The wind of moral panic in the United States has not stopped blowing. After dozens of attacks on drag queens and their children’s books, then laws limiting their activity, the Republican Party and the personalities who support it have found a new target: trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Followed by nearly 11 million subscribers on TikTok, the young woman who exposes every bit of her life on social networks has recently become the new ambassador for Nike’s women’s collection. A decision that enrages the reactionary right, including Caitlyn Jenner, another trans woman from the Kardashian family.
For days, on her Twitter account, the former athlete has cheerfully added her two cents to the attacks that the trans community suffers on a daily basis. ” It’s a shame to see such an iconic American company go woke like this ! “, she writes. Caitlyn Jenner says she sees this collaboration as “ scandal » : « We can be inclusive but not at the expense of the majority of people, and maintain some decency while being inclusive ».
She also deals with the LGBTQ+ community of “Rainbow Mafia” and of ” domestic terrorists “, between two passages on Fox News where she unbolts Biden and his policy” erasure of women “. Jenner previously lashed out at Dylan Mulvaney last year for vulgarly mentioning the content creator’s pre-transition genitals, who simply replied: “A trans person invalidating another trans person’s trans identity is pretty evil to me”.
Controversies that turn on themselves
On April 1, Dylan Mulvaney shared a video of herself with a beer from the Bud Light brand, which had sent her for the occasion a pack of cans with her face on the packaging. A funny and harmless initiative that the American right did not like at all. To protest, the country singer Kid Rock filmed himself armed with a gun shooting cans of the said brand which he calls for a boycott.
A few weeks ago, Caitlyn Jenner created Fairness First, a committee supposed “fight against radical gender ideology, put parental rights at the forefront of education and keep boys away from women’s sports”. Because as in France, the debate around the presence of trans people in sports competitions is raging in the United States. A discussion far from healthy since the far right uses false information and stigmatization to scare, shouting loud and clear to anyone who will listen that trans women are dangers for cis women.
In France, it was the sports youtuber Tibo In Shape who revived the debate in the worst possible way. In a video, he expresses his anger at the victory of a trans woman against a cis woman in an MMA fight: It’s not possible, I can’t take it anymore. Already that women’s sport is not at all highlighted and that we never talk about it on TV, it does not serve the cause of women at all to let trans women compete against them. A trans person will clearly have a physical advantage. I do not agree that men take advantage of their transition and steal the victory from women who have worked hard “, he explained while calling for the creation of sports categories specifically for trans people. Tibo In Shape, adept at polemics of all kinds, already complained in 2012 on his Facebook account of the adoption of marriage for all, of the fact that ” a black be re-elected (about Barack Obama’s re-election) and said with particular humor that he liked to throw pork chops at Muslims because ” it’s cool, they burn ».
Thus, the recent position taken by Caitlyn Jenner carries with it much more than a simple attack by one public figure against another. In this rhetoric, the entire media strategy of the extreme right is expressed. Wishing more than ever to divide the LGBTQ+ community in two, this political recovery tends to gain followers, as evidenced by the emergence of the LGB Alliance movement which advocates a break between gay, bi and lesbian people and trans people.
