Mick Hartley

On the side of a Costa van – celebrating the delights of a double mastectomy. The latest corporate horror show:

Joan Smith at UnHerd:

Cutting off a girl’s healthy breasts is an act of mutilation. Putting a cartoon version of the scars on the side of a van, to advertise a coffee chain, is a new low even for a movement that long ago lost touch with reality. Post-operative pain, rigid scarring, a profound sense of loss: none of these feature in the image of a “trans man” approved by Costa Coffee, which appears to treat the visible effects of surgery as a desirable fashion accessory.

The coffee chain is evidently keener to be seen as a “trans ally” than to think about customers who are post-operative women. Around 15,000 female patients have a mastectomy in this country each year, after being diagnosed with breast cancer. They do it to save their own lives, not in pursuit of realising their “gender identity”. Imagine their feelings on seeing their experience trivialised in this way, as though an operation most women dread is something to be thrilled about.

Challenged over the image on the side of a Costa Express van, however, the company displayed the sensitivity of a robot. “We want everyone that interacts with us to experience the inclusive environment that we create, to encourage people to feel welcomed, free and unashamedly proud to be themselves,” a spokesman intoned. “The mural, in its entirety, showcases and celebrates inclusivity.”

It’s been clear for a while that “inclusivity”, when used in this way, actually excludes large numbers of people. Not just breast cancer survivors — they’re mostly women, so obviously they don’t count — but all of us who are horrified by an ideology that promotes lies to vulnerable young people. Human beings cannot change sex and a girl who agrees to a double mastectomy is still a girl, albeit one who faces a lifetime of negative consequences….

But the furious reaction to the cartoon, which has included a call to boycott Costa, suggests that the public is waking up to the damage done by gender ideology. No one is “born in the wrong body”, and promoting the idea that we can opt out of it has disastrous consequences, including needless surgery. Nothing could be more damning of gender extremism than the way it has duped hard-headed commercial companies into using scarred bodies as an advertising tool.

Next up: an image of an anorexic and skeletal young girl, to further demonstrate Costa's commitment to “inclusivity”. And if that's too gross, then why isn't this?