If you’ve checked the comment section of the actor’s Instagram lately, you may have noticed things getting a little…strange. In short, in recent weeks, there have been numerous viral social media posts claiming that Pedro is inappropriately physically close with his female costars, such as Fantastic Four‘s Vanessa Kirby.
The thing is, there’s no evidence that any of the hand-holding or hugging is nonconsensual. Most of the people implying this are also pretending that Pedro is uniquely affectionate with women, which is plainly untrue. So, where did this come from?
As Vanity Fair noted, defenders of J.K. Rowling previously used a clip of Vanessa and Pedro at Comic-Con to suggest something untoward was happening after Pedro criticized the author for her anti-trans views (Vanessa herself has said that she found holding hands with him to be a “lovely gesture). It looks like that same line of bad-faith reasoning has now been jumped on by misogynists who don’t understand consent, but it’s tricky to pinpoint exactly where the flood started.
Pedro himself had kept quiet about the whole thing until yesterday, when he began replying to some of the spammy “I’m watching you” Dexter GIFs on an unrelated post hyping up the movie Sand Mama. Most of his responses were emoji-based:
Though he did offer some poor souls a hug:
And even complimented one user on their artwork:
It’s not the only time Pedro has responded to hate comments. Take, for example, his replies to commenters criticizing his defense of trans rights earlier this year:
In some ways, it is quite funny that “women like hugging him” was the best they could do…