Recently in Twitter-verse, actor James Woods (@realjameswoods) had some pretty harsh things to say about a photo of parents who seemed to be supporting their transgender child. Woods, who’s Twitter slogan is “Time to start fighting back…”, posted a photo of a family. Seems inconspicuous right? Wrong. The parents were holding signs stating, “I love My Gender Creative Son!” and “My Son Wears Dresses & Makeup… Get Over It!” What would seem as a loving and supporting family has turned dark on Woods’ Twitter post. He shared this lovely picture with the update, “This is sweet. Wait until this poor kid grows up, realizes what you’ve done, and stuffs both of you dismembered into a freezer in the garage.”

All hell broke loose in the comments, unfortunately those who follow @realjameswoods are in support of this heinous update, agreeing that this isn’t a loving family at all, but a travesty to the United States and to its people. The people who supported the love of this family were met with hateful remarks about their lifestyles and parenting choices. Those that were in favor of the ridiculous accusation of this child growing up and becoming a murderer because of the love his parents showed for his choices at that moment, were by the hundreds. This is the type of ridicule that the transgender community is facing.

If people can’t live their own lives without the negative effects of social media reigning down negativity, how can a nation progress? If hatred can spring from one post and cause such disdain, then how can we move past the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.? We can start by taking a step towards more positive social media posts. People can’t be controlled for how they feel, nor should they, but there should be a limit to the hate and anti-humanism that can be spewed from our keyboards.

The No Hate Speech Movement is just that. This initiative is a collaboration of volunteers who have been trained by the council of Europe. This is an effort to stop online bullying, hatred, racism, homophobia, etc. This is a start to show our support for other people. We do not have to feed into the drama and hatred of social media. We can take a step in a different direction.

The outcry should be for those targeted by this objectifying hate. Neil Patrick Harris fired back calling the post homophobic and he was right. But how many people are targeted daily by unjustified jokes and accusations? Too many. We can voice our opinions to stop this line of thinking that people can post whatever they want at the cost of someone’s livelihood, just as some people post their opinions about other people in hateful ways. It is our voice and our choice to not feed into this negativity. Like Woods wrote, it’s time to start fighting back, but we need to fight the real issues, for acceptance and love.  #nohatespeech