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Years after taking heat from viewers and employees for backing Dave Chappelle’s transphobic specials, Netflix is now facing down a stream of online rage for being too pro-trans, apparently. This week, a boycott campaign took off on X, spearheaded by far-right transphobe Chaya “Libs of TikTok” Raichik, over the presence of children’s series and movies that feature such horrific scenes as a boy wearing a dress (gasp!), a transgender character talking to reporters (egad!), and a kid telling a robot about the term nonbinary (gadzooks!!). This has escalated to accusations of Netflix “grooming children,” which have been boosted by X owner Elon Musk and by elected Republican lawmakers. (One of them is now threatening to drag Netflix executives in front of Congress, while Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has referred to a cartoon series as “abuse” and promoted her law to ban gender-affirming care.) As of Friday, various X accounts are continuing to air out what they find so objectionable on Netflix, from its production deal with the Obamas to its employees, while promoting alternative streaming services and programming to their rage-baited followers. The corporation itself has not commented on the matter.
Netflix boycott threats are a common tactic on the right, as ironically evidenced by Raichik herself, who’s been sharing screenshots of old Charlie Kirk tweets calling the company “a pedophile streaming platform.” (One user who claimed to be canceling their subscription was revealed to have said they’d previously canceled their Netflix account last year, and the year before that.) The online anti-trans fury does feel a touch more powerful this round, with sympathetic leaders in government who will gladly join something as stupid as the brigade against Cracker Barrel’s logo change. But, considering Netflix’s own right-wing bona fides, will this actually lead to an ideological protest on par with the Disney+/Hulu cancellations that spurred the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel’s show? Here’s an explainer for how this campaign against Netflix kicked off, what it really means for the streaming business, and why this may not have the oft-noted “Bud Light” impact.
Man, how did we get here?
This all began Monday, when Raichik shared a clip from the Netflix Original animated series Dead End: Paranormal Park, which ran for only two seasons and was canceled in 2023—but which, Raichik incorrectly posited, was being actively “promoted” on Netflix Kids. The 40-second segment involves a character finding affirmation in their trans identity, in a monologue that ends with another character making an unrelated joke. Raichik, whose posts have long inspired vigilante threats against schools and hospitals with trans-inclusive policies, then targeted show creator Hamish Steele, an award-winning trans cartoonist in London who’d referred to Charlie Kirk as a “random nazi” in a post-assassination tweet. (Steele, who has locked their X account, posted about receiving “extremely nasty weird homophobic and antisemitic emails” in the aftermath and is now taking a social media break.)
Elon Musk hopped on to say that the perfectly anodyne Dead End clip was “not ok,” and Raichik claimed soon after that the Tesla CEO had ended his Netflix subscription. By Tuesday, Libs of TikTok had posted a screenshot of her cancel-confirmation email and encouraged others to do the same. The voice actor behind the Dead End character responded directly to Raichik, speaking to his own trans identity and writing on X, “you can fear monger all you want, but kids & parents have told me [the show] saved their lives!!”
… That was it? A clip from an already-ended show that wasn’t even being promoted got Libs of TikTok all hopping mad?
Well, after the Musk boost, she felt empowered to attack other movies and shows, however flimsily. On Wednesday, she highlighted Transformer: Earthspark, an animated kids’ sitcom that was commissioned for Paramount+ in 2022. A Strawberry Shortcake TV movie from 2023 (which was also not a Netflix Original) earned her anger for featuring a male character who wears a dress. Another long-canceled Netflix show, the 2020–21 Baby-Sitters Club revival, came to her attention for a scene where a girl corrects hospital staff on her bedridden friend’s gender identity. And then Raichik went after another Paramount+ original, 2022’s Monster High: The Movie, which is reportedly streaming on Netflix U.K. and had committed the sin of having two characters introduce each other with their preferred pronouns.
Really, these are harmless and brief segments weaponized on behalf of a conservative movement that’s been seeking to erase transgender identity altogether, from pseudoscientific efforts to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors to scrubbing trans Americans from historical monuments. To these cruel people, the very depiction of a transgender person is tantamount to indoctrination, as is the (to them) inconvenient reality that young people do experience gender dysphoria and can understand the concept of gender fluidity. If you’ve imbibed enough far-right propaganda to become a J.K. Rowling type who believes that top surgery is “mutilation,” then anything about trans people will make you feel upset.
I seem to recall that Elon Musk is estranged from his trans daughter.
Indeed, and that’s spurred his mission to defeat the “woke mind virus.” He’s made nice with quite a few other transphobes lately, including Graham Linehan, the Father Ted and IT Crowd creator who was briefly arrested in London last month for tweets that invited readers to “punch” trans women “in the balls” if they’re situated in women-oriented spaces. (Linehan later wrote on Substack that this was “a serious point made with a joke” and “not a call to violence.”) Linehan, who has a lengthy record of transphobic rhetoric, announced his own Netflix cancellation on X in a Wednesday tweet that was celebrated by Musk. More paid-blue-check accounts who lied that Netflix is losing “millions” of customers joined in the fun throughout Wednesday, while God’s Not Dead actor Kevin Sorbo and his wife posted videos praising Raichik and Musk, with the former using the opportunity to also promote the “Christian publishing company” Brave Books—which happens to have a paid streaming service for kids.
Ah yes, it’s grifting time.
Better believe it! The Christian production company Angel Studios (best known for Sound of Freedom) soon began trending on X, as paid-check accounts recommended its streaming platform as a Netflix alternative. More enterprising users dug in and found that the Texan venture capital firm Gigafund, known for employing many Musk lackeys who’ve invested in his enterprises (SpaceX, the Boring Company, Neuralink), had helmed a multimillion-dollar fundraising round for Angel Studios back in 2022. Some of the more Christian nationalist types on X have objected to Angel’s history with Mormon founders, however. (Notably, no one seems to be recommending Truth Social’s homegrown streaming service. Sad!)
Eeesh, what a weird social network.
Right? You could see more evidence of this throughout the week, as other activists dug into every Netflix corner they could to “expose” the company as an indoctrination factory. One tweeted out a trans-character-centered article from Netflix’s in-house publication, Tudum, posted earlier this year in honor of International Trans Day of Visibility. This user also shared a May 2024 Netflix press release that touted its Fund for Creative Equity’s support of the Transgender Film Center’s Career Development Lab. Raichik, meanwhile, extended her purview to target other Netflix titles like the popular 2023 movie Leave the World Behind, an Obama-produced feature that she accused of “hating white people” despite including many prominent white people in its cast. From there, individual Netflix investors who’d worked in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were singled out as part and parcel of a “child grooming epidemic.” Anti-DEI crusader and Meta employee Robby Starbuck was mortified by the fact that various Netflix executives attended a corporate workshop in 2019 that centered on privilege and allyship.
I don’t get it, though. Hasn’t Netflix taken a right-wing tack recently?
Correct! CEO Ted Sarandos has dined at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump. Netflix signed a deal with reactionary comic Tony Hinchcliffe not long after the Kill Tony founder made that racist joke about Puerto Ricans at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. The streamer also partnered last year with Shane Gillis, the stand-up comedian who was infamously fired from Saturday Night Live in 2019 after his racist anti-Asian podcast segments were unearthed. (Gillis continues to hang out with outright racists on his podcasts, and Netflix has produced other stand-up specials with open anti-Asian racism.)
Chairman Reed Hastings may have inadvertently fueled another conservative cancellation cycle last year when he donated to Kamala Harris’ campaign, but he’s consistently defended Dave Chappelle’s transphobia, and his company has frequently backed “anti-woke” entertainment like the reality show Snowflake Mountain and a whole host of stand-up specials whose titles riff on the onetime buzzword triggered. In 2022, after Elon Musk accused Netflix of harboring the “woke mind virus,” company leadership dropped certain deals with Black producers like Ava DuVernay and Ibram X. Kendi.
These guys get mad about Netflix pretty often, don’t they?
They do, which is why I’m not convinced that this round will leave any lasting damage on the service. The right-wing outrage over the 2020 film Cuties revved up many of the same talking points we see now, and multiple surveys demonstrate that Netflix’s customer base remains overwhelmingly liberal. (Notably, Tesla stock also took a little dive on Friday, perhaps because Musk’s crusade is reawakening shareholder fears that he’s engaging in politics again.)
All of which is to say: Conservatives only have so many accounts they can cancel, and the Streisand effect may just spur liberal viewers to check out the shows and movies that the far-right is binge-watching for content.
