Dylan Mulvaney Breaks Silence on Right-Wing Bud Light Backlash: ‘Dehumanization Has Never Fixed Anything’
While musicians including Kid Rock, Travis Tritt and John Rich have been lashing out at Bud Light over their fury that the beer giant sent some one-off commemorative cans to Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender actor/activist has kept quiet about the tempest stoked by the right-wing media.
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But on Thursday (April 27), Mulvaney broke her silence in a three-and-a-half minute TikTok video in which she said she had been content to “take the back seat and let them tucker themselves out,” in reference to the backlash against the March Madness promotional stunt that so angered rapper-turned-country-singer Rock that he attempted to obliterate cases of Bud Light with a semi-automatic rifle.
“I think it’s okay to be frustrated with someone or confused, but what I’m struggling to understand is the need to dehumanize and to be cruel. I just, I don’t think that’s right. Dehumanization has never fixed anything in history, ever,” said Mulvaney, 26, in the video to her 13 million followers. Describing growing up in a conservative family and in the church, Mulvaney said she still has her faith, but it’s been a struggle to hold on to it in the midst of attacks that reminded her of similar criticism she faced as a child for being “too feminine.”
“Now I’m being called all those same things, but this time it’s from other adults,” she said. “And if they’re going to accuse me of anything, it should be that I’m a theater person and that I’m camp. But this is just my personality and it always has been.”
The right’s Bud Light malt-down came after Mulvaney shared a video of herself on April 1 participating in Bud Light’s Easy Carry Contest for the end of the NCAAs March Madness, revealing that the company helped her celebrate her “365th day of womanhood” with “possibly the best gift ever” — a commemorative can of Bud Light with Mulvaney’s face emblazoned on the side; the cans, which are not commercially available, so angered Rock and country singers Tritt and Rich, among others, that they vowed to boycott the world’s biggest beer maker as a result.
“I’m embarrassed to even tell you this, but I was nervous that you were going to start believing those things that they were saying about me, since it is so loud,” she said. “But I’m just going to go ahead and trust that the people who know me and my heart won’t listen to that noise… and to those of you who support me and choose to see my humanity even if you don’t fully understand or relate to me: Thank you.”
Even as Rock and Rich’s Nashville bar/restaurants have made a show of removing Anheuser-Busch products from their shelves, other artists, including Jason Isbell and Zach Bryan, defended the brand against the online backlash, pointing out the importance of diversity. SiriusXM talker Howard Stern weighed in on the issue, as well, saying he was “dumbfounded by why someone would care so much” about a trans person acting as a spokesperson for the beer brand.
See Mulvaney’s video below.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
