You may have heard that a US beer brand is being booed, berated and boycotted.
And that $7.5 billion was wiped off the share price of Anheuser-Busch InBev, one of the world’s largest brewers and maker of the suddenly very controversial Bud Light, in the process.
I have an admission to make. I live in the US and I have also decided to boycott Bud Light.
No, not because the firm gave a few beer cans to a trans influencer. Honestly, so what?
But because it’s generally just a very dull, uninspiring, forgettable beer. Light by name, slight by taste.
I’ve been boycotting it since about one minute after I first tasted it.
Yet there are people who apparently adored Bud Light’s watery blandness who are now in a red hot rage, whose blood vessels are on the verge of popping, because it had the audacity to partner with trans entertainer Dylan Mulvaney.
Yet, while most boycotts have a point, the unbridled anger directed at Bud Light doesn’t seem to have a reason at all.
No one can actually explain what they have an issue with. Beyond spluttering the word “woke” a few times. Which is an adjective, not a reason.
‘Deleting all products’
Country music star Travis Tritt said Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), now Belgian not US owned, was “unrecognisable” since it was brought out by those pesky Europeans. All of who, as we know, are trans.
Let’s not forget Bud Light is hardly the world’s most macho lager. It’s a lighter in alcohol beer for those people who find Bud just a little too out there. Easy tiger.
Tritt said he would be “deleting all Anheuser-Busch products from my tour hospitality rider”.
What an inspiring sacrifice. To boycott something you didn’t even pay for in the first place.
Kid Rock decided to get out a very large gun and shoot a whole load of Bud Light beer cans.
The Bud Light haters are getting very snowflakey. It’s all more drama than at a drag show.
Although it’s also getting quite sinister. AB InBev said on Friday that several of its US breweries had been targeted with bomb threats. That’s right, bomb threats. There are people out there who are apparently so enraged, to their very core, about a commercial partnership with a trans person they are threatening destruction that could lead to death.
But for what? And for why?
None of the high profile angry people have actually given any cogent responses. Kid Rock literally just swore and shot things.
There are indeed debates about gender and its blurring boundaries. At what age and to what extent children experiencing gender dysphoria should be supported and treated. And whether trans people should be allowed into some single-gender spaces.
But Mulvaney’s social media post touched on precisely zero of these hot button trans issues. Rather she talked about sport, how Bud Light had sent her a can with her face on and a promotion her followers could take part in.
She also mentioned her “365 days of womanhood,” marking her gender transition.
‘It’s just a can of beer’
Commentator Joe Rogan, a critic of so-called “cancel culture,” said the promotion was “silly” with a “goofy” person – but that was it.
“What they’re doing is just spreading the brand to an extra group of people. Why, if something is good, do you give a f**k who’s got it?” Rogan said.
“It’s also just a can with that person’s face on it. That’s all that was. It wasn’t like stuff they were selling.”
US broadcaster Howard Stern was equally as bamboozled saying on his show that “there must be a piece of the story that I’m missing”.
“I’m not bothered by gay people or transsexual people. They don’t impact my life, they don’t hurt my life. I love when people are in love. You wanna be a woman? Be a woman. You wanna be a dude, be a dude. Be whatever you f**ing want.”
“As long as you ain’t hurting anybody, I’m on your team,” he added.
Which seems extremely fair.
Real reason for boycott
Bud Light has become the most unexpected crossfire casualty in the new US culture war: gender.
Politicians see votes in stoking it. Some states have banned any kind of healthcare for trans identifying young people. Florida is looking at banning teachers from using the pronouns a student might prefer – which seems an oddly specific law to pass when teachers just probably use a student’s name.
A Florida congressman last week called trans people “demons” and “mutant,” later apologising.
So barring any coherent explanation as to why someone is so hysterically triggered by Bud Light’s partnership, it may simply boil down to a) Mulvaney, a trans person, exists, and b) they’re open and they celebrate it.
They’re angry because a trans person decided to drink a beer they also drink. Because that’s “woke,” or something.
Maybe that’s even scarier. That there are some people incandescent with rage not for any real reason but just because trans people exist. That’s enough for boycotts, beer cans being shot at and bomb threats.
AB InBev will survive. Its share price dip was not huge for a company worth $170bn. Much of the loss has been recovered and its share price is higher now than it was last year.
But people can choose to drink whatever beer they want. If they can no longer abide Bud Light, then join my boycott and have a cool, refreshing Stella instead.
Say it quietly though – it’s owned by the same company that makes Bud Light.