Marvel filmmaker Taika Waititi has come under fire after his previous tweets deemed as anti-trans resurfaced online.
The Thor: Love and Thunder director’s unearthed tweets from 10 years ago appeared to show the 46-year-old shame beauty pageant contestants, the trans community and Caitlyn Jenner.
“No disrespect to men who want to be/dress as women. I should have just said their makeup looks manly. Also no disrespect to meth users,” he tweeted back in 2013. The tweet was still on his page at the time of publication.
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The “meth user” comment stemmed from Waititi’s previous tweet at the time when he appeared to criticise beauty pageant contestants.
“Combining heels and bikini whilst plastering your face in orange so you resemble a leather pudding is totes empowering,” he wrote.
While that tweet has since been deleted, the Twitter thread remains on the platform. In the exchange with another user, who called him out for “sl-t-shaming, transphobia, and immense misogyny”, Waititi appeared to double down on his remarks.
“My trans friends can walk in heels but you’re right, actual kathoey are better looking,” the director wrote. ‘Kathoey’ is a word used for trans women in Thailand.
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In 2015, Waititi also tweeted about Caitlyn Jenner in which he deadnamed the former Olympian – deadnaming is the act of referring to a transgender person by a name they used prior to transitioning.
“We’ll all be wearing #JeSuis[Caitlyn]Jenner badges by Monday, he wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
The director’s tweets come as a surprise to many given Waititi was praised for his LGBTQ+ storytelling both in Thor: Love And Thunder and the TV series Our Flag Means Death.
In July, the filmmaker explained to Out magazine why he included LGBTQ+ storylines in his projects.
“We’re all queer. Just to varying degrees of where we are on the [sexuality] spectrum, I think. I think, innately, humans have all got some degree of queerness in them,” he told the outlet.
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And of his new gay icon status, Waititi said: “I love it. I mean, I’m just amazed to hear what my friends think of me. I’ll be like, “Hey guys, you’re looking at a little gay icon over here’ and it feels really amazing.”
Another tweet from April 2015 deadnamed Caitlyn Jenner days after she came out as a trans woman. It also referenced the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terror attack in Paris, with Waititi saying: “We’ll all be wearing #JeSuis[Caitlyn]Jenner badges by Monday.”
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