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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   37124 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Is Dylan Mulvaney the Trans Andy Kaufmann?

Watching the Dylan Mulvaney spectacle play out has left me with an odd feeling that I’ve struggled to quite put a finger on, with Mulvaney causing me to have something like an uncanny valley reaction to his transition and demeanor. I don’t mean this to say that Mulvaney looks almost female, but not quite, I mean that Mulvaney gives me the impression of someone that isn’t sincere about transitioning, but has put enough effort into it that I’m not exactly sure what’s going on and what to make of this person. In light of the recent Bud Light debacle I’ve finally settled on an explanation that makes more sense to me - Mulvaney is a modern Andy Kaufman, playing the part of a trans person well enough to convince some people, while others are in on the joke, and all of them contribute to Mulvaney’s accrual of fame and cash.

Who was Andy Kaufman? I think the Wiki summary is better than anything I’ll write up:

During this time, he continued to tour comedy clubs and theaters in a series of unique performance art/comedy shows, sometimes appearing as himself and sometimes as obnoxiously rude lounge singer Tony Clifton. He was also a frequent guest on sketch comedy and late-night talk shows, particularly Late Night with David Letterman.[6] In 1982, Kaufman brought his professional wrestling villain act to Letterman's show by way of a staged encounter with Jerry "The King" Lawler of the Continental Wrestling Association. The fact that the altercation was planned was not publicly disclosed for over a decade.

Kaufman died of lung cancer on May 16, 1984, at the age of 35.[7] As pranks and elaborate ruses were major elements of his career, persistent rumors have circulated that Kaufman faked his own death as a grand hoax.[6][8] He continues to be respected for the variety of his characters, his uniquely counterintuitive approach to comedy, and his willingness to provoke negative and confused reactions from audiences.[6][9]

Comedian Richard Lewis in A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman said of him: "No one has ever done what Andy did, and did it as well, and no one will ever. Because he did it first. So did Buster Keaton, so did Andy."[96] Carl Reiner recalled his distinction in the comedy world:

Did Andy influence comedy? No. Because nobody's doing what he did. Jim Carrey was influenced—not to do what Andy did, but to follow his own drummer. I think Andy did that for a lot of people. Follow your own drumbeat. You didn't have to go up there and say 'take my wife, please.'[97] You could do anything that struck you as entertaining. It gave people freedom to be themselves.[98]

Reiner also said of Kaufman: "Nobody can see past the edges, where the character begins and he ends."[99]

Kaufman made people laugh, get angry with him, and even physically attack him by playacting at different roles so successfully than people couldn’t tell where the sincere Kaufman stopped and the characters began. When I watch Dylan Mulvaney advertise native-scented deodorant, I don’t see someone that’s genuinely trying to be a woman. I see someone that’s clowning the concept, mocking women, mocking trans people, and exploiting the clicks for fun and profit.

I wasn’t around for Kaufman, so this comparison is likely imperfect. Nonetheless, watching people react to what sure looks to me like a running joke as though it’s perfectly sincere has been entirely surreal. I see people on the pro-trans side treating Mulvaney as sincere. If I’m right and this is a running joke, Joe Biden sure didn’t get the word. My inclination has been to chalk this up to people becoming sufficiently accustomed to never question claims from trans people that playing along with Dylan Mulvaney is no different than the rest of it, and even if they have doubts, they’re surely not going to look at Dylan and saying, “oh, come the fuck on”. So even though this was weird, it wasn’t until the Bud Light thing that it began to really seem hyperreal to me.

Here, watch this 35 second reaction video from Kid Rock. What’s going on here? Is Kid Rock sincerely pissed off at Bud Light, so pissed off that the only way to express it is with a burst of automatic weapons fire supplemented by some covering fire from a shotgun-wielding buddy? Is he basically sincere in his reaction, but strongly exaggerating the reaction because it’s funny? Is he ambivalent, but doing it for the clicks and lols? Is he part of the Bud Light advertising campaign, just driving the product into people’s mindspace? Does he agree with me that the whole thing is a big joke and he’s just rolling with his own improv? I don’t know and I don’t even know how I would know.

Vox reports that people have reacted in real life:

Don, a liquor store owner in Arkansas who requested to remain anonymous so he “doesn’t get caught up in the wokeness,” told me he’s seen a 20-25 percent dip in Bud Light sales since the controversy hit, with his admittedly small sample size of shoppers seemingly opting for Miller Lite and Coors Light instead. However, he doesn’t expect the backlash to stick. “A lot of people are talking about it, fired up about it, they’re never drinking Bud Light again, yada yada yada, but they’ll be drinking them in a month, as soon as the news cycle quits,” he said.

Well, what are those people thinking? Are they genuinely pissed, but not so pissed as to permanently give up a product that seems completely fungible with other light beers? How about Ben Shapiro:

The post started to pick up steam in conservative circles relatively quickly. Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro decried the collaboration on his show, saying, “Well, folks, our culture has now decided men are women and women are men and you must be forced to consume products that say so.” Shapiro appears not to be much of a Bud Light fan himself, so he probably doesn’t have much to boycott. “I understand Bud Light is piss water masquerading as beer,” he said, “so I guess that, you know, it’s sort of trans beer.”

Well, I’m glad he at least kept the on-brand smugness. In fact, no one seems to be missing out on their normal branding, which lends itself to the hyperreal experience. In keeping with that, I will smugly note that I don’t drink that shit anyway and I’ll be cracking an IPA from a real industry underdog - Lagunitas(tm), a tiny subsidiary of a little-known international parent company. Thank God that I’m not getting taken in by all this hyperreal marketing.

Is he part of the Bud Light advertising campaign, just driving the product into people’s mindspace?

I don’t think this is the case. Do you know what would be even more controversial and getting more eyeballs? Bud Light special “Z” with Putin’s face on it. Somehow if we get any controversy from a corp it always leans in woke direction.

I don't think the controversy has legs, unless InBev keeps trolling their customers. It's not as if they can boycott InBev.

small sample size of shoppers seemingly opting for Miller Lite and Coors Light instead

Wouldn't Evian and Aquafina be more suitable alternatives to Bud Light?

This is basically the equivalent of Starbucks putting Andrew Tate's photo on their pumpkin spice lattes. Worse because Bud Light has been losing market share and isn't well respected by beer drinkers.

Blue collar people see this as "I've been loyal to your mediocre product and you make an effort to insult me".

I see Mulvaney as someone who's addicted to attention, not some multilayered performance artist.

Kid Rock is just having some fun and showing loyalty to his fans.

Conservative commentators are jumping on this because Bud Light is a fun target to mock, and most of the jokes have already been written.

Anheuser-Busch can't back down because it will hurt their ESG rating. There's a specific LBGTQ rating that may be separate from ESG, I'm not sure how it works.

Mainstream ESG scores as used by people like Blackrock don't give very many points for this kind of thing.

The way I think of it in my professional life is that the "S" is a bit of a joke (apart from a few special cases like African mining where you can get dinged for paying off warlords), the "G" is a pass/fail checklist, and that most of the variation in scores is driven by the "E". In the large bank I work in, 75% of the ESG discourse is about carbon emissions.

Are there any ESG funds that shorted the shit out of Norfolk Southern immediately after the train derailment? IMO, any that didn't are confusing the thing with the symbolic representation of the thing. It would have been obviously value-aligned and profitable.

IMO, any that didn't are confusing the thing with the symbolic representation of the thing.

Are they, or are you?

Making money by incentivizing corporations to not ruin small Ohio towns seems very much like "the thing" to me.

There's your problem.

ESG is a tool for the establishment to get the private sector in line, not to actually do something for the environment.

Anbev saying senior leadership didn’t know about the marketing and it was lower level people. I believe she’s HBS and a VP so taking with a grain of salt.

But Bud basically needs to pick a side now or their top product is probably dead. They need to cancel the VP and fire her for cause in my opinion or try to be woke beer (which I don’t think exists for this product category but maybe good for other products). Give the right a scalp and maybe sales boom.

Woke beer can easily be a thing that exists. Even woke light beer.

Anbev saying senior leadership didn’t know about the marketing and it was lower level people.

They're lying, of course. But at least they're worried enough to lie, rather than do the whole "our former customers are evil transphobes" thing.

VPs are dime a dozen at a corp like AB Inbev.

The real issue is seltzers taking the beer market for the college and post college crowd

Seltzers always killed me when they took off because I was drinking La Croix and Vodka long before and never thought about starting that business. That being said I quit drinking seltzers. They’re too sugary. I no longer think they’re the end game. But Bud does feel like a doomed product. A revamp where it’s middle market might work.

For what it is worth there is a "fabulously gay" niche for celebrities in Europe. For example Conchita Wurst (which name is inherently campy, it means "clamshell sausage") won the Eurovision Song Contest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchita_Wurst

Note that the article uses he/him pronouns. He is not trans, he is gay, and the "bearded lady" he plays as a persona is described with she/her, but in RL he is also a queen. There is an ironic wink going on here which sidesteps bitter quarrels about "what is a woman" because he is a man.

Or Riccardo Simonetti in Germany who always has nice hair:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Riccardo+Simonetti&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi30tKwpan-AhVUwAIHHRzzDPYQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1620&bih=1048&dpr=2

They are regulars in inoffensive panel shows/show business as soft spoken excitable bubbly fun characters and if they advertise something few bat an eye. Dylan Mulvaney could maybe transition into that kind of celebrity role?

the line between extremely effeminate gay men who regularly exist in a form of light drag (eg. makeup influencers like James Charles) and HSTS transwomen can be blurry.

This is a big-picture issue worthy of an effortpost, but the line is fully blurred in many cultures. The pro-trans lobby has spent a lot of time and effort looking for examples of culturally normative trans identities in non-Western cultures, and they have found quite a few - kathoeys in Thailand, hijras in India, what used to be called berdache but are now lumped in the broader label of two-spirit in many (but by no means all) Native American tribes. The malakoi who Paul condemns in 1 Corinthians were probably a similar phenomenon in the Hellenistic Greek culture of the eastern Roman Empire. But these aren't examples of woke-Western choose-your-own-gender - they are specific "third genders" with just as restrictive rules as the two main genders. And they are all basically the same third gender - effeminate androphilic AMABs who are (from a secular perspective) licit sex partners for straight men - equivalent to Blanchards HSTS.

Of course, the fact that this group exists and is regularised in a middle-income country like Thailand makes it possible to poll them. And what we find out is that "Are kathoeys really women?" simply doesn't matter that much to the people it affects. And we see the same thing with African-American gay culture before it assimilates to white gay culture - was Marsha Johnson really a trans woman, or was she a drag queen? Very obviously, she didn't care.

The distinction you make in the two modes of homosexuality in your second paragraph is interesting. It seems to match to a pattern I've noticed among homosexuals myself, where more effeminate gay men tend to have monogamous partners serially, whereas more masculine passing gay men tend to operate in the first relationship style you describe with older/younger males (and also this tends to overlap with triad/poly relationships among gay men much more than the effeminate mode does.)

In my personal experience, growing up, the media I consumed tended to depict gay relationships in the former fem/monogamous mode, so I sort of believed I was meant to operate in that mode as well, but as I grew older I realized I was drawn to the second type of gay relationships much more, which also coincided with my personal behaviors shifting from effeminacy to more masculinity. Or rather my self perception that shifted from a more feminine self image to a more masculine one as I aged.

I think the two modes maybe derive from the psychological concept of self that a gay man can hold: He asks himself, Do I identify more with my effeminacy and need to sort of castrate a man to be in control sexually? Or am I secure enough in my masculinity that I can adopt this other mode of relationships where I am the bull/dad/dominant partner/alpha? This also stems from the fundamental nature of homosexuality making odd compromises necessary. Most gay couples I know with small age gaps tend to grate at each other over time because the fundamental power structure is unbalanced when they are too evenly matched physically, age gap relationships tend to be more stable and longer lasting. The monogamous/effeminate relationships can be interpreted to reflect feminine values (safety seeking, "soft power") and the prison/military sexuality reflects masculine values (pleasure seeking, "hard power"), both deriving from the uncertainty of the homosexual ego as to his particular optimal role in relationships.

There is also a class and culture component to this today, where I see more well to do gay men and men from cities in monogamous/feminine relationship mode and more working class/rural men in more of the older/younger masculine mode.

This also reflects an interesting distinction in Middle Eastern/Islamic culture where homosexuality has traditionally been an age gap relationship, which seems to be relatively tolerated, compared with the basically western/modern invention of the feminine mode of homosexuality coupled with LGBT identity which is seen as forbidden and not tolerated in Middle Eastern cultures.

One thing I would note on Mulvaney is I think it’s the first time a trans character went mainstream. The other higher profile one is a swimmer or a government official no one notices that isn’t always online. We don’t have a guy who played men’s NCAA basketball and took over the wnba. Something that would be way more high profile. The only other one is the Kardashian which never seemed that threatening and most wrote off to crazy family.

Also I would admit to finding him hitting the slender delicate frame that I find attractive. I guess this is a full time job but when we talk about female attractiveness like the dateme I think it shows how much could be improved if she wanted to break out of her dating market.

Laverne Cox is also more famous than Mulvaney. The first trans woman to be nominated for (and win) an Emmy, first trans person to appear on the cover of Time and Cosmo magazines, 6.4m followers on Instagram.

Caitlyn Jenner (kardashian) is the biggest. American hero who won the decathlon gold back from the soviets, on cover of magazines, and now part of a sitcom family. She has 14.4 million followers on instagram to Mulvney’s 1.8million followers.

I think Mulvaney is causing a lot of what the TERFs call "peak trans" - that moment when a previously tolerant person, even a true believer, realizes they aren't actually buying this.

The thing about Mulvaney is that whereas a lot of trans people I think are sincere in how they identify, even if their self-identification is an offensive caricature of womanhood because they are acting out their inner fantasy of being a pretty, pretty girl, I find it hard to believe that Mulvaney himself is a true believer. He seems to not only be living up to the stereotype of a creepy autogynophile acting out his fetishes, he's doing it in a flaming, performative fashion with a mocking wink at the audience: "Yes, we all know I'm a gay dude getting off on this, now clap and play along or else." Not since Jessica Yaniv have we seen a trans woman doing such a gross parody of a feminine girly girl who's really into tampons and jiggling excitedly and forcing women to suppress their disgust reactions. And whereas I think Yaniv is both a bad actor and straight up mentally ill, Mulvaney seems to be nothing more than a cynical grifter who's enjoying himself.

The difference between him and Andy Kaufman is that Andy Kaufman was funny.

Aren't "autogynephile" and "gay dude" supposed to be mutually exclusive, autogynephiles being heterosexual men who like to imagine themselves as women because they like women?

My understanding is that autogynophiles are aroused by the idea of being seen and treated(fucked) like a woman. Where they fall on the spectrum of gay->straight I don't know.

I think the primary part is that transexuals with 'gay face' can, to straight men, look very 'gross' in makeup. Since the makeup tends to exaggerate the 'gay face'.

On top of that, seeing full body pictures of him, he has extremely 'mannish' features. Very narrow pelvis, very broad shoulders and big head for his frame. There is nothing feminine about the guy. He just looks gay. His mannerisms are also just... gay.

I think the most plausible explanation for his behavior, as has been pointed a few times already, is that he, on some level, saw 'trans' as a business opportunity. And no one can say he is wrong.

That being said, I don't think that alone would explain why so many people take great issue with him and not someone like Hunter Schafer. I think that is much better explained by the fact that he, as a woman, just looks 'gross' from almost every angle. No joke, there are former bodybuilders who 'transitioned' that look less 'gross' than Dylan as women.

There's very much an uncanny valley effect going on. When you see someone with so much feminine energy (and he does in fact exude lots of feminine energy) your brain expects to see wide hips, boobs, a narrow waist, but all those things are just... not there, like the feeling you get when you first notice an optical illusion. Your brain's predictive coding spits out an error state.

(and he does in fact exude lots of feminine energy)

I think this point is being refuted by the @hanikrummihundursvin :

His mannerisms are also just... gay.

which, I agree with. There's nothing feminine about his energy, maybe a grokkable distinction here is "effeminate". The 'energy' put out by this guy is not remotely like anything I've ever seen in any women I've met, and comes off more like someone who's never actually met a woman. On the other hand, it pattern matches for plenty gay men I've met, if a little less 'bitchy'.

Same as the performance-based social media backlash against Nike regarding the Kaepernick ads. Or against Starbucks and Disney. It will pass in a few weeks, as it always does. Social media is the perfect medium for expressing outrage. Conservatives may try to boycott but the hard part is sustaining it.

I haven't bought a P&G product since Gillette scuttled their best a man can get ad. Never really did buy Nike but I stopped watching the NFL and started brewing my own coffee when Starbucks banned guns. Its been good for my savings rate, but I hope there are still some businesses that want conservatives money in the future.

oh yeah I forgot about the Gillette ad. i recall that was a big deal at the time. maybe that proves my point incidentally

I haven’t bought a Nike product since. Maybe I’m too small to matter. It’s very hard to find basketball shoes that are not Nike.

Agree. People are still boycotting Nike. Also, the Bud Light boycott won't pass.

But the situations are different.

Nike escaped unscathed because, for every person boycotting, there is another person who is buying Nike in part because of their woke pivot. For Nike it's not a bad strategy. Before going woke, the political position of Nike was of an evil sweatshop owner. They've switched the narrative and probably gained more consumers than they lost.

But Bud Light is going to lose sales forever. They are alienating their core constituency. And Bud Light will never be consumed by urban elites.

This is awful business strategy and will cost them billions.

I can't not drink more Bud Light, or any AB product than I already don't. If they resurrected Spuds MacKenzie and bud girls, the dog and attractive woman could convince me to buy a case for emergencies.

But Bud Light is going to lose sales forever. They are alienating their core constituency. And Bud Light will never be consumed by urban elites.

They don't care. They'd rather not be affiliated with that constituency. And no one else will pick it up because essentially all the marketing people who would be hired into a big brand are aligned.

Well they should care. As @jeroboam said, they're going to lose a lot of money if they piss off that constituency. The company may be so infested with ideologues that they are willing to lose money for ideology, but eventually that will run them into the ground if they don't get a clue.

The company may be so infested with ideologues that they are willing to lose money for ideology, but eventually that will run them into the ground if they don't get a clue.

Why? If the market is smaller and AB makes less total revenue, AB can just be a little smaller and do fine. Hollywood has been doing fine for decades explicitly avoiding catering to conservatives (since the Rural Purge); the occasional show or movie that does generally does well but they don't follow up.

Well if @jeroboam is right (and I think he probably is), the market for cheap shitty beer is different from Hollywood in that the market is almost all Red Tribe. It's one thing to commit to being woke and lose 25% of your revenue, it's another thing to lose 75%.

Well they should care. As @jeroboam said, they're going to lose a lot of money if they piss off that constituency. The company may be so infested with ideologues that they are willing to lose money for ideology, but eventually that will run them into the ground if they don't get a clue.

I do think "Bud Light" as a brand will suffer. But really, worst case scenario, they'll pull a switcheroo to escape the bad vibes a la Anglo-Iranian Oil -> British Petroleum -> BP. The American public does not have the attention span to keep track of which mask Nyarlathotep is wearing.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the bud light seltzers make up for all the lost sales

Seltzers and coolers and such go through cycles, but they're generally fads and fade. Beer is evergreen. So ABInbev would be foolish to depend on them.

And no one else will pick it up because essentially all the marketing people who would be hired into a big brand are aligned.

Burgers?

I’m not sure they gained more customers than they lost. Though they want the female market which spends way more on clothes so maybe.

The issue is nike has a borderline monopoly in a lot of sports stuff. You go to a shoe store and maybe they have 50 different nike and 4 other brands shoes.

Bud the switching costs is too cheap. It’s watered down beer. Cola is similar to Nike except 95% of the shelf space is a coke/Pepsi duopoly.

Honestly I think about this I wander why Under Armour can’t get their brand going and target hard at the old Michael Jordan demographic of male sports shoppers. I sort of want to start a basketball shoe brand. Can run with slogans like Democrats buy sneakers too. Men compete with men. Then some macho stuff about beating your opponent (old Nike).

The issue is nike has a borderline monopoly in a lot of sports stuff. You go to a shoe store and maybe they have 50 different nike and 4 other brands shoes.

They also have the objectively best running shoes. Among both pros and sub-elite amateurs that care about performance, damned near everyone is wearing either Alphafly or Vaporfly shoes to the start line. Other companies have now copied the "supershoe" approach and there are some competitors that are probably pretty similar, but everyone I know just stuck with the Nikes.

I too doubt any sort of boycott would have any measurable negative impact, much less a meaningful one, to these companies, but I also wonder how well this sort of marketing will work out for Anheuser-Busch. The types of people that I know who would be attracted to a brand by Mulvaney's endorsement are also the types of people who wouldn't be caught dead drinking Bud Light (though something by a brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch is another question), and I can't imagine this allowing them to overcome that distaste. But the people I know are obviously not representative of such a population, so maybe there are a lot of people who would be converted to drinking Bud Light that Anheuser-Busch's marketing identified. The effects of marketing is well known to be illegible even by marketers, so perhaps it's just a more general latching-onto-the-bandwagon thing. Actually, now that I think about it, it could also be an investment in the future: as current preteens and teenagers - a population I believe is more skewed than the rest of the population towards being positively influenced by Mulvaney's endorsement - age up into drinking age, their mental association between Mulvaney and Bud Light, now reinforced for multiple of their most impressionable years - could push them more towards that beer.

In keeping with that, I will smugly note that I don’t drink that shit anyway and I’ll be cracking an IPA from a real industry underdog - Lagunitas(tm), a tiny subsidiary of a little-known international parent company.

I know at least a few people who actively avoid beers produced by AB InBev and Heineken (owns Lagunitas) and all their subsidiaries. This is harder than it sounds, because it's not always obvious on the packaging. I'm not going to say that I do so exclusively myself, but I do prefer locally-owned brands where possible.

This is harder than it sounds, because it's not always obvious on the packaging

Former brewery owner/operator. The Brewers Association has a campaign called Certified Independent Craft: https://www.brewersassociation.org/independent-craft-brewer-seal/

Rules are you can't be bigger than Yuengling, and you can't be more than 25% owned by a macro-brewer. https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/craft-brewer-definition/

Pretty much every craft brewery that puts product out in cans or bottles has adopted the logo.

So if you actually want to be certain you're not supporting AB InBev, etc., look for the Independent Craft logo.

Small breweries in the US need to sell out as their exit strategy if they want growth, due to post-prohibition regulations that severely limit interstate distribution. They go from tiny to massive in a single step, and the scaling of their recipes, methods, and processes nearly always results in a decline of quality but with a presumable increase in consistency and quality control. They’re not “bad” for being sellouts; they’re typically worse for the drinker in small but noticeable ways.

Yuengling if in your market is independent.

Hopefully it was obvious that I was being tongue in cheek! I do enjoy Lagunitas though...

Personally, I don't make much more than a token effort in that direction, but my personal preferences do tend to run me in the direction smallish breweries, including some that are very local. As a Wisconsin guy, I drink a fair bit of 3 Sheeps and Central Waters. I also enjoy the hyperlocal breweries my area that only have enough capacity to do some minimal canning. But really, there are some fantastic products that come from InBev subsidiaries and I don't see myself excluding something like Goose Island BCS on the basis of the parent company. Buying a fresh, local pale ale or lager gives me a product that I actually enjoy more than nationally distributed products, but if something is good, I'm still going to buy it.

Is it really that hard? I mean I am not drinking as much beer as I used to in my youth, but I see tons of offering from local and semi-local breweries all around. Of course, I'm not sure whether any of them may be owned by somebody who is owned by somebody who is owned by Heineken - but that's way to much effort for me anyway to figure out that. And I don't think on this stage it really matters. But I think beer is one place where one could practically shut out somebody like AB and not suffer much, in fact with almost no additional effort.

Just look for the Independent Craft seal.

It mostly depends how much beer your drink and where you are. Yuengling is local to me so I can practically ignore the whole problem. And I don't drink a lot of beer so if I took a monthly trip to the brewery up the road and bought a six pack, I'd be golden. But I think for a lot of people it presents a problem because they need a cheap local beer when most local beer is expensive.

Seconding Yuengling. It’s easier to whitelist than to blacklist when it comes to these things (or you can just not care like a normal person).

There are better beers, and there are cheaper beers, but there are no better cheep beers

Looks like Yuengling goes for about $22 for a 24 pack these days. I'd rather drink a variety pack from Oskar Blues for the $17 for 15 that I usually see locally. Maybe a buck a beer crosses out of the cheap beer range though. I think the big packs of Founders are still under a buck a beer though.

It's still $15-17 around me depending on beer distributor you go to.

Oh, nice. That's like PBR range.

A man after my own heart. Have you ever toured the brewery? It's great. Fantastic drive through the country, if you take the right route, to get there this time of year.

Is it really that hard?

Strangely, yes. They own a few random really small breweries. Wikipedia lists all of the brands they own, which includes some really small ones that appear tiny and independent at first glance.

Also they were very quiet about that ownership for non political macrobrewery vs microbrewery reasons.

The whole Dylan Mulvaney thing has been grimly amusing to me from the start, because I was familiar with Dylan during his days as a musical theatre performer here in San Diego. His Wikipedia page references that he performed in a number of musicals in San Diego, which is his hometown as well as mine; I think the first time I saw him perform was in a production of Spring Awakening at the Cygnet Theatre in 2013, although I can’t remember if that was before or after his performance in Bare: A Pop Opera. In both cases, he played the same essential character - an incredibly effeminate, fey, vulnerable gay teenager.

I believe I met him casually a couple of times since we were both in the theatre scene, though this would have been a decade ago and I don’t recall for sure. He has certainly always been extraordinarily gay - steeped in gayness! - ever since I became familiar with him, so I’m pretty confident that that part at least isn’t an act. But, being a working actor, especially in this day and age, is an incredibly cutthroat, sink-or-swim kind of life, and any edge you can give yourself - anything, genuine or fabricated, that can provide you with any sort of leverage or leg up over other actors - is a vital step toward fame and longevity. If you’re correct that he identified an untapped niche and ruthlessly pursued it, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least and would be entirely consistent with my experience of theatre people, and of late-in-life-transitioning theatre people more specifically.

The problem with an act like this is that if he ever slows it down, he’s going to be eaten alive. Andy Kaufman was faking and everyone knew it, so he could get credit for his creative work, and if he stopped doing something, nobody cared because it was an act. If Mulvaney stopped being as girly as he is, he’ll be crucified for crimes against wokeness.

Being crucified would hardly be a problem for an attention seeker - who wouldn't want to be high up on a cross on a hill where everyone can look at you? One could easily imagine him pivoting to being ex-trans, or Gays For Trump, or anything else that might keep eyes on him or her.

Speaking of shameless attention seeking- I recently saw that Milo Yianopolis (sp) was still doing speaking events, but now as a formerly gay totally straight born again christian. Probably the most insulting identity shift i'm currently aware of.

The Bud Light debacle made it into the watercooler talk at my work, which is rare but not unheard of for culture war items. The general consensus seemed to be: it’s not just that he’s a man trying to be a woman, it’s that he’s trying to be an “adolescent girl”.

Oddly enough, I had the opposite reaction as you. If you want to be a woman, why would you want to be a business professional or something? why wouldn’t you want to be a teenage girl making melodramatic Instagram videos, dancing, screaming, waving your hands everywhere, and doing whatever gets you the most attention? His is perhaps the most sincere desire to “be a woman” as I’ve ever seen. Maybe the programmers with anime profile pics are the inauthentic fakers?

Maybe the programmers with anime profile pics are the inauthentic fakers?

Seriously. My top 3-5 lady programmers were all AMAB. Patriarchy?

I'd guess there's a bunch of reasons other than just plain old coincidence. One is that there just aren't that many female programmers, so there's a relatively higher proportion of MTF women in the industry. Also the well known male/female difference in interest-in-things versus interest-in-people could be resistant to whatever the cause of an MTF transwoman to be a transwoman rather than a cis man, and also resistant (perhaps not fully immune, but resistant nonetheless) to whatever treatment they might undergo as part of the transition. And there's also some (weak) indication that autism is correlated with transness. The latter 2 don't automatically translate to someone being better at programming, but it's not hard to see why someone who's further on the autism spectrum and with a greater interest in things could develop programming skills further than otherwise.

The 1st 2 could be attributed to patriarchy under standard modern feminist ideology. Not having roughly same amount of female programmers in the industry as male ones is, tautologically, an indication that society hasn't been engineered in such a way as to equalize the proportion of the sexes within this industry, and this is attributable to patriarchy no matter what the mechanism. If society has largely provided women the freedom to pursue whatever careers they want and they're just choosing not to pursue programming - which is likely the case in most western societies - that means that society has sent girls some sort of messaging that has discouraged them away from pursuing programming, which is a form of patriarchy. For the 2nd, the same reasoning applies, just to the interest-in-things/interest-in-people difference. The fact that there's some measurable difference between the sexes in this dichotomy means that there must be some sort of messaging, possibly starting even from the womb, that girls receive that pushes them towards greater interest in people rather than things. The messaging can take forms that are literally invisible and undetectable, but it must be there, and it must be an indication of patriarchy, as long as the results are the kind of imbalance we're talking about.

For the 3rd one, I'm not sure what feminist ideology has to say about the apparent correlation between autism and transness - it might not exist in any case, since I don't think this has been studied much. But there's got to be a way to attribute it to patriarchy somehow if it turns out to be the case; it's just that both autism and transness are considered to be "innate" or "born with it," and I'm not creative enough to come up with a way by which patriarchy can be attributed to a correlation between the 2, but that doesn't mean nobody is that creative.

If you want to be a woman, why would you want to be a business professional or something? why wouldn’t you want to be a teenage girl making melodramatic Instagram videos, dancing, screaming, waving your hands everywhere, and doing whatever gets you the most attention?

You could equally ask "why wouldn't someone who's already a woman not want to be a teenage girl making melodramatic Instagram videos?" Because that's behavior which depends on having a lack of adult responsibilities and on excessive self-centeredness.

To the extent that "wants to be a woman" is acceptable at all, it can at most mean "wants to be a woman in a situation similar to the one he's in now, except with the effects of gender changed". "Wants to be a woman + X" is no good if wanting X is already bad independent of gender.

Oddly enough, I had the opposite reaction as you. If you want to be a woman, why would you want to be a business professional or something? why wouldn’t you want to be a teenage girl making melodramatic Instagram videos, dancing, screaming, waving your hands everywhere, and doing whatever gets you the most attention? His is perhaps the most sincere desire to “be a woman” as I’ve ever seen. Maybe the programmers with anime profile pics are the inauthentic fakers?

Even if that were true, not sure why it would be more sympathetic.

Basically you're saying that everyone is being asked to indulge someone trying to secede from being an adult (a right they don't have)

Strip the trans element out of it and it would still be received badly. All the more for how much the desire has been indulged.

Basically you're saying that everyone is being asked to indulge someone trying to secede from being an adult (a right they don't have)

Well unfortunately many of the younger generation are succeeding in exercising that right. It's a sad world we live in.

How are people encountering Dylan Mulvaney ads? I have never organically encountered her content outside of culture war discussions about what it means that she's prominent/has brand partnerships. Is she huge on TikTok or something? Was this a targeted thing aimed at Gen Z or is she going to be in ads run during the NBA playoffs?

I don't know what's going on with Dylan Mulvaney but there were a bunch of articles on 'bimboificiation' and the 'rise of bimbos' a while back so cis women social influencers are also performing parodies of high femininity. I think it's kind of an Elle Woods thing where the idea is that you can act stereotypically hyper feminine and still be competent and agentic. I wonder if it's a way to respond to the pressure of always having to present an image or something. Chrissy Chlapeka is cited in a bunch of those essays and she recorded a song about being so hot she wants to fuck herself, which reeks of autogynephillia except she's cis (I think).

I can kind of see drag, and the way some trans women act as an insulting parody of femininity, but then the people I know who watch RuPaul's Drag Race are mostly straight women. I also thought Lana Del Rey was kind of performing a man's idea of a woman, but she has a huge female fan base so I don't know what's going on there.

Chrissy Chlapeka is cited in a bunch of those essays and she recorded a song about being so hot she wants to fuck herself, which reeks of autogynephillia except she's cis (I think).

And yet she somehow manages to be more butch than James Charles. I honestly don't know which one I would kick out of a women's bathroom for trespassing.

Clips of mulvaney from before his transitioning seem like the only difference is his pants fit better. Really seems like he saw a niche to better monetize his cartoonishly effeminate homosexual vibe and jumped at it while making functionally no non-aesthetic changes.

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