President Joe Biden and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney recently sat down for a filmed interview with NowThis News to talk about issues affecting the transgender community. In it, Biden showed support for a community under attack online and in statehouses across the country. 

Mulvaney is a transgender actress and activist known for the TikTok series “Days of Girlhood,” where she talks about her gender transition in daily videos. She has amassed 9 million followers on TikTok. 

The interview starts with Mulvaney saying that while she tries not to let words hurt her, what does hurt is “seeing people in power and authority figures creating laws and bills that are actively trying to harm us trans humans, especially trans children.”

She said lawmakers in many states want to exclude transgender people from participating in sports or getting proper healthcare, and some people want to decide where they can use the bathroom. 2022 saw record numbers of anti-trans legislation in statehouses across the country, according to the Human Rights Campaign. 

“No one should [be afraid] living in [the] state that they call home while being true to themselves. No one should have their lives put in danger because of who they are inside,” she said. “That’s why I’m sharing my story with the world.”

Mulvaney asked Biden if he thinks states should have a right to ban gender-affirming healthcare, to which he replied, “I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that, as a moral question and as a legal question.”

Biden said that some states try to block transgender people from getting access to certain medicines and procedures, but that “no state should be able to do that in my view. So, I feel very very strongly that you should have every single solitary right, including the use of your gender identity’s bathrooms in public.”

Mulvaney said that Republicans often villainize trans and non-binary people and that this narrative threatens their mental health and physical safety. She pointed out that trans women of color experience an alarmingly high murder rate. 

Anti-trans violence has doubled over the last four years, with victims disproportionately being Black women, according to a report from Everytown for Gun Safety. 

She asked Biden what the solution could be.

“I’m not being facetious when I say this, being seen with people like you,” Biden replied. “People fear what they don’t know.”

He said that people don’t know enough about trans people, not due to a lack of intellectual ability, but because they haven’t been exposed to them before. 

Interviews such as this one allows trans people like Mulvaney to have a voice and express support for the community from the highest position in government.

For Mulvaney, the harassment targeted at trans people online is part of her daily life.

She recently received hate after appearing in an Ulta Beauty YouTube series “The Beauty Of…” with genderfluid host David Lopez, where she discussed her experience transitioning and said that she would one day like to become a mother — a comment which conservatives immediately piled onto.

“‘I want to be a mother one day, and I absolutely can.’ No, you cannot,” Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative commentator who testified before Congress in support of the Trump administration’s anti-abortion policies, tweeted in response. “You can buy all the eggs, rent all the wombs, and wear all the makeup you want, but you cannot be a mother. And that’s ok. Accept who you are and don’t try to be something you can’t.” 

The idea that those who can’t biologically carry children can’t be mothers is outdated. If a cisgender woman hired a surrogate, nobody would tell her that she isn’t a mother. Why is it any different for trans women? 

Lauren Chen, a political commentator, also replied to Ulta, saying, “The fact that an adult male is obsessed with girlhood (not even womanhood, but GIRLHOOD) is just straight up creepy. Whatever happened to shutting up and selling makeup.”

Ulta tweeted in response to the hate, explaining its YouTube series aims to “widen the lens surrounding traditional beauty standards.” It said that some topics discussed can challenge certain perspectives, but that the company believes beauty is for everyone. 

“You had two grown men tell actual women what it’s like to be a girl as if they could have any earthly idea,” Stuckey later replied. “That has nothing to do with beauty; it’s lunacy, and it’s insulting.”

Neither Mulvaney nor Lopez are trying to tell women what it’s like to be a woman; they’re simply informing people, especially trans youth, about the process of transitioning both physically and mentally. 

The intolerant responses on the Ulta video show why there needs to be more advocacy for trans people. 

The multiple responses misgendering Mulvaney and Lopez show how little certain people care about others. It’s simple to call people their preferred pronouns, but Stuckey and Chen went out of their way to misgender Mulvaney just to prove a point.

While the Biden interview is a large step forward in showing support for trans people, there’s still much to be done to protect trans lives and rights. Transphobic people prove why it’s essential more is done to protect this community.

Kate Beske is a 19-year-old journalism sophomore from Destrehan.