Lady Gaga is speaking out after her International Women’s Day post with actor and TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney was inundated with anti-LGBTQ+ commentary.
On Monday, the 13-time Grammy winner lambasted the online vitriol that Mulvaney, who is transgender, had received for sharing a photo of the two together just days earlier. She also called out media outlets for mischaracterising the “appalling” response to the image.
“When I see a newspaper reporting on hatred but calling it ‘backlash’ I feel it is important to clarify that hatred is hatred, and this kind of hatred is violence,” Gaga, real name Stefani Germanotta, wrote on Instagram while resharing Mulvaney’s photo.
“‘Backlash’ would imply that people who love or respect Dylan and me didn’t like something we did,” the pop star wrote. “This is not backlash. This is hatred.”
Mulvaney, who last year was surrounded by a media firestorm after taking part in a high-profile partnership with Bud Light, originally shared her photo with Gaga on Instagram on March 8 to acknowledge International Women’s Day.
As of Monday afternoon, Mulvaney’s post had received more than 3,300 comments, many of them aggressively transphobic.
“This is so degrading to REAL women,” one person wrote.
“You are not a WOMAN. JUST SAYING,” another commenter wrote. “To celebrate yourself on International Woman’s Day is delusional.”
Gaga, of course, has been an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community since the start of her career.
In her Monday post, she wrote that while she isn’t trans, she deeply respects the community’s “endless grace and inspiration in the face of constant degradation, intolerance, and physical, verbal, and mental violence.”
“May we all stand and honour the complexity and challenge of trans life — that we do not know, but can seek to understand and have compassion for,” Gaga wrote. “I love people too much to allow hatred to be referred to as ‘backlash.’ People deserve better.”