On Monday, Vanity Fair unveiled its Caitlyn Jenner cover. The reaction to it has been overwhelmingly supportive, but some people have disagreed with calling her brave.
Terry Coffey of Salem, Oregon, took issue with Jenner being called brave and posted this photo showing "real American bravery."
The post quickly went viral, and has been shared over 700,000 times since it was posted on Monday.
What Coffey didn't know was that the photo was from the documentary Marwencol, which is about a cross-dresser named Mark Hogancamp.
Hogancamp was severely beaten by five men outside of a bar in 2000, which put him in a coma for nine days. He also suffered brain damage and memory loss.
When Hogancamp returned home, he found his closet was full of women's clothes and couldn't remember why he had them, because he was suffering from amnesia.
In a 2011 interview with the New York Times, he recalled a conversation he had with a friend after he was released from the hospital.
"'Do I have a girlfriend?" he asked a friend.
"They're yours," the friend replied. "You collect them and you wear them."
Mr. Hogancamp then learned that the men who beat him did so after he told them he was a cross-dresser.
After his severe beating, Hogancamp started making World War II mock-ups in his backyard in a town he called Marwencol to help stimulate his mind.
After doing more research, Coffey discovered the origin of the image.
Coffey then wrote how he was moved by the fact that the photo he used to protest Jenner was the work of a man who was beaten for cross-dressing.
He updated his status the following day:
The second half of the status stated:
I could have chosen any one of hundreds of photos depicting bravery, but I chose this one. Do I think it was an accident?
No, I don't.
What happened to this man was cruel, wrong, and unforgivable.
Hate helps nothing
Love wounds no one
and God heals all.
(and irony makes you think)
BuzzFeed has reached out to Terry Coffey for comment.