The trans community on TikTok has come out in full force to show support for creator Dylan Mulvaney after she was subjected to a slew of transphobic tweets from members of the U.S. Republican party.
Dylan, who has gained more than 8 million TikTok followers off the back of her “Days of Girlhood” series where she shares her journey as a transgender woman, has been the target of anti-trans vitriol from Republican politicians after she sat down for an interview with President Joe Biden about trans-related healthcare in America.
Anti-trans politician Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene was the first to voice her opinions about Dylan after the interview, saying, “I introduced a bill to stop gender-affirming care on kids and they want me dead. I’m being swatted while fake women visiting Biden are being swooned.”
Shortly after Dylan’s interview went live, other Republican politicians began posting about Dylan.
Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted a TikTok video of Dylan discussing an experience she had wearing tight shorts at the mall saying, “Dylan Mulvaney, Joe Biden, and radical left-wing lunatics want to make this absurdity normal.”
Fellow trans woman and former Olympic athlete, Caitlyn Jenner, also joined in on the hate, retweeting Marsha Blackburn’s statement in agreement. “@MarshaBlackburn thank you for speaking out and having a backbone – one of the best senators we have. Let’s not ‘normalize’ any of what this person is doing,” Cailtyn wrote. “This is absurdity!”
Caitlyn followed up with: “There is a difference between acceptance and tolerance, and normalizing exposing your genitals in a public way and a public place. I do not support that at all, in the slightest. Dylan… congrats [you’re] trans with a penis.”
The response to Caitlyn— ex-partner of Kris Jenner— has been mixed.
Twitter user @slypig89 commented on Caitlyn’s tweet, “@Caitlyn_Jenner please do the LGBTQ+ community a favor, get off of this platform, and stop trying to speak for us. The fact that you were wealthy enough to have surgery to help with your transition does not mean you get to negate others’ experiences and their transitions.”
While user @HuddlestonCPA tweeted in support of Caitlyn, writing, “I respect your choice to be you, Caitlyn, and I respect you. I met you as Bruce, back when I was the editor of the San Jose City College newspaper and you were training there. Your POV on this is good to hear. I agree with you (although I do like her upbeat attitude).”
Another user corrected Cailtyn’s grammar with a simple, “*you’re”.
Dylan responded to Caitlyn on TikTok. The video has over 20.5 million views and five million likes at the time of writing.
In the video, Dylan stated that she and Caitlyn “are two of the most privileged trans women in the country at the moment. With that comes a lot of responsibility.”
She added that although she and Caitlyn have differing views, she “probably would have still been willing to sit down with [Caitlyn] and try to connect with [her] in some way.”
Dylan said she was not affected by a lot of the backlash until she read one of Caitlyn’s tweets, in which she said, “He is talking about his penis!”
“Not you calling me a ‘he’! That is just … terrible,” Mulvaney said of being misgendered. “But then you didn’t stop there.”
Dylan said the tweets made her sound like a “creeper flasher exposing myself.”
“I’m just curious if you can think back to your early days of transitioning and remember being embarrassed about your body, or having strangers give you dirty looks, that’s why I made that video,” Mulvaney said of her video discussing her experience wearing tight shorts at the mall. “Because I was embarrassed and I wanted to reclaim my body in a positive way. Now you’ve taken that and turned it into something really ugly.”
The TikTok sensation also asked Caitlyn why she was so willing to be hurtful toward another member of her community to win the praise of Republicans.
“You’ve been accepted by a group of people that very clearly does not accept me, and nearly every day this week, I have been called a freak, a child predator, an absurdity,” Dylan said. “I am none of those things that your cohorts are painting me to be, and my question for you is: don’t you feel a little lonely over there?”
“These people that you’re standing with, I don’t know if they have your best intentions at heart,” she continued. “But they will use you to make mine and the trans community’s life a lot harder than it already is.”
“I didn’t start ‘Days of Girlhood’ because being a woman sounded fun. I started this series because of the unspoken shame of being newly trans,” Dylan added. “I am moving on, onward and upward, and I hope you do too.”
Although the trans community on TikTok has not always been supportive of Dylan, they have pulled through for her in droves during CaitlynTwitterGate.
TikTok star and model AJ Clementine posted a TikTok titled ‘POV: A Conversation With Caitlyn Jenner,’ where she asked, “What possessed you to say such horrible things about my girl Dylan?” She also points out that “not everyone has resources” when it comes to seeking out gender affirmation surgery.
Creator @kirazee shares AJ’s sentiments and expressed her disappointment with “trans people start attacking trans people,” especially when the community is already so vulnerable.
Caitlyn has not publicly or directly addressed Dylan’s video, but she did take to Twitter to talk about the backlash she’s received from the situation.
“I have never received more death threats, death threats to my team, nasty hate mail than this week,” Caitlyn wrote on Twitter. “It is all from the so-called ‘inclusive’ LGBT community. I am so disgusted by the hateful individuals threatening my life for giving my opinions on news topics of the day.”
Cailtyn’s team also released a statement to Rolling Stone, apologising for misgendering Dylan.
“An individual on Ms. Jenner’s team haphazardly misgendered Dylan, in the tweet ‘he is talking about his penis’. For this we deeply regret the comment and have taken the appropriate actions to rectify the situation, internally,” the statement read.
“Ms. Jenner has no further comment on the matter and stands by her statements, otherwise.”
Dylan is yet to respond to this statement.