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

Pleased to see the good doctor is admitting that this is a mental health issue, not just confused , often autistic anxious teens misled by social media and pressure from people who should know better.

I wonder if Dr Webberley has considered if giving anorexic teens a gastric band would help another “debilitating mental health issue that sadly takes so many lives”. After all, didn’t doctors used to prescribe lobotomy as a cure for mental health issues like depression and schizophrenia, and hysterectomies for women suffering from anxiety and PND, I suppose she could argue she is simply continuing this medical tradition of using surgery to sort out mental illness. Radical stuff Dr W, though personally I wouldn’t trust you to lance a boil.

The euphemisms 'top surgery' and 'bottom surgery' hide the very seriousness of all these procedures and normalises them.

When you say it like that. Ouch. Surgery to try to resolve mental health issues

Even Penguin Kids' books are at it:

twitter.com/penguinkids/status/1662051005356462081?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

[The Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility], which conducts reviews of health care treatments for the [National Health Service], concludes that none of the studies provides conclusive evidence that gender reassignment is beneficial for patients. It found that most research was poorly designed, which skewed the results in favor of physically changing sex. There was no evaluation of whether other treatments, such as long-term counseling, might help transsexuals, or whether their gender confusion might lessen over time.

Society is failing young girls

And you'd want him to have the best professional advice as well? And not get suckered by adverts for other products which normalise penis removal as a cool thing to do?

Which is what this is thread about. Advertising is not direct force but it applies social pressure and not only for the product directly being sold (coffee in this case)

There are restrictions on advertising for cosmetic surgery, and that's for good reasons. These restrictions should apply to cosmetic surgery for transition too, and I think (though I'm not sure) they could apply to the promotion of cosmetic surgery in an advert for another product.

It's possible (and easy!) to complain to the ASA Even if there aren't immediate grounds to get the advert stopped they do count complaints to know about issues that concern people.

What benefits are there actually for adults though?

Open wounds that smell like colon. Tied to a dilation schedule that seems pretty incompatible with work/life certainly at first anyway. Disabilities, incontinence, loss of sexual function, inability to breast feed. All to achieve the impossible? The failure rates of phalloplasty are atrocious. Is this really something that should be done to perfectly healthy functioning bodies.if so why? What benefit is there?

Normalising mutilating surgery at such a young age.

One day society will look back at the damage caused. Hopefully you won't be a parent of a child grown into an adult that regrets the mutilating and messing with puberty that was assumed to be the answer without studies to show it actually helps.

Thank you for saying this so much better than I could.

The gradual drip drip in society, coffee shops, schools, Penguin books, showing that mutilating surgery is normal and 'cool' as the Penguin book says. Drip, drip, drip, it's normal kids to physically mutilate your body, it's normal to take puberty blockers...drip drip drip.

Agree with what we are normalising. It’s so so bad

I read the other day that female trans people are still discriminated against in the way they are presented in public. As women their breasts are used for the public gaze in advertising. As 'men' their breasts are used for public gaze in advertising.

I'm trying to clarify my thoughts around this too. Gender distressed girls and young women put themselves through this brutal, mutilating surgery in the vain hope of being perceived as masculine and read as men by a society in which women are always lesser. And big brands like Costa fetishise their scars in a way that never lets them escape their essential femaleness. They are shouting out loud the part that's supposed to remain unspoken, and which is absolutely verboten to say about MtF transitioners. People can tell.

Indeed.

How dare they display such offensive imagery.

"And big brands like Costa fetishise their scars in a way that never lets them escape their essential femaleness. They are shouting out loud the part that's supposed to remain unspoken, and which is absolutely verboten to say about MtF transitioners. People can tell."

There are calls for SIMS a series of games aimed mainly at young people to include characters with surgery scars to show support and inclusivity to children who feel they are in the wrong body. It feels like a push to normalise surgery towards children. Surgery being promoted at the answer and normal and easy, it's anything but on all these counts. It's not the answer - you cannot change sex, it's not normal, and it's not easy.

Adults want the right to do nothing to themselves and be considered whatever they say they are whilst simultaneously pushing for kids to have access to all medical aspects of transition they themselves never wanted or had. Why?

Who benefits from a cohort of young people above the age of consent with the bodies of pre pubescent children ?

Who indeed Scully? It is always a very good question to ask!

@Whatwouldscullydo as a society we are pretty liberal about letting adults do what they want to do (for the most part!) even where there is no benefit to themselves or others i.e smoking, free diving, base jumping, refusing life saving procedures or operations, plastic surgery etc. All can cause permanent damage or death but it's about choice, recognising that we all have one life and should be able to live it as we choose within reasonable limits!

To my mind, if an informed adult wants to have their breasts removed when it isn't medically necessary then that's for them to do, especially if they believe that it will be of benefit to them. Whether I understand it or not, I think they should have that choice.

smoking, free diving, base jumping, refusing life saving procedures or operations, plastic surgery etc

@applesandmares Have you noticed that people don't smoke in adverts any more? That's not because it wouldn't be cool, it's because it wouldn't be legal.

In our society people can choose to do many things that are not allowed in advertisements.

Sure, applesandmares. Plastic surgery is something an adult can choose to have.

But someone suffering a serious mental illness fixating on hatred of a body part is not the same as an adult with good mental health choosing to have breast augmentation, or a nose job.

If being 'gender dysphoric' is a mental illness, then why are we suggesting that the patients should choose drastic surgery as a good way of dealing with it?

We don't offer bariatric surgery to anorexics. How is this any different?

YANBU - how can a company glorify mutilation of healthy women's bodies? I have requested my account is deleted and told them why, and uninstalled the app - can I ask anyone else who is boycotting buying from them also do the same? Make them know why you're not going to buy from them again.

Jesus. This is far worse than Costa doing it.

Drs have to take an oath though. First do no harm. Drs have a responsibility to act in an ethical way. Is it ethical to agree and advertise /promote surgeries that are so specialised that there are limitations on how many surgeons there are that can do them. Meaning of course that when the complications arise the patient has to go back to the same dr and pay more money to get it sorted. There are certainly questions there that need answering surely ? Can you get unbiased and ethical treatment when everyone involved makes money off you whether it goes right or wrong or you want it reversed etc

Where is the incentive to get it right when you are the only one available to fix it if it goes wrong. If it was life saving and genuinely needed wouldn't the nhs be doing it? Why is it that all this is only really available in the private circles. Women struggle to even get their tubes clipped. So a reversible routine procedure is inaccessible to adult women on the basis they may change their minds but yet drs will remove the penis and uterus and ovaries and breasts of teenagers?

Did you read my post? If you did I don't think you understood it.

As a woman who's had a mastectomy due to breast cancer, I have this scar but not through choice. I find the image very upsetting and I've been very positive about my cancer diagnosis four years ago. I can imagine it's triggered other breast cancer survivors as well.

Ironically, I was going to frequent our local branch tomorrow for the first time since we moved here - not now!

@ArabeIIaScott I'm not suggesting drastic surgery for people with body dysphoria, I'm just saying that if they are informed adults who are actively seeking that, I think they should be able to access it if medical professionals are happy to carry it out.

We don't offer weight loss surgeries to anorexics because it will kill them. We also don't offer heroin to heroin addicts, or euthanasia to the severely depressed for the same reason!