(You can listen to this column, read by the author, here)
Not since Coca Cola changed its formula to “New Coke” have we seen a marketing blunder the size of Anheuser-Busch’s hiring of a transgender woman, social media influencer to frolic, bra on, in his bubble bath, sipping Bud Light.
The people who are upset with Budweiser because of this are themselves not overwhelmingly angry at, threatened by, or hateful of transgender people. Those who say otherwise are lying or ignorant.
The Bud boycotters are angry at the intolerance from the trans movement against them.
Please take as much time as you need to roll your eyes. We know, the trans movement can’t be intolerant. We’ve been lectured.
The Bud boycotters are angry about the coerced speech and the forced lying they must do to avoid being shamed and banished from their communities. They are upset about being fired from their jobs, kicked out of colleges and labeled haters for speaking the simple truth.
Dylan Mulvaney was a stage actor until COVID put him out of work. So, he decided to publicly transition into a woman gathering some 10 million online followers in the process, making him a marketing darling. Corporations, trying to reach younger, woke audiences made him wealthy.
On TikTok he celebrated his growing days of “womanhood.” He sang songs on how we must “embrace the bulge!” That means embracing the male genital bulge a trans woman has protruding from his bikini bottom or tight skirt. He celebrated his plastic surgery to make his face look feminine, but no surgery to remove his “bulge.”
To tempt the young’uns to start drinking their product, Anheuser-Busch paid Mulvaney to glam up their Bud Light, even though he was never really a beer drinker.
Attention Big Tobacco! If you want Hollywood, the media and progressives to finally defend and praise you, advertise your addictive drug to youngsters with a transgender influencer!
Those reacting negatively to these ads see Mulvaney as just another symbol of the coercion of speech and denial of science they are forced to parrot to survive in today’s trans-Bizarro World.
They see their children forced to lie in school, calling obvious boys “she.” They go to work, and they’re forced to take inclusivity seminars where they must lie and call women “men.” Otherwise, they lose their jobs and can’t feed their families.
They don’t give a hoot that any man thinks he’s a woman. They’re angry that they are forced to lie.
They, and I, see it this way: If we took X-rays of Mulvaney’s reproductive organs along with DNA samples showing his chromosomes and sent that, and no other data, to 1,000 different medical scientists, all 1,000 experts would all say the data came from a male.
If in 1,000 years they dug up Mulvaney’s remains, without any other information those future scientists will conclude the bones were from a man.
There is no scientific examination, no genetic assessment, no pee-on-a-stick test that can prove someone’s “mentally identified” sex. Mind reading isn’t a science.
If someone says they have cancer, but they actually don’t, it doesn’t mean they have cancer. And to force everyone around them to refer to them as if they do have cancer is to force everyone else to lie.
Yet somehow those who call he a “he” are labeled haters, and fired from work — all for simply speaking truth. Don’t they deserve respect too?
Those who refuse to call a singular person by the plural “they” are tossed out of school.
I love many trans people. I hate the trans movement because of its hateful intolerance.
I don’t care that Bud’s hired a man who thinks he’s a woman to pitch their brew. I support any man who thinks he is a she. That’s what freedom is all about, doing things I find objectionable.
All I ask for is the same respect in return. Respect my right to speak without coercion. Tolerance must be a two-way street.
If those who claim to seek tolerance for the trans community simply had tolerance for those of us who believe in science and believe in free speech, none of this would be an issue.
And for those who look at Dylan Mulvaney and roll their eyes, as I do, let’s be careful to remember he has every right to think he’s a woman because respect is a two-way street.
But let’s stop being afraid to speak truth to power.
And who are the science deniers now?
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
