Mick Hartley

Dylan Mulvaney is the trans influencer who's achieved a stunning rise to fame in America with his grotesque parodies of what it means to be a girl. He spoke at the Forbes' Power Women’s Summit, an annual event highlighting female leaders in business and activism. 

Mulvaney’s appearance at the Summit comes just months after the TikToker reported being offered a partnership with Tampax to advertise menstruation products. The partnership allegedly came after Mulvaney’s video on his “12th day of girlhood” in which he discussed carrying tampons around to hand out in women’s bathrooms, and refers to the vagina as a “barbie pouch.”

Mulvaney’s TikToks documenting his “days of girlhood” have accumulated millions of views. In the videos, Mulvaney is often seen doing and acting in excessively “feminine” ways which are often perceived as representing harmful, sexist stereotypes. While “being a girl,” Mulvaney often attributes his womanhood to what he is wearing, his makeup, eating habits, and dramatic emotions which lead to crying and binge shopping.

He went on to feature in a marketing campaign by US beauty retailer Ulta, advertising skin care and make-up products to women. Because, after all, men make much better women than women. And then he had a meeting with Joe Biden. Who's, um, the President of the United States of America. 

Raquel Rosario Sánchez today in The Critic picks the whole ridiculous business apart – Girlhood is not a fetish:

This week, as the US prepares for the midterm elections, the progressive left is going all out to bring home the message that this is a battle for the soul of the country. Former president Barack Obama implored voters to cast ballots for the Democratic Party because, according to him: “the only way to save democracy is if we fight for it.” How exactly are the Democrats fighting for democracy? By inviting adult men who identify as little girls to town halls at the White House.

Being a girl is not a fetish. Yet you wouldn’t know that, based on the rise of adult men who have gone one step further from identifying as women and have started to build careers by identifying into girlhood itself. Society has gotten used to girlhood being commodified through pornography, where “barely legal” remains a highly popular genre, and Halloween costumes sexualise the aesthetics of girlhood. Something that few could have anticipated has been that through the rise of “gender identity” policies, men who identify as girls would be celebrated by the highest spheres of political power. This is a dystopian step that shows how far removed left-wing political parties have become from reality.

On 24 October, US President Joe Biden sat down with social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to discuss gender identity policies during a presidential forum, held by left-wing outlet NowThis. The purpose of the forum was to host “intimate conversations between Biden and young change-makers focused on finding solutions to some of the most critical issues facing their generation”. The conversation between Biden and Mulvaney focused on the protection of “gender-affirming care”, which consists of medical treatments and intervention to try to physically transform people into the opposite sex.

Biden was clearly entranced by the Mulvaney pantomime, and confirmed his belief that no barriers should be put in the way of doctors eager to make a profit from insecure children who are making irreversible life changes over transient feelings encouraged by social media. Because this isn't some kind of joke or satire: this is deadly serious.

What exactly does it mean to “identify as a girl”? According to Mulvaney, being a girl is an exciting adventure through endless outfit changes, playing with make-up and bouncing up and down looking ridiculous. “Days of Girlhood” represents a pantomime of what men envision girlhood to be like.

Wearing baby pink glitter eyeshadow and a pink dress over a pink background, Mulvaney introduced the “Days of Girlhood” by summarising what girlhood meant to him: “Day 1 of being a girl and I have already cried 3 times. I wrote a scathing email that I did not send. I ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford. And then, when someone asked me how I was, I said ‘I’m fine’, when I wasn’t fine. How did I do, ladies? Girlpower!” Mulvaney announced this in his TikTok video whilst nervously putting on lip gloss, playing on the trope that women are perpetually hungry for external validation.

“Day 3 of being a girl and I’ve already become a bimbo. We are drinking martinis at 2:55 on a Monday on Sunset Boulevard. And then we’re going make-up shopping,” Mulvaney shares whilst wearing a pink bikini and pink glitter eyeshadow. On Day 75 of being a girl, Mulvaney plays with tampons and pads. “I’ve been carrying around tampons and pads for the past two months, but I’ve never opened one up. I thought the letters stood for ‘small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’ based on the size of your barbie pouch. But after I googled, it’s actually the level of your flow, so there’s super, regular and large,” Mulvaney says whilst pretending to be dumbfounded.

“Days of Girlhood” represents a mockery of girls and women, at a time when the streets of Iran are filled with furious girls demanding the freedom to live free of patriarchal impositions. Girls in countries like Pakistan are abducted, raped and forced by judges to prove they are underage, whilst other girls are courageously speaking out against the imposition of sex-based stereotypes by proponents of “gender identity” policies. None of those concerns were heard at the White House.

Instead, Mulvaney started his conversation with the President of the United States by stating: “This is my 221st day of publicly transitioning”, to which Biden replied: “God love you” in a folksy manner meant to endear him to voters. What neither man clarified was that Mulvaney is counting the days of transitioning into what he considers little girls to be. Or that the purpose of the series is to encourage impressionable youth to develop a dysphoric rejection of their sexed bodies.

That the West is drowning in its decadence is a familiar charge levelled at us by our enemies – and not one I usually give much credence to, given our record in democracy and freedom, women's rights, gay rights, and so on and so forth, compared to the likes of Russia or China or Iran. But yes, it's difficult to look at this and deny the charge that there's something profoundly rotten going on here.