The man who earned scorn for jacking up the price of Daraprim, the only approved drug for a rare and sometimes deadly parasitic infection, and unapologetically raising its price more than fiftyfold, is now trolling the LGBTQ community with a make-believe McGuffin called “Clovergender.”
On January 4, Shkreli urged Twitter followers to “please spread clovergender awareness.” Clovergender is an invented name for adults who claim to be “a child trapped in a man’s body who is attracted to other children.” In short, it’s pedophilia disguised as an LGBTQ-like identity.
It’s also a hoax. Snopes traced the origins of the phenomenon that is certainly mocking legitimate claims by transgender and gender non-conforming people to 4chan.
In a post on December 31, users revealed the plot:
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“We’re creating a new gender to trolls SJWs [social justice warriors] with.” The post shows the birth of the term “clovergender” and phony preferred pronouns such as “cl / clir /climself.”
“We will be trolling on Tumblr and Facebook,” wrote the anonymous user.
There’s now also a Facebook page. It features disturbing images of grown men and little girls and sick slogans like, “It’s not that I don’t want to grow up. It’s that I can’t.”
Shkreli himself hasn’t perpetuated the hoax on Twitter because the social media company suspended his account for harassing a Teen Vogue writer.
But as the hoax has spread online, via Twitter and other social media, people have reacted to it with disgust and shock.
"Excuse me officer I'm actually clovergender. Have fun in jail bigot for trying to seperate me and my 10 year old girlfriend." pic.twitter.com/LwNYjMBUHz
— Lauren Southern (@Lauren_Southern) January 4, 2017
In sharing this with you, the aim is not to give this hoax more attention but to alert you and others to its potentially damaging impact on the LGBTQ community. For more, read the article posted by Snopes.
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