Hell hath no fury like a Twitter scorned. Over the past few months, despite his best efforts — despite, more importantly, his lack of any wrongdoing whatsoever — actor Kit Connor has been dragged through the fiery depths of Elon Musk’s recent acquisition.

Such was the severity of the flaming or dragging — Internet slang for “targeted harassment” — that, on the 12th of September, the young actor was driven to the point of deplatforming himself. What should have been a moment of celebration for the breakout star of Heartstopper (2022) — a Netflix series being lauded for its authentic portrayal of the LGBT experience — had been unceremoniously besieged by the pitchforks and torches of the Twitter mob. One would be forgiven for jumping to conclusions about the villains in this series of unfortunate events — right-wing trolls, anti-“groomer” evangelists, and so forth. One would be wrong, however. In the case of Kit Connor, in true Halloween fashion, the calls were coming from inside the house.

One can trace the origins of the controversy — the nontroversy — back to early May, when the Heartstopper hashtag began to fill with fan-fiction-esque speculations as to Kit Connor’s sexuality. Appearing on a podcast, the young actor — an eighteen-year-old — had expressed reservations about having his sexuality scrutinised in the public eye. So-called “fans” were affronted and aggrieved.

In the ensuing months, the rumour mill quickly picked up steam. As the Tweets calling Heartstopper corporate “queerbait” and labelling — which is to say, outing — Kit Connor as a closeted heterosexual grew in volume and virality, clickbait publications quickly picked up the story, amplifying it even as they defended him. For the uninitiated, “queerbaiting” is a term that emerged to describe the phenomenon whereby production companies allude at LGBT themes without ever following through: a marketing bait-and-switch. In the case of Heartstopper, of course, an explicitly LGBT series, the term “queerbaiting” did not quite fit — but that did not stop Twitter anons reaching for the closest, catchiest phrase to hand. True to trollish form, however, there was a portion of the “queerbaiting” rhetoric that was semantically and sadistically accurate, circumventing Heartstopper and aiming itself directly at Connor himself: essentially saying that Kit was neither an actor nor a human, but a marketing ploy.

In early September, when the actor was pictured holding hands with female co-star Maia Reficco, the Kit Connor corner of Twitter took a Spanish Inquisitorial turn. Fandom became bedlam, and any semblance of a flattering curiosity disappeared behind a tsunami of abuse and accusations. These were the hellish conditions that led Connor to abandon the platform on September 12th — conditions made hellish not by any homophobic puritans of old, but puritans cut from a new cloth. The saga did not end there.

“Don’t feed the trolls” is an often-cited piece of Internet wisdom. Yet, certain species of troll — specifically, those of a more ideological strain — can feed themselves, feed each other, and feed on each other. These New Puritans are one such. Thus, the abrupt departure from Twitter was not enough to rescue Kit Connor from the pitchforked mob. Just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in. In fact, news of the young actor’s departure only added more fuel to the flaming. There was blood in the water, and the feeding frenzy encircling the Heartstopper hashtag only grew more vociferous and vicious by the day.

The unfortunate story came to an unexpected close on the 1st of November, when Kit Connor made a surprise return to Twitter, announcing to his 1.1 million followers — with the enthusiasm of a show trial admission or an apology at gunpoint — that he was, in fact, bisexual.

In an ironic twist of fate, though one depressingly predictable these days, the puritanical fringe of the LGBT community did to one of their own precisely what the far-right had done to them for centuries. Connor was outed, shamed, scarlet-lettered, and tarred-and-feathered — and for what? Holding someone’s hand? Not wearing the most up-to-date Pride flag as a cape and running around like South Park’s Al Gore?

Oh the diversity, the equity, the inclusion.

The term “New Puritans” seems more fitting here than “far-left” or “woke”, for there is nothing “1960s” about this particular species of scold. It is not a term that I conjured out of thin air, but rather drew from the titles of two recent books: Noah Rothman’s The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives' War on Fun (2022) and Andrew Doyle’s The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World (2022).

Over the course of the last half-century or so, Rothman and Doyle (and I) contend, Puritanism has moved to a new HQ. This is not to say that Puritanism has disappeared from the political right, but that the political left has begun to make up for lost time. Today, as the case of Kit Connor encapsulates, a not-insignificant portion of the LGBT community has developed purity tests of their own: updated versions of the “one drop rule”, which swap out genetics and lineage for the politics of gender and sexuality. It is a hopelessly black-and-white vision of reality imposed over the natural grayscale of identity and sexuality, one which promises to lead its activists and allies down countless collaterally-damaging rabbit holes of faulty logic. Case in point: those entirely woke to the idea of gender fluidity becoming temporarily blind to the idea of sexual fluidity.

How open-minded. How “progressive.” What compassion from the cheerleaders of “speech is violence.” What empathy from the champions of mental health awareness and neurodiversity.

The New Puritans are not merely scolds, however, but ingrates. Ingratitude runs through the tragedy of Kit Connor as madness runs through the tragedies of Shakespeare. A few decades ago, production companies would not have looked sideways at a show like Heartstopper, nor would many heterosexual actors at the roles therein. Indeed, for fear of being typecast — or worse, outed — even many LGBT actors would have had trepidations about taking on a role like Nick Nelson (Connor’s character in the show). Today, however, such is the demand for LGBT-themed content that there are not enough non-hetero actors to go around! Today, heterosexual executives and actors alike would bite your hand off for a piece of a show like Heartstopper. Do you want less “queerbaiting” or more LGBT representation? Think carefully, because you cannot have both.

In the wonderfully acerbic The Madness of Crowds (2019), which criticises the New Puritans without using the term, Douglas Murray writes about a phenomenon, first conceived by political philosopher Kenneth Minogue, called “Saint George in Retirement” syndrome. Upon slaying a huge dragon to much acclaim, so goes the story, St George began stalking the land in search of more dragons to slay. Over time, George began slaying smaller and smaller dragons until, one day, with the best of intentions, he was “Found swinging his sword at thin air, imagining it to contain dragons.” There is something unmistakably St Georgian afoot here. Kit Connor was neither a real dragon nor an imaginary one, but a fellow knight. Well done, dragon slayers, you slew one of your own.

Published Nov 10, 2022
Updated Jan 28, 2023