https://www.businessinsider.com/qanon-conspiracy-theory-covid-19-vaccines-turn-kids-trans-gay-2021-2
False allegations that COVID-19 vaccines turn children gay or trans are spreading rapidly on Telegram, the messaging-based social-media app.
Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian, an Iranian cleric who is known for spreading false medical claims, appeared to be the first to popularize the bogus claim in a post on Tuesday for his more than 210,000 Telegram followers, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Following Tabrizian's Telegram post, popular figures within the world of QAnon, the baseless far-right conspiracy theory alleging Donald Trump is fighting to destroy a cabal of pedophiles, began to discuss the baseless claim. Influential QAnon channels, including one with more than 182,000 subscribers, began circulating the idea, using convoluted and inaccurate logic to question whether vaccinations could impact the gender and sexuality of children. These posts have tens of thousands of views.
MelQ, a QAnon influencer with 57,000 Telegram subscribers, shared a news article that referenced Tabrizian's comments. The post, in which the influencer shared a conspiracy theory claiming that vaccines in general cause "Gender confusion," has 71,000 views as of Friday morning. A Telegram representative did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
There is no link between vaccinations and queerness, medical experts told Insider. Still, these claims continue to spread on Telegram among QAnon conspiracy theorists who cited comments from Tabrizian, whose field of medical advice is considered a threat by Iranian health officials.
"There is certainly evidence that shows unvaccinated children are more likely to catch things like measles, but there is no relationship between vaccines or not being vaccinated and being queer or transgender," Dr. David Verhoeven, an expert in virology and professor of Vet Microbiology & Preventive Medicine at Iowa State University, told Insider.
Medical experts say there is no link between vaccinations and queerness
Some of the claims say that the COVID-19 vaccines turn children queer or trans by somehow activating a recessive "queer" or "trans" gene passed down by the parents.
According to Verhoeven, this theory is false for multiple reasons, the first being the vaccines don't integrate into human DNA at all and only activate the body's immune system against the coronavirus.
"The only thing within the body that the vaccine 'turns on' is the immune system," Verhoeven said. "Since there is no 'gay gene' anyways, there is no connection between getting vaccinated for COVID or any other pathogen and 'turning' queer or transgender."
While researchers have tried for decades to find a specific gene that makes a person queer or transgender, no such gene has ever been found.
The other portion of the theory asserts the combination of the vaccine coupled with soy products in our food supply would lead to more children being queer or trans.
Again, Verhoeven said there is no evidence to back these claims, as certain East Asian communities have historically eaten many soy products with no disproportionate rates of queer or trans people.
"If we can stop looking at being queer or gay as some defect or disease that needs to be cured or prevented and just be accepting of diversity, society would certainly benefit," Verhoeven told Insider.
The QAnon community has played a major role in spreading COVID-19 misinformation
germany anti-lockdown protest qanon
Mostly right-wing protesters, including a young woman wearing a QAnon shirt, observe riot police clearing Unter den Linden avenue during protests against coronavirus-related restrictions and government policy on August 29, 2020 in Berlin, Germany.
QAnon influencers, like other far-right activists, have used their platforms to promote baseless conspiracy theories about COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.
Marc-André Argentino, a PhD candidate at Concordia University researching extremism, wrote in an August report in The Conversation that the online QAnon ecosystem applied its "conspiracy mentality to the coronavirus crisis," beginning with the movement's belief that the virus was a hoax created to damage Trump's reelection chances. Even "Q," the anonymous figure whose cryptic messages originated the conspiracy-theory movement, has made false claims about the virus in posts on 8kun, a message board known for misinformation that's popular on the far-right.
Throughout the spring of 2020, the QAnon community merged with other COVID-19 deniers, most of whom come from wellness and pseudoscience spheres, a September 2020 BBC News investigation found. Together, these groups have protested government-mandated lockdown orders in the US and Europe throughout the pandemic.
MelQ, one of the QAnon influencers who spread Tabrizian's claims on Telegram, was one of the major proponents of coronavirus disinformation.
Since the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were announced in December, conspiracy theories alleging these shots cause various health problems continue to go viral on social media.
Facebook has since cracked down on vaccine misinformation, after false claims that the COVID-19 shots caused infertility circulated widely on the company's flagship app and on Instagram.
let's apply what we have learned in the last few years, in the comments below...
It is funny that this whole trans thing took off right after the kids got the jab. Not a peep before COVID. Just saying.
I've been monitoring the trans community chatter for 40 years... ask me anything
How has it changed over that time span? Do you believe it's a legit mental health condition in some people or do there seem to consistently be accompanying environmental/social/other factors?
well the big change is in the language.
they used to call themselves "trans-sexual" and now they say "trans-gender"
they have honed their propaganda game, in the same way as the homosexual community did,
for example, "homo-phobia" morphed into "trans-phobia"
their attitudes seem to have gotten more confrontational and militant.
they have circle-jerked themselves into believing all of their various slogans, such as
"trans women are real women"
they legit see straight men as being "oppressive" by "excluding" them from their dating pool.
they are famous for saying things like,
"if you don't want to date any particular trans girl, that fine... but if you don't want to date any trans girls at all, you should really stop and think about your transphobia"
like, they just don't seem to understand or accept that straight men are straight, and will not spend a moment entertaining the idea of dating a trans girl, when theres actual women available. they want you to think about how being straight excuses them, and how that should make you feel bad for them.
they seem to have asserted themselves into women's spaces, where they appear to have the motivation of voyeurism.
one notable incident involved a TIM (trans identifying male) inviting himself to a breastfeeding support group, and rationalized his unwanted presence in this group, by saying he needed to experience this kind of thing, to truly be a woman.
i do believe it is a mental condition.
so much so that i would not willingly associate with any trans person, knowing that the trans aspect of their personality is just the tip of the iceberg of toxic and crazy that lurks beneath the surface.
i have read all sorts of rationales.
one guy knew he was a female because he liked certain textures, like silk, and velvet, and lace, and satin.
one of their trans mantras is that "gender is a social construct",
and then we have this boy here who has a texture fetish, that he assumes only a female would have.
the entire medical field has gone crazy, trying to accommodate the crazy.
they no longer say "pregnant women", they say "pregnant people" to be more inclusive toward all of the men who keep getting pregnant.
how do men get pregnant, you ask?
oh its easy. you start with a person who was "assigned to be a female at birth". then you convince her that she is actually a man. and if she gets pregnant, then you tell her that men get pregnant.
and, because its coming from a doctor, it sounds reasonable.
of course men can get pregnant.
what doctor is going to want to argue with a pregnant person who insists they are a man?
they don't get paid enough to deal with that kind of shit.
so there are 2 aspects that should be considered.
theres the first aspect, where you don't really feel like the sex you were assigned at birth,
and theres theres the other aspect, which is they actually do feel like the opposite sex.
the idea of "feeling like" the opposite sex, is as cringe as a white man thinking he is black.
like, it would literally be impossible for you to experience life as the opposite sex, or another race, and here you are "appropriating" that experience,
... because you feel like it?
... because you are living life as your so-called "true self"?
i have a current working hypothesis that the CHO cells they use to make vaccines, cause causing an epidemic of PCOS in women. and because PCOS attacks the ovaries, it causes all kinds of hormonal problems for these women, namely that they start exhibiting male characteristics, such as facial hair, and/or male pattern balding.
i think there is also some munchausen by proxy going on.
for example, i know a family that got weirdly excited at the prospect of their young son growing up to be gay, because he was playing with dolls or some other activity that was "social constructed" to be a stereotypical female activity.
thank God he recently announced he has a girlfriend.
Can you describe the normalization of surgery as the best/only treatment? It seems there are remnants of disagreement there (it used to be you had to go through a lot of interviews and reviews before a surgery would be performed).
What happened to the disagreement? One of the earliest trans persons I was aware of was Dani Bunton and it seemed like they regretted the surgery (something to the effect of, I could have just worn dresses or something), though that may have been removed from the Internet now.
Do you see the pendulum swinging back towards non-surgical ways of helping people with the condition?
No, this started in 2016. Right after they shot that gorilla in the zoo, the next thing up was trans people starting with the bathrooms. This was going before convid.