When You Tell Me to Ignore Dylan Mulvaney, You're Telling Me to Normalize Violence Against Women

When I first became aware of Dylan Mulvaney, which was probably around the time of his commercial with Ulta in October 2022, I thought he was annoying but ultimately harmless. He would have his 15 minutes of fame and then fade away. After all, no one would really find this inane rendition of womanhood remotely entertaining or attractive. Right?

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@dylanmulvaney Day 1 of being a girl #trans #woman ♬ som original – Music Lyrics

For those who don’t want to hit play (and I don’t blame you), he says:

Day one of being a girl, and I have already cried three times, I wrote a scathing email that i did not send, I ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford, and then when someone asked me how I was, I said, “I’m fine,” when I wasn’t fine. How’d I do, ladies? Good? Girl power!

Cringe.

Some conservatives say that Mulvaney only became super popular because of conservatives and “right-wing hate,” and some say that he would go away if everyone ignored him. Others say that conservative media criticizing Dylan Mulvaney “plays into the left’s narrative that conservatives hate trans people.”

All of these takes are wrong.

Conservative outlets didn’t make Dylan Mulvaney “super popular.” He was “super popular” before the “conservative media complex” paid much attention to him. According to Mulvaney’s representatives at Creative Artists Agency, Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Girlhood” series had 750 million (yes, million) views within the first 100 days (day 100 being June 20, 2022), and Mulvaney’s TikTok made that day featured a screenshot showing just over 5 million followers at that point. The first big mention of Mulvaney in conservative media did happen before that (Prager U), but the number of posts about him didn’t start taking off until the fall, after he’d already inked a deal with Ulta and numerous other brands (RedState’s first mention of him was October 18, 2022).

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Way back in June 2021, Dylan was listed on Good Morning America’s “Who is making LGBTQ+ history right now: GMA Inspiration List,” and at that time he identified as non-binary. So, his fame was steadily growing long before conservatives took note.

And, big corporations need boosts to their ESG scores, so someone like Mulvaney was going to be attractive to them whether or not he was the subject of “right-wing hate.” Given what’s happened with Bud Light since their misguided stunt with Mulvaney, it can hardly be argued that it was good for both their ESG score and their bottom line.

In any event, ignoring Dylan Mulvaney won’t make him or the “trans issue” go away. Here’s why. Now, I’m a mom who absolutely believes that one of the best ways to eliminate a bad behavior, especially in toddlers, is to ignore it; however, it’s not effective in every single situation. If the person is behaving a certain way for attention and they don’t get it, that can be effective. Sometimes ignoring bad behavior gives the impression that the behavior is acceptable, encouraging more of it, and that’s exactly what’s happened here.

I’ll concede that lefties will defend Mulvaney even more vigorously because conservatives criticize him, thus enhancing his popularity. But that doesn’t mean that conservatives shouldn’t criticize him or that they’re doing something wrong if they do. By that logic, conservatives should never call out stunts like the Tennessee Three pulled, and shouldn’t call out Joe and Hunter Biden’s China connections, because that will just make them more popular. No. Wrong is wrong.

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What exactly is it that’s wrong with Dylan Mulvaney? As I wrote earlier this week, what’s wrong is Mulvaney purporting to be a woman, assuming he can in any way truly experience womanhood, taking jobs from women through his endorsement deals, supporting/advocating for policies allowing children’s bodies to be maimed, and sexualizing children. If my opposition to those things enhances Mulvaney’s popularity with leftists, so be it.

My criticism of Mulvaney’s attack on women doesn’t mean I hate trans people. How an adult chooses to live their life, provided they don’t expect anything from me other than the respect and courtesy I’d afford any other human being, is irrelevant to me. If an adult man wants to dress as a woman and have a woman’s name, I don’t care. The same goes for an adult woman dressing as a man and living her life as a man. And regardless of what term an adult uses to describe their sexuality, all I know is that I don’t want to hear about their sex life. Ever.

I don’t hate drag queens either, or adults who enjoy watching drag shows. I do have an issue with children being part of the audience, and I have a major issue with children being forced to have anyone’s body parts shoved in their face or being forced to put dollar bills in a stripper’s G string. (I say “forced” because I don’t believe the children taking part in these activities have the freedom to choose their actions.)

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Hate is a strong word, but it applies here. I hate people – trans or not – who participate in lying to children and in making them believe that normal childhood and adolescent insecurities and traumas are abnormal and that the answer is receiving destructive, irreversible surgeries and hormones. I hate people who sexualize children at a young age and use them to advance their political agendas.

I don’t hate them as individuals, but I have no use for men who’ve hijacked a movement originally designed to protect women and give women equal opportunities and are using that movement to attempt to erase women, sterilize girls, completely take over women’s sports, and force women to be exposed to their naked bodies in what should be a safe place.

I have no use for people who would physically assault a woman who speaks up when she feels unsafe around a man, or who speaks up when a man is taking opportunities specifically reserved for women away from her.

I have no use for people who attempt to normalize the aberrant behaviors that are on display in several of Mulvaney’s TikTok videos and stigmatize those who sound a warning.

While many of Mulvaney’s videos are annoying simply because of the simplistic, dumbed-down version of womanhood they portray, some are extremely disturbing, demonstrating how tenuous Mulvaney’s link with reality is. In this video he is pretending he’s “Eloise” from the children’s book series (or maybe thinks he actually is Eloise), living in the Plaza Hotel.

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In this video, he’s dressed as a doll and saying, “Let dolls be dolls, please,” repeatedly.

It’s not okay to stand silent when this madness is being pushed as somehow being normal. Silence leads to situations like we saw at San Francisco State University and other college campuses recently, where violent trans activists have either attempted to physically attack or successfully physically attacked those who spoke out against their agenda.

When Riley Gaines spoke at San Francisco State University and was attacked by trans activists, other lefty activists justified that attack by claiming that Gaines shouldn’t have been there voicing her opinion. A journalism student said it was “common sense” that Gaines shouldn’t have been there, knowing that “she wouldn’t be welcomed there,” despite the fact that a registered student organization invited her to speak.

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Twitter isn’t generally a great example of what’s going on in the world, but the conversation with this account was illustrative of the mindset on college campuses.

And, “A Christian church isn’t going to invite a satanic church leader to come speak at their service for example. It’s common sense.”

Common sense? The school didn’t invite Gaines; the student organization Turning Point USA did.

So now the journalism student’s question changes to, “Who invited TPUSA to SFSU?” and he insinuates that TPUSA doesn’t have a right to have a registered student organization on campus.

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But the fact is that TPUSA’s members at SFSU wanted to hear Gaines and invited her to speak. If other students on campus didn’t want to hear Gaines, they were free just to ignore her appearance on campus or that she existed. But they didn’t, because they felt that her views and ideology were so harmful that they had to be confronted head-on.

Ohhhhh….yeah.

The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

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