Dancing with the Stars pro Sasha Farber found himself in some hot water after liking a controversial social media post.
After fan backlash, he explained why he liked the post and said he had no idea its meaning.
However, not all fans are so fast when it comes to accepting Sasha Farber’s explanation.
Sasha Farber likes controversial Tonya Harding post
Dancing with the Stars fans saw a Tonya Harding post that many deemed offensive and then noticed that Sasha Farber had clicked “like” on the post.
The post was from the classic comedy movie Kindergarten Cop.
In the scene depicted, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s undercover cop talked to the kindergarten class. One child whose father was a gynecologist said, “Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina.”
Taken in the context of the movie, it was a comedy scene that showed how kids would say anything without knowing whether it was proper or not.
However, many fans saw that Harding made the post the day after Lia Thomas became the first trans woman to win an NCAA swimming competition in Division I.
Taken out of the context of the movie and put into the recent real-world events, the meme took on a very different meaning.
When Sasha saw the backlash, he unliked the post and left a message of his own on Twitter.
“Wow it’s so funny, you see a picture online that reminds me of being a kid watching that movie with your family and people just start jumping to conclusions, because you like a movie!” Sasha wrote.
Some Dancing with the Stars fans were not convinced
There were Dancing with the Stars fans who were not convinced that Sasha was oblivious to the meaning of the post.
While it was clear some fans had likely never even heard of Kindergarten Cop, others said the timing was bad.
A Reddit thread showed a screencap of Tonya Harding’s post (which she deleted after the backlash started).
The responses from fans were not all kind toward Sasha.
“There is intent behind Tonya posting that and there is intent behind sasha liking it. Tonya also turned the comments off after I’m assuming people were calling her out,” u/Excellent-Medicine29 wrote.
“It would have been so easy to not like this transphobic post,” u/chocearthling wrote. “Am I delusional hoping he just doesn’t understand it the way that we do?”
However, other fans came to his defense.
“It’s such a great movie, and it’s immediately what I thought of when I saw the meme too,” u/That253Chick wrote.
“See I immediately thought of the movie and would have probably liked it just for the movie quote!” u/Similar_Ad7289 posted.
Dancing with the Stars is on hiatus. The dancing reality competitions series will return to ABC in late 2022.