By Abe Greenwald
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Here’s a
secret. Most trans activism today isn’t really activism. It’s trolling.
Political activists, especially in human rights, try to build awareness of a
neglected cause and bring about systemic change. This would logically mean that
the work of trans activists was done a while ago. Americans couldn’t possibly
be any more aware of their cause than we already are. It’s omnipresent—framing
as many news stories as possible, written into the shows and movies we watch,
and hawked by influential people at every level of the establishment, including
the president. Far from being neglected, trans Americans have been
extravagantly celebrated.
As for
change, trans activists already achieved a tectonic shift in the popular
understanding of sex and gender, affecting a change so massive as to override
the institutional acceptance of biological reality. Biological male athletes
have been shellacking female competitors for years now. And the country’s
leading medical organizations have all thrown in their support for so-called
gender-affirming care of trans youths, with Boston Children’s Hospital at one
point claiming that babies can accurately
determine that their sex and gender are mismatched.
What’s
left for an activist to do?
Well,
gloat. Get in everyone’s face—even those who sympathize with you—and rub their
noses in your triumph. So that’s what popular trans activists have been up to
for a while—trolling. It’s what, for example, Dylan Mulvaney does, caricaturing
feminine sensibilities and behaviors with the delicacy of a wigged wrecking
ball. It’s what other TikTok influencers do when they rattle on about spreading
the good word of transgender ideology in kids’ classrooms. It’s already in
kids’ classrooms, and they know it. They just want to remind you.
Trolling
is a strange approach to activism. Its purpose is to elicit rage, not sympathy.
And that’s what it’s done. Predictably, Americans are now losing patience with these sore winners. The
majority of the country opposes biological males competing in sports with
biological females, and most believe that gender is determined by biology, not
choice. The trans movement will reckon with its self-inflicted loss in due
time.
But the
commercial interests that embraced the trans-activist craze are dealing with
problems on a more immediate schedule. Companies that aligned with what they
thought was a branch of human-rights activism are beginning to realize that
they saddled themselves not with beloved brand ambassadors but with
spokestrolls: people they’ve paid to irritate their own customers. NBC
News reports that shares in Anheuser-Busch
InBev have dropped more than 10 percent since Bud Light partnered with Mulvaney
in a PR campaign in early April, and “sales of Bud Light continue to plummet.”
The two executives behind the disastrous campaign were put on leave a month
ago.
Recently,
Target pulled some items from its Pride collection after people objected to
what looked like trans-friendly swimwear for children (reportedly, it’s
trans-friendly swimwear for adults) and apparel designed by a brand that
employs satanic imagery.
The big
story here concerns the Los Angeles Dodgers. The team originally planned to
honor an organization called Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on June 16 at
Dodger Stadium’s LGBTQ+ Pride Night. The Sisters are drag queens who wear nuns’
habits, give themselves obscene mock-clerical names, and spread the message of “go and sin some more.” In
other words, they’re not only trolls: They really are activists—anti-Catholic
activists. After an initial backlash, the Dodgers announced they would no
longer be honoring the group. But then they reversed course, apologized for
their moment of conscience, and announced that they would give the Sisters the
“Community Hero Award” after all.
We’ll
see how that goes. Given the Bud Light fiasco, the Target retreat, and the
shifting attitudes of the country, the age of the corporate trans troll looks
to be over before playoffs. And as it becomes ever clearer that conservatives
are on the right side of this battle, it would be behoove them not to gloat
about it. That’s how you lose.
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