On April 1st, Dylan Mulvaney, a trans woman and internet personality, posted a Bud Light advertisement to her Instagram and TikTok accounts that has become the latest subject of transphobic outrage. The ad features a special commemorative “Pride edition” can, decorated with the colors of the “rainbow flag,” a well-known symbol of the LGBT community and our emancipation struggle. Every anti-LGBT reactionary with Internet access, from your average Lifted-Dodge-Ram-Owner to big-name commentators and politicians like Ben Shapiro, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Caitlyn Jenner, has taken Bud Light’s pro-LGBT marketing as an opportunity to spread their share of transphobic bile online. So-called “anti-woke” fascists are calling for a consumer boycott against the giant beer company.
Conservative men on social media are even posting photos of themselves in drag as a sort of “gotcha” to trans women — and perhaps inadvertently learning something about their own relationships to masculinity in the process. Others are sharing their discontent with childish displays of hyper-masculinity, by, for instance, uploading videos of themselves shooting Bud Light beer cans.
Caitlyn Jenner’s complaint that Bud Light is “going woke” might appear self-contradictory. After all, isn’t Jenner herself a trans woman? What would motivate one rich trans woman (a member of the Kardashian Dynasty) to publicly slam another, less rich trans woman for taking on a superficially pro-LGBT, and altogether inoffensive, corporate sponsorship? Exactly the fact that she’s rich! Jenner, like all capitalists, is, before all else, a profiteer and an aspiring monopolist. She is a capitalist first, second, and third; any “solidarity” she might feel for other trans women is nothing compared with her wealth, which in turn is dependent on maintaining her public image as a conservative Republican. A bourgeois trans woman like Jenner would have no problem throwing another trans woman under her Cadillac Escalade if she stood to gain from it.
This is not to say that Anheuser-Busch is at all brave or a progressive champion of social justice and trans rights, merely for partnering with Mulvaney on an advertisement. Quite the opposite, in fact! The capitalists are featuring queer people and people of color in their media, advertisements, and marketing campaigns because they see a potential for profits. Although reactionary and chauvinist ideas, such as transphobia, are still widespread in the U.S., it appears that public opinion is becoming steadily more tolerant — toward LGBT people and other oppressed sections of the population — over time. Corporations have long-since taken the hint: in most cases, tolerance sells, and bigotry doesn’t. If the opposite were true, the capitalists would shift gears, and LGBT people would again be purged from representation in big corporate media. It’s really that simple. The “inclusivity” of the capitalists — their so-called “wokeness” — is nothing more or less than opportunistic profit seeking!
But should we care? We should certainly be concerned about the proliferation of transphobia. The latest barrage of fascist Republican attacks on the transgender community represents a last-ditch effort to reverse the tide of progress, to revive anti-LGBT bigotry in the U.S. public, to halt and roll back recent expansions of transgender civil rights. We must not wait for our rulers to “graciously” hand down pitiful reforms. Now is the time to stand up and fight back — to fight for our rights and the rights of our transgender family, friends, and neighbors. Our enemies seek to distract us — keeping us fixated on the latest social media frenzy, the latest colorful advertisement, the latest manufactured outrage — all the while Democrats and Republicans work hand in hand to make our mere existence even harder.
We must be steadfast in our position: that any and all instances of transphobia are intolerable. Transphobic vitriol and violence will continue under capitalism, even as the capitalists monetize “tolerance” of our identities. The “representation” politics the oppressed people are given is shallow and empty, because it does nothing to challenge, let alone abolish, the structures that oppress us: the rule of Capital, the white supremacist, settler-colonial order this empire was built on, and patriarchy. Socialism is the only path to the abolition of our oppressions, to the overthrow of our oppressors — the reactionaries who want to kill us and the capitalists who exploit and attempt to dupe us — and to the liberty and equality of all. We will remain principled and consistent in our efforts as we build a new world, one where “the last shall be first.”
