of trolling trans people have experienced before. It’s dangerously different.

Trigger warnings for child sexual abuse, pedophilia normalization, gaslighting, transmisogyny, and gender misappropriation.

A new and repugnant trend of pedophiles claiming to be “clovergender” people have surfaced and are now using Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr calling for the acceptance of them as a valid gender identity. They are using hashtags that are generally associated with LGBTQI people such as #NoH8, #LGBT, #LoveIsLove, as well as others to augment their viewing audience and make themselves known to the world. They claim to be a ‘forgotten gender’ and have used repulsive precedent such as Mid-East child-brides as justification of their perverse views of the world.

An article on snopes.com dated January 6th was quick to point out that this was a patently false claim, and even supplied a screen shot with the origin of this drivel, dated 12/31/2016. Just prior to that article’s release, a non-binary friend posted this in their Facebook feed:

The source of this perverse drivel appears to me the infamous trolling site 4chan, and the channers created it with a goal in mind that goes deeper than to just annoy the so-called Social Justice Warriors. Their exact target: Transgender and Non-Binary individuals. What they are attempting to do with this is to prey on the false fears that trans women are simply “men in dresses who wish to prey on young girls in women’s-only spaces”, an argument that trans-exclusionary radical feminists have touted for decades.

The accusations against trans women behaving this way is simply not true, and never was. However with North Carolina’s passing of HB2, and the direct economic impact of such a bigoted law being passed, it was becoming more and more obvious that the fears being touted by anti-trans activists simply was not going to work. After Donald Trump’s unexpected win in the 2016 Presidential race, religious conservatives and far-right hate groups are deciding to try the same thing in multiple other states, citing the Trump win as a mandate for conservative Christian values.

How could similar legislation be passed elsewhere when HB2 not only failed but is in the process of being repealed by North Carolina’s incoming democratic governor? The right-wing would have to seriously demonize gender nonconforming people. Enter the channers. They are giving the incoming regimes exactly what they need: A ‘gender identity’ which is invalid, dangerous, perverted, and sick – which is exactly how the religious right sees trans women.

As these ‘clovergender’ trolls fan out across the internet, they are actively destroying the credibility of not only trans and gender nonconforming people, but gay, lesbian, and bisexual people as well. The entire LGBTQI spectrum is under fire because according to “Christian” beliefs, we are already living an abominable sinful ‘lifestyle’.

Clovergender people are not –and never were– a valid gender identity, or sexual orientation. They are people attempting to re-brand pedophilia into something that can be normalized, and are using existing calls for acceptance and inclusion from LGBTQI people as a springboard. It’s beyond disgusting.

Everyone needs to call these sickos out when they’re encountered, and let them know that they are not welcome to play their revolting game with you, or anyone else.

[Fellow trans people, feel free to use the #NotOurGender hashtag when they come to troll you.]