About

This Is MY Son refers to a post on Twitter in which a mother attempted to paint her son, a star Navy soldier, as a poster boy for the #HimToo movement, a reactionary hashtag to #MeToo spread in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh's Sexual Assault Allegations which attempts to argue that men must be overtly careful in interactions with women lest they be victim of false sexual misconduct allegations. The post was mocked as a copypasta in which people posted variations on the original post with different images. The meme caused the son to create a Twitter account denying his mother's characterization of him.

Origin

On October 6th, 2018 Twitter user @MarlaReynoldsC3 tweeted an image of her son in his Navy uniform, saying:

This is MY son. He graduated #1 in boot camp. He was awarded the USO award. He was #1 in A school. He is a gentleman who respects women. He won’t go on solo dates due to the current climate of false sexual accusations by radical feminists with an axe to grind. I VOTE. #HimToo.

The tweet, shown below, has since been deleted.

Spread

The tweet began significantly spreading on October 8th, 2018. That day, many tweets parodying it in the form of a copypasta grew popular. For example, Twitter user @stephperry replied to the original tweet with a copypasta and an image of Gritty, gaining over 80 retweets and 500 likes (shown below, left). User @pattymo made the joke with a costume of Jared Leto's joker, gaining over 200 retweets and 2,900 likes (shown below, right).

Other Twitter users made the joke altering some of the details of the original post. For example, user @MarkDrucker made a joke altering the copypasta to fit Guy Fieri, gaining over 2,300 retweets and 12,000 likes (shown below, left). User @Manda_Like_Wine made the joke altering the copypasta to fit Graham, gaining over 370 retweets and 2,800 likes (shown below, right).

The following day, the son in the original picture, Pieter Hanson, made a Twitter account with the handle @Thatwasmymom^[1] in which he recreated the pose in the original photo but clarified he rejected his mother's characterization of him, writing:

That was my Mom. Sometimes the people we love do things that hurt us without realizing it. Let’s turn this around. I respect and #BelieveWomen . I never have and never will support #HimToo . I’m a proud Navy vet, Cat Dad and Ally. Also, Twitter, your meme game is on point.

The tweet, shown below, gained over 12,000 retweets and 64,000 likes (shown below).

The meme was covered by Washington Post,^[2] Daily Dot,^[3] and Mashable.^[4] Speaking to Washington Post, Hanson stated, “It doesn’t represent me at all. I love my mom to death, but boy . . . I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this.”

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References