On Oct. 30, TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a TikTok responding to Caitlyn Jenner’s hateful comments towards her on Twitter. Mulvaney, who is known for her “Days of Girlhood” series on TikTok where she documents her transition in an attempt to educate and spread positivity online, dedicated Day 233 of being a girl to Jenner. In Mulvaney’s video, she discussed the power that she and Jenner both hold in the trans community and called for Jenner to stop spreading hate towards her and the rest of the community.
The whole thing started last week on Oct. 24, when conservative senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted about an old video of Mulvaney on Day 74 of her journey of being a girl, following Mulvaney’s visit to the White House to speak with President Joe Biden about trans issues and rights. In the video Senator Blackburn posted, Mulvaney shared her uncomfortable experience at a mall and how shoppers were “directly staring at her crotch.” In the clip, Mulvaney called for people to normalize “women having bulges sometimes,” singing, “Normalize the bulge. We are normalizing the bulge. Women can have bulges, and that’s OK!” Senator Blackburn called Mulvaney’s take “absurdity,” and was then backed by Jenner, who quote tweeted Senator Blackburn’s tweet and said, “Let’s not ‘normalize’ any of what this person [Mulvaney] is doing. This is absurdity!”
But Jenner didn’t stop there. Not only did Jenner misgender Mulvaney, but she also tweeted, “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 your trans with a penis.”
Mulvaney started her video posted on Oct. 30 by calling herself and Jenner “two of the most privileged trans women in America at the moment” and “with that, comes a lot of responsibility.” Mulvaney prefaced her video by saying that although she “[has] a lot of respect for [Jenner] as a fellow trans woman,” she felt “outed” by Jenner speaking out against her. “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, because I was embarrassed and I wanted to reclaim my body in a positive way.”
Mulvaney continued, “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.” Mulvaney also called for Jenner to be “patient,” explaining that she’s not as far along in her journey as Jenner is — and that that’s OK. “This whole situation makes me not wanna share my surgical plans because there are so many trans women who don’t have access to it, or they don’t want it, and it doesn’t make them any less of a woman.”
“A trans person invalidating another trans person’s transness is pretty evil, in my eyes,” Mulvaney said. “The call is coming from inside the house! It’s coming off very selfish. Is no one else allowed to be trans? I, for one, am excited to welcome anyone into our community because I know how isolating it can be. And this whole situation, it feels like the movie Mean Girls.”
Mulvaney continued, “You were Woman of the Year! This is not Woman of the Year behavior.”
At the end of her video, Mulvaney called for Jenner to spread positivity instead of hate. “I’m going to keep trying to be happy and to build a beautiful life filled with other trans people, and I hope that you too will start taking care of our community,” Mulvaney said. “We have a lot of potential for positive change, or we can make it a hell of a lot worse [for the community].”
Fans flooded to the comment section of Mulvaney’s video to share their support for Mulvaney. Mulvaney’s video has now received over four million likes and 15 million views.
Jenner has not yet publicly responded to Mulvaney’s video.