Costa using Pride image of girl with breasts removed to support trans?

[Tryingmuchharder]

"Costa Coffee was today accused of glamourising 'complex and dangerous surgery' by covering a van with a cartoon image featuring mastectomy scars.
The UK's largest coffee chain defended its use of the image to promote 'inclusivity and diversity' but was branded 'crass and irresponsible' and 'absolutely bonkers' – and there were calls for a boycott of the company on social media.
The image, depicting an androgynous-looking character wearing long shorts with scars below each nipple, is taken from a mural designed by the chain for Brighton and Hove Pride last year."

I find the attempt to 'normalise' the removal of perfectly healthy breasts because someone feels more masculine is wrong. AIBU

It's not about transgender per se, it's about encouraging and promoting the chopping off of body bits as perfectly normal, it isn't. When someone is an adult and if they wish to modify their body in various ways so be it. However, the creeping normalisation of 'you feel a bit different then you are in the wrong body so change to another gender and take puberty blockers, chop bits off etc' bullshite fed to vulnerable young people convincing them by doing so all will be fine and dandy and all theirs worries, concerns and feeling 'odd/different' will just dissipate is BS. The books for very young children, the images of mutilated bodies, the sing song way that it's portrayed 'do this and makes your dreams come true crap.....

The reality and evidence is different. Longer term studies have shown increase in suicide in people that have gone down the trans route compared to peers - evidence shown earlier in thread. Also the growing numbers of young people who realise they were sold a lie and now regretting the decision and wanting to detransition. So caution and stop making it all hearts and easy fluffy to do this and normalising it.

Roll back 20 years and this wasn't normal..... there wasn't mass suicides of youngsters who felt odd in their bodies and didn't fit in, it feels and acts like a social contagion. It is particularly common now to see in young girls on the spectrum who are vulnerable, don't want to become young women and feel this is a way to avoid or escape the natural progression of their bodies! Society bullshite on what is a woman (pink and fluffy) and what is a man (tough and blue) doesn't help since most of us probably don't fit that out of date gender stereotypical rubbish anyway.

It doesn’t seem relevant to me to compare teen parenting with irreversible radical cosmetic surgery, made at a time before the body and brain have stopped developing and maturing.

There have been many studies establishing the fact that the human brain fully matures at 25.

That isn’t to say that people under 25 can’t make decisions or function as sentient beings with autonomy but it does suggest that making decisions that potentially render one sterile, unable to have orgasms, with stunted emotional and physical development, and involve removing healthy body parts should not be made lightly, or indeed glamorised in cartoonish pictures in advertising material for major coffee chains.

If it’s ‘transphobic’ of me to think there should be rigorous safeguarding around significant irreversible medical decisions being made by minors then so be it.

If women think they don’t fit into the pink box for girls/ women it’s the ‘cage’ (society and gender stereotypes) that’s the problem, NOT the girl/ woman. You don’t need to cut bits off yourself because you’re the kind of girl who likes ‘boyish’ things or who feels uncomfortable with her developing body.
Going through puberty RESOLVES these issues in 90% of cases.

The allegation that posts and this thread is "phobic" is rather lazy - I would suggest that posts are stating facts and that perhaps the country view is "factphobic"

Are they mastectomy scars though?
When I first saw the Costa cartoon, I thought the artist was copying the style of Pablo Picasso, so one "scar" is actually a nose, and the other is a big toe.

That's quite a stretch.

And one that failed to reach its grasp.

Costa is very obviously celebrating, in the name of inclusivity and diversity, a transman who has had a double mastectomy.

Oxfam included an image of a similarly mutilated female in its infamous pride (JKR) cartoon. Like Costa, Oxfam has history when it comes to misogyny. Remember how it's workers abused women and girls in Chad and Haiti. Costa thought that breastfeeding should be confined to the WC.
What will their PR geniuses dream up next?
Are they both in thrall to incels?

Does society think it's normal though? Surely the only ones who think that are the people themselves who are having it done?

A marketing initiative by a household coffee shop brand is about as accepted as things get

Well one way to do it. Another is children’s books, see Penguin example

Adults are failing children by normalising removal of body parts for gender ideology

Interesting you think early 20s is better but the current reality is the NHS does this stuff from 18 maybe even 17 plus. 21 used to be the age of coming of age but that was reduced to 18 at a time when there was no such thing as trans gender woo.
So rather than say 25 is ridiculous, it should be open for debate. The older someone is, the less chance of regret later. NHS should not fund it either way. You should pay privately if you want to unnecessarily m* yourself.

I genuinely never realised what an absence of feminist analysis there is in our society until this movement came along.

Also I’m thinking that maybe there’s a good dollop of racist Western superiority going on here. Y’know, so followers of gender ideology think breast binding is not like breast ironing, or foot binding or anything like that because, y’know, we’re the West. Breast binding and aesthetic breast removal can’t possibly be the modern Western iteration of these misogynistic mutilations of women’s bodies. Because we are the West and too clever and progressive to fall for that!

You should pay privately if you want to unnecessarily m yourself.*

Sadly that's only too easy. And it's not just a private individual decision because the NHS picks up the pieces.

Normalising self-harm is a really REALLY bad idea. It's like "heroin chic" over again only no-one claimed that using images of skeletal bodies and scarred arms for publicity was being "inclusive".

I disagree with this. People should not legally be able to harm themselves. I disagree with any ultra free market position that says they should.

Maybe that’s where medical ethics should step in. We also don’t allow various things that are possible due to advances in medical science