Absolut Vodka in Tesco Supporting Stonewall

[KittyPerry77]

There is an Absolut Vodka stand in my local Tesco supporting Stonewall and displaying the "Acceptance without exception" slogan. I find it very offensive to see an organisation that is trying to eradicate my right to single sex spaces supported in my local store.

Is it best to complain to Absolut and Tesco via snail mail or by Twitter? Which do they pay more attention to?

I’ve done it by letter, because it required a response.

I did the same when DS1s school plastered Stonewall posters for gay rights (specifically gay rights not trans), I asked that the stonewall logo and webpage be removed but not the message itself, and they complied.

All these commercial organisations are just jumping on the Pride bandwagon and monetising it because performatively woke virtue signalling looks good. They don't really care.

I would complain on twitter and @ in lots of GC people.

Dave Lewis is their CEO. Middle aged women are a much more important customer group for Tesco than woke younglings (this is true of M&S though as well, and they’ve gone insane)

All these commercial organisations are just jumping on the Pride bandwagon and monetising it because performatively woke virtue signalling looks good. They don't really care

This. They will have no idea what Stonewall want to do in respect of single sex spaces, safeguarding implications etc.

I think that is a marketing ploy, designed to downplay the LGBT boycott of vodka's due to Russia's awful treatment of gay and lesbian folks.
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/26/russia-vodka-boycott-gay-law

Absolut isn't Russian though, is the boycott vodka wide?

Absolut, I believe, is a Swedish brand?
In any case, I know they previously used to sponsor RuPaul's Drag Race, but then stopped for whatever reason.
There's an interesting article (of questionable authority, as it's from a drinks website) about vodka being the unofficial spirit of Pride here: vinepair.com/articles/vodka-lgbtq-pride/
Not really sure how to feel about this partnership with Stonewall. Obviously it's great to support gay rights (and trans rights, as long as you're not throwing females under the bus, which seems to be the Stonewall position right now). I doubt they've thought the same-sex spaces thing through (a fact they have in common with almost everyone).

I agree with Ereshkigal that this seems like a marketing ploy/virtue signal.

Well the boycott was pretty disorganised apparently. Stolichnaya was boycotted even though it isn't produced in Russia. I wonder how Russia's behaviour influenced all vodka's sales within this demographic - evn those produced out of the country?

DJLippy
That's a very good question. Thank you for reminding me of how oppressed LGBT people are in so many places across the world, like Russia.

Apologies for minor derail, but it's so weird to see this thread about vodka because today I watched Owl and Fox Fisher's documentary on YouTube about Being Transgender in Russia* and ironically the FTMs and non-binaries were using vodka to sterilize their testosterone syringes.

*Was actually quite interesting. While I'm against self-ID, people in Serbia apparently have to spend at least one month in a residential psychiatric hospital under constant monitoring before they can change their id or get hormones, which is imo excess and inhumane for trans people.

‘people in Serbia apparently have to spend at least one month in a residential psychiatric hospital under constant monitoring before they can change their id or get hormones’

There is a book called Queer in Russia; a story of sex, self and the other by Laurie Essig which was printed in 1999. I doubt it would be printed today. It mentions how lesbians thought of themselves as hetereosexual men trapped in women’s bodies, due to the societal view that being a lesbian was the worst thing a woman can be in Russia. From the current amazon description of the book;

‘After a decade of conducting interviews, as well as observing and analyzing plays, books, pop music, and graffiti, Essig presents the first sustained study of how and why there was no Soviet gay community or even gay identity before perestroika and the degree to which this situation has-or has not-changed. While male homosexual acts were criminalized in Russia before 1993, women attracted to women were policed by the medical community, who saw them less as criminals than as diseased persons potentially cured by drug therapy or transsexual surgery.’

Many societies that are intolerant of homosexuality use transing as a way to turn homosexuals into pseudo heterosexuals.

Many societies that are intolerant of homosexuality use transing as a way to turn homosexuals into pseudo heterosexuals.

Presumably if castration/ sterilisation is part of the procedure, this could be viewed as eugenics?

‘Presumably if castration/ sterilisation is part of the procedure, this could be viewed as eugenics?’

Yes, exactly.

So the infertility caused by transitioning surgery, MtF and FtM, is viewed as acceptable 'collateral damage'? An unfortunate consequence?

I find that truly shocking.

The medical establishment has previously prescribed various ‘treatments’ to try and ‘cure’ homosexual men and women, including lobotomies, so sadly this latest attempt is not all that shocking to me. Though it does make me angry, particularly since the organisations that are actually supposed to protect against this sort of thing, are actually cheering it on.

Absolut have a very longstanding brand association with LGBT. Which, until the T was taken over by a bunch of fruitloops, was a fairly benign example of a brand pushing a social agenda they knew was important to their target market. But I think it's got a bit controversial now and Stonewall is no longer the force for good they think they are allied with.

I suspect if we give it a year Stonewall will go the way of Kids Company and Absolut will forget that they are the voice of gender non-conformity and ally itself with whatever 17 year old instagrammers are doing then. (Probably not Instagram.)