Why are Primark promoting "Found Family"

[WandaWomblesaurus]

www.primark.com/en-us/a/inspiration/special-occasions/celebrating-found-families

"A Found Family Is About Finally Feeling Whole, Something That Might Be Absent In Your Biological Family, Like A Full Set Of Acrylic Nails Or A Good Pair Of Fake Lashes. It’s A Community You Choose, Whose Values And Honesty Speak To Your Own."
- Jude & Michael, Germany

What???

No offence but things are a tad different to Mary W's time.

What is the point of This Particular campaign then? Fucking hell it's like pulling teeth.

There is plenty of second wave writing critiquing the nuclear family.

What do you not understand about "to sell stuff"?

Yes, it is like pulling teeth.

The poster already answered you. The point of the campaign is to sell stuff. Presumably people are supposed to see the advertisement, feel connected to it, go inside to see the products and spend their money.

Same as advertising aimed at pet owners, tea lovers, football club supporters etc etc.

Apologies if I’ve missed something but I can’t see anything suggesting that Primark are going to be finding people families?

You might want to read the page where they quote the thousands of £ that is going to the ILGA (the people that are campaigning for the reduction of the age of consent) as explained by Rex earlier.

I am well aware of the concept of selling stuff. The questions is, why THIS particular campaign.

Any why choose the pictures they have chosen to support their efforts? Do you think the two kids in the above photo are old enough to find new random families from out of nowhere? Do they walk the streets until someone takes them in? How does this all work? Are Primark involved in getting kids removed from actual families?

I assumed Alison was trying to find out why you think Primark choose this particular campaign to support and plaster all over their clothes?

Why not just Pride?

ok, to put it another way - I cannot think of any feminist theorists who defend the biological / nuclear family as it is constructed in contemporary western societies. I am surprised to see a thread idealising it on a board that is meant to be about feminism.

Is it idealising it to not want kids being groomed?

Are those the only two options?

What qualifications do Primark have to get involved in this?

My best friend has been more of a sister figure to me than my biological sisters in the hardest year of my life, her family have taken my daughter and I as their own so found families have definitely important.

The thing that is surprising to me is the way that you and other posters think that the suggestion there might be an alternative to the (heteronormative/ patriarchal/ capitalist) family unit is the same as grooming.

What primark are very clearly doing is aligning themselves with the aspiration many people have to belong to a community that shares their values. I am not in general a fan of sweatshops appropriating the language of progressive politics, or of the way capitalism tries to co-opt values more generally. And there are plenty of things to criticise primark about.

But I think the idea that primark is grooming our children is an extreme and quite strange reaction to this piece of marketing.

I don't know what you'd call it but the strain of feminism I like is the one that is about choice. If a woman wants to be a mechanic, that's fine. If she wants to spend her day raising kids that's also fine and no less laudable.

I don't really feel any woman should be obliged to any social role because of her sex and that includes any variants one what she should be doing as a feminist. Other than standing up for other women also having that choice. The "anti-nuclear family" strain of feminism was never, imo, about helping the majority of women. It was elitist in that peculiarly left wing way and not representative of what the majority of women wanted at the time.

@Ohalpro you said:

"What primark are very clearly doing is aligning themselves with the aspiration many people have to belong to a community that shares their values."

They are aligning themselves with ILGA:

ILGA Feminist Declaration & Stonewall. Lowering the age of consent to 10?
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4215949-ILGA-Feminist-Declaration-Stonewall-Lowering-the-age-of-consent-to-100_

4w.pub/lesbians-vs-pedophiles/

"Last March, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (known as ILGA in its short form) co-sponsored a declaration which included a demand for the reform of laws which limit the "recognition" of an adolescent’s "agency" to consent to sex.* An "adolescent," by international standards, is a youth of 10-19 years of age.

This declaration, and its stuffed-in mandate, flew relatively under the radar, with very few activists groups or media outlets catching the sneaky addition buried on page 5 among a host of other, more reasonable, demands.
This is not the first time the ILGA has pushed to expand access to minors for sex. In fact, the last time such a thing had happened was in the 1990s, and the ILGA was expelled from its consultative status with a UN body for having ties to NAMBLA – the North American Man-Boy Love Association. NAMBLA is the oldest organized "pedophile rights" group in the world.
In the midst of the gay liberation movement, NAMBLA managed to be accepted by mainstream gay activist organizations...
...until the lesbians fought them off."

They are literally openly funnelling money to people trying to reduce the age of consent.

Are you saying anyone pointing out grooming must be 'heteronormative capitalist patriarchs'?

I guess people like you have to do that to try and hush up people that point out incredibly dodgy behaviour.

Presumably because they think it will make them money? Call me cynical but I believe most big businesses supporting charities don’t genuinely care about the charity. They pick a charity they believe is popular and use it to increase their own profits.

I don’t think primark are doing any work on behalf of the charity E.g vetting/removing children and whatever else you suggested, just giving the money to do whatever it is they do.

statement from ILGA here, regarding those claims about lowering the age of consent
https://ilga.org/statement-responding-false-allegations-about-ilga-world

As I said before, Primark using the term ‘found family’ as part of a marketing campaign is not a form of grooming. What does it achieve to pretend that it is?

For those of us interested in having conversations about being gender critical with our children and with the wider culture, the kind of bad faith arguments employed on this thread are just so unhelpful.

Do you think we have that free choice currently? Personally I think that millions of women’s lives are determined by gender stereotyping and sexist discrimination, much of it insidiously and implicitly reproduced in social ideas about the family/ motherhood/ care.

Except that, as the OP here outlines, it's not that simple.

ILGA Feminist Declaration & Stonewall. Lowering the age of consent to 10? www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4215949-ILGA-Feminist-Declaration-Stonewall-Lowering-the-age-of-consent-to-10

"There's been a bit of a stooshie on twitter today about Stonewall supporting the age of consent being reduced to ten. This sounded a bit unlikely to me, so I looked into it. (Spoiler, yes, indirectly they do).

The story stems from an organisation called ILGA (The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association). ILGA "support LGBTI civil society worldwide through advocacy and research projects, and give grassroots movements a voice within international organisations".

Stonewall are members of ILGA as are many, many UK charities, unions etc. You can see the list of members here: <a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=ilga.org/civi_details" target="blank">http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=ilga.org/civi_detailss (Archive: https://archive.li/pAc0aa_ ). ILGA requires that "All members must support the aims of ILGA." <a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=ilga.org/membership" target="blank">http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=ilga.org/membershipp Last year ILGA, along with the "Women's Rights Caucus" (I have been unable to find who this includes) adopted the "Feminist Declaration".

Story and link to the declaration here: https://ilga.org/CSW64-Womens-Rights-Caucus-feminist-declaration-Beijing255_ (Archive: <a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=archive.li/YzHiQ" target="blank">http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=archive.li/YzHiQQ ).

The International Womens Health Coalition (IWHC) host the document here https://iwhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Beijing-25-Feminist-declaration.pdff_ Archive: <a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=archive.li/TNA7m" target="blank">https://archive.li/TNA7mm (Direct link, will trigger download)

Section 14 of the Declaration begins with:

"Respect the rights of all individuals to exercise autonomy over their lives, including their sexualities, identities and bodies, desires and pleasures free from all types of discrimination, coercion and violence, and fully realize sexual and reproductive rights, and ensure bodily autonomy, integrity and sovereignty, by taking the following actions:"

Section 14a (bolding mine) states:

" Eliminate all laws and policies that punish or criminalize same-sex intimacy, gender affirmation, abortion, HIV transmission non-disclosure and exposure, or that limit the exercise of bodily autonomy, including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents , people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex or sexual and reproductive health services or laws authorizing non-consensual abortion, sterilization, or contraceptive use;"

According to the WHO "WHO defines 'Adolescents' as individuals in the 10-19 years age group"

Obviously there are further issues within this short paragraph alone, and I am sure there are plenty more if anyone fancies wading through the entire document "

Their statement goes nowhere near the Caucus or Declaration - where the problem is found.

It's reminiscent of plausible deniability. How plausible or deniable you find it, is up to you.

What I think is that declaring feminism to against the nuclear family is both inaccurate to the views of millions of feminists, unwanted by women on the whole and as harmful to the cause of actually freeing women from oppression as men in dog masks and assless pants at pride parade is to eliminating homophobia. I.e. it produces a result opposite to that which it claims to want.

When everybody is oppressed, that includes women. The destruction of the family is the fastest route to social breakdown and unrestrained state power. Nobody should be forced into one. That's not remotely the same as saying removing it is an intrinsic part of feminism. For Academics, perhaps. For real people it's absolutely not how most people see female equality which is about choice.

I sense a wild and academic derailment if I engage with this further and I think my view is (already was) quite clear. I believe in individual choice and equality of opportunity. And I find the idea of trying to structure society against the traditional family abhorrent. It's the foundation of a healthy society. What I support is enabling people to opt out of it as their choice. It's not mine nor anybody else's place to try to guide people away from that.

And to bring this full circle to Primark, that's what all this found family messaging is about. If it were a simple message without the surrounding context it would be a positive message. But this is messaging we see aggressively pushed a lot over the past ten or fifteen years. It is clearly anti-family and has frequently been used by the trans movement and groomers to push an idea on children that their family don't understand them and that they can find a better family out there.

I find that statement by the ILGA insufficient. They say they condemn child sexual abuse and exploitation. But then most paedophiles don't consider what they do to be abuse - they claim that the child "wanted it". They say they call for the rights of the child but paedophiles have claimed that a child has the right to make its own choice about sex - I.e. they state the child is capable of informed consent. The ILGA states that any paedophile found in their organization will be expelled but I'm not aware of anybody being expelled for producing a document calling for a lowering of the age of consent down to not even teens.

What they could have done is a simple one line statement that they do not believe the age of consent should be lowered. Or as they're international they could make a statement that they believe the age of consent should be 16, for example. Either of these would be simple and a clear refutation. Instead they wrote three paragraphs that avoids saying entirely that they don't want to lower the age of consent.

The ILGA was originally convened by Ian Dunn - the founder of PIE.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-ian-dunn-1151494.html

yep! would have been so much quicker to say don't have sex with children. Yet they didn't!

As far as destroying the "traditional" family structure - and by traditional I mean the male and female who are objectively the parents of a given child - there is a very good reason to defend it which is there is pretty clear evidence that those are the most likely people to have the best interests of the child at heart.

Once you start intro bringing in unrelated male sexual partners of the mother - and since most women are heterosexual, that's a very likely scenario - the risk of some kind of abuse is much higher.

In any case, I don't want corporations to make moral arguments to me or really to take any other kind of virtue signalling moralistic stance. I want them to tell me about their products.

The thing that is surprising to me is the way that you and other posters think that the suggestion there might be an alternative to the (heteronormative/ patriarchal/ capitalist) family unit is the same as grooming.

Presumably a “found family” could be those things too or is it now only the domain of the LGBTQ?. Most people will assume a found family is a supportive network in serving the purpose of a biological family. A narcissistic parent is often mentioned on MN where the poster has gone non contact found an alternative family.

Also false nails and eyelashes sound like the products of a patriarchal, capitalist society to me.