Boycott JL and Waitrose? : James Esses' latest Substack on John Lewis LGBTQIA++ 'Identity' mag

[PersephoneSeethes]

I saw it this afternoon on Twitter and read the article with utter horror.

I was hoping it would be uplifting stories about people being accepted and living full lives

John Lewis and Waitrose are seemingly actively promoting and policing
pronoun usage by colleagues, Stasi-style. This seems like it is a court case, a-la-Forstater, waiting to happen.

They have an article about 'raising non-binary and transgender children', not from an information position in case Partners come across such families in their stores, but with a heavy activist slant.

I think I have finally been pushed to the edge with this beloved company. I can no longer shop with them, and I shop at Waitrose every week for our main shop, have done for over a decade.

This is a real gut punch because I believe in what Waitrose does, or used to do: they pay their farmers better, their animal welfare is better, their shops don't have the bright lights and loud noises that set off my migraines and irritate family members autistic temperaments. But as someone who grew up a tomboy, and would have been thrown under the gender bus by Stonewall and all the other organisations if I had been a child today, I can't stand by and accept all this nonsense.

Nursery adviser? 😵‍💫

There's an obvious due diligence issue here with JL platforming some partners with interesting social media. I think we have all seen more of Ruby than any of us actually wanted

The other side to this is the lack of care for some of the more vulnerable partners for who 'bringing your whole self to work' is now all over the Internet

The whole thing is a mess.

What a great post

The response from Waitrose suggests it's all a bit competitive:

'We have an ambition to become the UK's most inclusive employer ...'

In the past I have spent between £50 and £100 at Waitrose on a Saturday. Today I shopped at Aldi and just went to Waitrose to use the toilet. To be fair they are cleaner than the public ones in town. To justify my visit I bought a solitary mushroom and paid with a £10 note.

Are there stickers we can decorate the toilet walls with?

I stopped going to JL when they started welcoming dogs in to piss and snuffle on their goods.

One of my neighbours is a typical middle aged Waitrose checkout woman. I must ask her what she thinks of the magazine. If it was paper rather than digital I expect she's using it to line her cat's litter tray.

I found online ethical butchers a few years ago. They aren't a cheap option but I prefer that they pay farmers fairly. I’ve been using the one that’s online butcher of the year but there are others. Quality is fantastic, better than Waitrose but needs more planning. I’ve been supplementing it with Waitrose but may just get back to being better organised.

Just deleted my John Lewis account and told them why. I'm no prude buy I'm sick of male sexual fetishes being shoved down my throat and I don't need it when I'm thinking about what to buy for dinner and shopping for duvet covers and kitchen equipment for my son in halls.

Please don't let IKEA go woke or broke.

@MrsOvertonsWindow can I use a version of what you say here to write to JLP and tell them where to stick their "inclusivity "? You express exactly what I feel , and so eloquently !

Marilyn Irish on X: "Seen in Waitrose (part of @JohnLewisRetail ) today. t.co/Wrulqzmmop" / X (twitter.com)

I'm having a bit of hard time understanding this entire saga.

Did the exhibition have the same content as I've seen shared online from the magazine? Like the gentleman who is into pup play?

Was the exhibit age-restricted at all? I think I found out about pup play and bondage gear at 17, and I consider that quite young enough. Could people have accidentally taken children into the exhibit, without realising what was inside?

https://twitter.com/The_StateMedia/status/1758775090089759194?s=19

@AIstolemylunch @FourChimneys Unfortunately, Ikea and Aldi - in fact just about all of them - are just as bad. Some of the people high up at John Lewis and Waitrose and responsible for this stuff came from Sainsburys.

It is as if they operate in a sort of bubble seemingly unaware of how this is viewed by the majority of people, partly due to how dissenting voices are treated and the chilling effect this has on others.

Aldi e.g.

https://www.aldipresscentre.co.uk/business-news/aldi-releases-gender-transition-guides-to-support-transgender-colleagues/

I know the magazine is called identity which is a big hint but was there anything in there for regular LGB and not Q?

For is it all the "look at ME" stuff? And mostly T?

Tbf there’s a difference between supporting trans ideology in general and there’s showcasing a perv like Ruby and saying they are just like a woman.

JL is fully down the the latter

Which is fine, I have no problem with any person who is nice, polite, respectful, considerate and professional to colleagues and customers alike.

The company has to comply with the Equality Act and its amendments. But this ‘bring your whole self to work’ notion is completely bonkers. If we are all going to get along more harmoniously, but of course! this queer theory movement don’t want us getting on harmoniously, the penny has just dropped!

Of course. I've learnt so much about all this from wise women on here 🙂

I am finding template letters very useful - it makes the task less daunting. If it's ok with you, I'll be adapting your words and using them in my own letter to JL/Waitrose as well. Thanks.

@MrsOvertonsWindow 🙏👍👍👍

Yes, and ultimately we need to buy food from somewhere as it's not something we can do without.

I couldn't find any mention of trans charities on the Sainsbury's website where they say which charities they donate to. Does anybody know where I can find this out?

Tesco donates (or used to donate) to Mermaids.

I wonder what John Lewis mean when they talk of being inclusive.

Do women (partners and customers) feel included knowing they might have to share changing rooms and toilets with someone like Ruby, and are unable to object.

Do colleagues who are subject to Tristans sharp wit and sarcasm feel included or do they feel belittled or bullied.

Do women feel included or excluded when councillor what's his name tweets 'fuck terfs'.

This inclusion seems to be a bit of a one way street

I don't have any issue with being supportive and non prejudiced but this is well OTT, I suspect someone high up on comes there has totally lost the plot. They need to reassess this

I think the exhibition as a one off isn't actually as bad as having this ideology embedded in an organisation's functions. Although the one thing led to the other, it's easy pickings for twitter to ridicule.

To get "N/A" as an option for "Gender identity" on the personal info (see very early post on this thread) staff had to raise it as an issue and then persist, not knowing how this might threaten their employment.

JL seem to have done a fairly comprehensive damage limitation exercise since this story blew up and appear to have removed all references to all their 'LGBTQ+' etc activities from any websites they can control. I've just done a quick skim through their press release pages and I can't now find anything from any date at all.

This is a summary of what I think was going on. Please let me know if I've got anything wrong.

As part of the (February) 'LGBTQ+' month JL produced the problematic in-house magazine and also invested in an exhibition of 'LGBTQ+' staff portraits using people's full names and identifying places of work as well as personal details. The photos were taken by an award-winning Brighton & Hove-based photographer called Chris Jepson who does a lot of work for 'LGBTQ+' clients. He created 'The Identity Project' which exists to document portraits of 'LGBTQ+' people and the JL project seems to be an off-shoot of this.

James Esses's article about the in-house magazine includes a copy of the magazine in full if you scroll down this page: https://www.jamesesses.com/p/the-trans-takeover-of-john-lewis

From what I can see, none of the exhibition photos are included in the magazine itself.

The event with the portrait photos, including Ruby with whip and Tristan wearing harness, was launched at the John Lewis Oxford Street store in a private viewing on February 9th and was due to run from Feb 10th - Feb 24th during store opening hours . https://www.consortium.lgbt/event/the-identity-project-jlp-edition/
Also, this giving some details of who attended https://www.gscene.com/arts/lgbt-history-month/chris-jepson-launches-new-exhibition-at-john-lewis-on-londons-oxford-street-for-lgbt-history-month/

The exhibition is/was on the 3rd floor of the shop and, from what I have read (including the link from the consortium website), it was open to the public and there were no age limits applied to entry. I can't remember any age-appropriate warnings on any of the info (before it was taken down) on the JL or Chris Jepson websites either.

Yesterday, BoiledBeetle posted on here a link to an X/Twitter post from someone who'd tried to go along only to discover that the exhibition had been curtained off and cordoned off and closed.

The most explicit photos that have been posted here (eg. of Ruby's outside-work interests) seem to have been easily located on publicly accessible websites eg. X/Twitter because John Lewis had used the full name in a photograph suggestive of BDSM as part of their exhibition collection and so, I presume, it was easy to conduct searches.

edited to include, I've just looked up 'pup play'. I hadn't known about that before (am learning all the time) so hadn't realised about the signifier of the t-shirt.

Also to add, I think I remember reading on the JL or photographer's website that there were plans to share some of the portrait photos in stores around the country but this may well have been my memory playing tricks. Does anyone else remember anything about this?

The magazine and the exhibition of portraits are two separate things but both celebrate lgbt history month (not quite sure of the link with history). The pictures from the exhibition were all online on the photographer’s website but he took them down yesterday (I guess at the same time John Lewis shut the exhibition). There were about 15 photos.

There were no age restrictions looking at the ad.