I Investigated the Radqueer Community (One Year Later)

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]One year ago, I made a documentary on the rad queer community. I went into their spaces, invited them to give their side of an otherwise one-sided affair, and I allowed you to make your own conclusions about what is known as one of the darkest internet communities. The reaction was strange to say the least.

[00:00:22]Although some rad queers didn't mind my coverage, others couldn't see past their rosetinted glasses. In many Tumblr posts, I was hated on for misleading people. In private messages, I was sent death wishes. Yet, I was happy with the video, as were many others. I shone a light on a dark community that manipulates people's minds. Miners often get sucked into something they don't quite understand and it can lead to terrible experiences that will stay with them their entire lives. So, in this video, I wanted to speak with someone who was a member but got out. And that's when I got an email from someone who I featured in my original thumbnail. I was in the Radquir community when you made that video and I was one of the lucky two people to be in that thumbnail. This is not me asking to be removed from it, but to let you know I have since escaped the Radquir community. I noticed you only really interviewed one potential exadquer in your video and didn't really talk much about what it was like being in that community and more just their views on it. If you're up for it, I wanted to ask if you would be willing to interview me about my experiences there.

[00:01:46]And of course, I agreed.

[00:01:51]If you don't know what Radqu is, let me give you a little refresher. The term rad queer was first created by a Tumblr user in 2021 and their reason for creating it was because they saw the LGBTQ plus community as unaccepting of paraphiles and trans identities. Since 2022, there have been two types of rad queer, old and new. Old Radquir supports the idea that paraphilas fall under the queer sexuality bracket while new rad doesn't see them as sexualities but still supports them. People in the community follow two sides no contact or pro contact. This applies to the paraphilia's aspect and the reason new rad was created is that the original creator revealed that they were pro contact. Contact stances are used to communicate opinions on interactions between paraphiles and their subjects.

[00:02:47]So if you are pro contact, that means you think that it's okay for, for example, someone who is attracted to children to actually have interactions with them sexually and romantically.

[00:02:59]Being anti-cont means that you are against this. And most anti-sequers believe that rather than indulging in their attractions, they should seek therapy. to put it right. There are also people who don't fully lean to one side or the other and stand somewhere in the middle, but that's on a person byperson basis. There are some additional terms to use if you feel like this, such as restricted contact and neutral contact, but it really just depends on what the individual believes, if there is a stance that actually covers it. During my original research, I spoke to a lot of rad queers who were active in the space. You can't define the entire community as pro contact or anti- contact because that simply isn't the case. It varies from person to person and thus putting a blanket conclusion on it gets us nowhere. Outside of accepting paraphiles, there is a big part of the community who identify using trans identities and they are a core part of the rad queer ideology. Trans IDs basically refers to any trans label that isn't transgender. Some of these are harmless and really don't affect others, but you'll find some disturbing labels mixed in with the rest. During my research, I found a disturbing number of individuals identifying with terms like transgrimmer or transist. And the general thought from a lot of rad queers in the community on these ideas is that if it doesn't affect them, then it's none of their business. Terms like those fall under a category known as transharmful. This covers all trans IDs that are deliberately harmful in nature.

[00:04:40]And some other examples are stuff like trans kidnapper and transy. Another category is transabled or transdisabled.

[00:04:50]This refers to identities where someone claims to transition into having a certain disability. Some examples of this are trans autistic, trans blind or trans Tourette's. The term was originally used well before the rad queer community to refer to people who amputated their limbs in order to alleviate gender dysphoria. However, it has now been adopted by the rad queers into what we see today. Another big one is trans race. This is one that you may have heard of as it has been well discussed over the years and it refers to people who claim to transition into certain races. One rad queer I spoke to in my original video actually identified as being trans race.

[00:05:32]>> So do you identify with a lot of trans ids then?

[00:05:35]>> Um yeah a few. I identify as trace or biracial or some call it transracial.

[00:05:40]>> There are a lot of other categories but these are the main ones. And now that you're caught up we can skip forward to today. I came out of my original documentary feeling happy with the conclusion I had drawn. I knew nothing about the community before making that video and I came out knowing all the things that there were to know. So, I could comfortably say that I thought the space was dangerous and I still stand by that conclusion. Radques often target minors, but not in the way that you may think. They can be drawn in by the promise of radical inclusivity in a world that is becoming more bigoted by the day and you can see why that may be appealing especially for a young person who could be struggling with their identity or their sexuality. Then when you join the ideas get darker and darker until eventually they're rubbing shoulders with files. Another way people can fall into the community is through what I've dubbed as the proship and dark ship pipeline. There are many examples of radques also identifying with pro shipping terms. And although they aren't interconnected or by any means exclusive, they also can't be miles apart. If you don't know what pro shipping is, let me explain. It's a term used for people who believe that shipping fictional and sometimes real people, toxic or non-toxic, is acceptable, and creating relationships, ships, is fine because it isn't real and can't cause any harm. Of course, you have the other side of it, anti- shipping, which argues that real life morals should apply to your ships. Pro shippers oppose any kind of harassment over ships, and they think it's completely fine to enjoy dark ships because it isn't reality. And that takes me to the next term, dark shipping. Dark shipping refers to fictional relationships that involve problematic, abusive, or taboo themes. This can include things like big age gaps, such as shipping an adult with a child or shipping victims with their abuser.

[00:07:46]Oftent times, these relationships also focus on incest. But just because someone is a dark shipper doesn't mean that they are a pro shipper and vice versa. There have been examples where dark shippers think that the relationship that they have created are somehow morally superior to others and so they take the high ground. So it's important to note that just because someone is one of these terms, it doesn't mean that they are the other.

[00:08:15]That's especially important to remember when I tell you that sometimes dark shippers can turn to the rad queer community. That may be something they identify with. And although it's often argued that these two terms have no correlation with each other, the normalization of certain acts through fictional media may make it easier for them to translate that to real life.

[00:08:37]Since my first video, I'd be lying if I said things have changed. This community is just as bad, if not worse. The behavior continues to go unchecked on social media platforms such as Tumblr, and there is no doubt that private Discord servers continue to thrive. And although it may seem like the rabbit hole is deep, it's not totally unescapable. Meet Cloud, an exrad who came to me back in December to share their story. They managed to escape the community despite seemingly being deep into it. And now they want to tell the world the realities of the rad queer community. In my original documentary, I focused on the space itself, the people actively inside of it. So now I want to explore the effects it can have on someone who has departed it because those people deserve to be recognized and spoken about just as much as anyone else. I was either 15 or 16. I think I was in the like getting either turning or just turned. For the sake of the intro for the interview, you can call me a cloud. Um, a survivor of the radar community. I do heavily believe I was groomed into it as I was not in a great headsp space at the time when I first joined. um I was able to fix my mindset and realize that it was a terrible community to be in and leave.

[00:10:08]>> Why did it attract you at first? Like what made you feel like the rad queer community was a place where you wanted and needed to be?

[00:10:15]>> There is a lot of history behind that.

[00:10:18]It all kind of starts back in 2023. I had I'm going to try and keep it brief because it is a long thing. I had friends. Those friends end things happened and they ended up publicly demonizing me and so I kind of fell into a dark space of me believing I was a bad person. So I joined the proship dark community and then the pro dark ship community normalized things like pedophilia and incest in my mind even though like I was young at the time so my mind was much more flexible to that stuff. And so when I was introduced to the radical community, those topics were a lot more dull in my and so I joined in because I started to believe what they were saying. I had had a few like casting thoughts about like the concept of conuity or whatever sensual incest or whatever, but nothing like major until I discovered what the rape community was.

[00:11:20]Was there any point where after you joined the community that you started to realize that there were any beliefs that were more extreme than you may have thought at first?

[00:11:30]>> Yeah. Yeah. Xeno Satanism for example, I always thought that was too far. I always stayed in my little lane of like rad queer. There was like postrad queer and xenosatanism and there was a ton of different terms. I just stayed in mainly ant rad. How were these views discussed in the community?

[00:11:50]>> Like any other queer identity, like people who are minor attracted people, pedophiles, um they were just treated like they like they were discussing like you would for queer rights for gay, lesbian, by people. And with trans ideas, same as that, but with more like since it's more obviously parallel to transgender, they talked about it more in the like trans. It was basically just like queer rights into these adding things into >> When you were in the community at first, did you ever witness any behavior that even when you were in the community made you uncomfortable?

[00:12:31]>> A lot of pro contact stances made me very uncomfortable. I did end up later on I went from uh anti- contact to complex contact because they kind of started messing with my mind a bit more.

[00:12:45]But um I was majorly I was like anytime I saw someone who was like procon I was just very much so grossed out because despite me having this like the thoughts of like it's normal for people to like kids or whatever. I still knew that acting upon them was wrong because I am a victim of bullying myself. So, I knew it was like firsthand.

[00:13:17]>> Was there any specific reactions that you saw in the community? Like, how did people react to to the criticism?

[00:13:23]>> A lot of people were just mainly really annoyed the same way that you would be annoyed by like trolls in your comments just trying to get a rise out of you.

[00:13:35]They just be like how there's anti in every community and how people would like you'll see like people complain about anti whatever whether that be like anti-um shipping which is harmless or anti-racist stance you should have um it all kind of just boiled down to antis are annoying we need to just ignore them. Was there any specific moment that made you realize that the rad queer community wasn't a place that you wanted to be?

[00:14:05]>> Um, I think it was more of a gradual fade out for me. I kind of like ended up losing another friend group which I mean that was kind of expected. I mean like hindsight it was expected. I was in a horrible mindset and I was not treating them the way I should have been. And I think that kind of kickstarted my real like distancing from that group of people, but it was more of a gradual thing and then I kind of just stayed away and kind of came to my senses. It wasn't an immediate snap of the finger thing. It was more of just like a oh that was that was not good. I still kind of struggle with thoughts of returning to the community. So like obviously I wouldn't I don't have any plans to anytime soon. I know how harmful it is and I know how much would rather stay away from that community nowadays. But especially with things like trans id. I am someone with a very complex identity.

[00:15:06]So those those are kind of what really called to me in the red group community the most. So I still have like trouble separating from those. And so it was kind of it was very hard for me. I don't think I would consider it too scary, but it definitely difficult hard.

[00:15:25]>> Looking back, do you feel that you were ever manipulated by anyone during your time in the community?

[00:15:30]>> I don't think I was manipulated by anyone specific, but I like the community as a whole in their in like how they work. Like I feel like that's kind of the way I conceptualize it.

[00:15:46]The best I can explain it is like a cult. Like the members of it are spreading their uh manipulative propaganda and stuff, but they they are so deep into the cult that they don't even realize what they're spouting is harmful or manipulative. So, it's like a much more deeply rooted thing. I I don't think I would call it a cult, but I think it definitely behaves similarly.

[00:16:11]Do you think that now that you look back, are there any like major red flags that you wish you'd noticed?

[00:16:17]>> Probably the like normalization of like there was this thing called um consensual abuse, which is like oh like doing abusive things like it could be physical, emotional, psychological, whatever. But it was in the guise of it being consensual, saying that it was okay because both parties were okay with it. I think that was definitely a red flag gesture. It's sure technically you could say it's consensual, but the thing is why would you want to be abused in the first place? There's something going on that needs therapy there. And I feel like encouraging them to seek out that abuse instead of encouraging them to get help was definitely a way to be like here's how you can get worse and I feel like would have been something. I was a very strong defender of that at the time because I I knew that I was feeling like that because I was in a very dark space.

[00:17:16]So I was trying to kind of defend that stance and looking back I'm like I was just trying to find reasons to get worse and I don't want other people to create find that reason to get worse.

[00:17:26]>> So when you started to get out of the community did any of your friends in the community like did they react in any way? Just I guess what I'm asking is how was the reaction when you started to leave it?

[00:17:37]>> I had numerous different battered accounts. I never I was kind of like nomadic in a way. I never really kept friends that well. I kind of just like being scattered. So whenever I ended up leaving, I kind of just like my account started getting less active. I I would like stay away for longer periods of time before making another Tumblr side vlog and then that one and then stay away longer. So, it was just kind of like I had so many identities in there that not only could I not really keep friends because I kept changing myself so much, it was also to the point where if I just left, no one would really notice.

[00:18:18]>> How has your perspective on things changed since leaving? Do you still hold any of the beliefs from the rad community?

[00:18:26]>> Um, I not that I know of. I mean, I do hold some like more like radically inclusive beliefs, but not not radically clear beliefs. Nothing like that that I know of. I I'm pretty sure I've gotten that all out of my mostly out of my system. I mean, I guess I'm kind of neutral on like harmless trans ideas, like nothing like things that wouldn't cause harm to someone to like anyone, whether it be themselves or another. So, like identifying as having wings or something, that's something I don't really care about that much, but I'm not really in support, but I'm not really in I'm not against it, you know? That's the most that I heard from that.

[00:19:12]>> Do you think that the rad quer community ever targets vulnerable people?

[00:19:16]>> Yes, absolutely. I know that whenever I was in it, um, whenever I did talk to other people in it, it was either fully grown adults who knew what they were doing and the consequences of what they were doing or people, young kids in a very terrible mind space just trying to get away from everything. And I think that obviously the adults in that community are manipulative groomers and the children are victims that deserve to get out. Do you think that platforms like Tumblr are doing enough to stop the harmful beliefs from spreading?

[00:19:52]>> Tumblr is not doing enough. Um, I had recently switched accounts which could like completely change my entire Tumblr account because I just didn't feel comfortable with my old one anymore. And after a while, I did end up getting I had not searched anything at all, but I started getting some rag queer posts suggested to me. The fact that the tags have not been like banned from the site is extremely concerning. It's getting worse on Tik Tok. I've been seeing a lot of them post on Tik Tok recently, but I know that they've gotten like they'll hide the dark ship and like proship tags on there. So, I'm hoping that they'll start doing that with the Rag tags eventually. I haven't seen much on Twitter, but I've also quit Twitter, so I wasn't really around enough to be able to see if there was like a community growing on there now that Tumblr is not doing enough to prevent it.

[00:20:45]>> What would you say to any rad queers out there who may be watching this who still hold the belief that the dangerous ideas that they're spreading are completely harmless?

[00:20:54]>> It's definitely not good and you're falling into propaganda. Um, I know you might not believe me and trust me, I was in the community for a like a couple years, so I definitely know how it's like to have your mind so set on something. But if if you're young or if you join the community young and you were taught these beliefs, they did not have your best intentions in mind. who the people who created the community, the adults who are currently in that community, they do not have your best interests in mind. And I do genuinely suggest trying to find a way to escape.

[00:21:42]Um, I feel like I got pretty lucky with how uh diverse I was because I wasn't too connected to anyone in the community, but I feel like with people who are have connections in it, that could be a lot harder. I don't blame any young grad peers because I was in their situation. I know what it's like. Um, but I do wish for them to realize that what what you are going through is the right for community is not where you're going to find acceptance. You might feel like does, but unfortunately not. to anyone who is in the community and maybe having their doubts, what would you say to them?

[00:22:27]>> I think I would genuinely suggest looking up the problems with like things like incest and child and adult relationships and how that messes with the minds of people. I think that's a great starting point. If you're anti- contact like I was, still look into that because I feel like if you're the thing is if if you're encouraging this, if you're encouraging these things as like sexualities or whatever, you are inherently encouraging contact. And I wish I knew that whenever I was younger, but I didn't. You do not have to stop feeling sympathy for people who might have pedophilic disorder or like paraphilic disorders in general, but you do need to start going into the mindset of they need therapy rather than they need to be a part of the queer community.

[00:23:17]>> If you had to give one piece of advice to anyone falling into the rad queer community, what would it be? Please just again I think researching the effects on your those things do on your mind is definitely a great way to dis disencourage the propaganda from getting into your mind and just try and listen to what people like me people who have been in the red core community before have to say and s like I said it does genuinely behave similarly to the cult in my opinion and I do think that if you're going through something, if you're if something's going on and that's why you feel so connected to the community that you just try and find something else. I know that's not the best advice, but just try your best to block the tags, block accounts, and try and see if you can find something else for your mind to feel like it can connect to. Just like I've said many times before, that community does not have your best interest at heart. It does not have anyone's best interest at heart. It is inherently a very selfish community and you deserve better than to fall into that.

[00:24:33]>> What do you hope that people take away from your story?

[00:24:36]>> I just want people to realize that honestly a lot of rag queers are not dangerous groomers. Definitely a lot of them are, but a lot of them are the ones being groomed, are the ones who are victims, especially if they're underage or they join the community while underage. And I just want people to my mindset ever since everything since 2023 has been very pro recovery, like pro- recovery of literally anything. So I encourage people to recover and get out of these groups instead of hating and demonizing them and calling them evil when a lot of the times they are the victims.

[00:25:22]>> I would agree that the rad queer community has cultlike attributes. The reframing of criticism as oppression, the social pressure to keep accepting and be open-minded. The fear of losing everything and everyone around you. the mentality that only the people in that group truly understand you. That's why it concerns me. Radquer isn't just a silly internet term or a Tik Tok trend like it's turning into nowadays. It is something much darker. It is a place where morally wrong things can be forgiven under the guise of acceptance.

[00:26:00]A place that vulnerable people, usually minors, are drawn into. a place where those minors could then be subject to abuse, labeling it as consensual, even though that is far from the truth.

[00:26:14]Vulnerable people lose their sense of humanity and normality when they get drawn into these isolated spaces. They become desensitized to ideas they once would have considered disturbing. And that is the worst part because once you have that mindset, it is so hard to get yourself out of it. But hearing from someone who did manage to leave makes one thing clear. What makes communities like this so difficult to understand from the outside is that they don't always present themselves as harmful.

[00:26:50]They present themselves as acceptance.

[00:26:54]And that's what makes him so effective at drawing people in. But most of all, that disguise of acceptance makes it difficult for members to recognize when things are crossing the line into harmful territory. And by the time they realize, they're often already too far in to see clearly.

[00:27:19]Thank you so much for making it to the end of this video. So, if you did enjoy, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share it. It really helps the channel.

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[00:27:56]Special mention if you're watching this far. I don't look after videos are released really, but I did have a look with some friends after I dropped the Radcore video about 2 weeks after it. I found this interviewed by Jessica flag.

[00:28:10]So, you know, let's all rep this. Let's rep this. This is now the Jessica fan flag.

[00:28:16]Thanks for watching, guys. as I love.