O'Donnell also called out Kid Rock for taking an assault rifle to a case of Bud Light over the brand's collaboration with the young trans star.
Dylan Mulvaney is addressing a lot of the backlash, criticism and outright hate she’s received in recent months, after stepping into the spotlight since coming out as a transgender woman in 2021.
The TikTok star — who has more than 10 million followers on the app — appeared on Onward with Rosie O’Donnell this week, for an interview shedding light on how she’s been dealing with all the attention from trolls. Many conservatives have been targeting her for her appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show” back in March, as well as a recent partnership with Bud Light. The flood of nasty comments come amid an ongoing rise in anti-trans rhetoric and legislation across the country.
As O’Donnell noted, Mulvaney’s appearance on Barrymore’s show became “a big thing” after Drew got down on her knees in front of her guest at one point. Both Rosie and Dylan noted this is something Barrymore does with almost all of her guests when she gets emotional or excited, but for some reason, it was seen as an affront to cisgender women everywhere by a certain subset of people when Drew did it for Mulvaney.
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“I have tried to be the most uncontroversial person this past year and somehow it has made me controversial still. I think it comes back to the fact that these people, they don’t understand me and anything that I do or say then somehow gets taken out of context and is used against me,” said Mulvaney. “It’s so sad because everything I try to put out is positive, it’s trying to connect with others that maybe don’t understand me, it’s to make people laugh or make a kid feel seen.”
“I think with Drew, we still haven’t seen a lot of trans people do the talk show circuit. She and I have such a similar innocence towards life and seeing the best in others and gushing over each other. I left that interview thinking, ‘Oh my god, that was the best. That was the best day,'” she continued. “And then they took it and turned it into something ugly.”
She went on to call the negative comments “bullying in the fact that they want anyone who associates themselves with trans people to be under fire.” Of her critics, she added, “They want to essentially shame people into thinking that if you associate with someone like me, that you are to be laughed at or that you are the crazy one because you’re giving into someone’s identity or simply acknowledging their existence.”
Mulvaney went on to give praise to both Drew and Rosie — who she long considered role models — for “inviting me into their spaces to join and hold hands and to talk and to get to know one another and call each other friends and that’s what I’m trying to focus on.”
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The 26-year-old then addressed the onslaught of anti-trans legislation sweeping the country, saying it’s time for straight allies, as well as the entire LGBTQIA community to “show up for us.”
“It’s all hands on deck. It’s not a time to sit idle. I have watched it get so much worse as my timeline has gone on and it’s been very odd to compare the two — my transition as well as all this anti-trans legislation, simultaneously — and the reason I think I’m an easy target is because I’m still new to this,” she added. “I think going after a trans woman that’s been doing this for 20 years is a lot more difficult. But what is their goal?”
Mulvaney said that while she’s not necessarily “worried” about podcast hosts taking aim at her, she is “worried about their listeners” — adding, “it’s a heavy time and it’s time to step up for sure.”
It appears the podcast was recorded before Mulvaney’s partnership with Bud Light also set off conservatives, prompting Kid Rock to take an assault rifle to a case of beer to protest the company working with her. While Dylan didn’t address it during the interview, O’Donnell did during her intro, which was recorded separately.
“Kid Rock had to take an assault weapon and shoot the boxes of beer, proving what?” she asked. “Beer companies have been supportive of the LGBTQIA community for decades. This is not the first time. Who do you think sponsors pride? Gay people, trans people, we drink beer too man. Put down your gun, Kid Rock, it’s in bad taste. Especially after what happened at the school in Nashville.”
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During the interview, Mulvaney also opened up about her journey to embracing her trans identity, after first coming out as a gay man before a transgender woman. As she spoke about the subject, she also talked about why she’s cautious about her following — and her reaction to parents who say it would be their “worst nightmare” for their children to say they “want to be like” Mulvaney.
“I knew that since trans-ness wasn’t an option for me then, because it was so terrifying, but I was still happy,” she said of initially coming out as gay. “I was able to suppress it in a way that I was still able to experience joy … but I wasn’t fully me. So I look back at the time and I don’t resent it because I was just doing my best and I know that was specifically the journey I’d been on, but I also now cannot even imagine going back to that gender because I will say, even with all the hate and controversy or whatever it is with me just because I’m trans, it’s still worth it because I wake up everyday a little bit happier than I was before.”
She noted that even though she has since come out as trans and even got facial feminization surgery, she’s still “very particular about how” she talks about her physical transformation — not wanting any of her followers to believe there’s only one way to be trans or they have to follow her lead to be considered a trans woman themselves.
“I also know I have a lot of kids following me and I really want to be sure that those decisions they’re making are not influenced by me. Even that word influencer terrifies me because the fact someone would buy a skin care product, let alone want to explore their gender,” she said, trailing off.
“I find it interesting because there’s a lot of people that are like, it’d be my worst nightmare if my kid came to me and said I want to be like Dylan Mulvaney,” she added, saying it was a common comment online. “If somebody was to say, ‘I want to be like Dylan Mulvaney,’ it might not be because they’re trans, maybe they want to wear pink or maybe they want to make jokes or maybe they want to try new things.”
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Though she noted she doesn’t “fully understand” what it feels like to want to transition — saying she “never once thought as a tomboy gay woman that I wanted to be boy” — O’Donnell also asked Mulvaney how she knew that simply coming out as gay and kissing boys “wasn’t the end all” for her journey.
“There was always this little buzz in my mind, hooking up with gay men as one, thinking, ‘This isn’t fully right,'” she said, adding that she hasn’t started dating yet since transitioning.
“It’s not something that has come up just because I’ve been doing so much work on my own transition, I think it’s scary to then have someone come in and when you’re in the middle of transitioning, my [anatomy] might change, and I think that I do fear where my romance will come from,” she added. “I get really scared that if it’s with a gay man it’s because they still see me as a man. Or if it’s with a straight man, are they fetishizing me?”
“But at the end of the day, I know that I’m worthy of love and I’m worthy of something more than just some sexual experience,” she concluded. “I will be a great girlfriend one day, I do want kids and that’s a very controversial statement to make as a trans person because we are so under fire right now as these like ‘groomer/predator’ types. It breaks my heart to think that that would limit my abilities to have children … it makes me really sad.”
Listen to O’Donnell’s full interview with Mulvaney below:
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