In yet another grotesque display of cruelty masquerading as humor, far-right cartoonist Hans Kristian Graebener, better known by his pseudonym Stonetoss, has taken aim at the transgender community in a way that has left many reeling in disgust. On Twitter, Graebener changed his profile banner to the final image shared by a transgender teenager before her suicide, while his bio includes a promo code: “Use code ‘FourtyOne’ for 41% off merch.”
The so-called “joke” is a horrifying reference to the often-cited statistic that 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide. Rather than address this number with compassion or concern, Stonetoss chose to trivialize it, to turn real trauma and death into a marketing ploy for merchandise bearing his hate-filled comic strips.
The teen in question was Charlotte Fosgate, a 17-year-old from Oregon whose story was previously reported by TransVitae in an article titled “When a Trans Teen Dies, Twitter Turns Her Into a Punchline.” Charlotte’s final image, a vulnerable snapshot taken shortly before her death, was cruelly repurposed as a prop in Graebener’s ongoing campaign of anti-trans propaganda.
This is not an isolated act. It is part of a long and disturbing pattern of behavior by Graebener, whose Stonetoss webcomic has trafficked in white supremacist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and especially transphobic themes since its launch in 2017. His comics frequently portray LGBTQ+ people as threats, reduce social justice to a punchline, and deny the validity of marginalized identities. In several past comics, he has made suicide the literal punchline of trans-themed strips.
Graebener has also been linked to the now-defunct alt-right comic “Red Panels,” which similarly spread extremist ideology under the guise of satire. After his real identity was uncovered in 2024 by antifascist researchers, including the Anonymous Comrades Collective, social media platforms like Twitter briefly took action, but only against users who shared his real name, not against Graebener himself.
Despite repeated bans from platforms like Reddit and Discord and repeated reports of hate speech and targeted harassment, Graebener has managed to retain a large and loyal following across far-right social media spaces. His work is often shared by prominent online extremists and is sold through merch stores that profit from bigotry.
But this latest stunt, mocking the suicide of a real teenager for clicks and sales, is a new moral low. It underscores the ongoing danger of allowing hate speech to masquerade as satire and the failure of major platforms to enforce their own rules when it comes to extremist creators with large audiences.
For the transgender community, and especially for those who have lost loved ones to suicide, this act is not just offensive, it’s retraumatizing. It sends the chilling message that trans lives, even in death, are fodder for ridicule and profit.
It’s not “just a joke.” It’s cruelty, calculated and deliberate. And it’s time the platforms profiting from Stonetoss finally said enough.
