‘Transphobic’ Christmas card pulled from Sainsbury’s

[IwantToRetire]

The card was deemed offensive for featuring a cartoon of Dr Seuss’s Grinch character alongside the caption: “This Christmas, I’m identifying as a Grinch.”

The phrase “identifying as” in this context has been described by trans campaigners as an anti-trans dog whistle for suggesting that a person can choose their gender to be anything.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/17/transphobic-christmas-card-pulled-from-sainsburys/ and https://archive.is/J2fLR

Actually I think this was completely unnecessary. Retailers don't need to get involved in culture wars even in jest, just like they shouldn't promote gender ideology and been called out for doing so. So the reaction is justified. Carry on making sales at the busiest time of year not war of words.

My next T shirt - I identify as a young person.

I am well advanced in years but inside I feel exactly the same as I did in my twenties. And it's feels that count.

Didn't Ricky Gervaise do a lengthy bit about it in one of his Netflix a few years back? Identify as an Apache Helicopter or something.

It was a shit joke then and it's a shit joke now (IMO), amazed that someone thought it'd be a good idea to stick it on a supermarket Christmas card, and actually went through with it!

I suppose the Daily Rupert understandably misses the point that appropriating Christian messaging for political purposes during the Christian season isn't exactly in the Christmas spirit.

My welfare needs form from the HA asks if I identify as having a disability. This is really, really common now. I've complained, but last year's was the same.

I've also had questionnaires asking which ethnicity I identify as/with. Can't remember the details.

I fucking hate this identity shit, but it's in everything now. Sainsbury's should have defended the card!

I don't get the joke or the reaction to it.
Isn't that the grinch on the card?
Surely the grinch can identify as the grinch? It's not pretence..

I think it's the activists identifying as Grinches tbh.

Sophie Mollie really has too much time on his hands.

I have no idea why Sainsbury's have pulled it.

Oh it's him again.

Has he reported back how his M&S bra fitting went yet?

Maybe he hasn't had time, what with roaming the streets of Aberdeen looking for something to be offended by.

🤣🤣🤣

Reading between the lines it looks as though it's the card designers and publisher that have been bullied into pulping the remaining stock.

Sainsbury's have said
A spokesman for Sainsbury’s said: “At Sainsbury’s, we’re committed to being an inclusive retailer where people love to work and shop. We offer a wide selection of <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/J2fLR/www.telegraph.co.uk/christmas-cards/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Christmas cards and our ranges vary each year, so there’s something for everyone.

So maybe there's time to get in there and buy the remainder up.

There is a legitimate use of ‘identify’ around disability isn’t there? (afaik the genderists appropriated the term). Some people don’t ’identify as being disabled’ - they have a particular condition but they explicitly don’t want it to define their identity iyswim. and/or (somewhat different thing) they may or may not ‘identify as disabled’. But forms relating to benefits should be about objective facts, not how someone feels about it. And obviously no one should be able to ‘identify’ as something they factually aren’t .

Oh lord, talk about closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Do they actually thinking complaining to a supermarket will change the fact that “identify as” has become a mainstream joke? And it was activists’ overreach that made that happen, not “transphobia.”

Decades ago it wasn’t uncommon to make an off hand comment about ‘identifying as’ being rich or something. This was well before being transgender was known outside a very small group.

This seems to me to be more language that has now been acquired for use by a group of people who had a strategy to use commonly used terms to describe themselves so that they could pressure society to accept their demands.

This really is another example of Operation: Let them speak.

There are signs suggesting that Gen Alpha see the ‘indentify as’ phenomenon as something that has been and gone. I don’t think they have enough interest to ridicule it, there is just no interest.

It’ll be interesting to see where the TRAs go with that. Their outrage at disinterest will not be noted/ responded to because of disinterest. There is no ‘polarised views’ or ‘both sides’.

And ‘educate yourself’.

If only it was just time on his hands.

In the entire history of greeting cards, I wonder how many have been withdrawn because women objected?

Loads and loads of cards rely on terrible hackneyed jokes, though - many of them weren't even funny in the first place. They've been making cards for the last 20 years or more with a huge picture of Delboy on them, saying "Have a triffic/cushdie birthday!!!" - and presumably people must be buying them.

There are also a lot of cards on display in shops that routinely use (or hint at) swear words and sexist themes - not to mention the fact that probably 75% of all 'humorous' cards rely on offensive ageist tropes, inviting you to laugh at the 'hilarious' idea that your friend who is 43 is akin to an elderly person, and thus naturally hopeless, past it and no use for anything anymore. I once even saw an inflatable zimmer frame in a card and tacky gift shop, so that middle-aged people can have a good old chuckle at the expense of disabled and elderly folk, by reducing their many everyday challenges in life to a cheap joke.

What they urgently need to do to redress this is to immediately repeal the law that makes it mandatory for people to buy any cards that they find objectionable in some way, instead of simply ignoring them and leaving them on the shop rack.

thanks for giving me a mental image that I'd rather not have!

When you hold dearly to something so ridiculous, it's remarkably arrogant to bitterly criticise other people for wanting to share a small slice of the Ridiculous Pie, because you naturally assume that it all belongs to you.

Sorry!

Brilliant card

if, as SM claims being trans isn’t a choice, then wtf do they use the word ‘identify’ in the first place? It’s genderists who’ve degraded the meaning of the word to ‘pretend to be something you objectively aren’t’, rather than more like ‘this is an aspect of myself which is important to my sense of self’.