Boycott JL and Waitrose? : James Esses' latest Substack on John Lewis LGBTQIA++ 'Identity' mag

Spar is still going strong round these parts!

I'd have been out, I'm afraid. I worked in a Woolworth's and a Spar decades ago.

Though both shops are now defunct, so there is that.

If I'd known that's what they wanted, I'd have put myself forward!

😁

Why was he taken off the tills? What was Waitrose's problem? He was only bringing his whole self to work.

I thought they approved of that.

On another point not related but does involve Waitrose - when Brexit happened , a couple of weeks later I bought a copy of the fledgling 'new European' and some guy on the till in his late 60s said to me 'what do you want to buy that crap for' - it's rare I complain but in this case I wrote to head office and said that staff members should mind their own business on what you buy. I did get a good response and voucher and he was off the tills for months. In this case I really think JL need to be inclusive indeed but focussing on it to the level of this is ridiculous and just creates bad press

I think the expression- know thy customer has to kick in here and whilst yes it's good that Sharon likes to be inclusive in terms of staff etc she will turn an awful lot of the mainly middle aged and older customer base off- and in the interests of staff I would think actually staying in business is more important! My 25 year old son for instance would agree with it being very 'inclusive' for staff - he doesn't however need to know that . He would presume it is.

They paid a woman with no retail experience £1m a year to run the business into the ground.

Bravo

It's been clear for some time that 'inclusion' for Sharon White only includes young people, non-white people, and economically disadvantaged people.

I wonder if that includes those non-white women who, for cultural and/or religious reasons, cannot use toilets or changing rooms which male-bodied people are invited to use if that's "where they feel most comfortable".

Interesting, I assumed those pictures were in the magazine, rather than in an exhibition.

The removing of the exhibit / online material will be presented as "safeguarding" all those participating from bigotry (aka as accurate feedback).
However, hopefully there'll be a little bit of awakening in the corridors of power that "bringing our whole selves to work" can involve promoting male fetishes, highlighting the mentally vulnerable employees who really should be protected from having this exposed, promoting practices that harm children like breast binding along with identifying JL male employees known for verbally abusing women.

It's their call now.

Out of interest has all this inclusiveness at JL included features and exhibitions on physical disability or mental health etc- I am convinced many of these trendy people in comms prefer focussing on LGBT as it makes for more funky pictures and gives them a more youthful feel- - and I'm not right wing or Tory- but I am anti focussing on LGBT and particularly the T to the exclusion of other issues that affect far far more of the population.

I’ve found a website where the exhibition launch is still up and archived it.

http://archive.today/pIwBg

The magazine and the exhibition of portraits are two separate things but both celebrate lgbt history month (not quite sure of the link with history). The pictures from the exhibition were all online on the photographer’s website but he took them down yesterday (I guess at the same time John Lewis shut the exhibition). There were about 15 photos.

There were no age restrictions looking at the ad.

JL seem to have done a fairly comprehensive damage limitation exercise since this story blew up and appear to have removed all references to all their 'LGBTQ+' etc activities from any websites they can control. I've just done a quick skim through their press release pages and I can't now find anything from any date at all.

This is a summary of what I think was going on. Please let me know if I've got anything wrong.

As part of the (February) 'LGBTQ+' month JL produced the problematic in-house magazine and also invested in an exhibition of 'LGBTQ+' staff portraits using people's full names and identifying places of work as well as personal details. The photos were taken by an award-winning Brighton & Hove-based photographer called Chris Jepson who does a lot of work for 'LGBTQ+' clients. He created 'The Identity Project' which exists to document portraits of 'LGBTQ+' people and the JL project seems to be an off-shoot of this.

James Esses's article about the in-house magazine includes a copy of the magazine in full if you scroll down this page: https://www.jamesesses.com/p/the-trans-takeover-of-john-lewis

From what I can see, none of the exhibition photos are included in the magazine itself.

The event with the portrait photos, including Ruby with whip and Tristan wearing harness, was launched at the John Lewis Oxford Street store in a private viewing on February 9th and was due to run from Feb 10th - Feb 24th during store opening hours . https://www.consortium.lgbt/event/the-identity-project-jlp-edition/
Also, this giving some details of who attended https://www.gscene.com/arts/lgbt-history-month/chris-jepson-launches-new-exhibition-at-john-lewis-on-londons-oxford-street-for-lgbt-history-month/

The exhibition is/was on the 3rd floor of the shop and, from what I have read (including the link from the consortium website), it was open to the public and there were no age limits applied to entry. I can't remember any age-appropriate warnings on any of the info (before it was taken down) on the JL or Chris Jepson websites either.

Yesterday, BoiledBeetle posted on here a link to an X/Twitter post from someone who'd tried to go along only to discover that the exhibition had been curtained off and cordoned off and closed.

The most explicit photos that have been posted here (eg. of Ruby's outside-work interests) seem to have been easily located on publicly accessible websites eg. X/Twitter because John Lewis had used the full name in a photograph suggestive of BDSM as part of their exhibition collection and so, I presume, it was easy to conduct searches.

edited to include, I've just looked up 'pup play'. I hadn't known about that before (am learning all the time) so hadn't realised about the signifier of the t-shirt.

Also to add, I think I remember reading on the JL or photographer's website that there were plans to share some of the portrait photos in stores around the country but this may well have been my memory playing tricks. Does anyone else remember anything about this?

I don't have any issue with being supportive and non prejudiced but this is well OTT, I suspect someone high up on comes there has totally lost the plot. They need to reassess this

I wonder what John Lewis mean when they talk of being inclusive.

Do women (partners and customers) feel included knowing they might have to share changing rooms and toilets with someone like Ruby, and are unable to object.

Do colleagues who are subject to Tristans sharp wit and sarcasm feel included or do they feel belittled or bullied.

Do women feel included or excluded when councillor what's his name tweets 'fuck terfs'.

This inclusion seems to be a bit of a one way street

Yes, and ultimately we need to buy food from somewhere as it's not something we can do without.

I couldn't find any mention of trans charities on the Sainsbury's website where they say which charities they donate to. Does anybody know where I can find this out?

Tesco donates (or used to donate) to Mermaids.

@MrsOvertonsWindow 🙏👍👍👍

I am finding template letters very useful - it makes the task less daunting. If it's ok with you, I'll be adapting your words and using them in my own letter to JL/Waitrose as well. Thanks.

Of course. I've learnt so much about all this from wise women on here 🙂

Tbf there’s a difference between supporting trans ideology in general and there’s showcasing a perv like Ruby and saying they are just like a woman.

JL is fully down the the latter