Is the Colorado shooter “trolling” the LGBTQ community?

The suspect in the shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado, may be trolling the queen community by claiming to be nonbinary, reports Metro Weekly. ISD Digital Research Analyst Clara Martiny spoke with the outlet about the suspect’s pronouns and said that if it is “trolling” then it’s not the only example.

“The far-right sees pronouns and individuals who identify as non-binary as a subject for hate attacks and trolling. This is something that we’ve observed a rise in — targeted harassment and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric — over the past several years. The LGBTQ community, especially, has been dehumanized, dehumanized, marginalized, attacked, and even scapegoated online,” Clara said.

“Now, with this news of [Anderson Lee] Aldrich wanting to identify using they/them pronouns and their lawyers making that clear, we’ve kind of seen how bad actors who have been pushing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online have tried to take that fact and muddy the waters,” she explained. “We’ve seen them say basically, ‘Oh, well, the shooting is not a hate crime because of Aldrich’s identity,’ and whatever it actually is and whatever Aldrich actually identifies as… They’ve taken this and kind of begun trolling for the sheer purpose of confusing individuals, of deflecting the blame and deflecting the fact that they have been pushing this rhetoric for the past year, to make it unclear as to what the actual problem is.”

Clara also added that Aldrich’s supposed nonbinary identity “aligns with common right-wing negative tropes and stereotypes about LGBTQ people.”

“I think the point of trolling in general, and especially trolling the LGBTQ community, is to continue to dehumanize, to marginalize them, to make them feel less as people and make them not feel welcome, and to push them away,” she says.