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Dylan Mulvaney is a TikTok influencer and transgender activist who has been documenting her transition for the last two years. Mulvaney is known for her positive persona and her ability to keep a smile on her face no matter what hate is thrown at her.
Now, Mulvaney is under attack for putting out a song that details her life as a woman. This is not the first time she has gotten massive amounts of hate.
In the summer of 2023, Mulvaney partnered with Bud Light to promote their product and was featured in a video advertisement. And of course, conservatives lost their minds. People reported that “the post sparked negative commentary among conservative social media personalities, politicians and celebrities, many of whom used transphobic rhetoric to attack Bud Light for turning to ‘woke’ advertising and playing off of the current political climate, which has seen a significant rise in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policy being introduced in many conservative legislatures.”
Mulvaney persevered through the backlash and hate and kept spreading nothing but kindness and positivity.
Currently, she is under fire again for her song “Days of Girlhood,” which marked the second anniversary of her transition.
The song details her experience and relationship with femininity and womanhood. However, people truly believe she is mocking the female experience and stereotyping women.
Mulvaney sings in the song, “Monday, can’t get out of bed / Tuesday morning pick up meds / Wednesday retail therapy ‘cash or credit?’ I say yes / Thursday, I had a walk of shame (didn’t even know his name) / weekends are for kissing friends / Friday night, I’ll overspend / Saturday, we flirt for drinks / Sunday, the Twilight soundtrack cues my breakdown in the bath.”
Mulvaney is not mocking womanhood, and she is not making a joke out of women experiences. She is singing about specifically her experiences and her life. Hers may be different from other women, but she is still a woman and her experiences are as valid as everyone else’s.
Not only that but when a cisgender woman talks about “girl math” and “girl dinner” and talks about the same girly things that Mulvaney does, no one bats an eye or has a problem with it.
I even saw on TikTok a video of a woman complaining about the song and saying Mulvaney does not know what it is like to be a woman, she does not have to be scared to go to a gas station alone at night. Remember the backlash from the Bud Light ad? Mulvaney also received death threats for that. Mulvaney was probably scared to just be alive, not even just being alone at night.
Not to mention, I am a cisgender woman who is not afraid to go to the gas station alone at night. I constantly go to QuickCheck to grab a snack and a Baja Blast at two in the morning. The reason why I am usually not afraid to go around at night is because I’m 5’8 and not easy to lift off the ground if you catch my drift.
Does that make me not a woman? Am I not a woman because I do not share the same fears as others? Going alone to a gas station has nothing to do with my identity. And guess what? I am also a woman who loves retail therapy and the “Twilight” soundtrack just like Mulvaney. So why can I like those things and she can not?
Halima Jibril for Dazed wrote an article defending Mulvaney’s song and stated, “This universalisation of the ‘female’ experience is not only lazy but has historically been incredibly harmful. During the second wave of feminism, white feminists were heavily criticized for their generalistic claims about women and their plight, which tended to focus on the experiences of white, middle-class, non-disabled, heterosexual women. This, in turn, ignored the ways imperialism, racism, class, sexuality and disability impacted the oppression of women outside of the margins, and this is precisely the sentiment that TERFS and transphobes are expressing in their responses to Mulvaney’s video.”
Listen, it is not a great song. But it is a cute and fun pop song about being a girl from one woman’s perspective and people are losing their minds over it. She never once said her experience defines womanhood and people have really shown their true colors and outed themselves as transphobic.
I think as women we have to remember that everyone’s experiences are different and we have to support one another, especially during Women’s History Month.
Trans women have been historically ignored during the celebration of Women’s history and it’s time we start giving them the recognition they deserve. Trans women’s history is women’s history. Trans women’s experiences are women’s experiences. Trans women are women.
So, let us spend this Women’s History Month supporting women, not tearing them down.
