The Crazy Right Wants to Boycott Hershey Because She Appeared (Trans)on a Commercial
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But as usual on these platforms, some members used the news to make violent threats against the trans community and even Johnstone’s life. Others commenting on the news claimed Hershey’s decision was proof that it was worshipping the goat-headed heathen idol known as Baphomet, who was supposedly a winged hermaphrodite. More commenters made claims that Hershey’s products contained “babies” a reference to QAnon conspiracies about the torture and murder of children.
The LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Egale Canada said in a statement Thursday that it was “disgusted by the transphobic response to what should be a celebrated campaign.”But the campaign from the right to “cancel” Hershey’s over visibility is nothing new in right-wing circles. After Disney publicly opposed a Florida law which restricts conversations about gender and sexuality in some public schools last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who will likely run for president, and his culture war allies launched an effort to strip Disney World of a special tax status the company has enjoyed for decades.
DeSantis signed a bill doing just that last week and appointed allies to oversee the new “Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board,” including Bridger Ziegler, a county school board member in Florida who co-founded the “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty, a conservative nonprofit which has led a national right-wing effort against “critical race theory” and LGBTQ+ rights in schools as well as COVID-19 restrictions earlier in the pandemic, and campaigned for hardline conservative control of school boards.
Hershey’s is not even the first candy that the right has targeted. Far-right Fox News star Tucker Carlson has criticized the perceived decrease in hotness of the cartoon M&Ms characters—a symptom of wokeness, to be sure—to the point that it’s turned into a running bit on his show.
The attacks on Johnstone also come as Republican lawmakers in at least five states have introduced bills this year that would restrict transition care for adults, particularly those on Medicaid, according to the Washington Post. And in Florida, the DeSantis administration banned gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18 and ended Medicaid coverage for all transgender healthcare last year, Republicans have proposed expanding the effective ban on discussions of sexuality and gender through middle school.
Michael Knowles, a right-wing commentator and former co-host of Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, called for states to “ban transgenderism entirely” last week.
"It's not enough to say, ‘You have to wait until you're 12,’” Knowles said the following day. “It has to be the whole thing." Knowles also said there “can’t be a trans genocide” in America because “transgender people is not a real ontological category, it’s not a legitimate category of being.” In a Twitter thread Thursday night, Johnstone wrote that it was an “immense honor” to be included in the campaign but that she was declining to speak to the media in the immediate future and that it was “best to let this blow over.”
“Trans women are women. We face systemic discrimination on the basis of both misogyny and transphobia - from harassment to hate, poverty and homelessness and more,” Johnstone said. “I am thankful to Hersheys Canada for including me in their campaign.”
VICE
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