Transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney is finally speaking out after kicking off a controversy that dethroned the top-selling beer in America, and boy is he unhappy.
You know Mulvaney as the man who rose to fame doing a cartoonish act as a woman in his “365 Days of Girlhood” TikTok series. The unintended parody of womanhood made Mulvaney millions of dollars in endorsement deals from a variety of companies, including — very briefly — Bud Light.
Bud Light’s advertisement chiefs fell all over themselves to be a part of Mulvaney’s circus act and sent him a specially made can of beer with his face on it. The can was not for sale, but was a vanity item made solely for Mulvaney.
But Bud Light fans were nonetheless shocked when Mulvaney featured the can in a sponsored post on social media.
The marketing stunt triggered a boycott that has seriously hurt Bud Light and sent parent company Anheuser-Busch into panic mode. Two executives were “put on leave” and later confirmed to be out of a job.
The disaster ultimately ended Bud Light’s reign as America’s best-selling beer.
In the two months since partnering with the brand, Mulvaney has remained mostly mum about the resulting hullabaloo — until now.
In a Friday TikTok video, Mulvaney told fans that he’s built his platform by being honest. Which was odd coming from a guy claiming to be a woman.
He then said he needed to get something off his chest and went into the whole mess with Bud Light and that infamous can with his face on it, a can that he said he hid and subsequently lost.
If and when he finds it, he said it needs to go in a museum, “preferably behind bulletproof glass.”
@dylanmulvaneyTrans people like beer too. 🏳️⚧️🍻♬ original sound – Dylan Mulvaney
Mulvaney then complained that his Instagram video unveiling the can resulted in “more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined,” adding that he stayed silent for so long because he was “scared of more backlash.”
“For months now I have been scared to leave my house, I have been ridiculed in public, I’ve been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he said.
Mulvaney blasted Bud Light for failing to reach out to him in the wake of the controversy.
“For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all,” he said, “because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want. And the hate doesn’t end with me. It has serious and grave consequences for the rest of our community.”
Mulvaney insisted that “there should be nothing controversial or divisive” about companies working with transgender people and urged corporations to step up their promotion of the LGBT agenda.
Amusingly, even as conservatives boycott the brand, liberals are also turning on Bud Light because it has neglected to come out in support of Mulvaney.
Of course, Bud Light still has not recovered from all this. Its more than 20 percent weekly losses in sales year over year are starting to look permanent.
Ultimately, while it seems Bud Light has not learned any lessons from this self-inflicted fiasco, other corporations just might be realizing that it is time to start easing up on their campaigns to push the groomer agenda on customers.
