Adidas chooses men to model women’s swimwear, Target has Satanists designing Pride apparel and another company pushing children’s swimsuits with different crotches for potential trans kids, and the LA Dodgers invite an anti-Christian drag show to perform before a game. What are us “normals” missing?
These days almost every day brings with it a new example of corporate America’s embrace of woke politics instead of their customers. It was barely two months ago when Budweiser and Nike shocked the squares by securing the services of Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender social media influencer who’s primary claim to fame is prancing around like a stereotypical Valley girl on crack-cocaine, to promote their products in the name of diversity. At the time, the head of marketing for Bud Light informed middle America that they were no longer relevant in the quest to increase beer sales. Alissa Heinerscheid described one of the best selling alcoholic beverages in the United States as “too fratty” and “out of touch.” “I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light,” she claimed in an interview with the podcast “Make Yourself At Home” on March 30. Almost immediately after, some enterprising online sleuths dug up photographs of Ms. Heinerscheid looking altogether fratty herself in her Harvard days. None other than the Harvard Crimson described her social group, the ISIS club complete with talks about “the exploitation of the scrotum professors” and drunken scavenger hunts, as “haven of inebriated ditzes” taking part in “boozefests.” This apparently was completely forgotten in the desire to appeal to the tiny sliver of the population that describes themselves as transgender. If anything, Nike’s transgression was even worse, choosing Ms. Mulvaney to model women’s athletic gear when she is neither a natural born woman nor an athlete, effectively mocking women everywhere and stealing money from female athletes that have paid their dues on the field and could certainly use the cash given how much less they earn then their male counterparts, as we are so frequently told.
The resulting outrage from the average person and the subsequent boycotts – Bud Light sales continue to drop week by week by as much as 28.4% – should normally have been enough to cause other corporations a little pause in their march to a woke future. Instead, like the popular and every present “hold my beer” internet meme, Adidas, Target, and others plunged ahead with what can only be described as woke swimwear, some of which is outrageously targeted at children. First, Adidas chose an effeminate male model to showcase their new women’s swimsuits in an advertising campaign that can only be described as bizarre. A figure with no breasts and an obvious penis dons a woman’s one piece from the side with a body shape and pose that no actual woman wearing the suit will ever have. The advertisements themselves make no mention of the gender of the suitably ethnically nondescript model, possibly black, possibly Pacific Islander or Hispanic, but one cannot possibly miss the package between their legs, because nothing says female swimwear better than protruding male parts. The best we can say is that these swimsuits were not targeted at children, as Target itself decided was appropriate with a new line of clothing timed for the upcoming Pride month. Apparently, someone reasonably high up in the corporate hierarchy believed the parents of toddlers and young children would be thrilled to purchase swimsuits with a variety of different crotches, because what parent doesn’t like talking about their kids’ crotch? Thus, there was the “tuck” crotch for young boys considering whether to continue with their birth gender to safely hide their penises and pretend they were little girls. The swimsuits were also available in a wide crotch variety for reasons I am unaware of and are better left unexplained.
This gear was accompanied by a variety of other clothes, handbags, fanny packs, and totes with woke slogans including merchandise designed by a self described “gay trans man” and Satanist. Yes, Target secured the services of Abprallen, a brand based in the United Kingdom that openly dabbles in Satanism and proclaims Satan himself is an LGBTQ supporter (who knew?) to develop items emblazoned with “cure transphobia not trans people,” “too queer for here,” and “we belong everywhere.” Shocking the squares being part of the “fun,” it wasn’t long before principal designer, Erik Carnell was mocking people that questioned these products and the decisions leading to them. “These have already got the transphobes infuriated with me and I feel like quite the celebrity to think that they believe this is all some big conspiracy and I have any power to brainwash anyone when I’m just some guy drawing pictures!” He wrote on Instagram. Mr. Carnell’s previous work includes designs with Satanic symbols and slogans, “Satan respects pronouns” tee shirts, “gay as hell” stickers,” and stained glass windows covered with the phrase “trans bodies are holy.” As he described it, “So for me, Satan is hope, compassion, equality, and love. So, naturally, Satan respects pronouns. He loves all LGBT+ people. I went with a variation of Baphomet for this design, a deity who themself is a mixture of genders, beings, ideas, and existences. They reject binary stereotypes and expectations. Perfect.” In another post on Instagram, this time accompanied by a naked demonic creature with a horned skull and mutilated breasts, he claimed, “Being called a demon is something I can cope with, and the idea of a trans demon is pretty damn cool, most of my work focusses on gothic or dark and satanic imagery juxtaposed with bright colours and LGBT+ positive messages.”
Clearly, Mr. Carnell was the optimal choice for a mass market, family-oriented brand because who doesn’t like a little Satanism with their back to school supplies, or at least so the media would have you believe. According to CNN, he was just an ordinary small businessman in the fashion industry unfairly maligned by a backlash against the LGBTQ community. “I was ecstatic at the thought of being able to share my stuff with an entirely new market,” Mr. Carnell explained to the network. “But then things fell apart. About a week and a half ago, Carnell said, he started receiving hundreds of hateful messages including death threats, some of them incorrectly saying the collection was being marketed to children, as some people lashed out at Target over its Pride offerings.” (Here, CNN plays completely dumb and acts as if the swimwear with different crotches simply doesn’t exist. It is true that Mr. Carnell did not design that line, but they were all part of the same Pride launch and therefore it’s not unreasonable for consumers to be confused about who designed what.) “The amount of backlash that I have gotten has been overwhelming,” he said. “I just hope that this is the beginning of the end of the messages and the onslaught that I’m getting.” After nary a mention of his Satanism, saying it was just one design that wasn’t available at Target, CNN attributes this onslaught to “hate” spreading online. “I’m not naive. I absolutely knew that there would be negativity thrown my way,” he said. “I understand that people are incredibly passionate with their hatred towards LGBT people. And the current political climate is one that tells those people that they are correct to feel that way,” Mr. Carnell explained.
CNN, incredibly, might have been among the more honest news organizations covering the story. The Associated Press was caught claiming there was violence at actual Target stores before stealth correcting the record. Originally, they reported “Target is removing certain items from its stores and making other changes to its LGBTQ merchandise nationwide ahead of Pride month, after an intense backlash from some customers including violent confrontations with its workers.” The paragraph was quickly edited with no notice of a correction and the reference to violent confrontations removed, replaced with a statement from Target. Collectively, the media seems to be taking the position that all of this is completely and totally normal. Therefore, anyone expressing concern is a transphobe. For its part, Target appeared to be caught completely by surprise at first, initially defending the lines before pulling them and then, you guessed it, blaming parents who expressed concern about swimwear that either eliminates or accentuates their child’s crotch and clothing designed by a proud Satanist. CEO Brian Cornell issued a statement, claiming “This has been a very hard day for Target, and it follows many difficult days of deliberation and decision-making…What you’ve seen in recent days went well beyond discomfort, and it has been gut-wrenching to see what you’ve confronted in our aisles.” Mr. Cornell could not find the time to apologize to normal parents, but there was the usual peon to the LGTBQ community. “We stand with you now and will continue to do so – not just during Pride Month, but each and every day. Those were the two guiding principles when it came time for us to act: do all we can to keep our team safe, and do all we can to honor our commitment and connection to the LGBTQIA+ community.”
Left unsaid: Why a commitment to that community, which on the surface seems a reasonable thing, translates into sexualizing children and promoting Satan. Why is it apparently impossible to honor the community and not engage in what at least to this observer seems to be obviously outrageous behavior? As difficult as it might be to believe, Target was not the only corporation caught dabbling in Satanism recently. The Los Angeles Dodgers chose to invite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to support their Pride Night festivities, a group that is radically anti-Catholic, literally dressing up as trans nuns with face paint encouraging people to “go and sin some more” in a parody of Jesus’ teaching. They perform an Easter ceremony followed by a drag show with imitations of Jesus and Mary. They host pub crawls featuring the Stations of the Cross and the Eucharist. What’s not to like at a family baseball game? Perhaps needless to say, the backlash was swift and the Dodgers quickly canceled the event, but not without apologizing to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence instead of their own fans. “After much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Los Angeles Dodgers would like to offer our sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families.” The message could not be more clear: Average Americans appalled about the sexualization of children and simulated sexual acts performed in front of children are the problem.
Corporate America has backed down in these cases, but not because they feel their decisions were either inappropriate or outrageous. On the contrary, they feel those descriptions are better applied to their customers, and they have only relented because they also fear the potential impact on their bottom line (Target, for example, has lost some 18% in market capitalization). To some extent, this is the market in action, but at the same time the number of companies in different industries simultaneously taking a route so at odds with anything resembling mainstream America and so obviously prime for a massive backlash suggests something deeper. What is it about corporate America that is so completely out of touch they believe parents want children’s swimwear with a holder for a penis or baseball games with Satanists? Alas, this is a difficult question to answer, made even more so because the leadership in these companies aren’t exactly card carrying members of the LGTBQ community or politically radical in any way, shape, or form. They are almost uniformly “normals,” straight, white, and equipped with prep school and Ivy League pedigrees like Ms. Heinerscheid. One finds it almost hard to believe they would prefer to see their own children subjected to these displays, or at least I find it difficult to conceive that Target’s CEO shops for children’s swimwear with a tuck pouch. One might even presume he would be outraged if someone tried to sell such a thing to his own child. Why then do they insist on pushing this on the rest of us?
Two things come to mind. First, it seems clear to me that both political and corporate elites are suffering from the sort of mass delusion unseen since the turn of the 20th century and the spiritualism craze. For whatever reason, the trans phenomenon has become a full on freak out where normally smart, educated people continue to insist on some of the most ridiculous things imaginable. For example, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and journalism professor at NYU who recently claimed she wasn’t a boxer, but if she was she would have no problem getting in the ring with a man and anyone who disagreed must be a transphobe. There is no rational basis for this statement, and yet they insist everyone else is irrational. This has gone beyond fair treatment for individuals with different lifestyles into some truly bizarre territory where an intelligent woman says she’d be happy to be punched in the face by a man and proceeds to attack anyone who disagrees. Second, this is all about power. They have it, you don’t, and they want to stick it in your face. Unfortunately for us all, the combination of the two renders them completely unaware they are committing corporate suicide and will continue to do so until middle America makes them pay.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 