According to viral videos on social media this week, actor Pedro Pascal pretends to soothe his anxiety by groping the women around him—his Fantastic Four costar Vanessa Kirby, his friend Sarah Paulson, and Willem Dafoe’s wife, to name a few. There are memes and incriminating footage from red carpets. But none of it is true.

Pascal is currently promoting his starring roles in superhero blockbuster Fantastic Four and critically-acclaimed Eddington, fresh off the press cycles for the rom com Materialists and the hit HBO adaptation The Last of Us. Alongside his busy roster as a leading man, Pascal has emerged as a progressive public figure who criticized Hollywood’s “passivity” over Gaza, wore a pro-trans “Protect The Dolls” t-shirt to a Marvel premiere, and called JK Rowling a “heinous loser” when she celebrated her successful efforts to roll back trans rights in the UK.

Rowling’s allies on X were the first people to accuse Pascal of groping women, a narrative that started last year but gained massive traction in recent days. On Wednesday, a British anti-trans activist who paid for an “I ❤️ JK Rowling” ad in an Edinburgh train station in 2020 posted “He never gets the anxiety gropes around men, does he?!” on a clip of Pascal and Kirby at the Fantastic Four premiere. Her X post has over 50 million views.

After the success of that post, accounts that are known for derivative viral slop content began creating their own memes that claimed Pascal uses his anxiety as an excuse to initiate sexual contact with women. They highlighted more videos of Pascal embracing and touching his female friends and peers as supposed examples of misconduct. Some of the videos were faked—likely altered with AI—to show Pascal kissing women. He has been positioned as a cheater, a creep, and an opportunist.

These posts and the resulting discourse and tabloid media coverage of them also claimed that Pascal has said he uses “physical touch” to ground himself when he experiences anxiety. But no such interview exists, despite being cited by Google’s AI summaries, by dozens of content creators, and in multiple online news articles.

In a recent Men’s Health interview that has been cited, where he was asked about managing anxiety, Pascal talked about having more conversations on the phone with his loved ones instead of doomscrolling. He didn’t mention any kind of physical contact. After a clip of Pascal and Kirby holding hands at Comic-Con last year was seized on by Rowling’s transphobic fans, Kirby told Vanity Fair in June that she and Pascal were just nervous—something he echoed.

The basis of the allegations against Pascal isn’t true, and none of the women he’s been accused of groping have said so themselves. Kirby has even said the opposite. What’s happening to Pascal across these viral posts is a smear campaign, one spearheaded by bigots against a celebrity whose inclusive stance directly challenges their beliefs.

Media coverage of the campaign, which is dominated by lowbrow news websites, has further distorted the origins and motivations behind it. The smears have been reduced to a “debate” and reasonable people raising “concerns.” Podcasters and YouTube channels are digesting the viral topic with similar “both sides" and bad faith framing. Pascal has been victim-blamed for appearing in too many movies and for not clarifying his oft-discussed sexuality.

Regardless of how one feels about speculating whether a celebrity is gay, there’s a lot of viral discussion about Pascal being, well, not straight. And in another interview for Fantastic Four this week, Pascal said one of his earliest crushes was on Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford. Being queer or being perceived as queer is a vulnerability that can seized upon by the kinds of people who participate in smear campaigns—and the kinds of people who campaign against trans rights.

There are parallels between the venomous attacks against Pascal and those against women like Amber Heard, Blake Lively, and Megan Thee Stallion. Each of them have been subjected to amateur “body language analysis” as a way to suggest guilt and wrongdoing. Each of their cases has been sucked into an algorithmic feedback loop that rewards content if it’s slanted against them.

Each of these celebrity women have also alleged that content creators colluded to attack them online. In court, Heard’s lawyer pushed to identify specific YouTubers who received information about her from opposing counsel. Megan Thee Stallion is suing a blogger she says was paid to spread lies about her. In court filings, Lively suggested that a sudden onslaught of social media backlash was coordinated by her former costar and director, a crisis PR agency, and paid disinformation firms.

Some of Pascal’s defenders have wondered aloud whether he’s being targeted in a similar effort—perhaps even one paid for by Rowling (while Rowling is funding anti-trans efforts, there’s no evidence that she paid for social media manipulation to smear Pascal).

When I reached out for comment from the anti-trans Rowling fan whose Pascal tweet incited the latest wave of smears, she denied that money or Rowling had anything to do with it. She also said transphobic things about Pascal’s family. Without legal discovery or other smoking gun evidence, it can be hard to prove whether smear campaigns are happening because of malicious intent or paid coordination (or both). A lot of people who attack celebrity women aren’t being paid or informed by their abusers. But they gain attention, popularity, and profit (typically from ad sharing and audiences) by reinforcing the status quo.

It’s ironic that some viral posts have questioned why Pascal is able to warmly embrace the women around him in the age of Me Too, when the backlash to Me Too has created the conditions for this smear campaign against Pascal to thrive. Not only has cultural ignorance and disinformation around abusive behavior informed this rhetoric that identifies consenting women as victims (the very thing anti-Me Too crusaders claim to be against), but the nonstop smear campaigns have primed online creators and audiences to respond to new kinds of misogynistic and bigoted hate. Both Pascal and his The Last of Us costar Bella Ramsey have been targeted this year. It feels like there’s a new smear campaign every week.

The main difference between Pascal and these women and nonbinary people who have been recently smeared is that more people are defending him. Some accounts that said nothing or even joined smear campaigns against the other people I mentioned have jumped to his defense. The unfounded allegations against Pascal have been damaging and continue to spread, but the aggressive pushback is another reminder of who is most vulnerable to being smeared.

A prominent public defender has been accused of sexual harassment 

Alex Peter, a lawyer and content creator better known online as “loloverruled,” posted yesterday that he was “embarrassed and ashamed” of his behavior after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple people. “I take full responsibility for making people uncomfortable,” he wrote, adding “I would like to show what accountability can look like. Really cannot express how sorry I am to all.” He then deleted that post.

The allegations against Peter—who has worked as a public defender, has a large TikTok following, writes popular pieces on Substack, and collaborates with well-known leftist influencers like Hasan Piker—have largely been posted on X by women and sex workers in his community. He’s accused of sending unsolicited nude images (which he denied), pressuring women and nonbinary people for sex, and using his online notoriety as a manipulation tool. 

A woman named Ashlye Meyer whose X bio identifies her as another public defender posted: “so happy to finally see loloverruled outed as a piece of shit, he literally was ANGRY and blocked me when I refused to have sex with him :) literally messaged me ‘I always get what I want’ this man is a true pest.”

Another woman named Zoë, who said Peter repeatedly made her uncomfortable in DMs despite her protests, wrote “i find it hard to take the apology he just posted (and now deleted lol) seriously bc it’s full of the same excuses he used w/ me, oh it was just a miscommunication, we’re just misreading each other. no i think he fully knows what he’s been doing especially after seeing the amount of ppl coming out with stories.” 

Marina, a nonbinary sex worker who uses the pronouns “they” and “them” and was one of the first people to come forward about Peter, said that Peter sent them messages using “vanish mode” to conceal the evidence of his behavior. Marina said that Peter “threatened me saying if they ever hurt me i would be powerless bc more people like them and it would be so easy to call me a liar and ruin my life.” In his since-deleted post, Peter denied threatening anyone and said some of what was being said could constitute “libel and defamation,” but that he wouldn’t be suing. 

Some of Peter’s high-profile collaborators have announced they’re severing ties with him, including Piker. “That’s not drama, that’s straightforward creep shit,” Piker said on his Twitch stream yesterday. The leftist commentator said he was unaware of Peter’s behavior or the full details of it, but that he felt it was unacceptable and a betrayal of his trust. 

Peter’s former “Western Kabuki” podcast co-hosts also issued a statement saying they had previously parted ways with Peter after multiple unrelated women came forward to them privately about his conduct. “We didn’t initially say anything when this started in order to preserve the anonymity and safety of those who came to us, as they have plans to tell their stories on their own terms,” the statement said. “We stand with everybody who’s told their story and those who came forward to us.” 

Peter’s admissions and the growing number of allegations against him have reignited conversations around misogyny and predatory behavior in online leftist spaces, as well as the way sex workers are uniquely vulnerable to abuse and stigma. There are no communities that are free from abuse of power or gender-based violence, and the perception that progressive politics are less misogynistic is unfortunately, repeatedly disproven. The support that has been extended to people speaking out against Peter so far is positive, and I hope that the community continues to support them.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a few cool things I’ve been doing recently: 

• Tonight in Brooklyn, I’m in conversation with Kylie Cheung about her essential  new book Coercion: Surviving and Resisting Abortion Bans. I interviewed Kylie earlier this year about abortion bans as state-sanctioned violence against women. Event details are here!

• I returned to Matt Bernstein’s A Bit Fruity podcast to talk about JoJo Siwa, queer female sexuality, and exploitation in child stardom. 

• There’s an upcoming documentary on Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni that I did an interview for—I’m intrigued to see the final cut! 

Thanks so much for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and upgrade to support my reader-funded journalism. Until next time.