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Life & Arts
Mumsnet and the great margarine boycott
Flora fleeing the parenting website is about corporate capitulation not transgender activism
© Lucas Varela
October 18, 2019 3:00 am by Robert Shrimsley
I can’t believe they’re so bitter. Type “Flora” into the search box on the Mumsnet website and enjoy the fury. Regulars on the parents’ discussion forum are in a rage after the maker of the best-selling marge said it was ending its association — that’s ads to you and me — with the site. Yes; the fat is flying, or fleeing. Mumsnet has been deFlora-ed.
Mumsnet’s offence was allowing discussion of transgender issues. A trans activist saw and was offended by some of the posts, tweeted out an angry response urging followers to boycott the marge and, bada bing, the website was iced by Flora’s Dutch parent, Upfield.
It turns out that Upfield takes human rights so seriously that it can no longer be associated with any site anywhere that ever allows anyone to say anything that upsets people. So I guess you also won’t be seeing any association with Facebook, Twitter or any significant news outlets.
Now angry mums are retaliating, with calls for their own boycott. It raises the ugly prospect of the whole thing being fought out in our supermarkets as Mumsnet users bulk up on Bertolli while trans activists flock to Flora. It’s kicking off in the white fats and lards aisle. The floors of Tesco will run yellow with vegetable oil.
To be clear, Mumsnet itself did not say anything transphobic but, being a platform of debate, it allowed others to discuss gender issues in a way that someone decided was transphobic. The site has moderators to remove offensive posts but Upfield argues that the controls were not effective enough.
Whether the comments were transphobic or just remarks trans activists dislike may be arguable. In general, my starting point is that trans people have faced years of appalling abuse and prejudice and so the community can hardly be blamed for hitting back now people have started to listen. But it is also true that some trans activists have a record of aggressively trying to silence legitimate debate.
In truth, however, this is not really a story about trans activists. They just happen to be the campaigners in this instance. It could just as equally have been another minority-rights campaign or a religious group or, in fact, anyone with an axe to grind, a few hundred followers on Twitter and a line to Stop Funding Hate, a campaign that exists to pressure advertisers.
What it is, is a story of corporate capitulation. It is a tale of how a market-leading food manufacturer fled at the first whiff of grapeshot. Perhaps Upfield really believes it is doing the right thing. Perhaps it has calculated that the trans activists and their supporters were more likely to carry through a boycott than the ordinary Mumsnet users. Flora certainly meets one of the criteria for a boycott in that there is a ready supply of alternatives.
But this trend is growing and advertising boycotts can work. Fair enough; why shouldn’t people withdraw support from companies that do things of which they disapprove? But successes mean this form of activism is only going to grow, which means more and more businesses are going to face criticism and attack.
Advertisers are the weak link for those targeting a media business. Most advertisers want a quiet life, where the only issue talked about is their campaign. Flora may care deeply about the issues raised or it may just care deeply about getting the hell out of this row. Either way, the tactics work but campaigners now know that Upfield can be pushed around with just a few social-media posts. Let’s hope environmental campaigners don’t find out about its use of palm oil.
The consequence is that activists scent weakness, and the boundaries of acceptable speech are being redefined away from pure prejudice towards anything over which a group takes offence. If the issues do not affect the core business, most companies are inclined to avoid controversy.
But businesses are going to face a lot more of this and they are going to need to be a lot clearer in their own minds about when they are going to stand firm and when they are going to fold. As yet, the boycott threats have mostly been one way; that may not be true for ever.
The problem with this kind of attack, as the makers of Flora should understand, is it spreads