Is it a new day in America?
Dylan Mulvaney just deployed the “s” word—and it doesn’t seem like it’s changed anything about the boycott of Bud Light, which continues to lose sales months after partnering up with the transgender influencer, much less the larger national debate about gender identity.
In a new TikTok video, Mulvaney announces that he is visiting Peru. “The people here are so kind,” he says in the video from Machu Picchu, a famous site of Incan ruins. “I feel very safe here.”
“It’s a little sad I had to leave my country to feel safe,” Mulvaney adds.
In using the word “safe,” Mulvaney is playing a tired trick of the LGBTQ movement: squelching the debate by arguing that any opposition is tantamount to attacking someone’s personal safety.
In doing so, the radical movement has made it almost impossible to have civilized debates about these issues, effectively silencing large numbers of Americans.
But based on what’s happening now, Americans are refusing to fall for that manipulation anymore.
Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBTQ activist group, last month declared a “national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people.” Kelley Robinson, the organization’s president, said in a written statement: “There is an imminent threat to the health and safety of millions of LGBTQ+ people and families, who are living every day in uncertainty and fear.”
When Target announced it was changing its Pride Month lineup (which had included onesies for babies, a women’s swimsuit with a pouch to tuck in a penis, and merchandise designed by a British designer known for his satanism products), the national department store chain cited the safety of its employees as a reason.
“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said on its website in late May.
Target officials, however, did not respond when I reached out to ask if they could provide details about whether employees or customers had been physically threatened, and whether any police reports had been filed.
Mulvaney, oversharer extraordinaire, similarly has been mum when it comes to delving into any particulars about why he feels unsafe.
“What transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could ever imagine,” he said in another video shared late last month on social media. “For months now, I’ve been scared to leave my house. I’ve been ridiculed in public, I’ve been followed, and I have felt a loneliness I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
Now let’s be clear: I’m no fan of Mulvaney, but he, like every human being, should be treated with respect and kindness. If he is receiving real threats, I hope he is getting help and protection from police departments. No one should be following him; that’s just creepy and wrong.
But Mulvaney can’t cry “unsafe” and stop the conversation he launched when he promoted Bud Light in conjunction with his “365 Days of Girlhood” video series.
Just imagine if disgraced former NAACP chapter leader Rachel Dolezal, upon the revelation of her white background, had said she felt unsafe because people were saying she had appropriated a racial identity that wasn’t hers. Would that have flown, halting criticism?
Furthermore, is Mulvaney calling on his fellow activists to promote safety? After all, people who speak out against transgender extremism are risking their safety.
Swimmer Riley Gaines, who competed against biological male Lia Thomas, tweeted that she “was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man” after her April speech at San Francisco State University about limiting women’s sports to women.
In 2021, British newspaper The Telegraph reported that “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling “has said that she has received ‘enough death threats to paper my house’ after trans activists staged a protest outside her home and revealed her address online.”
That same year, another British newspaper, The Daily Mail, reported that “a lesbian businesswoman has blasted transgender rights activists for trying to ‘intimidate’ her by sending her ‘death and rape threats on a daily basis’.” That businesswoman, Angela Wild, sold feminist products such as badges stating “Protect women-only spaces” and “Female biology is not bigotry.”
And let’s just look at some facts here. In the allegedly “unsafe” United States, a top news network host just delivered an on-air apology for a segment that “misgendered” Mulvaney. Cities across the country hosted massive Pride parades in June, complete with police protection. The new “Barbie” movie features a transgender actor.
President Joe Biden last month “hosted the largest Pride celebration in White House history,” Reuters reported. The White House even prominently hung the “Progress Pride” flag, which includes colors to represent transgender individuals. Rachel Levine, a transgender person serving as an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, called for a “summer of pride” in a video posted to an HHS social media account.
Meanwhile, Peru isn’t exactly some beacon of transgender acceptance. Outright International, a group that focuses on LGBTQ human rights, notes that Peru “is one of the few countries in South America that has no legal recognition of same-sex couples.” Its analysis of Peru continues:
Trans people can go to the judiciary to rectify the name and gender marker on their national identity card, but the processes are expensive, complicated, and can take many years. Trans people’s organizations have been fighting since 2016 to have a gender identity law that allows this change to be made administratively, but its approval has not yet been achieved due to the existing conservative majorities in Peruvian legislatures. Since 2017, Peru has had an explicit law against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, but violence and discrimination against LGBTIQ people remain, and cases of hate crimes often go unpunished.
Digging into the Human Rights Campaign’s report about the so-called “national emergency” is similarly revealing. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation, which is cited in the report.)
What is happening in the U.S. that is so threatening to LGBTQ Americans? Well, states are doing things like not allowing children to receive experimental medical treatment that could sterilize them; limiting single-sex bathrooms to, well, a single sex; not allowing boys to play on girls’ sports teams; not allowing public school teachers to discuss sexual orientation or gender identity matters with kids; not allowing public schools to lie to parents about using a child’s new gender identity, pronouns, and names; and telling public school teachers that they have to use the name and pronouns on a child’s birth certificate.
The horror.
Of course, the Human Rights Campaign puts all these initiatives in the scariest language possible, its report loaded with hand-wringing over “’Don’t Say LGBTQ+’ laws” and “Forced Student Outing laws” and “gender-affirming care bans.”
But again, Americans aren’t falling for this manipulation anymore—as shown by the fact that bills on these matters are becoming laws in many states.
Americans are showing they’re fed up with being called transphobic and hateful just because they don’t think men should be able to appropriate womanhood and beat women in women’s sports, and because they don’t think children should be allowed to undergo irreversible experimental medical treatments.
Bud Light continues its dismal sales. Modelo Especial has toppled Bud Light and become the bestselling beer in America for two months in a row. “Sales of Bud Light and Budweiser dropped 28% and 11.7%, respectively, from a year earlier, while Modelo Especial sales rose 8.5%,” reported Reuters. Meanwhile, social media is buzzing with rumors that Costco plans to drop selling the brand.
Gender ideology activists have been shockingly successful in getting Americans to let radical ideology infiltrate American institutions and life under the guise of “kindness.” But it seems that Americans have woken up.
It’s about time.
Transgender people should be treated kindly and charitably. But it is not kind to hide a child’s gender confusion from his or her parents. It is not kind to force an employee to violate his or her beliefs about gender and use the new pronouns someone just decided to adopt.
It is not kind to female athletes to make them compete against men who are stronger than they are, especially when women are at a higher risk for injury in those situations. It is not kind to lesbians to tell them they are bigots if they won’t have sex with men.
Yet this is the upside-down world we are living in.
American elites continue to pretend that this is all normal. But the Bud Light boycott finally is giving voice to the millions of Americans who think otherwise. Mulvaney, like every other American, has a right to free speech. But also like every American, that doesn’t mean he has the right to silence others.
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