For a controversy that’s ostensibly about the visibility of transgender men and women, those very people—and LGBTQ+ people more broadly—have been absent from news coverage and analysis of the recent Bud Light boycott. Instead, much of the attention has been focused on Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI)’s actions around its partnership with social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who is a transgender woman. The partnership angered some people who were upset that a multinational conglomerate collaborated with a trans celebrity; some of them vowed to boycott the brand. In coverage of this response, headlines have mostly focused on stock prices and beer sales instead of the personal toll of angry reactions.
The controversy surrounding Bud Light is a business story, but one caught in the midst of a culture war. And when anti-trans panic worms its way into any apple with the slightest hint of rot, it tries to work its way to the core. The decay that told hold because ABI printed Mulvaney’s face on a set of cans shipped exclusively to her as a personal gift from the company has gone so deep that the performance of hatred became the centerpiece, obscuring the capitalist reality in which it’s all based. Culture wars in beer—or any other industry—won't subside until consumers realize that for-profit corporations by definition don’t have moral imperatives we place on people. They exist first and foremost to make money and for most, ethical responsibilities come later.
(In one example of a historic beer boycott of Coors, opposition by unions, LGBTQ+ activists, and others only began to subside after decades and hundreds of millions of dollars in donations by the company to civil rights groups, LGBTQ+ organizations, and coalitions fighting for equal rights. Today, some people—especially those who identify as queer—still won’t drink Coors.)
The tension in these cases and others is that LGBTQ+ people are important enough to matter to corporations’ bottom lines, but they still struggle to be seen by governments and some parts of society as important enough to be safe from violence, healthcare discrimination, and isolation in the workplace.
“There aren’t any trans voices being heard outside of trans communities on this,” says Rachael Engel, head brewer at Bosk Beer Works in Woodinville, Washington. (Engel is a trans woman.) “No one listens to us. We tend to get ignored unless we’re being attacked.”
In its own statement that came more than a week after conservative activists began a public campaign against ABI, company CEO Brendan Whitworth never used the words “transgender” or “LGBTQ+.” He instead cited a “proud history” of supporting members of the military, first responders, and sports fans. Bud Light’s vice president of marketing remarked that the campaign with Mulvaney was a bid to reach younger drinking-age consumers among the influecer’s considerable social media following—not explicitly a show of solidarity with trans women and men.
“Easy politicizing on both sides is the reality. … But it is scary to a certain extent because people act out,” says Gennifer Herley, executive director of TransNewYork, which provides counseling and workforce training on LGBTQ+ issues. Herley, a trans woman with a PhD in organizational psychology, is referring to people who react violently to growing visibility for trans people. “We see shootings every day. We see violence every day.”
Because corporations can’t be relied upon to have moral compasses, it’s critical that the public more broadly look beyond the business consequences to center the lives most affected by the backlash.
Both critics and supporters of Bud Light’s minor partnership with Mulvaney have mostly overstated the brand’s commitment to ethics one way or the other. While the public has tried to suss out just how much ABI does or doesn’t care about trans people, it has overshadowed the effects such public flare-ups have on trans and LGBTQ+ people.
“A real tragedy of things like this is when this all settles, Bud Light’s going to be Bud Light. They’ll be fine. But now, as a queer person, I worry about what is going to happen to the next queer influencer who has the nerve to stand up and say, ‘Yes, I am going to take this opportunity,’” says Michael Uhrich, former chief economist for the Beer Institute and founder of Seventh Point Analytic Consulting. He now works as chief economist for the American Iron and Steel Institute.
Violence is a reality for LGBTQ+ people and especially trans people in the U.S.: Transgender women and men are 2.5-to-four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than people whose gender conforms to their sex assigned at birth. Trans people, in particular people of color, also face increasing murder rates. While online arguments about Bud Light may seem largely symbolic to many on the political left and right, videos of Kid Rock shooting cans of the beer are more sinister when viewed in the context of real-world violence.
“My concern here is mainly that when the industry has moved to the next thing, we’re going to leave the trans kids of the world much worse off than they were before any of this shit started,” Uhrich says.
Uhrich says he’s been reticent throughout his career to speak candidly about his identity as a queer man. This was partially because he didn’t find it relevant to his work, but also because he calls it “a big risk” personally. He says he’s spoken with trans and LGBTQ+ friends who are scared when they see violence like people posting videos shooting bottles and cans of Bud Light.
Such displays come at a time when the political right is pushing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in part by baselessly accusing LGBTQ+ people of harming children. (The American Civil Liberties Union has tracked 461 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the U.S. this legislative session, more than twice the number of such bills introduced last year.) Uhrich fears that given the high stakes, heated rhetoric can spark anti-trans violence.
“There’s all this talk about Bud Light—Bud Light’s good; Bud Light’s bad; Are their sales going to tank. But do you realize trans girls could be murdered over shit like this?” Uhrich says. “This is actually a dangerous thing and I don’t think people realize that.”
Despite the firestorm it touched off, Bud Light's partnership with Dylan Mulvaney does matter for trans visibility.
“Trans people can enjoy things. We can be marketed to,” Engel says. “It’s nice every once in a while seeing somebody market to us even if it’s not a product I'm interested in. But I’d like to be noticed a little more than as a marketing opportunity. ”
Jonathan Ochart, founder and CEO of The Postcard Agency—a digital marketing and public relations agency that specializes in working with LGBTQ+ brands and nonprofits—says that when ABI works with Mulvaney, it sends a message that trans people exist and have a right to be visible in society. As LGBTQ+ people see that across advertising as well as politics, the arts, sports, and more, it advances the idea that they can live more authentic, public lives.
Even visibility in marketing campaigns often sparks reactionary backlash. Ochart says that’s where a global corporation such as ABI has the clout to set the terms of the discussion. Through steps like denouncing hate speech against a trans person and deleting hateful comments on its social media, a company can help set ground rules and reject the idea that anti-trans speech or actions are valid and normalized.
“When there’s that big solidarity from such a large corporation, that sets the tone. That doesn’t leave room for misinterpretation and can help squash hate speech,” Ochart says. On Bud Light’s Instagram page, for example, there was no reference to the controversy or the company’s statement. The brand simply didn’t post between March 30 and April 15. Its Facebook page hasn’t been updated since March 30. Here, Ochart says, ABI missed the mark with a chance to say something of meaning.
Uhrich, who worked for seven years in MillerCoors’ marketing department, agrees.
“If I was Dylan Mulvaney, I’d be out blasting ABI, like ‘Hey, you’re my partner on this, why haven’t you stood up and said No, this isn’t OK?’” Uhrich says. “They have left her to the wolves.”
He says that if companies aren’t willing to use their vast resources—money, influence, industry relationships—to protect the trans people that they were willing to use for potential gain, then those corporations have no business working with them in the first place. (In a press release from last year, ABI says that it has donated more than $13 million to local and national non-profit organizations that are committed to advocating for LGBTQ+ equality over the past 20 years.)
“The cost of ABI saying—‘No, no this is wrong. Nevermind Bud Light, but how you’re treating Dylan Mulvaney is not OK’—the cost of them doing that is too high and that’s what’s wrong with doing a campaign like this,” Uhrich says.
Meanwhile, other brands were more than happy to try to cash in on the controversy. A conservative influencer reportedly is launching a beer called Ultra Right Beer as an alternative to Bud Light (though major questions have arisen about its viability). Last week, public relations professionals also pitched stories to the media promoting their alcohol brands in contrast to Bud Light.
So while corporations did what corporations do, the tangible consequences of hate and vitriol fall on individual people. Herley says that given the powder keg of anti-trans political messaging across the country, every spark can be more dangerous.
“This is somebody’s life. I can get myself into a situation just by going to the store. The trans community … you find yourself in the wrong place, you better be prepared. And it’s really sad to think about that,” she says. “Budweiser should have took a bit more care about what they were doing.”
In complicated ways, Bud Light’s collaboration with Mulvaney sets a precedent. Herley characterized the visibility of a trans celebrity on a can of Bud Light “amazing.” But as a workforce and workplace trainer, she worries the backlash and ABI’s bungled response will make other companies and trans people wary of working together.
“A big problem is what other corporations will take from this,” Herley says, suggesting that other companies may avoid collaborating with or celebrating LGBTQ+ people for fear of the abuse that can follow. Sadly, for the people working to spread hate, that’s a key goal.
Given how broadly the controversy has been covered, it’s shifted from being an external news story to an internal one for companies. Herley brings up the potentially negative emotional and mental effects of this controversy on ABI’s LGBTQ+ employees, or ABI employees with trans family members. The company employs roughly 19,000 people in the U.S.; she says it’s conceivable that an LGBTQ+ worker would feel anxious and unsure of the broader company’s commitment to their wellbeing.
“You could have somebody in their workplace who’s going to become hostile to them, or maybe they just won’t come out. A lot of people stay hidden because of these fears,” Herley says.
Uhrich agrees. He says the lack of a strong, vocal commitment from ABI to Mulvaney and to support of LGBTQ+ people generally would be something that he as a queer beer professional would take note of if he were applying to jobs at large beer companies. Had the company responded to the backlash by reaffirming its support for the campaign with Mulvaney, he would have felt differently.
“Say I’m a young marketing executive just graduating from grad school and thinking about where I want to work. Do I want to work for ABI knowing that this is how they treat queer people that they work with?” he says.
Engel says she’s already seen fellow trans brewers leave the industry. When she transitioned in 2017, she says she knew of about a dozen trans brewers nationally; since then, three or four have quit their jobs in beer. If LGBTQ+ people opt out of working for ABI or in beer generally, it diminishes their opportunities and opportunities for the rest of the industry. In recent years, beer has already faced issues of queer erasure.
“Honestly I’m kind of worried about trans beer professionals. We’re losing us. People are drifting away from the industry, exactly because of things like this—because of transphobia; because it’s controversial for us to exist,” she says. “That’s why I try to be as visible as I can be, to prove that I’m not scared of them and I’m not going anywhere.”
When trans professionals leave careers they enjoy, it not only sets them back professionally but negatively affects the rest of the workforce. This is because people’s biases tend to soften upon developing a close relationship with a member of a marginalized group. It’s why the “coming out” movement is widely credited with advancing marriage equality and other gay rights. Over the course of just two decades, millions of people in the U.S. realized that they had LGBTQ+ siblings, parents, friends, cousins, teachers, and roommates.
“What it usually takes is somebody ends up knowing somebody who's trans in a company, whether it’s the president’s cousin or whoever,” Herley says. “I think there’s hope, but it is about investing in your people. … It’s about educating the country about who a transgender or gender-diverse person is, and how each of us is an individual. It’s about people really getting to know somebody, so they can realize ‘OK, well this person’s human.’”
Change can be supported by corporate support and clear public relations, but only if such initiatives center human dignity and people’s individual lives as their north star. ABI’s objectives are said plainly in their CEO’s recent letter that used 196 words to talk about the American values he holds dear but didn’t reference the person or communities impacted by the ongoing controversy. The company “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” he wrote. Instead, ABI is “in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
Words by Kate Bernot