Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid. There but for the grace of….

This week we have seen the public derision of a few brand names who think of themselves as big brands and therefore above criticism. The face of this catastrophe has been created and it is Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, (erstwhile?) VP of marketing at Budlight. Let’s unpick some of this without making it personal.

She/her has taken to the airwaves to tell us – rather patronisingly it has to be said, clearly she is an expert – that Bud Light was a failing brand and she wanted to make it more relatable to consumers. Way to go bigging up your brand. Way to go making your brand more relatable to less than 0.05% of potential customers while alienating 51% of them. She has warbled on about inclusivity while excluding women who have ideas about their own autonomy and who are insulted by a man larping about as a woman, in womanface, and whose tinkerbell antics and (obviously) flat chest have the potential to influence young girls about their appearance – a phenomenon which is acknowledged to have increased the rates of self harm in terms of unnecessary surgery and drugs – double mastectomies, hormone “therapy”. This in much the same way that influenced young girls into eating disorders. So that sets the scene.

Having thrown women under the bus in an attempt to revive a beer brand she will, more than likely, be thrown under the bus herself by those brands she represents, Bud Light among them but also Anheuser-Busch who surely must be regretting their fulsome praise of her in previous months and Anomaly who seemed similarly chuffed. Does she deserve it? Hmmm…

This is one headline: “BUDWEISER Stock and Sales PLUMMET, as core base insulted.” And to think only a few months ago (two precisely) this was being said by the chief marketing officer at Anheuser-Busch: “A new era for Bud Light. Enjoyment Made Easy: Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy. A more confident, magnetic, and diverse tonality for America’s #1 beer. Amazing work from our Bud Light team, kudos Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, Daniel Blake Anomaly, Bruno Cosentino” . Wrong.

For me in part she symbolises the risks of being in a marketing bubble or even just a life bubble, of not living in a real world that reflects real people. I question her moral view of the world if she thinks it is ok – even as a marketing professional with commercial responsibilities – to have a man in womanface as a brand ambassador. Would she employ a person in blackface similarly? Would she do that despite it being offensive and wrong if it promoted her brand? Where is the moral compass here? Why not hire Rachel Dolezal to front a cosmetics brand for black women? That works, doesn’t it? In part also she symbolises the toxic underbelly of the media.

Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid was being loudly touted as the first female to lead a beer brands marketing. Her she/her pronouns front and centre in her bio tell us a story. It is a story of bandwagons and fantasy, of misogyny and delusion, of first world problems creating more first world problems in a ghastly spiral of deception and gaslighting. Women are reaping the disbenefits of that. An entire and huge demographic is being trivialised, abused, insulted and marginalised in the name of “inclusivity”, a word, by the way, that has been dumbed down to mean simply the enforced public acceptance of any and all fetishes and perversions, the removal of necessary barriers that enable safeguarding, the gaslighting of women and children who protest, indeed the planned assault of women who gather together non-violently to talk about these things. All for the sake of men. As with marketing I would guess that we should follow the money to see where this leads. Toxic combinations: money and entitlement, money and fetish, misogyny and money. Follow the money. Always.

Women are already marginalised. One side effect of the removal of “woman” from descriptions of women is that the extent to which we are maginalised, abused or killed is not recorded and therefore not perceived. Can you see what it is yet? The placing of men in womens prisons contributes to this hideously, offences are recorded as committed by women when they are a mans offences, men intimidate and assault women in a confined prison. That is part of their game, part of the fun for those men pretending to be women and thus accessing us at our most vulnerable and people need to listen to people who know about these things. Prisons, rape crisis, hospitals. And Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid is part of the problem. And the larping womanface she used as part of her cunning strategy is perhaps one of the worst examples. Mocking women, playing an insulting fantasy version of a stereotype we have been rejecting for decades, grinning and gurning at a tampax, flinging tinkerbell arms wide and jumping about like a flea on acid in an attempt to demonstrate his insulting sterotyped concept of girlish high spirits, Dylan Mulvaney is among the lowest of the low, his misogyny tangible and contemptuous, the damage he is doing almost irreperable. And he doesn’t care as long as the money keeps rolling in from big companies falling over themselves to look “inclusive”, and he is allowed, even lauded, for insulting women as much as he damn well pleases. Nike has doubled down on their scurrilous insults. Shame on them.

Here’s some inclusivity: making recruitment and support more accessible for people with neurodiversities; not erasing women from our language; retaining safer spaces, and that means penis free zones, for women and children; recognising the value of retaining boundaries in safeguarding; not behaving tokenly when it concerns people with disabilities of all kinds when recruiting, advertising, training; not looking for validation of your “courage” when doing all of the above. It isn’t brave, or extra, or extraordinary, it should be ordinary, usual, good practice. Empowerment is possible without disempowering another group to achieve it.

So, however much her defenders say Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid just made an error of judgement and she is a good VP marketing and deserves forgiveness I say no, she showed her lack of moral compass – and revealed that of her employers – and willingness to crap on entire demographics because of her tone deaf approach. And it is one that threads its toxicity through marketing, media, politics and social care. It needs to stop now. Untold damage has already been done, don’t do any more.

Stop disrespecting women.