Conservatives want to make Doritos the next Bud Light

These days, transphobic backlash directed at big corporations follows a predictable template. A big brand partners with a trans influencer for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it campaign, right wing extremists raise hell online, and the brand backs off. But even as the most recent example involving Doritos is more complicated, the bottom line remains the same: conservatives continue to rail against any mainstream acknowledgement of trans people.

Last weekend, Doritos Spain featured local trans artist Samantha Hudson in a 50-second (now deleted) Instagram video called “Crunch Talks.” Right-wingers immediately hopped online to get #BoycottDoritos trending, recalling the Bud Light boycott when that brand sent personalized can to trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The Daily Caller inaccurately referred to Hudson as a “brand ambassador” while the usual right wing ghouls — Libs of TikTok, End Wokeness, Tim Pool, Oli London and many others — stirred up their followers with outrage tweets.

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It turns out, there are reasons why the Doritos partnership was ill-advised — namely, the brand should have done more thorough vetting — but Hudson’s gender identity is not one of them.

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Content warning: discussions of sexual assault and mockery of victims

Following the campaign, graphic and offensive tweets that Hudson made when she was 15 years old and has said were intended as “dark humor” soon surfaced. According to Newsweek, one post translated from Spanish begins, ​​”I want to do thuggish things [to] a 12-year-old girl,” and goes onto describe an explicit act of rape. In another post, she said, “I hate women who are victims of rape and who turn to self-help centers to overcome their trauma. k fat wh*re.”

“Some tweets that I posted in 2015 are resurfacing and honestly I don’t know what to say, I don’t remember having written such barbarities,” Hudson wrote in response to the post. “At that time I dedicated myself to saying nonsense, the heavier the better, because I thought that ‘dark humor’ was funny.”

Doritos Spain quickly pulled the plug on the partnership, but they stressed that right wing backlash played no role in the decision. “We have ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments,” a Doritos Spain spokesperson told Rolling Stone. “We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”

Whatever Doritos’ stated reasons for ending the partnership, that hasn’t stopped right wingers from focusing their ire on Hudson’s gender identity — just as they did with Dylan Mulvaney, who had no such controversies attached to her. Rather than isolated examples, the tweets serve as a convenient tool to tar an entire community as depraved and advance their tired groomer narrative.