“Hanging with Satan”

Satan respects pronouns, and Jesus does too. That looks like a nonsense sentence, but to Erik Carnell—the “trans-man” behind the London-based startup whose Satanic designs inspired a massive Target boycott—it makes perfect sense. 

For Pride Month, Target made a deal with Carnell (a biological female claiming male identity) to distribute several of her designs on shirts and handbags, including slogans like “Cure Transphobia, Not Trans People,” “Too Queer for Here,” and “We Belong Everywhere.” But they chose to pass on some of her edgier designs, like one that featured the head of a demon with the slogan “Satan Respects Pronouns.” On Instagram, Carnell explained that she had modeled the head after Baphomet, a “non-binary” demon. The design soon went viral on Twitter, as did a mini-guillotine captioned “Homophobe Headrest.” Customers swiftly hit Target in the wallet, prompting the chain to cut ties with Carnell’s firm, Abprallen, in a fit of damage control. 

Carnell has expressed disappointment in various interviews, lamenting that all she’s ever wanted is to encourage “queer” youth like her own younger self. In her narrative, it’s bigoted right-wingers who have distorted her message as a message of violence or hate, when she’s just trying to spread “positivity” and “hope.”

Needless to say, these aren’t the words that spring to mind when browsing her catalogue, a bleak landscape where hearts are strangely surrounded with barbed wire, and grinning skeletons lurk around every corner. For a Halloween design, a bony hand scrolls through a “dating graveyard” of ignored last Grindr messages. “So many ghosts, so many contacts you’ll never talk to again, so many people with the surnames Tinder or Grindr!” If this is “positivity,” we’d hate to see negativity.

Carnell further objects to being labeled a “trans-Satanist,” when, by her own reckoning, she’s an atheist who doesn’t even believe in Satan. True, she did pose in her own Satanic T-shirt while wearing devil horns, and she does frequently use occult imagery throughout her work, and she has admitted that “the idea of being a trans demon is pretty damn cool.” But really, this is all just an elaborate subversion tactic. Her original Instagram description for the Baphomet design elaborates further: “[Satan] is merely used as a symbol of passion, pride, and liberty. He means to you what you need him to mean. So for me, Satan is hope, compassion, equality, and love.” If Christians want to say people like her are rejecting God for Satan, then “fine,” she says, “We’ll hang with Satan instead.” Metaphorically speaking. In any case, this is a form of Satanism.

There is more. Jesus is still cool, apparently. Keep scrolling through the catalogue, and you’ll find another pin with the slogan “Jesus Loves Trans Kids.” A message we could all agree with on the surface, but of course in this context, such a message comes with many strings attached. Carnell’s Jesus doesn’t simply love trans kids, he loves and affirms every aspect of their self-expression. She directly addresses children in “religious contexts” who are taught that Christianity is incompatible with an LGBT identity. Perniciously, instead of rejecting the idea of imago Dei, she twists it: “[I]f we’re made in God’s image then the easiest conclusion to come to is that God made us trans, or gay, or bi, or any other sexuality or gender you can imagine.” 

Recall, by her own description, Carnell is an atheist. So why suddenly invoke Jesus? Clearly, she doesn’t mean the Jesus of the Bible, who famously didn’t get along with Satan or devils in general. She means the Jesus of her own storyworld, who bears an unsurprising resemblance to the Satan of her own storyworld. Like “trans-female” activist Charlotte (Charles) Clymer announcing that “God made me in her image” on live TV, Carnell freely helps herself to religious grammar in her personal build-a-religion project. Just read the description for a pin with the slogan “Trans Bodies Are Holy” and count every borrowed phrase: “designing your temple,” “living righteously,” repeating that you love your trans body “like a prayer,” declaring that it’s not just the body that’s “holy,” but also “the soul within.” 

That’s an awful lot of religious grammar for an atheist. But of course, even atheists must worship something.

With Carnell, as with influencers like Dylan Mulvaney, we are seeing how a disturbed soul can become both victim and perpetrator—pledging mock allegiance to a god of her own making, knowing not what manner of deal she has struck. We are called to pray for her soul. But, equally, we are called to reject what she is selling.