Transphobes are hilariously outraged over a fake news story claiming Moana is trans

A satirical news site recently published a story claiming that a sequel to Moana would make her the first transgender Disney princess. If you know anything about Disney’s history with middling LGBTQ+ representation, you’d spot this story as a fake right away. But plenty of transphobes took the “news” as fact.

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Mouse Trap News, self-described as “The Onion of Disney News,” posted an Instagram reel depicting Moana as a trans man. The reel went on to describe a supposed sequel, Moana 2: Rise of Kai, in which the titular princess gets top surgery and takes the name of Kai.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as the reel went viral, transphobes took the opportunity to show off how bad they are at fact-checking.

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“This is disgusting. Mona is a children’s movie,” one user commented.

“Disney needs to stop ruining princess fr,” said another.

“If this is true i would cancel my Disney+ subscription and never take my kids to Disneyland ever again,” added one parent, who at least had the decency to include the caveat if.

Others were sitting back and watching the hilarious chaos unfold.

“This account is SATIRE. Please stop believing absolutely everything you see,” commented one user.

Another, speaking the real facts, pointed out, “‘First transgender princess’ does mulan mean nothing to you?”

Not only does Disney have a long history of censoring queer content, the rare times that they don’t, they restrict queer characters to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments or underpromoted movies. In either case, there is always intense conservative backlash, so the idea that Disney would suddenly have a well-known character come out as trans exists only in the paranoid brains of Fox News viewers.

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While the Moana news might be fake, we can still imagine the sequel that might have been. The Mouse Trap News website, which is not exactly queer friendly (it kicks off its satire by bizarrely claiming that queer people don’t watch Disney movies…make it make sense), does make a surprisingly astute case for the queer themes in Moana.

“The movie Moana is all about Moana overcoming many challenges,” the story reads. “However, in the movie, she is always struggling to find and understand her identity. She screams this to the audience in the popular song ‘How Far I’ll Go.’ Some of those lines include, ‘I can lead with pride, I can make us strong. I’ll be satisfied if I play along. But the voice inside sings a different song. What is wrong with me?’”
You really can almost picture the sequel, which is probably why it struck such a nerve with transphobes. Of course, Disney is no stranger to queer (more often, vague outsider) subtext. But authentically supporting the queer community? That’s another story.