Just doing my duties
instant reblog. spread this.
the fuck the fuck
Reminder to everyone to stay safe out there, there are terrible people who we need to watch out for, and if anyone of these people try to interact with you reminder that this site has bullied people off before and even though it won’t get rid of them everywhere at least we could take one hunting ground away from these monsters
*Deep breath* Okay. Let’s do some fact-checking here. It’s 2:30am but I am down this rabbit hole so why the fuck not.
The source of the image itself appears to be a Reddit post from about 11 months ago, in r/antiradqueer. The same reddit user posted it in a community r/Radqueers in which it is the only post. In the original post, OP says they were “inspired” by a Tumblr post which has zero sources. The Reddit OP is fairly active on Reddit but most of their activity is pretty random and a lot is troll-ish. They do not appear to be a credible source.
The “source” links they have in tiny text at the bottom of the image are:
A random blog post
An unsourced wiki post in a custom wiki called “Paraphilia+ Flags”
Another unsourced post from the same wiki
A Wikileaks document
This last one is the only one even approaching a credible source. Wikileaks says they have verified the document, which is from the FBI Cyber Division “Innocent Images National Initiative” and was circulated in 2007. This document only includes the “boylove”, “girllove”, and “childlove” symbols, and is itself sourced from Wikipedia and other independent websites, not credible sources. It refers to only one actual case in which the “boylove” symbol was used, and a website I am not going to investigate but is again an independent website not a credible or scholarly source.
Snopes has investigated similar claims in 2018 and 2023 in which they found little evidence flags such as the ones in this post were widely used or recognised and are not “official”. They also found no connection to LGBTQ+ communities.
TL;DR version: this infographic has no credible sources for the majority of its content. The Wikileaks link gives it an air of credibility, but that document itself is also lacking sources.
Please be wary of posts like this one. Always critically check their sources and question their motivations. Are they trolling? Are they perpetuating the myth that pedophiles and the LGBTQ+ community are inextricably linked?
Yes, there are predators out there. But “infographics” like this one are fearmongering at best and malicious at worst. Your best protection is your critical thinking skills.
@l1f3r3m0v3r oo i think you should reblog this version instead
