Bittersweet Infamy - #115 - This Bud's Not for You

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

Taylor tells Josie the stories of transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, whose TikTok ad for Bud Light kicked off a right-wing beer boycott, and January Marie Lapuz, the beloved social butterfly whose 2012 killing shocked Vancouver's LGBTQ+ community.

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Today's episode of Bittersweet Infamy is about transphobia. It includes examples of transphobic hate speech, including a clip of Donald Trump's recent remarks promising to directly target the transgender population as president. This is relevant as, since we've taped this episode, Trump has issued several executive orders doing just that. The episode also includes descriptions of transphobic violence, particularly when we discuss the killing of January Marie Lepouse. Listen with care. Welcome to Bitter Sweet and Freedom. I'm Taylor Basso.

And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in NPA. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Boy, it's been a hell of a few weeks since the last episode, hey? Yeah, I've been trying to not think about it, but now that I think about it, yeah.

Unfortunately, really wicked wildfires in Los Angeles that have done a great deal of damage to life and to property. It's pretty gnarly. And we both have, you more recent than me, but we both have experience with wildfires. They are very scary. Even just being in their vicinity. No fucking joke. But certainly seeing flames down the street. Being a hundred kilometers away in a different fucking city is harrowing, let alone a major urban center exploding in flames. It's really intense. Obviously,

sending our love to any of our listeners who are affected or know people who are affected. If you are interested in donating to some sort of relief, there is a website from the city of L.A., lacity.gov slash L.A. Strong, and it has a few different organizations you can potentially donate to. An individual occurrence that really bummed me out was the passing of David Lynch. Yeah, that was a bummer. He's a fave. He's the director I've seen the most of.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I'm like a couple, I would say like three or four movies out from finishing the Lynch filmography probably. And that's kind of a little project that I've set myself in terms of like, well, there should be one director whose entire filmography I've seen.

And I do really, really adore the work of David Lynch. So yeah, RIP. This is sad, but you know that he was diagnosed with emphysema about a year ago because he was a habitual smoker. A devoted smoker, I would say. He loved to smoke. Even with emphysema, he was like,

I loved every goddamn cigarette I ever smoked. Listen, they end up hurting your lungs, but they're really cool. Ugh. But he, his emphysema did not respond well, of course, to the air quality in LA. Yeah. And there were complications that were immediately affected

by the air quality because of the wildfires in LA, so. And even with that, he was giving like tongue-in-cheek kind of weather reports from behind his desk during the wildfire right up until the end. Yeah, oh, that's a real sad one. Here's someone I guess you shouldn't bother mourning because they came back. How about TikTok being banned overnight? Right.

And then coming back with a lavish knob glazing of Donald Trump as its message. So wait, OK, I just heard before we hopped on about its reinstatement, because I was following when it got quote unquote canceled. But what's the reinstatement story? They're just like, Donald Trump is the best. Thank you, Donald. Thank you so much to dear leader Donald Trump. Oh gosh.

Juche blog day zero. You know what? It was like truly, truly, truly, truly. It was very creepy, very spooky stuff. And I think like relevant to a lot of the knob glazing we're going to see of Donald Trump, especially from tech types. This was just fucking the Dems snatch in defeat from the Jaws of Victory yet again on this fucking tick tock band that Donald Trump is getting the credit for bringing it back. Holy cow. I know all the tech adoration too. I'm just like, I need to get rid of my puffy vest.

I bought a puffy vest in like 2008 and now it's time to say goodbye. Burn those black turtlenecks. Bye. I have a couple of puffy vests that I bought in 2008, but they were more like that 70s show ski vest kind of thing. Okay, yeah, I think you might be. Yeah, mine is a mountain equipment. It's still a mountain equipment co-op. So maybe I should try and keep it around. Posterity's sake. I just won't wear it, put it in a shadow box. Memory of your time in Vancouver when you had to be wearing mech at all times. Well, I worked there too, so I got a lot of free shit.

I remember that. And then, speaking of lavish knob glazings of Donald Trump, we are recording this on Monday, January the 20th. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It's also known as Blue Monday, the saddest day of the year. Yeah, yeah. It's burning hot in some places, it's ice cold in others, like where Josie's filming, where they're preparing for a cold snap. We had to record this in the afternoon because I don't know if the deep freeze is going

to fuck up things again and then maybe Ted Cruz will have to go back to Mexico to get his trencita suit on. They're looking pretty frayed these days. We woke up to the sound of our landlords putting plastic skirting along the base of the house. Skirt, skirt. Was that the sound? It was more like, chh, chh, chh, chh, cause they stapled it, but. Yeah.

Yeah, hopefully we're good. We've had a lot of experience now, so we'll see. Yep. And relevantly, it's the day that Donald Trump is getting inaugurated for presidency number 47. How you doing? I forgot about that one. What a wild ride, dog.

What a wild fucking ride. I want to get off. Yes, that would be very nice. Is there a ride attendant? I got up this morning at about eight and I'm like, all right, here we go. I have the day off of work, but I'm like, going to get things done. And I just like went back to bed and didn't wake up for a few more hours. And I was like, I'll just do this for the next four years. I'll just sleep. It's fine. I'll just

not do anything else. Well, we need you awake and fighting. So I know, I know that's true. Properly rested is good too. The movement demands your attention. Yes. Before we move into our main story today, we're not gonna be having a Minfamous today, just cause you'll see why. It would have been too fine a needle to thread tonally. I got a Scoogum story coming here and I didn't want to risk one of those diarrhea stories

being the Minfamous, you know what I mean? And we also, we gave you quite a Scoogum episode last time too, so we're cognizant of timing. Yeah, don't worry. We've noticed that our average runtime has gone up. And while we'd love your feedback on whether you all are okay with these longer episodes, we also want to do what we can to make sure that they're of a reasonable size. And this one ran a little bit long in the writing for my end.

So no Mimfy today. If you want that extra content, that extra bittersweet punch, we invite you to join us over at the Bittersweet Film Club over at ko-fi.com, k-o-fi.com, slash bittersweetinfamy.com, become a monthly subscriber and you can hear us talk about Battlefield Earth. That is going to be- I did watch it. You did watch it. So now we've both watched it. We haven't discussed it yet, but we've watched it and we're going to be getting to the bottom of it. If we can.

We're going to solve it. We're going to solve the mystery that is battlefield earth. We're going to unlock the Rubik's cube of battlefield earth and we want you to join us over at coffee. Yeah. Yeah. And special shout out to Lizzy D who re-upped her subscription. So she's our favorite subscriber now. Our favorite subscriber is always the person who most recently did something we liked. So you can easily knock her off. And then Lizzie, you can do it back.

Eventually one will come out as the victor. It's true. And it'll be the last person that we talk to. Very sweet. And you must be a very organized person, Lizzie D to- We're grateful. We're very grateful. Yeah, that's totally something that would fall off my desk

and I'd never see again. Fall into the crack, the abyss behind the desk. We're essential. We're essential podcast content. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service,

destination-focused dining and cultural enrichment on board and on shore, and every Viking voyage is all-inclusive with no children and no casinos. Discover more at Viking.com. I tried the Y for free, and I never looked back. The instructors empowered me. One more, you got this!

The gym strengthened me. The pool soothed me. And the pick-up games energized me. Great game! The Y is everything I needed it to be. Because the Y is so much more than my gym. Try the Y free for seven days at trytheY.ca. Okay, let's get into our main story for today.

Yeah, let's do it. Today's episode is going to be about transphobia, including examples of hate speech and transphobic violence. If you, the listener, are not in the mood to hear two cisgender people talk about the implications for trans people of recent developments in worldwide politics, I completely understand. Yeah. Sometime in the last year, I had a conversation with people I care about and whose opinions I respect on the subject of transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney and the successful right-wing boycott of Bud Light Beer

in response to Mulvaney's social media ads for their products. Don't think anyone in the room was transphobic at all, to be clear, but I was really passionately insisting that this was real cause for alarm from a human rights perspective, and the person I was speaking to thought that it was mainly a loud and belligerent fringe

making noise about the issue, and that it might've been more about Mulvaney having kind of a grating influencer presence than her being transgender. Okay. I left that conversation frustrated mostly with myself because mine is an anger that often crumples inwards rather than exploding out.

Amen, brother. You've been to those therapy sessions too, babe. Nice. I never cut myself any slack for saying things less than perfectly, which sucks because we all speak imperfectly all the time. That's why we edit this thing. That's why we edit this thing. It's why I'm reading off a script right now. Yeah, there we go. Amen. Woo again.

And so I thought that in order to purge this moment of having been imperfect in an important conversation and as far right heads of state crest the horizon in both the US and Canada, I mean, we've hit horizon in the US, I would present to a wider audience a more coherently organized story about Dylan Mulvaney and this Bud Light boycott. Okay, okay. Why it happened, why it matters, and more than just the abstract,

to more than just the fringe, and what we can try to do about it. Nice. I also want to tell you later on about a woman named January Marie Lapousse whom I met as a young adult. Her story isn't directly related to Dylan's, but it has a lot to do with my own passionate feelings on this issue, and I think her story is one that demands sharing when we're discussing the unsafety of a transphobic society.

Yeah. I want to emphasize that while this telling places're discussing the unsafety of a transphobic society. Yeah. I want to emphasize that while this telling places January's story near the end of the episode, that should not be read as an implication that it is subordinate to the other narratives, and it is in fact probably the most important thing I'll tell you today. Okay. When I'm telling any story about a marginalized community, I try to be sensitive. I want to give the full spectrum of humanity that exists within any group the joy and the sadness and the silliness and the darkness, and I want them to be able to feature in any role in

a story not just as victims of discrimination and violence. I remember when I was first reading up on gay history and I realized all the death dates of nearly every single meaningful male player came between 1986 and 1994. Yeah. It can be hard to constantly hear about yourself followed by a bunch of sad statistics. And it's nice to just have the chance to see people like yourself in all kinds of roles, lead and supporting, not just victims and villains, but not just heroes either. It's nice to be a little naughty sometimes and even a little bit funny. Believe it or not, I even try to sprinkle in variety in my depictions of straight white guys.

Everyone gets door service in the Taylor Basso suite. And because I want people of all stripes to be able to listen to the show, even those who don't agree with me. You are wearing stripes too, just so you know. I am wearing stripes right this very moment. This represents all the stripes of people, right? I typically try to make my politics evident through my curation of hopefully thoughtful and empathetic and varied and entertaining stories about all different kinds of people from all different backgrounds, that and I really don't think the world needs another millennial spitting dry political takes into a podcast microphone and epidemic stinking up all reaches of the political spectrum.

Yeah. But indulge me as I do just that. Please and thank you. Unfortunately, I would say today's story lacks my usual light touch and it isn't very funny, although equally, I hope it's not dreary in the telling and it definitely has its moments of absurdity. Kid Rock shows up as a prominent character, for example. Wow.

Damn. Ba with the ba. With that said, I think today's episode is going to be more of a direct approach to a major political issue that's been weighing really heavy on my heart for a while, the demonization of transgender people by the US and Canadian far right. Ugh. You're not a fan either? No, I'm not.

I think that transphobia is so deep into some cultures that people feel like, well, if you're changing that, then you're changing my culture. And it's just like, that's not progress. That's not kindness. That's not what you... Why are you so, like, entrenched in your gender norms that you can't see somebody else's norms and respect their norms? It's really, really bothersome to me when people get so, like, cranky about it.

And that's my exposure, right? I'm lucky enough that what I see is crankiness. As opposed to violence. As opposed to violence. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, I understand that the crankiness is kind of a microcosm that can explode into violence. And that's what kind of pisses me off about it. A big group of cranky people is sometimes just a mob. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. I don't understand where you even get a foothold in this conversation because it is so small-minded

and so stupid. There's no attempt to empathize. There's no attempt to understand. That's not the place that so many of these conversations start from. And I think that that's, I can't speak for like a side because I really don't, as much as a lot of my politics line up with what I guess would be considered

the political left in a North American context, I really don't see myself as being a member of a side. I kind of come, try to come to my own values independently and act them out, right? And so that's my value is to kind of come in with empathy. And I just like, it's frustrating to watch that not only not happen on such a large scale, but also to be able to see like the string pulling that's happening to make it happen in real time. To be able to see like, I guess I would just call it the misdirection campaign

against a benign group of people as a scapegoat. And to watch people not realize that that's what's happening is really frustrating. That is very frustrating too, to see that we all have knee-jerk reactions and we all kind of make mistakes, but then that process of actually reflecting and understanding and exercising empathy yields the same stupidity, you know? I think a lot of it too is entrenched in the ideas of in-group psychology. If the people who are holding Bibles are saying this, and it is entrenched in me, for example, that to be a God-fearing, church-going person is de facto a good thing.

Yeah. I take it on faith that you must be speaking well. Like, you know what I mean? I think there's that component of it too. Whereas, like, the other side gets demonized as, like, baby killers and child mutilators and these sorts of things that you're of course against. Yeah. But it's all just a big fucking smoke job. And it comes at the expense of real people's lives.

And it's awful, I think. Yeah, and not just inclusive of like everyday interactions, but also like their entire life. And especially if violence is enacted against them, you know, their safety. Employment, housing, medicine, all of it. Yeah. Are you allowed to play tennis competitively?

All of it. Oh, God. So we're talking about this in an American and a Canadian kind of context. This is an issue that extends to every continent in the world, other than Antarctica, though as we've discussed, life in those bunkers can get a little bit prickly at the best times.

We're mostly going to be talking in a North American context today because that's the context I'm most familiar with and a context that seems relevant as on the day of recording, America inaugurates a president throatily engaged in an anti-trans moral panic. Throatily, yes. I'm not transgender and I'm no expert on gender or really anything, but I've worked in LGBTQ activism

and education, I've worked in sexual health, the movement, and I play in a queer dodgeball league if that's relevant. What's the name of your team? You want to give a shout out? Yeah, yeah, the Lucille Balls. Yeah, girls! The Lucille Balls. There's a lot of good names in that league, dude. Oh, I bet. They're all shit that you could cut. Game plus dodgeball equals blank. And they're all that. Let me confess my bias right up front. These people are my friends and I believe you should have your friends backs.

Hell yeah. I also recall an incident on Canadian Thanksgiving when my family and I were eating at the table. A TV in the background set to some American channel. On came a Trump ad ranting about prisoners getting sex changes and ended with the punchy slogan, Kamala, the candidate for they slash them, not you. I happen to be sitting next to my romantic partner

who uses both they and he pronouns and has expressed to me over and over that they don't give a shit which one people use, so it's all good. Even still, I felt very conscious and very angry that on what was supposed to be a nice day with loved ones, Donald Trump was fucking me and the people I love where I live.

Yeah. At my goddamn Thanksgiving dinner. Canadian Thanksgiving too. Like not even, yeah. We're like totally different country too and still. Entirely different month. Gross. As we start a new year and a new season of Bittersweet Infamy, I do not want this to

be a podcast exclusively about America or the American right. And I especially don't want this to become a podcast about Donald Trump. He doesn't deserve that. He just deserves nothing. No. Not even a podcast. Not even a podcast. Well, there should be some podcasts about him critically from those who are interested, but it's not, I'm not fucking interested. I truly am not fucking interested. who are interested, but it's not, I'm not fucking interested. I truly am not fucking interested. I find the whole shtick so boring. The comedy of fascism has worn me dry and I can no longer find even the most bare chuckle of merriment. Because it's not funny, because it's violent. As I have plainly expressed, I don't like Donald Trump's soul or his lack thereof.

And Christ knows the guy gets as much attention as he wants from people who are much more interested in talking about him than me. I am, however, going to play a clip of Donald Trump speaking on trans issues in December 2024, shortly after his re-election. If you don't want to hear a bunch of factually illiterate hate speech about trans people, skip ahead two minutes. I seriously wrestled with whether I wanted to put these clips in here just because like, one of the limited things that I have control over

is what appears in this podcast, but it is something that like, there's a difference in hearing something from the person who actually means it as opposed to the diffuse effect of secondhand reporting. Yes, yeah. I can say Donald Trump said this over and over, but here's him fucking saying it and do what you want with that.

I should also flag it's full of a bunch of fucking lies as everything Donald Trump says is. We'll talk about it. The left-wing gender insanity being pushed in our children is an act of child abuse. Very simple. Here's my plan to stop the chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation of our youth. On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden's cruel policies on so-called gender-affirming care — ridiculous, a process that includes giving kids puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance, and ultimately performing surgery on minor children. Can you believe this? I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs

that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age. I will declare that any hospital or healthcare provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare and will be terminated from the program immediately. My Department of Education will inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body, they will be faced with severe consequences, including potential civil rights violations for sex discrimination

and the elimination of federal funding. As part of our new Credentialing Body for Teachers, we will promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique. I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female and they are assigned at birth. No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender, a concept that was never heard of in all of human history. Nobody's ever heard of this, what's happening today.

It was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago. Under my leadership, this madness will end. Thank you very much. Eugh. What you very much. What a fucking bully. Yes. Yes. So what a fucking bully. I think there's something and this maybe you'll speak want to clock more is the use of language

that has typically been kind of a positive or has historically gotten to a point of positive connotation that he- And then gets morphed. Like the idea of teachers or educators who speak about body dysmorphia in terms of gender are going to be slapped with civil rights violations? Like, no, no, no. You don't, you're misusing the term civil rights. Like that is not what, but it has this positive connotation. It's MLK day to day. Civil rights is in the sixties was a hot button, but now it's just a good thing. Right? So what?

Not only is it something that has a positive connotation, but I would observe that it's something that is often associated with minority and specifically black communities, just like the word woke, just like the word cancel, da da da da da da da. It is a deliberate perversion of things that represent progress or things that are like generated from minority communities, et cetera. And they're selected, they're careful. Because civil rights can be kind of, you can glom onto MLK and you can... So put it next to the word mutilation.

That'll change it. It's wild. That's wild. Even as I watched you fucking react to that, I was like, should I be even including this clip? Because it's just fucking hateful, gibberish. But then I remembered that it was like a friend, like an internet friend named Mardo posted that on their Instagram to be like, dude, here's why I do not fuck with people who've voted with this guy. And it had a really strong emotional impact on me. And I-

Yeah. Bring it to you because I can see that it had a fucking strong emotional impact on you. And I feel like as fucking gross as it is, sometimes that strong emotional impact can lead us toward action instead of complacency. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I think for a long time, my strategy has been to just ignore Trump.

That perhaps was a helpful personal strategy during the Biden years. But yeah, I just didn't want to fucking I wanted him to be as historically irrelevant as possible as soon as possible. But that's not the case. That's not where we are. So we got to listen to his voice. But now we got a real line, right? I don't recommend tracking everything fucking Trump says and does. But in this context, I just want there to be no ambiguity about the legitimacy of the threat to trans people. Yes, yes. And I think that does need to be made clear, because if you're not listening

to his voice, then you don't hear how extremely violent it could be. I will try to never fucking play a Trump clip on this show again, if I can help it. We'll do our best. We'll do our best. We'll do our best. Yeah, we'll see how the next few years go. So obviously, if that clip of Old Faithful going off didn't make it clear, this episode is going to be talking about this situation in a mostly US context, but I've added a bit of Canadian context to the mix because it feels relevant.

Yeah. Conservative leader Pierre Poilier seems poised to take the reins of the country later this year. And in February 2024, he made comments about how, while it wouldn't be within the Prime Minister's power to do so, he ideologically supported banning trans women from competing in women's sports or entering women's bathrooms. There are still ongoing battles around LGBTQ topics in Canadian schools, which we've discussed on the podcast before. While the American and Canadian contexts are different, I don't at all think Canada is immune from discrimination.

Very easy to find instances in our history as well as ongoing examples of the minority being mistreated by the majority, including ones we'll discuss today. If you're new to the discussion of transgender issues, here are some quick terms. When we talk about biological sex, that's things like your sexual organs, your hormones, the physical markers of what we typically call male and female. Oh, as we've discussed in the past, there are people called intersex who are born with a mix of both because that's biological organisms, baby. Yeah. Variations. When we talk about gender, that's the way you feel on the inside. We're not really sure of the chemical and anatomical cause of this as we're

not sure of many aspects and features of the brain. Why do we dream? When your biological sex doesn't match your gender, that's called being transgender. Some folks are transgender men or transgender women. Some folks are non-binary, which means they feel neither or both. There are really all kinds of different versions of this that change as you go around the world. To rebut, Trump's claim that this is something the radical F made up 10 minutes ago between euthanizing squirrels. Oh my gosh, that one. you saw me react to that one.

I was just like, just the dumbest shit you've ever heard. And something that's being echoed on the floors of Congress as this gets introduced, literally someone, I have some Republican twat, may I use the word twat? You may, you may twat, twat away, twat away. Some Republican fucking twat use like the argument this is silly transgender people don't exist,

that's made up. What? So let's just break it down. There have been transgender people in every culture throughout history. India has the hijra, a federally recognized third gender that dates back to antiquity. Samoa has the fa afafine, a widely accepted third gender.

We've known about the Arabian Kha'nith since the 7th century CE. Thailand has the Katoi, has for centuries. You can find examples of this among African tribes. Indigenous communities in North America have similar concepts, which have come to be referred by the umbrella term Two Spirit. There are many cultures that were able to wrap their heads around this concept before the radical left got to it. They just don't happen to have been the ones who colonized the Western world. Yeah, or want power and control over people. So you know, there's that too. Well, I'm sure there's people in any culture who want power and control over people too. Yes, yes, that's true. But I think that's the deep down motivation for

this, right? Is to instill fear and to exert power. Yeah. Fear of the other, distraction, distraction from hands in the till, from more pressing issues of global environmental concern, from the massive and growing even more yawning gap between the richest and the poorest. Yeah. Ha ha ha. Yeah. That one's fun. Or even the richest and the kind of rich. ha ha ha, yeah, that one's fun. Or even the richest and the kinda rich, holy shit! True enough, yeah. Even in the Western world you can find historical examples. We know about Eleanor Reichener, a sex worker from 1390s London who consistently identified as a woman despite being a sign male at birth.

Did you say 1390s? 13, we got in the time machine for that one, but we gotta lurch forward. In the late 1700s, the universal public friend, a genderless Quaker preacher, traveled the Northeastern United States, attracting followers. I don't know that story, that's rad. I wanna learn more about the universal public friend.

That sounds interesting. Yeah, that does. But no time to stop there. Albert Cashier was a sign female at birth, enrolled in the Union Army as a man to fight in the US Civil War, and continued to live as a man for the next 53 years. Yeah, boy! Frances Thompson was a freed slave and anti-rape activist and is believed to be the first trans woman to testify before the American Congress about the Memphis riots of 1866. So like, wish we were meeting under better circumstances obviously,

but that's kind of a historical milestone. Yeah. Yeah, totally. What is more recent is the phenomenon of hormone treatment and gender-affirming surgery, what used to be called sex reassignment or sex change surgery. If you want to watch an aggressively mid-oscubate drama, 2015's The Danish Girl tells the story of Lillia Elba, who died after complications from an attempt at surgical transition in 1930. drama. 2015's The Danish Girl tells the story of Lillia Elba who died after complications from an attempt at surgical transition in 1930. Is that Eddie Redgrave? Eddie Redmayne.

Redmayne. Okay, sorry. That's exactly, and exactly. Ex-soldier Christine Jorgensen, who made front page news with her transition in 1950, was the first transgender celebrity in the United States. Okay. in 1950 was the first transgender celebrity in the United States. OK. And of course, we know all about cantankerous libertarian con artist Liz Carmichael, who in the 1970s was outed as transgender while being prosecuted for her fraudulent three-wheeled car, The Dale,

as we told you back in episode 71. We love The Dale. We love The Dale. We love to hate The Dale. Liz was my favorite person who I would never want to have a conversation with in any context. Yeah, very well put. Yeah, yeah. I want to know all about you, but never goddamn meet you. Yeah. Do not care to meet in person, but what a character, what a woman. In the 2000s, trans people became gradually more prominent as a minority group,

which coincides with the time I graduated high school and started my own LGBTQ activism, my work in the movement, to include giving anti-homophobia and transphobia workshops and being a counselor to leadership camp for queer youth. I felt very ensconced in the movement and things were slowly and very inequitably, like very inequitably, getting better. I look back on that time of optimism

with a lot of bittersweet emotion, as you might imagine. You wanted a bittersweet in for me, baby. Damn, baby. The bittersweetness was coming from inside the house all along, we knew that. All the time, yeah. We knew that. It's also around this time, late 2000s, early 2010s,

that we start to see, and like even mid to late, I would say, 2010s, that we start to see queer people in advertising for large brands. Right. That most fraught kind of representation, because it means we're making enough progress to be seen as commodities. Yeah, it's a hard thing to celebrate, but it isn't all bad. Yeah, there's I guess there's worse. There's violence, right? So this is kind of good. You know what I mean? It's that kind of logic, right? I myself appeared in a print ad for Kaya, a brick and mortar offshoot of Canadian

mobility giant telus meant to sell phones and digital devices to the LGBTQ community. It was not explained to me why queer people needed a separate store for this purpose, but it was explained to me that I would be able to keep all the professional photos as well as the wardrobe from the shoot. And that was all I needed to hear. Yep. Oh, I want to see those photos. I'll send them down. I must have the CD somewhere. This is back when they gave you things on CDs, right? Perfect. That uptick in visible representation extended to transgender women, both in media. 2013 saw actor Laverne Cox's big break in Orange is the New Black. She's great. And relevantly in advertising, Kai Cheng Tom is a friend of mine through the movement.

And in fact, we initially met working at that leadership camp I was telling you about. She also, among her million rules and titles, happens to be a killer writer who published her first of several books, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, a dangerous trans girl's confabulous memoir. It's a tongue twister of a title you baked there, Kai Cheng, in 2016, shortly after which she was tapped to appear in a Sephora campaign. Hey, hey.

As luck would have it, her column on this exact subject, Trans Women in Advertising, dropped this week on Extra, which is the local Canadian gay rag, parentheses affectionate. She says, and I'm going to read a long extract with very slight edits only for length. Okay. There was a brief extremely odd moment

in the mid to late 2010s when it seemed like being a trans girl could also mean being an it girl. For a split second in the violently transphobic history of the modern world, trans women were in, to a limited extent, in specific social circles, and our faces could even enhance the market value of major brands. In those years, I had several trans women of colour friends get influencer contract

offers, that is, sponsorship and modelling deals, with brands such as MAC Cosmetics, Dove, Hudson's Bay, and even Mastercard, all within a handful of years. I myself appeared in a Sephora makeup campaign and was offered another contract with a major fashion label. In that same handful of years, though, a disturbingly large number of my trans women friends and acquaintances experienced homelessness, joblessness, street violence, intimate partner violence, and severe mental illness caused by trauma. All this to say it was a frankly bizarre moment to be alive, if slightly intoxicating. Embarrassing though it may be to admit today, I suspect that a small part of my 20-something self really did believe that appearing in ads for expensive makeup was going

to do something good for trans people. And of course, it was awfully nice that activism could be oh so glamorous too. That's really well put. She's a great shock of shocks! A few books deep, she's a fucking pretty good writer, and she's had like a weekly column with Extra for a while that I recommend checking out. Oh nice! Oh cool, very cool. I saw Kai Cheng's lovely face splashed across the wall of Granville Street Skytrain station in the relevant ad and I do want to say that while I completely understand her ambivalence about her experience, I think she does herself a slight disservice in her cynicism here because I do think that seeing her face in

the context of beauty mattered to someone. Representation matters, it's true. Well, she's about to shit all over the representation matters argument, but yes, yes. Okay, great, good. I'm glad, I'm glad someone will. It's not just representation matters, right? It's representation as a circuit of larger and more comprehensive and substantial

quality of life improvements for all populations, all embattled populations in this context, trans folks. Representation is the outermost ring of a very like- Representation is the candy coating of the shit that matters. Yes, exactly. Who doesn't love candy?

And I do think we need to see ourselves in all strata, even a hyper capitalist society. If we already have makeup idols, why not trans makeup idols? If we already have cell phone stores, why not queer cell phone stores, et cetera? I mean, why, but why not? Yeah, right, yeah.

Kai Chang goes on further to pick apart the ways in which this kind of glossy representation doesn't take into account the real struggles of everyday people, including the most vulnerable. Quote, the day-to-day struggles sometimes called material reality of many communities of poor, homeless, imprisoned and sex worker trans people were continuously relegated to the background where they largely remain today.

I plan on returning to this article on those subjects later on in this episode. In the meantime, says Kai Cheng, I am not certain exactly when trans women lost our oh-so-brief moment in the sun as trendy marketing assets, though the vicious and extreme public backlash to TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney's ill-fated Bud Light endorsement deal seems to have signaled the end of the end. Which brings us, finally, the stage is set, the green flag drops to Dylan Mulvaney and the Bud Light boycott. Josie, what do you know about this subject? I don't know a lot. What you've already alluded to, I guess,

is like as far as my knowledge went that Dylan Mulvaney was on and it was like a big ad. Like, I want to say like it wasn't Super Bowl, but it was something similar. It was a piece of TikTok sponsored content for March Madness. A bunch of other people got the same invite. It wasn't a pick ad.

You'd think it was. Yeah. You'd think it was. Smolland and on her channel, EG directed at her own audience. Oh, oh. She didn't do a fucking Super Bowl ad. They just acted like she did.

Oh, okay, okay. See, yeah, you need to tell me more because I know very little. Okay. Dylan Mulvaney was born December 29th, 1996 in San Diego, California. She was assigned male at birth, which means that she went by he before transitioning. Since transitioning goes by she or they, she grew up in Del Mar Heights and Carmel Valley, Josie, any intel on those communities?

Yeah, kind of seaside, kind of an old, they had this not so much Carmel, but Del Mar kind of had like this old hippie seaside vibe that has gotten, it's pricier now to be there and Carmel was kind of more inland. And so it had more of a suburban vibe, like a little bit cheaper. Dylan's grandfather, James F Mulvaney Sr. was president of the San Diego Padres. Oh, go pods! More relevantly than ever, go pods. Dylan attended Cathedral Catholic High School.

Oh, I know Cathedral. Tell me about Cathedral. It's kind of in the Carmel Valley area. Catholic High School had uniforms. I played like a few softball games and water polo games against them. You know, that's all I got. Okay, cool. Well, we love it.

We love the context. She went to Cathedral and she was on the Glee Club and it shows neutral observation. She could be like a Ryan Murphy's Glee character kind of in the way that she like carries herself a little bit. Nice. Powerful era for gay theater kids, the 2010s. Yeah. Powerful era. Finally, she graduated from the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory

of Music with a BFA in musical theater in 2019, quickly got a series of roles in local and touring productions, including a touring version of the Book of Mormon where she played Elder White. Good for her. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, interrupting the live performance sector. So Dylan kind of ate shit on that fucking touring version of Book of Mormon, unfortunately.

Dylan started cultivating an online social media presence using Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, the CCP recruiting tool that was banned for a couple hours before the intervention of glorious leader Donald Trump, where she did what most of the filthy communists on Mao's favorite app do, sang little songs and did little dances. That make people really happy. Yeah. Well, they really piss some people off too, apparently. Yeah, well they really piss some people off too apparently. As the pandemic raged on, Dylan formally came out as trans and introduced that aspect of

her identity to her influencer content. Nice. Quote, when the pandemic hit I was doing the Broadway musical Book of Mormon, I found myself jobless and without the creative means to do what I loved. I downloaded TikTok, assuming it was a kid's app. Once I came out as a woman, I made this day one of being a girl comedic video. Video.

And it blew up. I really don't know another place online like TikTok that can make a creator grow at the rate that it does. Thank God our glorious leader Donald Trump brought it back. Oh, huh, huh. Dylan decided to extend her successful comedy short into a series entitled Days of Girlhood, discussing her perceptions of the trials and tribulations

of embracing a new identity that she hadn't been raised in and effectively documenting her transition day by day, which damn you could not pay me enough money to do that. Whoa. That's a position of extreme vulnerability and extreme public. Holy cow, right? As you were telling me all these details, I think I just assumed that Dylan had transitioned

earlier? No, she did this during the COVID pandemic on the internet, basically. It's a very internety kind of story, this story. Yeah, yeah. Whoa. Yeah, that's a lot. That's intense. That's... I get it. I mean, that's hella intense. Yeah. To use a bit of San Diego vernacular.

Well, that's more Northern California. Well, fuck off then. Just stick with gopads. You're fine. You're covering all your bases with that one. Don't worry. Absolutely. Who needs more? So day one, she's bitching about her mood and putting on lip gloss. Day two, she's at the flea market trying to buy some dresses. Day three, trying on club wearing bikinis. That'll piss people off.

Day four, Dylan talks about how it's what's on the inside, not the outside, that makes you a girl. Women can have facial hair. It's true. And that all women have facial hair. Yep, Yep. If you've got alopecia, I don't mean to say, you can, you can show it to me. You know what I mean.

Many women have facial hair. Day five, Dylan contemplates bangs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, that's, ooh, yeah, that's a big one. It's a story about a transition from a more masculine to a more feminine identity told imperfectly and messily by someone newly undergoing that transition, and as you might imagine for folks with really narrow concepts of femininity and masculinity, it was apparently extremely triggering. Dylan began to receive a lot of attention from transphobic commenters, increasing in

amount and intensity as her popularity grew. By October 2022, she had 8.4 million TikTok followers. 8.4 million. Imagine transitioning in front of 8.4 million people. That gives me stress. I can't even, like, I couldn't even like brush my teeth in front of 8.4 million people, like. No.

First of all, how did they all get into my bathroom? Yeah. To put yourself out there in that way too, in such a vulnerable, like you and I have podcasts all the time about like, what are the parts of the, that's the privacy police. What are the parts of ourselves that we reveal on the show? What are the versions of ourselves that we are on the show?

Just because like to go out there and entirely expose yourself, parentheses non-sexual, is very difficult. Well, and some of the stuff that like, maybe we shouldn't include that. I'm happy with like, sure, I'm happy with the world knowing that. But then when I really think about it, it's like, do I want my great, great aunt to know that? Like not necessarily, you know, and it's just you, the world seems a little bit simpler when you say, oh yeah, I'm sharing it with the world.

And then when you actually like think about the people and the individuals who that is, it's a little scarier. The individual people, many of whom don't have your best interests at heart. Or context, right? They're just seeing one or two videos and then that's it or whatever. There was a graphic I saw on the internet once

that I really liked. And it had like pixel art background of like a sunset. And it said a quote, something like, I made this like my Facebook cover image. So I'm sure I could go back and find it. But it said something to the effect of like, no one is that slice of them that you encounter. Yeah.

And on social media and in a content creator position, so much of what we do is like curating the version of ourselves that we give you even unconsciously, even without thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. But on the other hand, I will say for Dylan, like having kind of started down that track and then seeing how many people responded, you know, like not even thinking of the negative comments, just seeing. For all the negative shit that gets piled on her, she does get support during this too, because there are people who really respond to her or even people who just respond to the idea that it doesn't really matter if a trans woman does spawn con for a beer or whatever.

Yeah. And I could, so I could see where she's coming from in terms of like, no, I'm doing this because it's important because this is something that I want to do and I shouldn't have to stop doing something I want to do because other people are uncomfortable with it or whatever. Who don't even know me. Yeah. Like, yeah. Is this something I would do? No.

Fuck no. Could not pay me empty out the fucking Canadian mint into my living room and I would not do it. All them loonies are crazy. No I'm gonna say roll them up and send them back, okay? That same month, marking day 167 of girlhood, Dylan Mulvaney appeared on The Beauty Of, the podcast for the makeup brand Ulta Beauty Beauty chatting with host David Lopez about her transition. Ulta posted a video clip on their Twitter feed with a caption that read,

partially trans girls can do it all except they did that thing with the clap. So it basically said trans girls can't do it all. I love how you like podcast that. Podcast clap, I podcast clap. Dude, we're getting more and more pro by the that. Podcast clap, I podcast clap. Dude, we're getting more and more pro by the day. Podcast clap.

Well, okay, let's bring the mood down because it's about to suck. Okay. Thank you for the heads up. I'm not still smiling at my clapping. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Turn that smile upside down. Transphobes found the video pretty quickly. Quotes.

These are now just quotes of various. These are the top tweets. Disgusting misogyny. Quit trying to erase my wife and daughters with your pandering to the political left. These are men, not women. I will not stand for it. You really want to insult your primarily female customers, don't you? Hashtag a boycott Ulta trended on Twitter. It's that tack, the JK Rowling tack. It's the, this is an affront to feminism. Ulta Beauty responded, We believe beauty is for everyone and while we recognize some conversations we host will challenge perspectives and opinions, we believe constructive dialogue is one important way to move

beauty forward. The intersectionality of gender identity is nuanced, something David and Dylan acknowledged themselves within the episode. Regardless of how someone identifies, they deserve our respect. Amen. Bookmark that response for later on when certain other corporate goodwill sentiments are found lacking. I know, I had a moment where I was like, good job, Ulta.

And then I was like, you know what, fuck Ulta, it's fine. Yeah, being, not to be like hashtag not all corporations, but like, I think that there are, like if there is blowback, it is better to support the fucking talent in any case, I think, unless it is a situation where they did something truly inexcusable. I think it's always a good idea

and it's good optics, damn it, to support the talent. Loyalty looks good, I think, but we'll get there, Bud Light. It is a really popular talking point around these videos that trans women in general, and Dylan Mulvaney specifically, are doing things that are insulting and reductive and even destructive to the idea of true womanhood. This type of rhetoric has been propagated by many famous ghouls on and off the internet, including Harry Potter author J.K.

Rowling, whose brain was melted by the algorithm and replaced by little Dwendé that furiously pulls levers that make her type non-stop conspiracy theories about transgender women into her stupid little phone. Woo! Yuck! Josie, I'm not a woman. And so I'm ill-equipped to comment on broad definitions of womanhood, but one, I point out again that there are many cultures worldwide in which the general transgender concept has existed

and even been accepted for a long time, and the women don't seem to have gone extinct. Exactly. And I'll add here, I think you can have thoughts on this even if you're not a woman, because the idea of limiting gender so much like that, or limiting experience to gender kind of just feeds the machine of like, well, but that's an exclusive club that you can only be born into, right? Or whatever it is.

And in my own experience, having met more trans people as I've gotten older and having more exposure to trans identities, like different media, it has been so helpful for my own understanding of how I feel as a woman, which can be very like suffocating, right, to feel like you have to look, you know, like you have to look like this. You can't have a hair on your face

or you can't go and do this. Shave your armpits. What the fuck is that one? All of these things that are like, that's not actually what being a woman is. And like, I think being able to empathize with a trans view of the world has been so helpful for like giving myself the deliverance from that stupidity of the confines of gender. Yeah. And I'm cisgender. I don't know, I've always felt pretty confident in being a woman and feeling like I've wanted to be a woman and yeah, I think I will continue to feel this way. Congrats. Thank you. Well, I mean, is it? I don't know. It's just- Man, I feel like a woman. Let's go girls.

But even that, if that's a cultural baseline, we'll call it a cultural baseline. If we're speaking about this conservative conception of femininity, it is so liberating and wonderful to take on and to understand a trans worldview because it does that. It just, it's opening and liberating.

It allows you to really think about who you are as a person. And how much of it is bullshit and how much of what is forced upon us by society is so arbitrary. It's so true. It's so true. But then also like, you know, gender is a construct, but it's also very important too. Like you have to, it's felt. We express ourselves within the construct of gender, right? Even people, the concept of like transitioning to presenting in a more feminine way is a transition to, for some

folks, not all, looking more conventionally feminine or more conventionally masculine in a way that reflects that construct. Even as we talk about it, that's something that's kind of felt, right? Yeah. It's kind of been that for me as well. I feel more comfortable wearing girlier things because I know, well, this is something that I can choose. This is something that I can choose and not have it thrust on me. Yeah. I think it's such a tight and narrow understanding of gender

and gender expression is just so detrimental to everybody. That's what I really need to say. And from a personal experience, it's so detrimental to anybody. My number two point, well, being a man has of course not been as historically embattled a concept as being a woman by half. I speak on behalf of manhood. When I say I'm happy to welcome transgender men to dine at the table with me, I cannot see how your acceptance in any way comes at the price of my own identity. What a reflection of insecurity when it does. I also think it's extremely wacky to make womanhood your hill to die on and then vote

for a rapist, but that's a separate issue. Right, yeah. Well, yeah, there's a lot of ups, there's a lot of downs. The terrain is very rocky. Yes. Speaking of separate issues, shortly after the Ulta controversy, Joe Biden did a sit-down interview with NowThis, a social media news company targeting an audience of progressive millennials and gen zeds.

He must have been so confused. I'm sorry. What's skivity toilet? Dr. Jill Biden? What? Okay. Yeah, she works in community college. I bet she knows a lot of the young folk language.

Fortnite. She knows the Fortnite dances. She can floss. Yeah, she knows how to floss. The interview was structured as a forum in which Biden was interviewed by a variety of young change makers, including Dylan Mulvaney on Girlhood Day 221, doing her best Barbara Walters on trans issues. Hmm. The part where Barbara Walters was an interviewer, not the part where she sympathized with every abusive rich person you can imagine. Right. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It was mainly the pantyhose. We're talking pantyhose. Biden expressed his support for access to gender-affirming care for adults and children. Choose your own bathroom works. It went over a boat as well as you'd expect. I regret checking the comments.

And now, in addition to existing as a general conservative flashpoint for her perceived mockery of girlhood, Dylan had the sleepy Joe stink on her. And you know how much the American right loves that guy. Yep. Let's go Brandon, right? Controversial Georgia representative and literal bat out of hell Marjorie Taylor Greene reposted the video with the caption, I introduced a bill to stop gender affirming care on kids and they want me dead.

I'm being swatted while fake women visiting Biden are being swooned. Oh my God. On the gender affirming care note, this is another major case pushed by transphobes that oversell us doctors and coddling teachers are forcing transgenderism upon our children by doing things like performing surgical interventions

without consent and letting children who identify as cats use litter boxes. They love that one. That's so fucking stupid. The litter box thing is of course completely fake. Not that that stopped 20 plus politicians from repeating the lie according to NBC News. It's part of a moral panic that takes any instance of educating kids that LGBT subjects exist and redresses

it as grooming. Literally litter box grooming. Yeah. Well, yes. Oh, God. The child molester shit is a textbook smear on queer people, old as the day is long. You may remember when we did episode 76 about James Chamberlain. Yeah.

The children's educator who made it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and got it passed so that you could read kids' books about LGBT people in schools. They called him a fucking pedophile. Why? Because he was gay. That's like, when we, when my boss and I were pulling that camp together,

an article, an interview we did with a local paper got posted to a website called Equal Parenting that added notes calling us narcissists and pedophiles. I'm so sorry. Out of thin fucking, I was 18 years old. I was a fucking virgin. You were a virgin at 18. I lost my virginity at 18. It's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. They should have been saying that shit about me. I'm not. I'm not a fucking pedophile.

It was so ridiculous that they didn't focus on that. That's where you should pick up from my response. My point being this same tired ass baseless rhetoric that gets used against gay people, gets used against trans people, that gets used against any, it's all, even like they're killing the babies. Well, that's blood liable shit that they said

and say about Jewish people, right? They're fucking pedophiles. Well, that's just liable shit that they said and say about Jewish people, right? They're fucking pedophiles. Well, that's just re-warmed this. Everyone I fucking don't like is Elon. Elon always calls people pedophiles that he doesn't know because he doesn't fucking like them. He called that submarine guy a pedophile because he was better at getting the fucking kids

out of that cave in Thailand. Just because you rescue children from a cave from imminent death within a cave does not make one a pedophile. Yes, let's be very clear with Shannon Doherty. Yes! So this same fucking shitty rhetoric is being used in the fight against trans people by folks like Fox News host Laura Ingram who asked, When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?

I... essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals. Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn So exactly the kind of thing that James Chamberlain was fighting for, right? Yeah, yeah. He and his press secretary, Christine Pasha, prefer the term anti-grooming bill, with Pasha saying on Twitter, if you're against the anti-grooming bill, you're probably a groomer, or at least you don't denounce the grooming of 48 year old children. Oh God.

If you disagree with this, you're a child molester. Ugh. To echo my sentiment earlier, I also think it's extremely wacky to make child abuse your banner and then vote for a guy who taps Matt Gaetz, the Secretary of Defense. Fair enough. As far as gender affirming care for minors, requirements vary from state to state in the U.S. or province to province in Canada, but surgical intervention for patients under 18

is broadly illegal across both countries except in extremely rare cases This is consistent with the recommendations of every major psychiatric association and pediatric society In Canada and America as well as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards for medical care under which pre puberty gender affirming care is just names and pronouns Once we hit puberty, we're talking about reversible things like hormone therapy. Right. Surgery comes when you're old enough to medically consent on your own behalf. So this child mutilation shit ain't happening.

Makes sense. All of this is underpinned by constant psychological monitoring, according to the fucking Harvard School of Public Health. Previous research has consistently demonstrated that gender affirming care for TGD, I think that's trans or gender dysphoric people, can be life-saving in mitigating negative mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Mind you, this statement came in the context of the first ever review of access to gender affirming surgery by Americans under 18, which found that cases of people under 18 accessing gender-affirming surgical interventions were basically non-existent

and wildly outweighed by instances of cisgender boys and men getting top surgery for things like gynecomastia. What's gynecomastia? If you're a dude and you've got boobs and you want them reduced. Oh. Because it fucks with your perception of your gender. Ugh, but because they consider themselves cisgender, that's, yeah, gotcha. So the trans doctors butchering our children narrative is, of course, a sham. What is true, according to the trans legislation tracker, which keeps track of anti-trans bills being proposed in American government at a state-by-state level and federally, there were 672 anti-trans bills introduced to Congress in 2024.

Jesus. Of those, 385 were focused on education, AKA don't teach kids that trans people exist and don't use the pronouns they ask for. Or healthcare, AKA restrict access to gender affirming care. One thankfully failed bill, Missouri HB 2885, tried to make it so that teachers who use students' preferred pronouns

had to register as sex offenders. Why? So if a kid said, I want you to call me he and you did, you'd basically look like a child sex offender. You can lose your job. That's a failed bill, but- That's insane. Of these 672 anti-trans bills introduced in 2004, 50 were passed, which is 50 too many.

Jesus. Just attrition. That's what those numbers are showing is that just attrition, just get, let's put the most ridiculous thing and see if it passes. And then if that ridiculous thing doesn't pass, then this other thing that's like slightly less ridiculous, though untrue and false and horrible does pass. Will look less ridiculous. Oh God. To put a pin in this discussion of gender affirming care for minors, despite the body of peer reviewed medical evidence pointing to its effectiveness, particularly around mental

wellbeing and happiness is currently banned in 25 states. The U S Supreme court is expected to decide on the constitutionality of that ban later this year. Back to Dylan, the opportunities and accolades continue to come in. She continues to tie herself to the American left, showing off a letter from America's spurned Mamala Vice President Kamala Harris,

congratulating her on one year of girlhood. The Biden administration wasn't the only blue institution with an interest in Dylan Mulvaney as on April 1st, 2023, an appropriate date for the start of some foolishness. Dylan posted a piece of sponsored content on behalf of Bud Light, the Light beer brand owned by Brewing Mega Giant and Hooser Bush in Bev.

Okay, here we go. So this was part of a March Madness promotion, which is maybe why you associate with some kind of big event in your head. It was part of a March Madness promotion, but not like this wasn't the prime time March Madness ad that the hubbub would have you believe. Right.

Bud Light was doing the easy carry challenge, the hashtag, sorry, easy carry challenge, where you could win 15,000 by physically carrying the most Bud Lights at once. Okay. Invites creativity, customer participation, and honestly, probably a lot of intoxicated operation of heavy equipment.

Yeah, pretty fun. All fun. Yeah, good time. Save fun for the family. Yeah. As part of the campaign, Bud Light commissioned sponsored content from all sorts. You probably don't know who Pat McAfee is, but he did the challenge on his show. No, don't know.

It's a higher standard of living you got. Said Bud Light's VP of marketing, Alyssa Heinerscheid, who caught a lot of flak for IT eating the influencer campaign, The brand has been in decline for a really long time and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light. It means inclusivity, it means shifting the tone, it means having a campaign that's truly inclusive, feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men. Sort of a lot of corporate gibberish there, but we understand that the point is swim or die Bud Light because your market share is getting eaten

and you need to expand your audience. And so that's something that is like worth keeping in the back of your mind as this Bud Light fiasco unfolds. Bud Light was already on the skids before this happened. So this seems to have just like accelerated an already going process of market attrition for them. They were still number one beer in America at this point in the narrative, but their fingers were slipping kind of thing. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.

Why not then to attract this, you know, new woke millennials who love gaming and transgender, you know? Let's get the pronouns. Let's get them by accessing the now 10 plus million that followed Dylan Mulvaney on TikTok. Controversy does numbers, right? So she's, her reach is just growing here. Yeah. And so it was that Dylan Mulvaney,

presumably on day 300 something of girlhood by now, came to take the Bud Light Easy Carry Challenge, dressed like Audrey Hepburn for some reason. Josie, you up for some sponsored content? Hashtag add. SponCon, let's go. Hi, impressive carrying skills, right? I got some Bud Lights for us.

So I kept hearing about this thing called March Madness, and I thought we were all just having a hectic month, but it turns out it has something to do with sports. I kept hearing about this thing called March Madness, and I thought we were all just having a hectic month, but it turns out it has something to do with sports. And I'm not sure exactly which sport, but either way, it's a cause to celebrate. This month I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever,

a can with my face on it. Check out my Instagram story to see how you can enjoy March Madness with Fudd Lite and maybe win some money too. Love ya. Cheers. Go team. Whatever team you love, I love too. Okay.

Love ya. Okay, break a leg. So what do you think? Yeah, I think, I mean, your point, like the vertical filming, the sound quality, like you hear the can on the table just as loud as you hear your voice. She probably did like three takes of that tops. Yeah, it felt very quick, very easy, very just like it's in looks like a living room

dining room thing, like not a great. Yeah, she's got a curtain behind her, hasty backdrop kind of thing. Yeah, and it's kind of like a weird kind of brown 60s vibe to it and like, yeah, it's not super manicured. She looks great. Her makeup is fantastic. She's in her hair and all of it.

I do wish the Audrey Hepburn thing were explained. Yeah, maybe that would help. Maybe she was already doing like some Audrey stuff and this is what she had to like bang out in between her on tent parentheses Audrey content. We don't know. It feels as though it wasn't, you know, an expensive situation. She was kind of freestyle in there. They'd probably just said go be yourself because that's what people actually want. Totally. When influencers do ad reads or whatever, they want it to be in your own authentic, endearing voice because they want you to associate Bud Light with Dylan Mulvaney,

because you follow her on TikTok and you like her, right? So they just say, go out there and do it. Yeah, the ending is definitely, she kind of like has a few endings. Stop, start, stop, start. I'm ready. Uh huh. See you later. See you at the Carrie contest.

Okay, yeah. And buy it. Yeah. But like extremely harmless. Do you think that a beer brand needs to be destroyed? And trust me, I get that Bud Light ain't the victim here, but it's collateral damage. Do you think that this is really worth the bullshit that you know I'm about to tell you it's bad?

No, it is not. It is not. I can tell you right now. Uh, no. The response from detractors was swift and brutal, all the same transphobia we've echoed and so I won't give it more coverage here. And more. Man, people disavowed the contamination of their favorite flavorless piss water by wokeness.

Which like cancel is a word, and apparently now civil rights too, Jesus, is a word that rich men took from black people and repeated ad nauseam on Fox News until white people were scared of whatever threatening meaning they assigned it in their heads, usually something to do with political correctness, which is a 90s word that means woke. Yes. heads usually something to do with political correctness, which is a 90s word that means woke. Yes. Speaking of Fox News, they whipped up a frenzy around Mulvaney, as you can imagine, airing constant programming intimating that she was a monster, a freak, a threat to your American

values. Jesus. So started the Bud Light Boycott. When we talk about virtue signaling, the idea that we do things specifically to affirm our moral correctness on a particular issue to people who usually agree with us. Oh boy, was this that. Wow. It was extremely popular to festoon your Facebook,

your Telegram, your Signal, your Truth Social page, your Ashley Madison account, with evidence that you were not buying Bud Light. Everyone got their beacon there from DeSantis to Megyn Kelly, presumably embittered that her own brief attempt to go woke and mainstream for self-profit went down in flames when she got fired from the Today Show for defending Countess Luanne doing blackface. Perhaps the most iconic backer of the Bud Light

boycott was white boy rapper Kid Rock, a man whose stylings we evidently enjoyed at today's inauguration, not that I watched it. Oh, that's right. Wow. Huh. You can also enjoy his voice in the video he posted on social media, April 3rd, 2023, in which wearing a mega hat, he says, fuck Bud Light and fuck Anne Heuser Bush before spraying three cases of Bud Light with an MP5 submachine gun. Oh my. Oh, that's dumb and dangerous. That's rough. This vivid symbolic gesture carries a lot of weight given that according to the UCLA Williams Institute, transgender people are more than four times more likely than cisgender

people to be victims of violent crime. Between 2017 and 2021, track murders of trans people nearly doubled according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control nonprofit. Quote, since January 2017, there have been 298 homicides of transgender individuals in America. 72% were with a gun. 63% of all transgender gun homicide victims in the US were black women. Ooh.

That's a massive over-representation compared to the 13% of the overall transgender population they make up. In brief, trans people in America, especially black trans women, are very vulnerable to gun violence. Oh my god. Those numbers are... yeah. Yeah, really sobering. Yeah. The boycott carried on swiftly, beer was dumped, and cases were steamrolled. You wanna get the damn steamrollers out, huh? dumped, and cases were steamrolled. You like to get the damn steam rollers out, huh? Yeah, they love the steam rollers.

They're always driving a burnin' shit in barrels and driving steam rollers over shit. That tired ass playbook. Never tried the steam roller, maybe there's something to it, you know? Rui taught me how to drive a tractor, it's pretty fun. Country star Travis Tritt pulled Anhuser-Busch products from his tours,

followed by Ted Nugent, so did John Rich from his Nashville bar. Bomb threats poured into the Anhuser-Busch factories. These damn bomb threats, huh? Ah, can't shake them. On April 8th, Marjorie Taylor Greene sniffed a carcass to pillage and joined the brigade, stoking the fires with her tweet.

I would have bought the King of beers, but it changed its gender to the Queen of beers. Ah. The caption accompanied an image of a car trunk full of Coors, a 20-year partner of Denver Pride. Oh, sure. So just well thought out stuff. On April 15th, the National Republican Congressional Committee sold drink koozies

that read this beer identifies as a water. In mid-May, Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Marcia Blackburn opened a Senate investigation into Anne Huser-Bush's partnership with Mulvaney, claiming the word girlhood made it an effort to market alcohol to children. Oh no. So think of the children again, right? Ah.

Rumors circulated that Bud Light had laid off their entire marketing team, which was not true, although Alyssa Heinerscheid and her direct superior, Daniel Blake, were eventually both supported by the company in their leaves of absence from their positions. So given a shit ton of money. I think that's what that means. Probably yeah.

To go fuck up somewhere else. That was to much delight among the online right. Knock on protests of other brands, including ones around Pride merchandise and Target stores emerged, it was a very gleeful time to prove the adage, go woke, go broke. Catchy rhyming slogans about wokeness aside, prior to this, educated wisdom was that consumer boycotts are not particularly effective tools of protest, at least not in any way that had proven out so far. I don't know how much that Ulta Beauty boycott, for example, really hit Ulta's bottom line. Right.

When Gillette adds, question toxic masculinity, or showcase a dad teaching a transgender son how to shave, they made a ripple with the usual suspects and boys were caught, but not in any way that seems to have lingered in public memory. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to right-wing causes, lefty product boycotts have met with similarly lukewarm results. The Bud Light boycott, by contrast, was, and it gives me no delight to say this, a rousing success. Congratulations, Anti-Woke Warriors.

You crushed it on this one. Easy carry. How successful was it? By June, 2023, the sales of Bud Light and Budweiser dropped 24.6% and 9.6% respectively. So even daddy Budweiser took a hit. Yeah.

It had also lost its spot as number one in the beer market too. Josie, give it a crap. Of course. Modelo, Modelo Especial. Oh, wow. I mean, I don't drink Bud Light. I don't drink Budweiser, but I do drink Modelo's.

Well, you're part of the problem, not the solution for Bud Light. Yeah, I knew that. I tell people that all the time. Yeah, yeah, I saw my business card. How did Anheuser-Busch respond? Their immediate response was, "'From time to time we produce unique commemorative cans

for fans and for brand influencers like Dylan Mulvaney. This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.'" Truly cutting to the core of the real issue here, the Mulvaney can, can folks is not for sale. Don't worry. You don't have to buy a Dylan can at the store.

We can run the end credits right there, right? Do you do do, do do do. I can imagine that marketing table, like how they're like, well, no, like that's not the issue. We need to say this. And it's like, well, we can't touch that. So we got to say this. And it's like, well, what if we do this?

It's like, and then it's just like the stupidest conversation of like click, click, click, click. And we just ended up on like, well, at least let them know that like the can isn't at Walgreens. Yeah. And it's like, all right, I think that's what we got. We're good. We're good to go. Let's send that out. And it's like, you are not taking a stand at all. You are not even interpreting the situation in the way that it's being viewed in the public eye. So what the fuck are you even doing? Why release anything? Then that's the question of why did you release anything at all? Because now you just sound like a fucking idiot. Because we had to do something because the stock value and the stock value eats shit. I should say that too. Stock value eats absolute shit. Cause now we're fucking with the shareholders.

We got a real problem. That's why we need to release a statement. The shareholders are wringing their hands. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Later on, after more deliberation and Huser Bush's CEO, Brendan Whitworth facing calls for his resignation, issued the following statement. We never intended to be part of a discussion

that divides people. We're in the business of bringing people together over a beer. My time serving this country taught me the importance of accountability and the values upon which America was founded. Freedom, hard work and respect for one another. As CEO of Anne Huser Bush, I am focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage. I care deeply about this country, this company, our brands and our partners. I spend much of my time traveling across America listening to and learning from our customers, distributors and others.

Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great dears to consumers across our nation. Okay. So what do you think? Kind of empty. Like there's not, that beer can is empty. Yeah, that's what everybody thought. That wishy washy bunch of corporate America goop

pleased no one. Neither the machine gun crowd who wanted their apology and acknowledgement that Dylan Mulvaney was in fact a woke groomer lib, nor the queer community who noticed the complete absence of any support for dylan mulvaney or transgender people or indeed any mention of the above yeah yeah we remember that ultra beauty statement that tackled these things pretty directly right yeah and took an understanding that like we know you might not like this but this is what we stand for this is a

choice we made and and yeah whereas like what do- what the fuck was that? What the fuck do you stand for? Which- what the fuck- not to be like, which side are you on, but fucking which side are you on, dude? Is Bud Light a faggot beer or no? Inquiring minds want to know. Like from a marketing standpoint, it's deadly because it's just empty. There's nothing in it. You're just throwing empty beer cans at people and nobody likes that. As do many of the frat boys who drink Bud Light. Yeah. And like throw a full beer can at somebody because yeah, it might hit somebody.

It might hurt them. But you know what? Some might catch it and then get a free beer. Josie, I was worried when you started basically inciting there, but you saved it. But you know what? No, it was a friendly toss, catch a beer out of midair, crack crack crack,

goes goes goes, done done done. Truly to me, rings in my mind as one of the most feckless and cowardly piece of shit statements of any kind I have ever heard from anyone in any context. Holy cow. A reiteration of Kai Cheng's point that the revolution will not be led

by our large corporations, quote, the fashion labels, consumer brands, corporate DEI campaigns and politicians that so eagerly plastered our faces and bodies on their advertising as inspirational content are currently nowhere to be found as gender affirming medical care is being challenged or banned in several states. Capitalism, it seems, was all too happy

to champion trans rights, so long as corporations stood to make money and no substantive changes to social systems needed to be made. Yep. This was a common sentiment among the pissed off LGBTQ community, with a secondary Bud Light boycott now taking place among the alphabet people, which I totally feel, because when I read that scene, I was like, well, I'm not drinking Bud Light ever again. So like, I guess I got the feeling. Yeah.

Brendan Whitworth was now in the awkward position of defending Bud Light's queer cred, while also pushing a bunch of macho new ads with horses and motorcycles and shit. Stocks continued to nosedive and sales plummeted even as Bud Light offered a $15 rebate for the Beyond July fourth weekend, making it effectively free.

Whoa, damn. And they couldn't fucking get rid of it. Oh my God. You turn woke if you drink it. If you drink it, you turn into a transgender person, dude. Well, when beer has no flavor like Bud Light. Let's continue to take those stocks, baby. Let's go.

Let's roll up our sleeves. And that's the thing, they've somehow really made it into a thing where like so many people had a vested interest in the failure of Bud Light which can't oh if that's good that's Hall of Fame shit right oh man. Impressive really. Throughout all of this Dylan Mulvaney herself remained silent until June 29th so a couple months later well when she finally posted a video acknowledging the commotion, she said that Bud Light had not reached out to her at all and had left her

completely unsupported to weather the backlash. No. Quoted with minor edits for brevity. What transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined. I should have made this video months ago, but I was scared of more backlash, and I felt guilty for what had transpired, so I patiently waited for things to get better, but surprise, they haven't really. And I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did. 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 that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Oh man. If this is my experience from a very, very privileged perspective, just know that it is much worse for other trans people. Yeah. For a company to hire a trans person and not stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all. Yeah. I agree.

The hate doesn't end with me. It has serious and grave consequences for the rest of our community. At the end of the video, she provides a link to the Transgender Law Center for those who want to make a thoughtful donation. Bud Light did not directly respond to Dillian Mulvaney's comments. I bet she's now like in any of those contracts. There has to be a clause. It's like in the event of. If I get gobbled up by the fucking internet right again, you can't fucking put me on ice, yeah.

Yeah, that's horrible. I wanna seize on something Dylan said about the privilege of her position. Yeah. And it's relative cushiness compared to the realities of some other folks. I would not wish to Freaky Friday with Dylan Mulvaney during the Bud Light experience by any means.

No. It sounds miserable. Not a lot of fun experiences make it onto the Infamy podcast. It is also the case that Dylan Mulvaney has a platform of 10 million supporters and receives personal letters from the vice president of the United States.

Although I assume she'll be eager for that to stop once JD Vance is sworn in. Yeah, that would suck. These are not things that the average person, let alone the average transgender person, has access to. Dylan is alluding to the reality that the average transgender person faces discrimination and barriers that are not necessarily presented in her social media presence, and are not necessarily presented on glossy makeup ads or customized beer cans. It's a sentiment Kai Cheng Tom echoes in her extra column.

In retrospect, the representation-based approach to trans rights has long been concerningly divorced from the ordinary material interests of trans lives. While it's certainly edifying to see trans people on TV, I'd rather have universal access to gender-affirming care and ideally both. Yeah. And while it was nice to get a high-end modeling contract one time in my life, it would be much nicer to live in a world where trans people have protected workplace rights and equal access to employment.

That feels like it's acknowledging like a grassroots change is so much more effective than the top down where it only affects a small few. And not to say that the top down isn't visible and arguably more visible, but that's only to affect change so that everybody can feel it. So why like that's not the pinnacle of having representation. Representation is just a step. It's a tool. It's the candy coating on the delicious bonbon of, I don't know, equity. Yeah, you're just getting started. Representation is just getting started.

It is not a place to land, yeah. Yeah. So this is where I'd like to briefly pivot away from the Bud Light boycott story, which is in its ninth inning, whatever sport that is. Go pods. Go pods. Go pods. And tell you a little bit about January Marie Lapouse.

Okay. January is someone I met a few times in passing in the late 2000s, early 2010s when I was brand new to the movement. And I was spending a lot of time at Q-Munity, then called the center Vancouver LGBTQ plus hub space that had a bunch of resources all housed in one I-jing building. A clinic, a library, a youth service with an office that had been sprayed rainbow colors by teenagers and so

on. January was a Filipino woman in her early twenties with a big smile and an energy that filled the room. She was very vivacious and bubbly and made little wise cracks, often self-effacing ones. I'd be surprised if she knew my name, but I definitely noticed her. I'm sure I would have bounced off her jokes a little bit because you've all heard me talk.

She was a senior in high school and you were a freshman. Honestly, I was trying to come up with how would I describe my relationship with January? Because it feels like an overstatement to say that we were friends or kind of even acquaintances, although I guess we were acquainted and I kind of settled on, I was a fan. Like I was a bit of a secret admirer maybe of hers. I liked the way she filled a room. I like to watch charming people be charming. Yeah.

You can pick up a lot of tips and tricks that way. And she was very charming lady. Very, very, very charming. Instantly, instantly and obviously charming. And I liked to watch the dance happen kind of thing. Yeah, that's, yeah. She was someone who in the brief time and brief contexts that we interacted made a really vivid impression on me, as you can tell.

She is also unfortunately the first person I met who was murdered. Hers is one of a handful of young and unfair deaths of queer people I knew that I think of very often. Yeah. And that animate a lot of my activism in the space and inevitably when I think of things like this boycott I think of January. Yeah. I'd like to tell you a little bit now about January's too brief life. Heads up, January's death unfortunately was a violent one. And while I intend to tell it respectfully, I also intend to describe it

honestly. I should add that much of the good work in keeping January's name and story alive has been done by her friends Alex Sanga and Ash Brar, and I think it's incredibly moving how much effort and care they have devoted to memorializing their friend. That's very cool. It's very, very cool. They produced an award-winning 26-minute long documentary film called My Name Was January, which you can and should watch for free at januaryfilm.com. Oh, cool. The podcast Canadian True Crime covered the story, I thought, very thoroughly and thoughtfully in 2023.

And by happenstance, our fellow 604 Podcast Network show, Podcasts by Proxy, covered the case this month. And I thank them for shining a light on January's story. January was born into extreme poverty in April 1986 in the Philippines. She eventually immigrated to Canada, where at the age of 23, she met Ash Brar on a bus. He recognized that she was Filipina and spoke a bit of Tagalog to her. Representation does matter a little bit, even on the bus. January being the world's most charismatic human being bang, instant connection. Ashbar happens to be one of the founding members of SHARE Vancouver, S-H-E-R Vancouver, a non-profit supporting

the queer South Asian community in Metro Vancouver along with Alex Sanga. And SHARE means lie, and we think of this very proud, strong representation of what being a queer person could be like, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. It means that in a variety of South Asian languages, I should say. Ash tells Alex, I just met the most amazing person on the bus named January. So likable. I think we could use her. Cool. Soon, January was Cher's social coordinator pulling together their parties and doing a goddamn good job at it. The crowd size is swelled and swelled as January became an attraction in and of herself,

and people travel to her parties to watch her perform, and specifically her Beyonce numbers are supposed to have been legendary. That's a hard one too. This is the single ladies era too, it's the time of Beyonce, I feel very soft spot toward, So I'd like to see, you know, the hand flip of it all. The cardio, insane. Yeah. Yes. Organizing these social events seems to have been a real calling for her. Every

account of January goes on and on and on about what a sparkling personality she had and what a great performer and what a jokester and what a singer. Her mom, Betty, says that every time they were in the car together, she and January would sing her favorite song, no matter what, by Boyzone, which is a real sappy ballad. I hate to be redundant, but I caught the live show and it's completely true. Charisma was a tremendous asset in opening doors for Cher alongside Ash and Alex's own hard work. That's so amazing. I don't know, that that job is not easy to do, right? And I think that shows so much that they met on the bus too, because it's just that's how vibrant January was, you know, that like, it was just like, boom, boom, boom.

I think it's nice that he reached out to her and spoke a bit of Tagalog. Yeah. And that and that speaks so so highly of him too, that like, to make that bond in that way. That's so cool. Don't say no to conversations on the bus, parentheses, weigh it out situation by situation. But don't go in close-minded, how about that? True, yeah. Unfortunately, January's role as the share social butterfly was unpaid and she was unable to find employment, despite her many evident talents due to the discrimination she faced as a transgender woman. A 2023 study found that it's still the case that trans, non-binary, and two-spirit people in Canada denied employment at three to five times the rate of cisgender people.

She ended up doing survival sex work in Vancouver's downtown Eastside, an area infamous for its economic precariousness and also well known for its tight-knit community. Jania was apparently known for giving lavishly of herself to other members of the community, even at times when she had very little to give. Eventually, she moved to New Westminster and she started doing sex work out of her home. It was unfortunately in that context

that she interacted with the person who would go on to kill her. On September 29th, 2012 at 10 p.m. January's neighbors heard a commotion. They came next door. I'm about to just... It's about... Steal yourself or you can go ahead and fast forward a little bit if you're feeling like these types of details aren't gonna hold you. They came next door to check on things and they found January in a pool of blood with the killer, a man they didn't recognize

standing over her. He threatened the witnesses and fled the scene. They called the police and the ambulance, which took January to the hospital. Meanwhile, Ash Brar heard that something bad had happened to January. He arrived at her home with some friends to find the place covered in dry blood

and swarming with police. Oh, God. January died early the next morning at the hospital. There was a lot of controversy about the way the RCMP handled the case. Okay. The press release announcing January's death called her Mr. Lapooze throughout

before mentioning at the very end that, oh yeah, she changed her name to January four years ago, aka we knew this information. Right, yeah. The RCMP would go on to give a series of half-assed non-defenses asserting it relied on doctors' reports and reserve the right to dictate its own press releases. Thank you very much. Thankfully, the community loved January and pushed to keep January's case relevant through activism, including a vigil at New Westminster City Hall. Nice. Finally, the RCMP announced that it had arrested a suspect, 20-year-old Charles Jameson Mungo Neal, aka Jamie, a member of the Quakuto First Nation from Fort

Rupert. He's the son of a residential school survivor mother who left him to be raised by a single father. He had a turbulent and troubled childhood. We've discussed before the profound role of residential schools in the cultural destruction of Indigenous people in Canada. This is unfortunately a story where everyone's marginalization kind of contributes to a tragedy. The story is that Jamie came to January's house for some kind of service, re-sex work. They had a disagreement about the price and that the disagreement turned violent. He alleges that she started the confrontation by coming at him with a pair of scissors and that his

response in self-defense was to stab her 18 times. Jesus. In addition to claiming self-defense, Jamie Neal stated that January's gender identity didn't influence him, that he'd known she was transgender before he'd come into the house and was okay with it, and they didn't have a problem with transgender people. Yeah. Putting aside the extraordinary violence of the crime, I would argue that the crime itself doesn't occur

if January isn't who she is. A transgender immigrant woman engaged in survival sex work uniquely vulnerable to incidents like this because the killer perceives that she's a less valuable person in society and her death can go unavenged because the RCMP, for example, won't treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Exactly, yeah. Unfortunately, January's community adored her. Jamie Neal was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter, not murder, as in the self-defense theory goes on the books.

Oh god. He was released in 2019, although that release was revoked shortly afterwards, as Neal didn't follow the conditions of his parole. January's death left a massive hole in her community. In her impact statement, January's mother, Betty, said, January is a person with no sadness. She made everybody laugh. She loved helping people regardless of race, color, or age. She is sweet to everyone. regardless of race, color, or age. She is sweet to everyone. Her smile is like sunlight up in the sky. Her absence is breaking my heart.

She was everything I had. Betty. Sheriff Vancouver went into a bit of a hibernation after January's death, because she truly was the life of the party, right? People came to see January at these parties. Yeah, yeah. And it didn't was the life of the party, right? People came to see January at these parties. Yeah, yeah. And it didn't feel right to throw a party, right?

They probably couldn't even do it without her. Yeah, and it would have sucked because January's parties were the best. No. Who the fuck is gonna be Beyonce now, right? Alex and Nash and their servants' hearts picked up and went on, and in 2025, Shera Vancouver is thriving. Ashbar is still the president, Alex Sanga is a filmmaker,

and executive produces the Shera Vancouver podcast. Since 2015, they have circulated the January Marie Lapooze Award for Youth Leadership. Aww. In the 2SLGBTQA Plus community, I've got a longer one in BC. I'll tell you about it some other time. Okay. To be more concise, let's call it the movement. Okay. Applications closed December 31st, presumably because then it's January. Yeah, gotta get it done in January. Right. So to bring us back to our subject Azure and hopefully dry these tears,

some of which are me being moved by the strength of the friendship that this young woman had with her friends, right? That's really amazing, yeah. This Bud Light boycott, right? It's something that you could, yeah, we forgot about that, right? Yeah.

And it's something that you could on the face of it mistake for something frivolous. You got Kid Rock in his silly little hat and his obnoxiously large machine gun. You've got the influencer dressed up as Audrey Hepburn in what was evidently the world's most ill-advised piece of sponsored content, rattled by a flood of online hate to be sure, but physically unscathed. Yeah. You've got a bunch of panicked C-suite types eating shit and cannibalizing each other in

boardrooms while the public stock of, let's be honest, a pretty terrible beer plummets. But the trickle-down effect of this kind of pointed animosity and campaign of dehumanization toward any community is that people will die. Yeah. People will be killed, real people. People like January who have stories and communities and lives that they deserve to continue living and not as statistics or names read as vigils or memorial art or illustrative examples on podcasts like this one. So as frivolous as it seems sometimes that everyone in this story is arguing over beer,

it's not about beer, it's about humanity. As of December of 2024, one month ago, Bud Light had not only lost its top spot in the US beer market, but fallen to number three behind Modelo Especial and Mickelob Ultra. Nasty. Mickelob is an Anne Huser-Busch InBev product. They seem to be moving toward making it their flagship product now that Bud Light is, you know, pfft. Yeah.

Nonetheless, high-profile investors have expressed their confidence that Bud Light will recover and customer sentiment will move on, notably Anne Huser-Bush's biggest name shareholder, a man who never totally threw his name behind the boycott, Donald Trump. Dylan Mulvaney recently clocked in 1,000 plus days of girlhood, that odometer rolled right over. She staged a one-woman show called Fag Hag in the Edinburgh Fringe. She's booked on the West End

and she released a music video, Days of Girlhood, which attracted all the expected attention from all the expected critics, as did a post she made celebrating International Women's Day. Seems like Dylan and the online transphobes will be locked in a zealous battle for the foreseeable future. Yeah. Keep fighting that good fight, Dylan. When I look at the evidence, I see two sides of this argument, right? The first is one where

trans people of all ages have existed in different societies as long as recorded history are the most disempowered and vulnerable and misunderstood in our own society right now. Broadly speaking, I understand that we all have different individual circumstances and no one wants to be lumped in as a statistic, but they ain't great statistics. They can't consistently attain jobs or housing or safety from violence and they've been shown by every credible data source time and time again to respond best to acceptance and affirmation because no fucking kidding, that's what everybody wants. And it's not hard. It's not hard.

No. The second is when we're supposed to abuse these people because we don't understand them and they don't fit into the arbitrary gender whims of a European colonist society whose medical knowledge, as I frequently say, expanded less than 200 years ago to include washing your hands after you take a shit is good. A society which still does not know a great many things about our minds and our bodies and how they work. We're supposed to squander the miracles of electricity and communications technology,

using them to yell at an influencer for being on a beer can. And while the world continues to literally burn down and freeze solid around us at an alarming clip, we're supposed to waste precious time and taxpayer money ginning up legislation to falsely label teachers as child sexual predators, ridding the system of anyone remotely sympathetic to LGBT issues in education,

propagating the cycle of ignorance that brought us here in the first place, all based not on evidence but on vibes, because some rich guys told us so to distract us while they steal from us, and it must be true because they were holding bibles when they said it, but they're sacrilegious bibles that cost $70 and have Lee Greenwood's face on them. On the day of recording, Donald Trump is being sworn in for his second presidency, this time armed with a Supreme Court of handpicked appointees who in July 2024 voted to grant the president absolute immunity for crimes during his presidential office. He is supported by the behemoths of social media, all of whom are eagerly relaxing their

policies around fact checking and hate speech. Meanwhile, according to Trans Legislation Tracker, there are 219 anti-trans bills active in America, one's already passed. Donald Trump and his cronies have pledged to introduce more. This month, a federal court ruled in favour of forcibly detransitioning inmates in Florida. Four days ago, the House voted in favour of changing Title IX to revoke federal funding from schools that allow trans girls to compete in girls' sports. This is a good time for me to add that studies have shown that transgender athletes undergoing hormone therapy statistically have no outstanding

advantages over their cisgender counterparts. To our cisgender listeners, in times of economic strife and massive technological change, it's easy for people empowered to distract from their own machinations by pointing the finger at people who are easily exploited. Hitler and the Holocaust are the most well-known examples, but you really don't gotta look for them. Please do not allow yourself to be influenced by the torrent of anti-trans sludge that is gonna be rocketing out of the social media sewer, the right-wing news channels, and the political institutions.

Stay vigilant, I'd say, stay woke, but they'll boycott us for that kind of talk. And please take your duty to our trans and non-binary friends and family seriously. Speak up. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Robyn said that on Cycle One of America's Next Top Model, and it's still true.

Yeah. She was a very conservative Christian, Robyn, so she might use it in a different context than I would, but the point stands. You know, Still there! So she was still dropping pearls, right? Let's reach across the aisle here. If you want to join the movement in earnest, there are many groups and individuals you can support more than I can name. Dylan Mulvaney obviously recommends the Transgender Law Center,

America's largest trans-led civil rights organization. You can find them at transgenderlawcenter.org. I also want to shout out the good work being done by friend of the podcast, James Chamberlain, who I interviewed about his role altering the landscape of Canadian education to make it more friendly for LGBTQ students. In addition to his ongoing work with Island Queers and Allies Who Care and Roar,

reaching out assisting refugees, he is on the working board for Lawyers Against Transphobia. They have prepared a website full of educational resources with more on the way. This September, they plan on hosting a conference in Vancouver focused on developing legal strategies to push back against anti-trans hate in Canada. That's rad. Oh, that's so cool. It's very, very rad stuff, as always. You can find them at lawyersagainsttransphobia.com or, Josia, like this,.org. I do like that. You saw that, you were excited. You were like, it's gonna be a.org!

It's a.org! You need a.org for the movement. I still have a lot of love for Qmunity, which is the organization that I was kind of haunting the halls of when I first met January. You can find them at qmunity.ca, that's Q-M-U-N-I-T-Y.ca. And of course, if you were moved by January's story, check out Share Vancouver, which is the organization supporting

queer South Asian folks in Vancouver that Ash and Alex found in January made even better with Beyonce performances. They're online at sharevancouver.com. That January Marie LePouze Award that I mentioned, by the way, you don't have to be South Asian, or you don't even have to be LGBTQ, you just have to be like making a positive impact for the LGBTQ community and be under 30 kind of thing. So there's a lot, there's money there. It's like a good award. It's not a half ass job, right? Cause they love their friends.

Yeah. Yeah. They're doing it right, yeah. In her column, Kai Cheng emphasizes the importance of solidarity when she envisions possible paths forward for the trans community. She says, I believe that a focus on building power through grassroots trans community institutions and on developing solidarity with other social struggles is key. Trans communities have survived throughout history by relying not on corporations or even on the state, but on one another. Fuck em. Kai Ching proposes trans-led and staffed community clinics and underground hormone provision networks in the vein of the Jane Safe Abortion Collective that you covered back in episode 51?

Yeah. And building coalitions in solidarity with other movements. Quote, trans health care has been framed in opposition to women's health care by the anti-trans movement, but nothing could be further from the truth. Both are about the right to essential care and bodily autonomy. Hear, hear. Exactly. Yeah. She concludes the article, I won't pretend that I didn't enjoy the brief moment of time that the transit girl

fantasy seemed to come to life for me, that the notion of being a fashion model who was also changing the world didn't tug at some core wounds and longings deep in my soul. Yeah. Yet the fantasy was always just that, a fantasy. That kind of representation was never going to change the world in ways we really need, no matter how many trans women of colour's faces were used to sell products made by underpaid labourers in the global south. She's just fucking speaking up. Representation was never going to be our liberation because it was about representation in a sick, corrupted system. We don't need to be part of that system. We need to build a new one.

That's rad. Counterpoint why not gay cell phone stores? You pose a strong argument, Taylor. As tempting as it would be to end the podcast on that note, that's how Kai Cheng ended her article and I try not to bite my friends ever since I stole a story title from Josie that one time in her VFA. I'm still okay with it. Sorry. So I'll give the last word to influencer Dylan Mulvaney as she crests day infinity of girlhood,

quoting Dylan from a video she released after the pylon for the Biden interview. Do a good handful of people hate me? Yes, but we've got too many good things going on right now. That's a good, that's a good last line. And I think that's what I wish verbatim that I would have said in that conversation about Dylan Mulvaney. Like the whole, the whole thing, the whole episode just now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

And a lot of it, like I say, is to do with this lady that I was a fan of, January, whose circumstances of dying did and do strike me as tremendously unfair. Yeah. And I think you telling the story also kind of reflects that those instances aren't just statistics. They affect a huge community of people. And they traumatize a huge community of people. When I wasize a huge community of people. When I was giving a talk during my time in the movement, I said something to the effect this was in the context of hate crime. So it's relevant here. I just put this together,

but it would have been I think 2011 and January died the next year. I remember saying something to the effect of like, if you're not angry right now, you should be, but it's not enough to use that anger impotently, try to do something with it that will help as much as you can, as much as it's within your power. And someone actually like kind of came up to me later and said that was a really useful nudge that I needed to get into volunteering. And it's something that I try to, I guess because it worked on that one person that one time, it's something that I try to hold myself to too, which is that when I do get angry about things like this, that I think it's fair to be angry about.

Yeah. To use that anger in a good way that's transformative to community, not to minimize the absolutely shitty, horrible thing that Dylan Mulvaney went through, which was absolutely shitty and horrible. But I think there's a direct pipeline from that kind of pointed, stoked animosity toward violence, and the statistics bear that out. And

I think that we got to start talking about this more and more honestly. Yeah. But again, I'm just one guy with a comedy podcast. What am I? This, I guess, I guess, I guess this is my meager platform, right? I might as well use it. Well, but then, you know, you've crafted the story as hard as it is, but you've been able to kind of like infuse it with everything that you wanted to say. And now you can either share this episode or encapsulate it further and share in response when somebody else does something, you know, it says the same kind of comment.

I don't have to cry every time. You can if you want to, that's fine. I can if I want to, folks. There's nothing wrong with crying on your podcast, no matter what Josie's brother says. Thanks for listening! If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com

forward slash bittersweetinfamy. But no pressure, bittersweet Infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bitter Sweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet! Lots of sources for this week's episode. First of all, I want to give a big shout out to Kai Cheng Tom. I extensively sourced her article, Trans Representation isn't Trans

Liberation. For Extra Magazine, January 10th, 2025. My Dylan Mulvaney info came from Everything You Need to Know About the Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney Fiasco by Samantha Riedel, Abbey Montiel, and James Vector for them August 14th, 2023. Here's my hashtag boycott Lopez trending on Twitter by Tessa Patak for InStyle published October 17th, 2022. Caitlyn Jenner joins right wing pylon of trans TikToker Dylan Mulvaney by Asya Iftikhar on October 27th, 2022. I looked at Kelsey Myhichick's portfolio page on the Bud Light Easy Carry Contest. I read more bad news for Bud Light published in CNN Business December 13th, 2024, written by Jordan Bolinski. For statistics, I read the UCLA Williams Institute release, Transgender People Over Four Times More Likely Than Cisgender People To Be Victims Of Violent Crime, March 23, 2021

I read the EveryTownForGunSafety website, everystat.org I read the TranslegislationTracker at translegislation.com I read the Human Rights Campaign release Get the Facts on Gender Affirming Care And I read You're an Unconventional Hire, Trans Visibility in the Workplace by Jade Pichette for Pride at Work Canada Info on Gender Affirming care, and I read, You're an unconventional hire, trans visibility in the workplace by Jade Pichette for Pride at Work Canada. Info on gender-affirming care came from Gender-affirming surgeries rarely performed on transgender youth by the staff writer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School

of Public Health, July 8, 2024. Also read Sheena Goodyear's CDC news article, How Gender-affirming health care for kids works in Canada, November 16, 2023. Sheena Goodyear's CBC News article, How Gender-Affirming Health Care for Kids Works in Canada November 16, 2023. From my info on participation in sports, I read the Human Rights Campaign's release Get the Facts About Bans on Sports Participation by Transgender and Non-Binary Students. I also read the American Psychological Association's page on transgender exclusion in sports.

I also read House Votes to Ban Trans Girls from Women's Sports and Schools by Orion Rumler, the 19th for them, January 14, 2025. The information on January Lapooze came from mynamewasjanuary at januaryfilm.com. It's a great 25-minute-ish short that tells you all about January from the perspective of our community. Really lovely stuff. I also read January Lapooze's killer sentence to 8 years in prison by Jeremy Haynes with Fracture magazine October 2nd 2014 and released revoked for transgender women's killer by Denise Ryan.

Published November 24th 2019 to Vancouver Sun. I listened to and highly recommend the Canadian True Crime episode January Lapooze British Columbia April 17th 2023. Other sources I consulted included Samantha Riedel's article for them, Why are Republicans so obsessed with grooming? April 7, 2022. Also read Pierre Poiliev's comments on trans women a dangerous distraction, Amnesty International says February 23, 2024 on Amnesty International. I read, in case you missed it, NBC 20-plus politicians promote bizarre claim that youth are identifying as cast released by the Human Rights Campaign.

I read, Federal Court rules in favor of forcibly detransitioning transgender inmates in Florida by mural design for Aaron in the Morning, January 6, 2025. Lastly, I read the Wikipedia pages for the Universal Public Friend Eleanor Reichener, Albert Cashier, Francis Thompson, and the Bud Light Boycott. Audio clips, resourceful reposts of Donald Trump's original reporter remarks and Dylan Mulvaney's original social media ad. We'd love you to become a monthly supporter over at ko-fi.com. That's K-O-F-I dot com slash bittersweetinfamy. You can join the Bittersweet Film Club as we discuss Battlefield Earth. Other members of the film club include Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie D, Erica Jo, Soph, Dylan, and Satchel. Bitter Sweet Infamy is a proud member of

the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Alex McCarthy and Lexi Johnson. Our cover photo is by Luke Bentley. The song you are currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive fares. Discover more at Viking.com. I tried the Y for free, and I never looked back. The instructors empowered me. One more, you got this!

The gym strengthened me. The pool soothed me. And the pickup games energized me. Great game! The Y is everything I needed it to be. Because the Y is so much more than my gym. Try the Y free for 7 days at TryTheY.ca