If you search for one of Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters, she will pull her claws out. A few online trolls discovered that on Monday (March 11), when Gaga wrote a protracted retaliation against Dylan Mulvaney critics.
Gaga criticized a flood of readers who flooded Mulvaney’s post with anti-trans language in an Instagram post. She had just posed for a picture with the transgender influencer in honor of International Women’s Day. “It’s abhorrent to me that Dylan Mulvaney and I wrote about [International] Women’s Day and we were met with such hostility and hatred,” she wrote.
The “Born This Way” singer continued by stating that news outlets shouldn’t label Mulvaney’s “backlash” as a “backlash” and instead should address it as what it is: “Hatred is hatred, and this kind of hatred is violence,” she wrote. ‘Backlash’ would suggest that those who admire or admire Dylan and me didn’t like what we did. This is not a reaction. This is contempt, exactly.
Mulvaney has found herself in the spotlight of an anti-trans attention storm before, and this is not the first time. In 2023, she initiated a large influx of anger against both the celebrity and the brand, leading to a boycott of Bud Light led by designers like Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and others. Eventually, Mulvaney criticized the beer company for “abandoning her” when she saw the offensive language in their promotional video. She said that it’s worse for a business to get a trans person than to not formally stand by them.
Gaga used the opportunity to discuss the “immense job” that still needs to be done when it comes to transgender acceptance in her post. “In this time, I feel very safe, not just of Dylan but also of the trans community, who continue to inspire others with their unending grace and inspiration in the face of unending degradation, intolerance, physical, verbal, and intellectual abuse,” she wrote. “I do not speak for this community, of course, but I do have something to say. I sincerely hope that all people will gather to celebrate International Women’s Day in a way similar to the day that all women are treated similarly.”
Gaga once more cautioned people to use the correct terminology when talking about transphobic speech as she concluded her post by urging her viewers to “honor the complexity and challenge of trans life.” “I love individuals too much to refer to contempt as ‘backlash.’ Folks deserve better.”
