Ocado siding with misogynists and agreeing that the word "woman" and its dictionary definition is hate speech

[PerverseConverse]

Mumsnetters in their droves are abandoning Ocado after they sided with advertising company, Primesight, for removing Standing for Women's billboard in Liverpool. The billboard was a very simple dictionary definition of the word "woman." This has been declared homophobic and hate speech by Dr. Harrop who demanded the billboard be removed.
Since when did the very word, "woman" equal transphobic hate speech?
Posie Parker, the woman behind Standing for Women, was on Sky News this afternoon with Dr. Harrop defending the rights of women and the right to call ourselves women.
Shares in Ocado have gone down today and the company amidst a torrent of cancellations have said they will issue a statement today. So far they haven't done so but all their tweets saying Primesight reflected their company values have been deleted along with the many comments that followed.
Is it unreasonable to boycott Ocado for publicly showing themselves to be against women, who after all are their target consumer group? Scores of posters on the feminist boards don't think so but I'd love to hear the opinions of those outside of the feminist boards.

CharlieParley what an amazing post. You are the reason so many of us lurk - you make us feel ill informed! Thank you.

Thanks everyone. I only found that out myself at the weekend.

Molokonono, I think any legal action would probably better directed at venues that cancel women's events and companies that refuse women's business and do so with a statement alleging transphobia or hate. Policing the speech of individual women haters on the internet is - with rare exceptions* - surely a waste of time and money.

*pursuing an individual who consistently harrasses individuals or groups may be the exception. But based on just the words RatRolyPoly posted here? I personally wouldn't bother. It's like getting the big guns out to stop the annoying whine of a gnat. Seems like overkill.

RatRolyPoly are you saying that Posie's right to free speech has been curtailed, and that she now has fewer rights in that regard than the rest of us do

If so, who made that judgment? On what authority, or under which law was that right removed from her?

Told my mum about this and shes not ordering anymore from them. She buys around a hundred quid of stuff every week.

Datun

YY

To all of it.

Someone schooled us all yesterday on the word woman. We're all fighting to defend a word that only got invented 200 years ago and whose meaning adult human female is an equally recent concept.

We can't all study Old English at university, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but even without knowing just how old the word woman is - such that it is present at the very beginning of our language - this is ignorance, if not stupidity of such epic proportion in an adult, that I too was forcefully reminded of my children when they were younger.

And just for fun, because I love language and anything related to its study, here is a list of words that did make their first appearance in the English language in 1818:

anti-monopoly
biological
Chinese cinnamon
city editor
Daddy-longlegs
disenfranchised
elementary school
Frankenstein
hatha yoga
in loco parentis
laughing gas
limited edition
nonconsolidated
policy holder
roadworthy
romantic comedy
seventh heaven
trade discount
vested interest
woman of letters

The website is here if you want to have some fun seeing what words entered the dictionary in the year of your birth. It's focused on American English, but still fascinating.

It's like getting the big guns out to stop the annoying whine of a gnat.

Or, as a friend says "using a cannon to shoot a chicken".

Again, my preferred method of dealing with annoying posters is to make use of the scroll button.

I had a phone call yesterday from a nervous sounding women apologising on behalf of
Ocado and asking me to reconsider. I said I would when Ocado published a public apology and she said they’d been advised not to do so but they realised they had upset people. I said I wasn’t upset, I was angry, that I fully supported the rights of trans people but wasn’t prepared to support misogyny, and thanked her politely for her call. Then went off and peak-transed my ex husband who thought he was meeting me to talk about childcare plans for the next few months, and the dentist.

PepeLePew you tell 'em!

DisrespectfulAdultFemale Thank you, that was the phrase I was looking for!

Glad I was able to help!

Who has advised them not to make a public statement? Stonewall

I asked and she laughed nervously. I felt sorry for her (I know) so didn’t push it. I asked her how many people she had called that day had changed their minds on the phone and she laughed nervously again and said “not many”.

@PepeLePew that’s interesting! I wonder if I will get a call too? I might nick your excellent response. X

Any one willing and able to head over to Ocado's Facebook reviews and prop up a review from one of us highlighting the issue? A man has ridiculed mumsnet and the women who use it and has had a right rant. And there's a woman on there who has no clue and just wants to get on with her stressful life instead of jumping on the bandwagon like us We need some voices on there to kick some ignorant misogynistic ass.

They get deleted

The bad reviews are still there on Facebook. It's the Trustpilot ones that have been deleted. I'll attach a screenshot of the review I mean as it's one with idiots commenting. One sane person has commented but the rest

Trustpilot is deleting bad reviews? Really?!