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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Unfortunately, I really want to talk about all the Bud Light stuff, and I don't want to make a new throwaway for it. So you will have to deal with this short summary of my jury duty instead of the nice effort post I've been cooking up on dog walks: 1) The pool is almost sarcastically diverse, as though someone had intentionally excluded anyone else resembling my 'peers.' 2) If someone shows up it's because they want to serve on a jury, and they find it strange that someone would intentionally decrease their chances of being selected 3) The entire experience can be a colossal waste of time and energy, 50 otherwise productive people spent all day not working because one illegal immigrant made a sexual innuendo to another illegal's girlfriend/stepdaughter. Why not just deport them?

Onto the Bud Light thing, as discussed earlier here yesterday. The short summary would be that someone (also from San Diego, coincidentally) decided about a year ago that they were a woman, and Bud Light decided to make them a special commemorative can, which apparently they drank in a bathtub as part of a marketing campaign. This has made a lot of people (including me) very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. I'm writing this post now because the company just offered its' first official response and it's perfect gpt fuel-on-the-fire. It's short so I won't give highlights, instead, a summary that suggests it pisses off everyone rather than mollifying anyone. I eagerly invite someone to provide a mirror image of 'their tribes' response but I want to share a few thoughts about mine in a few buckets:

1). For most of my adult life, I drank an incredible amount of Bud Light. Occasionally flirting with the limits of 'functional' alcoholism at ~30 a day, occasionally dipping below my typical 10-12, occasionally taking a month off because I'd been getting fat. This amount of consumption is not unusual in my peer group. Just do some napkin math: (minimally) one beer per half hour of time awake and 'off the clock.' Essentially, Bud Light is not a 6 pack that sits in your fridge for weeks, it's bought in 18 packs by people like me on the way home for the night.

2). We drink Bud Light for exactly the reason you (the proverbial 'you', of course) poke fun at it. It's thin, watery, and doesn't have a lot of alcohol. I can drink 30 a day and never get shithouse drunk the way I will after 3 bourbons on an empty stomach. I can drink more than a tiny sip and enjoy the flavor, unlike a double tangerine ipa. I like to sit around and drink beer, and it's a perfect beer for that.

3). I have my friends that drink Bud Light, and my friends that poke fun at me for drinking Bud Light. I love both, but with the later, we usually don't tool around in the garage while drinking. These days with the later it's usually more like visiting the latest pop-up microbrewery which may or may not have food (or anything drinkable). There's a culture, or if that's a bit grandiose, a vibe around a hot sunny day and a big cold box of weak watery beer.

4). Unlike most potential boycotts, I (and my people) have some purchase with this one ('purchase' for the non-english natives among us here meaning 'agency, power, or leverage'). We get a little say. There is a little verve here. This is not nike, something I already didn't buy, or every insurance company known to man, something I can't really avoid buying, this is weak watery beer!

5). Unlike most Allied marketing, this feels like it was meant to hurt. I'm aware Bud Light has done rainbow pride cans before, and I've probably even bought some without thinking about it. But something feels wrong about buying this beer now that I know they intentionally had a AMAB in a bikini drinking their commemorative can celebrating '365 of womanhood.' Not only can I effectively boycott this, but I can't unfeel the desire to boycott this! This one might have legs.

After the non-apology from the brass, Bud Light may have terminally tarnished their brand. Planting a flag and vitally interested to hear your thoughts

I don't particularly love most trans activism, and I'm deeply troubled by a lot of the medical interventionism on the youth.

However, there is a sense that certain factions or cultures of conservative men (of varying races and ethnicities) have created defensive silos of culture against the encroachment of gender non-conforming men. These places could be certain gyms, certain sales teams, certain blue collar unions, or certain bars. The shared sentiment is that there's enough spaces for gay or trans people (these men can't tell the difference) and so they need to batten down the hatches and keep their exclusionary spaces free from the taint of homo (no pun intended).

I think that there's a good proportion of younger straight men who are very into this, a la the andrew tate fans, and there's another group of younger straight men who are completely over it, and don't want to engage in long or endless discussions of masculinity and how important it is to pick a side.

If i were to entertain the idea of corporate advertisement as culture war, I'd say the point of this ad might be to demonstrate how hateful conservatives actually are against gay and trans people, no matter how much they pretend its about protecting children and women's sports. The liberals could be seen as responding to this "it's just about protecting children and women" rhetoric by saying "okay, here's a drag queen in her proper place, advertising beer in a funny commercial, joking about not knowing what March madness is"

Then the conservative men start literally shooting cases of beer, and it becomes apparent that it's not really about protecting women and children, it's about establishing cultural silos of hatred towards gay and trans people.

It's a good tactic for uniting the gay and trans factions that have started to schism lately. At the risk of being snide, I think the QT BIPOCS realize the white gay tops aren't coming to the club if they keep calling them "the nazis of the LGBT community" for going to the gym. Also that white wealthy gay men are the ones with the social capital and mental fortitude to penetrate these conservative cultural silos.

However, there is a sense that certain factions or cultures of conservative men (of varying races and ethnicities) have created defensive silos of culture against the encroachment of gender non-conforming men. These places could be certain gyms, certain sales teams, certain blue collar unions, or certain bars. The shared sentiment is that there's enough spaces for gay or trans people (these men can't tell the difference) and so they need to batten down the hatches and keep their exclusionary spaces free from the taint of homo (no pun intended).

Then the conservative men start literally shooting cases of beer, and it becomes apparent that it's not really about protecting women and children, it's about establishing cultural silos of hatred towards gay and trans people.

Consider that there are semiotics to LGBT representation on a Bud Light can that go beyond the semantic meaning. Gay rites are civil rites. The red tribe can recognize a blue tribe religious ablution when they see one. Why do you think the red tribe failed to raise a stink about Milo Yiannopoulos, when he was a gay invading their "silo"?

Democrats used to get quite surly about Americana imagery and music in sports, brands, and media back during the War On Terror. This isn't because they "hated America" or "hated freedom". They correctly perceived extreme displays of the Stars and Stripes as a gang marker for the red tribe.

I'm willing to entertain the notion Alissa Heinerscheid didn't know what she was doing, but it looks a hell of a lot from the outside like a triumphalist blue tribe elite planting their flag on the reddest of red tribe territory. Imagine conservatives buying the largest mosque in Portland and erecting a big George W Bush statue on top of it. Are they doing anything wrong? What do you think will happen to the statue?

Bud light is a beer, not a religion or political party. I think that's my point, that people who are aligned along political, religious, or politico-religious lines try to establish non-political and non-religious entities like a beer brand as off limits to their political or religious opponents.

The comparison between making one commercial for bud light with a trans woman celebrity and putting a statue of George Bush on the largest mosque in Portland is kind of silly to me. They're not similar.

Corporate brands aren't anyone's territory other than their boards' or shareholders'.

I think it looks like a triumphalist blue flag to you because you experience trans and gay inclusion as a loss. This situation reminds gay and trans people that their existence, without accounting political speech, is experienced as political speech, whereas the opposite is not true. A conservative man can go to a pride parade, just like in the blog post you linked, and not be threatened. To experience hostility and attention, he needs to do something political, like wear a police uniform, or hold a TERFy sign.

You can say both sides are doing the same thing, retiring conformance in certain spaces, but the degree to which the conformance required invades someone's identity is different. That's what's being demonstrated. We have all seen conservative speakers accosted on college campuses or shoved at pride events, but these people were trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible. This is the other side, where conservatives are literally shooting cases of beer in effigy because a trans woman took a bubble bath with a bud light.

To you it looks like a sly tactic in a culture war. To me it's a reminder that people like you might see my existence as a tactic first and a personality second. There's a degree to which you think a republican drinking bud light in a garage is more authentic than a trans woman drinking one in a bubble bath.

  • -11

You can say both sides are doing the same thing, retiring conformance in certain spaces, but the degree to which the conformance required invades someone's identity is different.

Would you define identity please? Is identity not your personal conceptualisation of who you are, what kind of person you are?

I think that the distinction between beliefs and identity is a lot more arbitrary than you are trying to say. Is there any objective way of saying any particular thing is one or the other, aside from motivated reasoning?

If you "identify as trans", then that means you were born as a normal biological man or woman, and at some point, you decided you would feel better if you were the opposite sex. So maybe you decide to dress and adopt the style and mannerisms of the sex you believe you should be. Maybe you decide to do some more drastic things such as take hormone treatments or get surgical alterations. Maybe you decide to change your name and get people to call you the new name and pronouns. Maybe you decide to try to live life as your desired gender, including such otherwise ordinary things as using bathrooms and playing sports. Exactly what makes any of those choices/decisions an "identity", and anything a red tribe / conservative decides to do to express themselves a "belief"?

It also sounds disingenuous to me to blame all violence against conservative speakers and activists on college campuses on them "trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible". College is ostensibly a place for exploring many different possible belief types, yet on many occasions it seems the mere existence of any conservative who doesn't care to spend 3/4 of their time apologizing for supposed wrongs that they haven't actually done is considered "offensive".

And since when is wearing a police uniform a political act? The police are ostensibly there to preserve law and order. Blue Team desires to see them as the bad guys due to cherry-picking a relatively modest number of bad acts that they think were not punished decisively enough. In what other contexts is it legitimate to tar a large group of people and an entire profession due to accused bad acts of a small percentage of them?

Let's discuss the difference between a personal identity and a political belief then. A personal identity is about how you try to relate to other people. A political belief is about how you think the state should use it's claim to legitimate violence in order to enforce its law. So if you're just being trans, you're existing a personal identity. If you're saying trans people shouldn't be allowed to use women's bathrooms according to the law, you're engaging in a political belief.

All trans people have a similar identity, but they can have a very wide range of political beliefs.

Conservatives do not share any particular identity, but possibly they might share some political beliefs. Honestly, they don't really seem to share any political beliefs, but that's a different discussion. Regardless, conservatives are conservative because of one or more political beliefs they hold, not their identities.

I don't feel the need to respond to your other questions because they address claims I didn't make and opinions I did not state.

I think the conservative position on the bathroom thing is more accurately stated as "I (as a biological woman, or husband of one, or father of a young daughter) do not feel comfortable having biological males in womens' bathrooms with (me, my wife, my daughter)". There definitely are some people claiming trans identities that abuse bathroom rules to harass and assault women and children, though the extent to which this happens and is a significant concern versus being an overblown fear are of course debatable. Which makes it kind of strange that this has become a primarily conservative position, while feminists who align with Blue Team are typically the first argue about the risk of sexual assault from having men in female spaces, but this gets us into the whole TERF debate.

So shouldn't not wanting yourself or your daughters to be subject to sexual assault be a personal issue? That's the core motivation here IMO.

As kind of an aside, does the law even really regulate who's allowed to use which restroom prior to trans issues entering mainstream politics? As an ordinary straight cis biological male, if I was to enter a womens' restroom somewhere in public, I expect I would be asked to leave, perhaps rudely, by any women there who saw me or possibly management of the place I happened to be in. The police wouldn't really get involved unless I made a big scene about it and stayed around long enough for them to come, assuming there didn't happen to be any police there already. I might be trespassed or arrested for something to the effect of disturbing the peace or resisting arrest if I continued to hang around and make a scene about it long enough for police to get there. I don't think there even was a way to be charged with using the incorrect bathroom.

You don't have to discuss the other points if you don't care to, but you did write in the very post I responded to "but these people were trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible" and "do something political, like wear a police uniform".

You answered your own question regarding the bathroom. Good job. It's a personal identity if you just leave the restroom until the trans person is gone. It's a political one of you try to pass a law or meet the trans person subject to the law via the series of escalations you described.

hi. i guess i have a niche here of pointing out obvious things everyone else ignores. i'm over this whole debate, nothing's going to change, hopefully a lot of people will be a lot happier, a lot of people are going to kill themselves, or their parents and then themselves, or others and then get killed by cops. nobody's going to learn anything and in 40 years when people can hop in a chrysalis and pop out looking however they want we'll collectively pretend this period of superficial dynamism never happened. but man, i will never tolerate rhetorical duplicity.

i don't think you're lying to me, so i'll say you seem to misunderstand/not understand politicization, or how it is used in modern discourse.

"identity" (as diluted a term there has ever been) is what certain groups of people use to refer to certain aspects of themselves they argue inherently merit political considerations (rights). identity can thus very easily be and often is highly or maximally political.

"[nouns] exist, their existence isn't political" could hypothetically be a nonpolitical statement, but 99.9% of use cases in contemporary discussions are referring to the trans-identifying, and in that regard there is literally nothing you can say more political than "trans people exist, their existence isn't political."

i'm annoyed nobody pointed this out because i think you probably have a decent response, but everybody's accepted your framing so they're conceding 75% of the debate just like that. how fucking boring. i won't, that's my thing here apparently. their "existence" is not settled. in 40 years it won't be settled either, sorta, but it won't matter, it's just right now it matters. so right now, no. their identity is not given, it is political. their presence anywhere beyond private confines is political. the demand for "representation" is political, workplace and otherwise public accommodations tailored for them are political. a trans-identifying person being used to promote a beer is generally political, one being used to promote a beer of the deep red dominion is the most politicized speech it is possible to make. if there were any room to doubt intent we would have seen AB limit their selection for promoters from the many trans-identifying in this country who pass, who even strong ideologically opposed men would admit are congruent with traditional female beauty standards (or would if fairly tricked by blind samples). they did not. the selection of a person the majority of people would consider on their best day unattractive is an expression of an integral part of the structure of this political thought and settles this as deliberate political action.

you can argue this is a good thing. that yes, they are political, but this is all a vital part of the cause and is justified. just don't lie about it, or for you, don't unknowingly perpetuate rhetoric that was designed to be duplicitous.

Sure, everything is political, because everything can be framed in terms of power. But some things are more political, because they exert more power, and some things are less. Dylan Mulvaney making a beer ad is less political than the reaction to it, which is more political. It's not "the most politicized speech it is possibly to make". It's a man, or a woman, in a dress, or a bubble bath, drinking a Bud Light. There are many many things far more political. The essence of politics is the control of the state and its exclusive claim to legitimate violence in the enforcement of the law and its sovereignty. Miss Mulvaney's bubble bath is not near to any of those things.

I'm kind of surprised at people who think Bud Light is some sort of exclusively Republican domain. It's Bud Light, not the NRA.

  • -10

I'm kind of surprised at people who think Bud Light is some sort of exclusively Republican domain. It's Bud Light, not the NRA.

I think you're failing to recognize Bud Light as a class marker, which is part of the discussion here. You may want to re-read Scott's writings about the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe.

Bud Light is a beer, not a class marker. I certainly don't want to read, let alone re-read, anything that discusses the "Red Tribe" and the "Blue Tribe".

  • -16

As a practical matter, if you are going to participate in discussion in what is still essentially the free-floating descendant of the comments section of Scott Alexander's blog, it is probably worth being familiar with the classics just to be up to speed with what people are talking about. But in this particular context, (a) I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup is a fun read, and (b) it talks about exactly the sort of way in which what beer you drink can be a class or "tribe" marker.

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A conservative man can go to a pride parade, just like in the blog post you linked, and not be threatened.

Uh... I strongly disagree with this analysis. Go to your next pride parade in a MAGA hat and see what happens.

You're continuing to demonstrate my point. A conservative has to display specific political speech in liberal spaces to have his presence politicized. However, gay and trans people just need to display their personal identities to have their presence politicized.

They're not equivalent. Conservatives engage in hatred based on identity, and liberals engage in hatred based on beliefs.

This ad campaign is just a reminder that conservatives still view being trans or gay as a political choice first, and a personal characteristic second.

  • -22

They're not equivalent. Conservatives engage in hatred based on identity, and liberals engage in hatred based on beliefs.

I would say that's a pretty bold statement to make about two very broad groups of people. I've personally observed both groups hate people for both reasons.

Putting aside the excessive generality, I would say that I object to this rather glib slogan on the grounds that beliefs are quite often an integral part of a persons identity and that in fact the lines between identity and belief are often so blurred as to make the distinction meaningless.

If I, a member of the Hawkmanii tribe, attack and murder a member of the Boarmanii tribe from the next valley over based solely on him being a filthy Boarmanii (who had it coming because you can't trust these "people"), would I have killed him based on his identity or his beliefs? By modern standards we would be considered to be members of the same ethnic group, distinguished only by our styles of dress or perhaps how we choose to wear our beards. Yet both of us would become murderously violent towards anyone implying that there is anything even remotely similar about us, I was born a Hawkmanii, I will die a Hawkmanii.

This ad campaign is just a reminder that conservatives still view being trans or gay as a political choice first, and a personal characteristic second.

So these hypothetical conservatives consider gays/transgender types to be repugnant because they perceive them as making an incorrect political choice, not because they perceive it to be an immutable characteristic? This seems to undermine the argument you made in the very line above.

The difference is not meaningless. If you would murder someone from another tribe regardless of their personal beliefs, then you're murdering based on identity. If you would murder someone from your own tribe based on their beliefs, you're murdering based on belief. The existence of green doesnt mean blue and yellow aren't different.

The trend is obvious. Liberals will frequently eat their own based on failures of belief regardless of identity, like with Al Franken. Conservatives will frequently support their own based on identity and regardless of belief, like Donald Trump and his history of cheating on his wife with a porn star.

Liberals will support someone like the current Pope, intrinsically conservative in identity, for expressing more liberal beliefs on gay people than previous Popes. Conservatives will shoot a case of their favorite beer, or applaud such a shooting, because they made one commercial with a trans woman. The trans woman doesn't express political views in the commercial, in fact, she actually says "whatever team you love, I love too" but conservatives hate her based on her identity.

Regarding this:

So these hypothetical conservatives consider gays/transgender types to be repugnant because they perceive them as making an incorrect political choice, not because they perceive it to be an immutable characteristic? This seems to undermine the argument you made in the very line above.

Conservatives would like to pretend they are hating people for their beliefs, rather than their immutable characteristics, so they recast immutable characteristics as political beliefs so they can justify their identity based hatred.

This is evident in one of the other replies to me that claims that blue collar hostility towards gay men is justified because gay men are intrinsically likely to sexually harass straight men. The poster linked an identity, being gay, with an inevitanle political action, sexual harassment, to justify the hatred of gay men.

They're smart enough to pretend that it's just harmful beliefs and actions from gay and trans people that they object to, like drag shows for children, surgery for children, and men in women's sports.

This commercial cleverly displays that this is just a facade designed to persuade moderate liberals such as myself that they are looking for any compelling reason to attack gay and trans people because their hatred is based on identity.

This whole website is based on the idea that it's better to object on ideological rather than tribal lines, even if tribalism is powerful. Conservatives are clearly the side of power through tribalism, and liberals are clearly the side of power through persuasive ideology.

The other two posters here are arguing with me. Because they think I'm gay and they think that is deviancy, or morally inferior. Maybe you are too. I'm arguing with them because I disagree with their comments. I don't hate them based on perceived identity.

  • -10

Do you believe that identities can be disputed at all? Can someone wrongly identify as something?

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But when you say you are transgender, you at least believe in the theory that gender and sex are not the same thing, right? Certainly, if you claim you are a unicorn, you believe unicorns do exist? Do you think that the hatred toward a cisgender white man claiming he believes in this theory would be any different from the hatred toward a transgender man?

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If you would murder someone from another tribe regardless of their personal beliefs, then you're murdering based on identity

But their beliefs are their identity, it's the only way in which they are different (from a modern first world perspective). Identity is a question of what individuals believe to be important, both in themselves and in others. You can take a Hutu baby and a Tutsi baby from their respective homelands, raise them in a black american ghetto without any information about where they came from and they would not identify or be identified as Hutu and Tutsi, they're just black. Yet raise these same babies in Rwanda and one may very well end up dismembering the other with farming implements in a wide ranging genocide based solely on their identity.

To give another example that you keep banging on about, being gay. There are plenty of examples of cultures throughout history that do not share the modern concept of "being gay". I'm massively over-generalising here, but for ancient greeks, having sex with men was something that you did, not something that defined you. If you showed up to ancient Athens and insisted that having sex with or being attracted to men was this incredibly important, immutable part of who you were, they'd probably consider you to be strange and childish.

In both the cases above, the cultural context informs the identity of the individuals involved far more than their genetics.

The trend is obvious. Liberals will frequently eat their own based on failures of belief regardless of identity, like with Al Franken. Conservatives will frequently support their own based on identity and regardless of belief, like Donald Trump and his history of cheating on his wife with a porn star.

How exactly does Justin "Minstrel Show" Trudeau fit into this? And what intrinsic genetic traits does Donald Trump share with his fellow american conservatives that is shielding him from harm? As far as I can tell, there is no genetic link between conservatives (if there was then by your logic it would be haram for liberals to oppose them based on their conservative genetics anyway).

This is evident in one of the other replies to me that claims that blue collar hostility towards gay men is justified because gay men are intrinsically likely to sexually harass straight men. The poster linked an identity, being gay, with an inevitanle political action, sexual harassment, to justify the hatred of gay men.

It is strange to me that you consider sexual harassment to be a political act. I would say it's pretty reasonable to assume that gay men are more likely to sexually harass straight men than a straight man is. Ergo, if you're afraid of being sexually harassed or assaulted by a man, you would be wise to focus your defenses towards gay men. From the perspective of our hypothetical blue collar worker, the problem is not the immutable characteristic (attraction to men), the problem is the increased risk of the bad things he doesn't want happening to him.

I wouldn't blame a woman for being more frightened of being sexually harassed or assaulted by a straight man, why would I fault this hypothetical blue collar worker for drawing the same conclusions?

This whole website is based on the idea that it's better to object on ideological rather than tribal lines, even if tribalism is powerful. Conservatives are clearly the side of power through tribalism, and liberals are clearly the side of power through persuasive ideology.

Ideological lines are tribal lines. The very next sentence you accuse the enemy tribe of being the bad mean people who are ignorant (perhaps they are also smelly?), whereas your tribe are the good virtuous ones who seek to rise above such petty nonsense. You would have to be willfully ignorant to end up on a site like the motte and not have been presented with an abundance of examples of those from the liberal tribe acting solely out of opposition to the conservative tribe.

Conservatives would like to pretend they are hating people for their beliefs, rather than their immutable characteristics, so they recast immutable characteristics as political beliefs so they can justify their identity based hatred.

They're smart enough to pretend that it's just harmful beliefs and actions from gay and trans people that they object to, like drag shows for children, surgery for children, and men in women's sports.

This commercial cleverly displays that this is just a facade designed to persuade moderate liberals such as myself that they are looking for any compelling reason to attack gay and trans people because their hatred is based on identity.

I honestly can't tell if you're trying to rile people up here or if you're just that arrogant and close minded. I would say that you started from a fundamentally flawed understanding of identity and have developed a self-serving explanation of why your team are the goodies and the other team are the baddies from there. How does your mental model account for the existence of gay conservatives for example? Trump is probably the most pro-gay president ever, he was publicly pro gay marriage while Biden and Obama were still saying that marriage was between a man and a woman.

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You're continuing to demonstrate my point. A conservative has to display specific political speech in liberal spaces to have his presence politicized.

Putting aside that you consider "wearing a police uniform" a political statement, what do you propose as a clear way for a conservative to self-identify at a pride parade to see whether or not he'd be threatened?

Could we raise some money and get Ben Shapiro to attend a pride parade, just attend, with no political statement of any kind? I'd be willing to wager money people would get up in his grill, if not literally attack him.

This website is named for the motte and bailey fallacy, right? I believe that's relevant to this discussion, where you started by expressing anger that a beer company picked a trans woman for one commercial and expressing glee at the violent and angry responses from conservatives, and now are asking me to find a way for a political pundit to express gay and trans hatred at a pride parade to prove... something.

My original point stands. The bud light ad with Dylan Mulvaney and the response to it demonstrate to gay and trans people that conservatives require to be allowed to exclude them, with violence if possible. It's a smart way to demonstrate that conservatives don't care about women and children as much as they just hate gender nonconforming men and women. They have gone from seeking out gay and trans people to victimize, to creating silos in which they feel justified in victimizing any gay or trans people who dare to enter, but the urge to react to gay and trans people with violence is unchanged.

Conservatives were making headway with their concern for trans children and women's sports, but they took the bait and started shooting cases of beer because a trans woman drank a bud light.

  • -10

the violent and angry responses from conservatives

....? They're not buying beer. One guy shot a case of Bud Light and posted it on social media. It was not a case with Mulvaney on it, just a blue box.

now are asking me to find a way for a political pundit to express gay and trans hatred at a pride parade to prove... something.

Your core argument is that your side is morally superior because conservatives are welcome in gay spaces if they're not "political", but gay people are not welcome in conservative spaces, regardless. This is not some pedantic nit I'm picking. Please demonstrate that a legible conservative can enter a gay pride space and not get a hostile reception. I've tried to demonstrate it's possible for legibly gay people to enter a conservative space in the same way.

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