Believe it or not, I am not a surfer. That is John’s gig. I represent the old, fat, and balding demographic, not the spry, athletic, and manly-man types in our audience.

Still, I feel perfectly competent to judge a situation like this one, in which an iconic Australian surfing brand drops a female athlete for expressing gender-critical views and replaces her as their representative with a pathetic male cosplaying as a woman, making him their brand ambassador.

Rip Curl makes huge damage control move as Aussies called to cancel the iconic brand for using a trans woman to promote women's surfing, as the brand moves to scrub any trace of the promotion. https://t.co/fIxGIk1m01

— daisymay4263 🙉🙈🙊 (@daisymay4263) January 30, 2024

I was first tipped off to this story by a video on Twitter, which, in two minutes, boiled down the insanity of gender ideology into a story anybody could understand. No fancy ideology. No stupid and complicated theories. No gametes to discuss.

You see with your eyes that a horrible injustice is being perpetrated based on a theory of humanity that makes as much sense as asserting that pigs can fly.

My daughter’s favourite movie growing up was Soul Surfer, the story of @bethanyhamilton, and she had the official movie poster on her wall for years.@ripcurl deserves the full Bud Light treatment.pic.twitter.com/1M4AQwvmfK

— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) January 30, 2024

Unbelievable. Freaking insane.

Bethany Hamilton is an icon not just for being talented, but for being a survivor and a role model for young girls and anybody who has faced what seemed to be an insurmountable challenge. She had her arm taken off by a shark, and was back to surfing in a month and has been competing for decades since.

What brand wouldn’t want to be tied at the hip to her? She is a star athlete, has a tremendous and inspiring story, is mind-bogglingly famous, and well-loved.

Rip Curl, that’s who. Because Bethany thinks that women’s sports should be for women. And that makes her Nazi-adjacent, apparently.

So, who did Rip Curl replace Hamilton with as one of their icons? Sasha Lowerson, a female-identifying man who is now allowed to compete against women because the powers that be decided to go completely woke.

The reaction has not been unreservedly positive. Shocking, I know.

In fact, Rip Curl’s decision seems to be costing them a lot of goodwill, and they are facing what appears to be a mounting Bud Light-style backlash. If there is any justice in the world, it will be much worse than that because Bud Light only insulted its customers–Rip Curl lashed out at somebody who represented them for decades because they wanted to virtue signal.

For a lot of surfers–the target audience for the brand–Bethany is like a big or little sister whom you love and admire, and for younger girls, a role model. Not like a rapper or a Kardashian, either, but an honest-to-goodness, feel-good, do-good role model of the sort that we used to seek out and promote before W.A.P. (Wet-A**ed P**sy by Cardi B) became a song that Hillary Clinton claimed was an inspiration.

I can’t stress enough how much worse this is than the Bud Light fiasco, in my eyes. Bud Light was merely insulting its customers by making fun of them and their values. They deserved to get smacked down because they were disrespecting their customers.

Rip Curl, though, is taking aim at fundamental values that strike much deeper than a demographic. Hamilton represents grit, determination, skill, and aspiration to achieve; Sasha Lowerson represents the opposite: a sad, pathetic and deluded man pushing women out of their spaces to steal their glory.

Lowerson isn’t living his truth; he is stealing the truth of others who have so much more to give. He is a pathetic and self-indulgent figure, and Rip Curl elevated him over a truly great woman.

I hope they rot in hell.