Save Send Delete: April 2023

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney and the Bud Light Boycott, Explained

"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.

JK Rowling and Trans

The Witch Trials of JK Rowling
A Seven-Hour Podcast Explores Trans Extremists' Response to the Harry Potter Author

The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is a 2023 podcast examining the backlash after JK Rowling, in 2019, tweeted in favor of women's rights. Rowling was accused of transphobia. She was labeled a TERF. "TERF" is a misogynist slur trans extremists use to dehumanize women. It is an acronym for "trans exclusionary radical feminist." TERFs, in this definition, do not recognize men who identify as women to be women. In her 2019 tweet, Rowling expressed support for women's being allowed to have their own opinion about what makes a woman, and to not lose their jobs for expressing that opinion. After Rowling tweeted, online vitriol, boycotts, death threats, and book burnings ensued.

The Woke Camelot: "I Mourn Lost Magic."

Thoughts on the Woke Camelot
"I Mourned the Loss of Magic."

I have lived most of my life within eyeshot of the Manhattan skyline. In my hometown, I had to climb to the highest point on a wooded trail, but there it was. Culture, sophistication, and power splayed across the horizon and incarnated as distant, vertical, rectangles. Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" would play inside my head.

Lately I haven't been going into the city much. I was there in autumn, 2022, to see a play. As I purchased my subway ticket, a smelly, muttering man hovered close as a toxic cloud. I had to focus on not allowing fear or rage to cause me to fumble. I'm a woman alone and even seeing David Strathairn, a movie star I adore, live onstage, was not enough to compensate. The lesser mortals, the New Jerseyans I live among, may never be as sophisticated as Manhattanites, but they do not push women onto subway tracks.

The other day I heard an ad on the radio for Lincoln Center's new production of Camelot. I rushed to the internet, determined to overcome any hesitation and purchase a ticket.