 |
"I Just Don't
Understand the Bud Light Boycott!"
An Explainer for the Confused
Dear Judy,
Hi. I saw your Facebook post. "I just don't understand the Bud Light boycott," you wrote. I'm writing to explain the Bud Light boycott to you.
Here's the background: Dylan Mulvaney is
a 26-year-old actor. His biggest role had been onstage, in The Book of
Mormon, a "crass," "slick and smutty," "blatantly
racist" musical that "profanes some serious articles of faith" –
all quotes from professional reviews. It's ironic that a man who would
eventually claim victim status got his career start making fun of an inoffensive
minority who had never done him any harm.
Mulvaney's career plateaued, and in 2022,
he began posting TikTok videos documenting, as he put it, his transition into a
"girl." Note the word "girl." You can watch Mulvaney
playacting at being a six-year-old girl in this video. His schtick clicked with the
Barnum and Bailey sideshow audience, and with those who see no need to respect
societal taboos between adult men and little girls. Suddenly the obscure actor
was world famous.
Oh, by the way, Judy. About that word
"actor." Some years back people decided it was "sexist" to
refer to, say, Meryl Streep as an "actress," because, of course,
"actress" refers specifically to women who act. Nowadays you have to
refer to Streep and her female peers as "actors," somehow honoring
them by referring to them using a word previously coded as male. Me, I don't
think it honors women to apply to them a word that previously applied to men,
but hey.
Even though the word "actress"
has been memory-holed to the outer limits of the un-Woke, guess what word the
Woke use to refer to Mulvaney? That's right. He's an "actress." The
word "actress" has been resurrected and restored to Woke
acceptability, but only if you use it to refer to an adult man who identifies
as a six-year-old girl.
Not everyone was thrilled by Mulvaney.
Women said that Mulvaney was mocking women by playacting stereotypes of women.
He presents girls as stupid, helpless, superficial, fearful, vain, frivolous, in
need of rescue, and obsessed with hair and makeup. For example, in high heels
and minimal clothing, he runs in terror from a dragonfly, begging to be
rescued, and he falls down and flails on the ground. In another video, he says
that he loves hair extensions – a kind of wig – so much, that when he is
wearing them, "I don't know my own name. I don't know where I live."
Mulvaney plays with Barbie dolls. He sings "Normalize the bulge," insisting that his
penis is a woman's organ. I am a woman, he insists, but "I don't have a
Barbie pocket," his term for a vagina. He insists that people must not
"stare at" his "woman's crotch" even though he displays his
"bulge." If you disagree, you are a hater and must be punished.
Some trans-identified people also found
Mulvaney offensive. Blair White is a man who identifies as a woman. White rakes
Mulvaney over the coals in a lengthy, no-holds-barred critique, here. He says that when he first saw
Mulvaney, he thought Mulvaney was a transphobe doing everything he could to
belittle and stereotype trans people.
Once he realized that Mulvaney was in
fact a man who claimed to have turned into a girl, White says that he
recognized that Mulvaney was acting out "woman-face," that is, a
gender version of minstrel show blackface, in which white performers pretend to
be black. "It's as if Dylan googled offensive stereotypes about women and
did a video for each." Mulvaney, White says, "mansplains to women
what it is to be a woman."
In the past, White says, trans people
wanted to integrate into society. Now, trans extremists like Mulvaney adopt an
adversarial relationship with the rest of society. They demand access to
women's spaces and children's bodies and souls and announce "Disagree with
me and you are a hater who must be punished." Such extremists, White
argues, pose a threat to women and children. "Forcing people to use female
pronouns with your dick hanging out is South Park level behavior … I
don't want this weirdo representing trans people, least of all at the White
House."
Mulvaney doesn't just insist he is a "girl."
With equal vehemence, Mulvaney insists that he is a victim. Mulvaney constantly
harps on how "transphobes" want to "hurt" and victimize him,
even though he is "pure" and "nice" and never ceases his
rictus smile. Mulvaney has, smilingly, threatened women who refuse to acknowledge
him as a "girl" "so hot I could steal
your husband."
You – and this "you" is anyone
who denies that he is a "girl" – are "actively trying to harm us
trans humans, especially trans children," he announces, through the rigid
teeth of his phony smile. Mulvaney, in his own mind, is a Christ figure,
hanging on the cross of transphobia, pierced by transphobic nails; even as he
squirms from the transphobic lash, he looks like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast
at Tiffany's.
How, in Mulvaney's paranoid, entitled, masochistic
fantasies, do we wish to harm him? We harm him by upholding women's rights to exclusive
access to women's sports, changing rooms, prisons, and domestic violence
shelters. And also, we are "harming" him by supporting laws that
prevent money-hungry medical professionals from castrating and performing
mastectomies on underage children. Transing kids, you see, Judy, is a "big moneymaker" for surgeons,
hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry. Each transed kid is a lifelong
customer.
The laws for which Mulvaney advocates,
under the rubric of "gender affirming care," would forbid adult
professionals, or even parents, from saying to a child, "You are a boy,
not a girl, and in time you will grow into comfort with your body." Statistics
show that most kids who experience gender dysphoria eventually do grow out of
it; see here. A caring adult stating this helpful,
objective reality to a mentally confused child, to Mulvaney, is "violence,"
"hate," and "harm." And should be punished, and outlawed.
What else can't we say, under the rubric
of "gender affirming care"? Jamie Reed, a former professional in
transing kids, became a whistleblower. She is exposing the real harm her
institute was doing to children, under the benign-sounding policy of "gender
affirming care." She and her colleagues were forbidden to say, "I
have concern about a patient." See her story here.
Trans extremism's refusal to allow any
speech that departs from trans extremist ideology is not limited to medical
institutions. Teachers are fired for using non-trans pronouns. Books are banned
because they report objective facts that do not agree with trans extremist
fantasies. Chase Strangio, a leading trans extremist, vowed to disappear books
like Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier. "Stopping the
circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% the hill I will die on," Strangio
tweeted. She is deputy director at the
ironically named "American Civil Liberties Union."
Mulvaney's passive-aggressive, martyr
smile is part of a larger campaign that includes violent assaults. Kellie-Jay
Keen Minshull, in New Zealand, Riley Gaines, in the US, and Maria MacLachlan,
in London, are a few of the women who have been violently assaulted by men who
identify as women. All three assaults have been videorecorded. Trans extremists
assaults on others usually seem to follow the male-beating-up-on-female
pattern. In 2015, though, Zoey Tur, a man who identifies as a woman, and who
has a lengthy history of beating his wife and daughter, threatened to send the
smaller Ben Shapiro "home in an ambulance," because Shapiro used the
pronoun "he" in reference to Tur.
On March 27, 2023, a trans-identified
shooter killed six at a Christian school in Nashville. Initial police reports
indicated that there was a manifesto that suggested that the school's Christian
identity and the shooter's trans identity played a role in the shooting. On
March 31, 2023, William Whitworth, a male who identifies as
female, was arrested. He planned mass shootings at schools and churches.
You may be thinking, "How did we
get from an adult man playing with Barbie dolls to mass shootings?" The
point here is that Dylan Mulvaney insists he is a victim. Among trans
extremists, victim status is used to justify violence. Trans extremism is not a
non-violent movement. "Kill all TERFs" has been a trans extremist
slogan for a decade.
In October, 2022, Mulvaney, whose only
claim to fame is making videos on his "transition" to being a girl,
spoke with Joe Biden at the White House. "God
love ya," Biden croak-whispered to Mulvaney.
Again, Mulvaney harped on his victim
status. Men who identify as women "are being murdered at an alarming
rate," he claimed. His claim is false.
Mulvaney spoke in favor of the transing
of children. Without legislation mandating "gender affirming care" extremists
claim, there will be an epidemic of child suicides. In fact, laws making it
easier for young people to access "gender affirming care" do not lower suicide rates, and they may increase
suicides. A recent review of numerous studies in various countries shows
that the entire "gender affirming care" approach for young people
lacks rigorous scientific support – see here.
In response to Mulvaney, Biden said that
nobody should have the right, morally or legally, to ban the surgical
castration and breast removal of underage children.
Further, men who identify as women are
victimized "more than any other group of people," Biden falsely
insisted, finger raised. Biden was not telling the truth. Statistics show that
Jews, for example, are disproportionately victimized in hate crimes.
Worldwide, Christians make up the largest number of those persecuted for
their religion. In spite of this, trans extremists regularly spread virulent
hate speech against Christians. All women – real women, not Mulvaneys – every day
live with the reality of gender-based violence.
These objective facts do not play any
role in Mulvaney's rhetoric. It should not be surprising that a man who insists
that he is a girl, and that his penis is a woman's organ, should eliminate
objective reality in his policy recommendations to the US president. It is as
important to Mulvaney and other trans extremists to declare themselves victims,
above all rational debate and criticism, as it is to declare themselves a sex
that they manifestly are not.
"People fear what they don't
know," Biden croak-whispered. "It's a lack of exposure," he
said, in an inadvertent irony. In fact women who have been exposed to male
genitals in women's changing rooms have repeatedly protested that
"exposure." See for example, the women forced to swim against Lia
Thomas, who exposed his penis to them in their women's locker
room, and women at the Wi Spa and the Santee
YMCA. Any reservations about trans extremism are the result of
"pure hyperbole," Biden insists, again, given standard trans
extremist rhetoric about "trans genocide," any mention of
"hyperbole" is unintentionally ironic.
On April 1, 2023, Mulvaney released a
video featuring a can he had received from Anheuser Busch. Mulvaney's face
appeared on a can of Bud Light. Mulvaney brings up March Madness, a reference
to basketball competitions. Mulvaney pretends that he doesn't know what March Madness
is – because girls are too stupid to understand sports. In another video,
Mulvaney dances in a bubble bath while drinking Bud Light. Again, Mulvaney's
take on what constitutes "girl" identity is taking a bubble bath while
wearing a full face of makeup, an elaborate hairdo, and gold jewelry.
In response to these videos, a boycott
of Bud Light began. Judy, you are not alone. A lot of people are saying that
they don't understand the Bud Light boycott. CNN's Don Lemon said, "So
what if someone who is transgender drinks Bud Light? How does that affect you? What
does it matter? I don't really get it." It's "crazy," "ridiculous"
Lemon said.
Howard Stern was "dumbfounded."
"I thought there must be a piece of the story that I'm missing .. I'm not
bothered by gay people or transsexual people. They don't impact my life, they
don't hurt my life … You wanna be a woman? Be a woman. You wanna be a dude? Be
a dude. Be whatever you f—ing want … As long as you ain't hurting anybody, I'm
on your team … I wish I could call Kid Rock … just tell me 'Why are you so
upset about this? How is this hurtful?'"
Joe Rogan asked, "What the f--- is
this? This is silly … How is that the big deal? … I think it's goofy because I
think that person's [Mulvaney] goofy … But if you want to hire a goofy person,
who gives a s–t? It's kinda hilarious when somebody says '365 days of
womanhood.' … It's also just a can with that person's face on it."
On The
View, Whoopi Goldberg said, "What are you so angry
about?"
Not just famous people have been saying
that they "don't understand." I'm finding a lot of "I don't
understand" posts by average folks on social media.
Here's the thing, though, Judy. And
here's what I'm trying to explain to you. You and all the other folks insisting
that you don't understand the Bud Light boycott always follow up by revealing
that you do understand. You understand us exactly.
You understand that people like me, who
support the Bud Light boycott, are
hateful,
intolerant,
ignorant,
fearful,
transphobic,
Christian fascist,
MAGA-hat-wearing,
FOX-TV-watching
rednecks
living in flyover country.
You said all these things, Judy. Right
after you said, "I don't understand," you said that anyone who
supports the Bud Light boycott is a MAGA redneck. I tried to talk to you. I
didn't call you names. I was civil. You deleted my post.
Nothing we say is worth hearing. We can't
tell you what we think or feel or value or work for or believe in. People like,
you, so-called "liberals," erase us and silence us with every word
you speak. Your approach is, "Shut up you redneck. You don't get to tell us
what you think. We tell you what you think."
I just tried to talk to a Facebook
poster who opposes the Bud Light boycott. I was brief, civil, and polite. He
responded, and this is a direct quote, that I "obviously" believe
that "the earth is flat, the moon landing was faked and Trump is still the
president." He "doesn't understand" the boycott. But he does. He
understands it 100%. It's the product of people who believe that the earth is
flat, etc.
Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, supports
the boycott; he's a Christian fascist. Blair White is a man who identifies as a
trans woman; he's a transphobe; so is Caitlyn Jenner, another man who
identifies as a trans woman. Jenner has repeatedly criticized Mulvaney. Oh, the
transphobia.
Dylan Mulvaney is a social media
superstar who pushes the transing of children – he pushed it in the White
House, while talking face-to-face with Joe Biden. Psychologist Dr. Erica Anderson has said that children
are transing because of "peers and social media." Social media like
that produced by Mulvaney. "It's gone too far," said Anderson. "What
happens when the perfect storm — of social isolation, exponentially increased
consumption of social media, the popularity of alternative identities — affects
the actual development of individual kids?" Of course Dr. Anderson is just
another transphobe who believes that the earth is flat. Dr. Anderson is also a
man who identifies as a trans woman and his career is to provide transition
services. Oh but he's a transphobe.
The crew on The View shouted and
literally bared their teeth – I mean they looked like animals trying to bite
their enemy to death. Screaming, teeth-baring Whoopi Goldberg said she could
not understand why people are boycotting Bud Light. Then she revealed that,
yes, she really did understand. It was because of all of the horrible things I
listed above. Those evil redneck Christian fascists.
Goldberg said that the man's name was "Dylan
McDermott." Dylan McDermott is actually a very hot actor. Goldberg didn't
even know Dylan Mulvaney's name. Oh, but Goldberg is not just an expert, she is
a moral superior.
Goldberg voiced the "I don't understand"
rhetorical ploy. "What are you so angry about?" But then she went on
to clarify that she absolutely did understand. She blamed a "conservative
backlash" for "destroying Bud Light in various stupid ways." "Beer
does not have a – it's not a Democrat or a Republican. It doesn't have a belief
system. It's just beer!" she helpfully explained to us stupid rednecks.
She also threatened Anheuser Busch. "Don't let them scare you. Let us
scare you."
Haters travel in packs, in mobs.
Goldberg's team on The View nodded and backed up everything she said.
There was no peep of challenge. There were no alternative points of view.
"I don't understand" is somehow never followed up with an
acknowledgement that we've been trying to explain our opposition to trans
extremism to you for years. The View's cast could support "Dylan
McDermott" as Bud Light "spokes-girl" without ever being
introduced to a thought that did not agree with their own.
Sunny Hostin said, "This country is
highly transphobic."
See what I mean? If The View represented
any kind of exchange of ideas, someone would have immediately said to Hostin,
"Compared to what? Where else on planet earth is better for trans people? And
how exactly is American transphobia expressed? What about the teachers who have
been fired for declining to use trans-demanded pronouns? What about the women
who have been physically assaulted because they believe in, for example, women
only sporting competitions or women's only changing rooms? What about the
parents who lose custody because they do not support their child's insistence
on a new gender identity? What about the Virginia girl raped in a high school
bathroom by a boy in a dress? Her dad was assaulted, arrested, and nationally
humiliated. Merrick Garland, the nation's attorney general, directed the FBI to
investigate concerned parents as terrorists. Are all of these really
expressions of how 'highly transphobic' 'this country' is?" No one asked
Hostin any of these questions.
"Trans rights are under attack all
over the place," she continued. "This is a Belgian company. That's
why it's so dumb to me."
Ana Navarro said, "Republicans are
using LGBT. This paranoia, building this fear, building this stress that your
kids are going to turn into whatever if they see an influencer posting. In the
meantime, the NRA are having their convention. Six year olds are playing with
guns."
Judy, my friend, Trump supporters are
criticized for a rhetorical ploy called "whataboutism." It's a way to
change the subject. Ana Navarro and other supporters of Bud Light's choice of
representative are engaging in whataboutism. "Man who insists he's a girl
on a beer can? Oh yeah? What about guns / world poverty / name the problem."
Yeah, guns and world poverty are
problems all right. But right now we are talking about trans extremism. Let's
lose the whataboutism. Let's focus on one issue at a time.
Navarro's insistence that kids
transitioning because of internet influencers as a problem that only "paranoid"
"dumb" "Republicans" are "building" reminds me of
the Democrats' insistence that violent crime is only a problem imagined by
Republicans. That idea hurt Democrats at the polls in 2022. I wonder how trans
extremism will affect Democrats long-term.
Commenting on the Bud Light controversy,
Bill Maher said that Americans do not like the trans agenda "that has real
world consequences on themselves and on their children" "shoved down
their throats." Trans extremism does not allow for discussion of alternate
points of view, any more than the mob on The View. "You have to
accept everything they say or you're a bigot and you are shouted down"
Maher said. Maher is a liberal. He donated a million dollars to Barack Obama.
He has repeatedly warned Democrats that their
embrace of trans extremism costs votes. He is correct. If I lived in
California, even if she were running against a mud fence, I would not vote for
Democrat Katie Porter. Days after Riley Gaines was beaten and kidnapped by
trans extremists, Porter bashed Gaines on national TV, and supported men
competing against women in sports.
Navarro scoffed at the idea that social
media, social media like Dylan Mulvaney's short videos, has the power to
encourage children to identify as trans. Navarro's ridicule is reflected by
many who "don't understand" – but really do understand – the Bud Light
boycott.
Their scoffing is vicious. Watch
detransitioner videos. Young people who underwent castration or double
mastectomies and came to recognize these surgeries as the biggest mistakes of
their lives state in no uncertain terms that they were brainwashed by social
media's hard sell of trans. Here are some samples of the real world impact of
videos like Mulvaney's on children's lives: here, here,
here, here.
If you don't cry while watching these videos, if you don't feel like punching
the wall, I don't want to know you.
As I write these words, a story has just
broken. Jacob Stevens. Thirteen-years-old. From Ohio. In his photo, he is
freckle faced and smiling on a sunny porch. In another photo, he is in a
football uniform, looking determined, for all his young years. In his final
photo, there are electrodes taped to his forehead. Tubes protrude from his
mouth. An IV is taped to his arm. His chest is the chest of a child. Flat,
white, no visible musculature. He's dead. He took a "TikTok
challenge" to take numerous Benadryl tablets.
We tried to explain all this to you.
Every detail of what I wrote above. Mulvaney's misogyny. The danger of social
contagion among lost youth rattling around a culture that has abandoned its
foundations, who turn to the internet for their needs as if it were a giant
teat. The overt, usually misogynist violence of trans extremism. Trans
extremism's demonization of civil discourse and objective facts.
Judy, you refused to hear us. In place
of our words, you put your own words:
hateful,
intolerant,
ignorant,
fearful,
transphobic,
Christian fascist,
MAGA-hat-wearing,
FOX-TV-watching
rednecks
living in flyover country.
And there's more you refused to hear.
You've been refusing to hear this for a long time. Our society has turned on
white men. White men, especially blue-collar white men, are the safe group to
stereotype, ridicule, and demonize. "White man" is actually an insult,
as well as a punchline. You could just walk onstage on the Bill Maher show or
the Daily Show or any given Netflix comedy special and just say the words
"white men" and the audience would laugh. You know it's true.
Who drinks Bud Light? A lot of white
men. Alissa Heinerscheid, VP of marketing at Bud Light, said that Bud Light is
"fratty" and "out of touch" and it needed to
"evolve" to "inclusivity."
We know what Heinerscheid is implying. A
TikTok video says the quiet part out loud. Soogia1, an Asian woman, maybe
Asian-American, I don't know, said the following. Her full text is worth
quoting.
"It really tickles me watching
these men pour their bud lights down the sink … or drive over them with their
trucks. Or pew pew them with f---ing assault rifles. Pew, pew, pew. Pew, pew,
pew. Do you really think that Anheuser Busch with all the research that they do
and the millions of dollars that they sink into marketing, didn't calculate and
account for you to have a temper tantrum and drop off as customers? They knew
exactly what they were doing. They know that Gen Z … are starting to get to
drinking age. They know that Gen Z is far more enlightened and accepting and
woke … [they] embrace the LGBTQ community. Sacrificing you? No brainer.
Anheuser Busch are playing the long game by aligning their views with their
future customers' views. So it's not really you boycotting them more than them
being willing to disregard you and leave you behind. Pew pewing beer cans?
What's wrong with you?"
Soogia1's gleeful contempt for white men
answers the question you and other liberals like you have been pretending to
ask, Judy. "I don't understand the Bud Light boycott." Oh, but you
would have no problem understanding a boycott if a black-identified brand
selected Rachel Dolezal as representative. Contempt for black people is bad.
You understand the Chick-Fil-A boycott. A Christian-owned company? Of course
Wokesters like yourself feel righteous about that. You completely understood
when Aunt Jemima had to remove a real black woman's face from their product,
and Uncle Ben's had to eliminate Uncle Ben. You understand when Land O Lakes
butter "removed the Indian and kept the land."
Judy, like all the Woke, you support
boycotts of brands whom you perceive as belittling human beings you endow with
human worth. A brand insulting blue-collar white men? You understand that just
perfectly.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
No comments:
Post a Comment