Lush puts "trans propaganda leaflets" in children's party bags

As of February this year, 23 prosecutions for false communication and just under 300 altogether under the Act.

https://freespeechunion.org/hundreds-charged-with-online-speech-crimes-under-online-safety-act-amid-us-free-expression-concerns/

Interesting question. I tend to forget about that Act, but yes - massive amounts of false communication.

Going off at a tangent, the online safety act seems to limit ‘false communication’ . Obviously this isn’t online - but there has been a lot of false communication on this issue, some harmful e.g. re suicide statistics.

But is anyone ever prosecuted?

Libel of organisations isn't quite the same as of individuals. I think the NHS would have to show a significant financial loss, rather than merely defamation, to be able to bring a case.

And they'd not want to be seen using NHS funds on suing private, non-medical businesses.

I wonder if the comments about the NHS rejecting the wider medical consensus are libellous?

Completely out of order.
a) because it was in party bags for 7 year olds and discusses trans issues and suicide
b) because it was in party bags for 7 year olds and discusses any viewpoint on anything at all (could have been animal rights, disabled people, public transport, still inappropriate)
c) because it was a unrequested political statement, regardless of the recipients being 7. I'd feel the same if I got the leaflet in with my shopping.

What planet are they on?

This is so full of 'we're the nice, kind, caring people' and 'those who disagree with us are hateful and nasty'.

It's tremendous gaslighting, when you consider that they are the ones demanding the right for children to have their hormones messed up and their puberty destroyed, often left infertile and with wholly avoidable serious health issues as a direct result.

If you block a child's natural puberty for their sex, it doesn't magically switch it to the puberty of the opposite sex; just like if you chop off a healthy arm, it doesn't grow back as a leg - it's just gone completely.

They claim that most children know what 'gender' they are from the age of 4. More blatant lies: plenty of 4yos want to be cats, dinosaurs, unicorns, Thomas the Tank Engine or whatever; and a lot of them genuinely believe that, if they want it enough, it becomes the truth.

It's downright abusive to seek to put so much responsibility on to such a young child, and to give them so much agency. The big difference with 'non-trans' children is that, whatever they know or think they are, it doesn't change or destroy material fact from happening naturally until they are old enough to appreciate it.

They also push the fallacy that biological men can have HRT, which is demonstrably false. The 'R' stands for 'replacement' - you obviously cannot replace something that was never meant to be there in the first place. It's the equivalent of (actual) women going to their GPs and being given 'replacement testicle surgery' when it's discovered that theirs are somehow missing!!!

Their booklet contained the page where they describe their trans utopia and later discover 'sadly it was all a dream' (what an original literary device); but to me, I thought the rest of the booklet read like a big fairy tale dream, where if you wish hard enough, it will come true. Et in trans Arcadia ego.

It all just comes from an automatic assumption that they are the central characters in this, and that they are entitled to whatever they want and demand as a given. Anybody who doesn't bow down and give them everything they feel entitled to is a 'hater' - and thus gets added to their list to bump up the massive perceived 'hate crimes' index that they are supposedly intolerably suffering from.

It's like saying that Tesco are guilty of a hate crime by refusing to let you take away food that you don't have the money to buy - however hungry you are or however much you want it.

Yet another company that blames a single employee or a single store instead of taking accountability. Lush go even further by saying take the content up with the organisation who wrote the leaflet, as if they were not the ones who approved it and then went to produce 100000 copies.

They talk about the NHS rejecting the wider medical consensus.

That is just flat out wrong and potentially dangerous.

I just made the terrible mistake of trying to read the leaflet.

What is this “UK Census” of which they speak? Could they perhaps mean the England & Wales Census? So strange they make no mention of the ONS having had to admit the stats were unreliable & inflated but instead try to hint at poor brave trans people being so scared about their safety that vast swathes of said population were not recorded.

Equally, I’m sure they just forgot to mention that the main driver for the burning of the contents of the library of the Sexual Sciences Institute was antisemitism. And it clearly wasn’t at all deliberate they gave the impression that there was a coherent policy on the trans population in Nazi Germany.

On the plus side, I suppose they did manage to refrain from actually naming poor Elagabalus as trans AND used the qualifier he was “probably” trans.

I can go no further, lest the stupidity is catching…

Some nice looking things. The ingredients are considerably better than Lush's were last time I looked.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease, I'm afraid. This particular group screams loudest about how hard done by they are, so they take attention from causes that actually need support.

I received their email this morning and immediately deleted the app on my phone and iPad. Shame because I love SuperMilk but nah.

• FY2021: Pre-tax profit was £3.3 million, representing a 0.5% profit margin.
• FY2023: Lush posted a pre-tax loss of £28.1 million.
• FY2024: The Group recorded a Loss Before Tax of -£34.5m, according to Lush's own website

May the decline accelerate!

American Cream was (is?) a conditioner that I used for years and years. It actually smelled really nice.
Fun fact: It was called "Vive la Revolution" in France, IIRC.

Haven't shopped in there since just before Christmas 2022 when I was asked by my sister to buy her some shower gel. Luckily, I managed to convince her that there are better products out there.

Lush won't get another penny from me.

Are they significant people?

Saw a recent awful window display too.

In many ways. I can’t even walk past it without my eyes watering and sinuses itching, so I’ve been boycotting them since long before their SJW bullshit.

This part of the article jumped out at me:

“It [the leaflet] then tells the story of a trans student in the US who killed herself after her Saudi Arabian family “hired lawyers and fixers” to take her back home.”

Saudi Arabia is one of the worst oppressive regimes in the world, especially for women. Many women have tried to protest or escape over the years and have mysteriously ‘disappeared’ after being caught. There are numerous accounts of kidnappings, torture, imprisonment, beatings, forced marriages, rape, and murder.

A quick google will provide lots of examples (I could go on all day!) but here are a few links to illustrate.

‘Lolita’, who fled to Australia to escape the older man she was forced to marry as a child, only to be bundled into a black van by a group of Saudi men and has been missing ever since. From the BBC, there are links within this article to other cases https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmj26102l2jo

An archived article from the New Yorker from 2023 - Saudi Arabia’s vanished princesses https://archive.ph/BbE5z

From Amnesty - who don’t actually know what a woman is - a call for the authorities to reveal the whereabouts of Manahel al-Otaibi who got eleven years in prison for making social media posts about womens’s rights, and has been disappeared https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/saudi-arabia-authorities-must-immediately-reveal-whereabouts-woman-unjustly

I guess the brutal oppression of half the population isn’t a righteous cause for Lush 🤷🏽‍♀️

Lush stinks

I love their perfume, cardamon coffee as well as lust. I have been wearing their perfume since my uni days (not everyday as i am an occasional perfume wearer)
, they bring back so many memories of falling in love. Cardamon coffee perfume is quite a political perfume too, apparently it was inspired by a cup of cardamon coffee perfume served in a Palestinian refugee camp..it is ludicrously expensive, I wanted to boycott lush for raising the prices from 30 quid to 150 quid for a large bottle in just a few years. My current bottle is a valentines day gift from dh, I tell him not to buy it cos it's not worth it but he buys it cos he knows its my favourite. I do wear hermes twilly too but I always return to lush. I like their bubble bars too but very occasional treat.

They are the only present my MIL likes (and she is an orthodox jew so doubt she agrees with all their political stances but her home/bathroom is a shrine to lush literally).

I don't think I can give it up...

This is shocking

Well done @TinyRebel you absolute star.

I do think any parent whose child has been given one of the leaflets trying to promote child sterilisation do have a legal case to bring. Cass said social transition is not neutral, and this is what a beauty brand is pushing! There's also the consumer protection laws - they're not allowed to lie about their products, lying to children about puberty blockers honestly seems worse.

I am happy to say I have stopped buying from Lush-it has been a few years now. And DD loved the bath bombs so I spent a fortune in there but they will never have a penny of my money ever again.

As I said on another thread-too political for bath bombs

I know this is getting slightly off topic but can I ask what the bubble bars are on Ascent? The bath bars look as if they will be oily rather than bubbly.

Oh wait - it looks as if they're out of stock of the bubble bars! So I'll try to remember to get some later.

I ordered some body powder from Megababe - my Lush days are done!