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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36336 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.

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.

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