Role Models, You Say
And in “inclusive” retailer news:
So says James Bailey, Executive Director of John Lewis & Partners.
Or, as an earlier John Lewis “Inclusion Report” put it, “inclusivity” will result in “a better connection to our customers.” Customers who will learn to “respect difference,” while freeing themselves of “judgement.” The project, it seems, is an educational one, and customers are among those deemed in need of education. And so,
The Identity Project will also “come to life” in “a travelling exhibition on display at various John Lewis locations.” Regarding the project, its creator, photographer Chris Jepson, says,
However, all has not gone entirely to plan:
The chap in question, Marc Geoffrey Albert Whitcombe, now known as Ruby Geoffrey Michael Porcelain Whitcombe, is portrayed in the Identity Project, and presented to customers, thusly:
“My identity is the chance to express my true inner self and be accepted and supported for who I am,” says Ruby. Photographed in a rose-adorned wig and while clutching what appears to be a whip:
In search of further education and deep moral improvement, sceptics unearthed other treats from dear Ruby’s social media presence:
One of the tamer offerings:
Yes, I know. You’re feeling inspired and uplifted.
Presumably, the way to “redress the visual narrative that LGBTQIA+ people look a certain way” is to celebrate the existence of dysmorphic and autogynephile men who are also devotes of bondage and sadomasochism, and who like to share photos of themselves posing with sex toys while flashing their collection of ladies’ knickers to random passers-by.
It also seems that the way to become more authentically “queer” – to express one’s true, inner self and who one really is – is to elaborately accessorise and play dress-up, and to pretend to be something that, by definition, one isn’t.
Other John Lewis employees highlighted in the Identity Project include an in-store nursery advisor and enthusiast of the ‘pup’ and ‘furry’ communities, and who is helpfully pictured wearing a bondage harness. Because that’s the mental image you want when shopping for baby paraphernalia.
This, lest we forget, will “give young queer people role models to look up to.”
Whether female customers, the backbone of John Lewis’ customer base, will be inspired to shop harder and more often by the thought of employees bringing their autogynephilia to work, as Maya Forstater put it, remains to be seen. Ditto bondage fantasies and wearing rubber dog costumes. Perhaps well-off ladies in search of posh frocks and upscale furnishings will be dazzled and enchanted by the thought of sad, cross-dressing men in thigh-high boots who like to share photos of themselves smeared with unspecified white substances.
Also unclear is whether the elevation of employees’ tiresome kinks to the status of unassailable “identities,” and therefore something to be gushingly affirmed, will result in “a better business.” With customers feeling a warm affinity, on account of those “similarities in the identities we share.”
Needless to say, the memes have begun.
Update, via the comments:
Liz notes the unhappy combination of baby products and bondage harnesses, and asks, not unfairly,
Well, quite. I was in John Lewis recently, buying towels, and at no point did I feel a need to know about the cross-dressing bondage activities of the sales staff. Whether the person bagging my towels likes to dress up as a pantomime dame while brandishing instruments of torture was not, it has to be said, foremost in my mind.
The weirdly woke marketing of John Lewis – and the jarring mismatch with the tastes of its customers – has been noted here before, in the update to this.
And the ideological shoehorning currently underway has been explored by James Esses, here.
Update 2:
Following media coverage and widespread customer disaffection, the touring Identity Project has now been withdrawn.
However, rather than acknowledge the incongruity of the project and its dubious conceits, points aired many times by critics, a John Lewis spokesman has claimed, “We have closed the exhibition for the safety and protection of our partners.” Apparently, being mocked on social media by unhappy customers is a safety issue now. One therefore has to wonder whether anything much has been learned by John Lewis executives.
What the hell were they thinking?
Not, I think, an unfair question.
Other John Lewis employees highlighted in the Identity Project include an in-store nursery advisor and enthusiast of the ‘pup’ and ‘furry’ communities, and who is helpfully pictured wearing a bondage harness.
I read that and thought, “By ‘nursery,’ please be related to plants, shrubs, and whatnot.”
Alas, no.”[H]elping parents with all of their queries about starting a family.”
He is living with his partner and raising a Cocker Spaniel. Putting the bondage aside, what the fuck does he know about parenthood?
Why can’t they just, you know, sell groceries? I’m amazed they think this is going to help them achieve sales.
I was in John Lewis recently, buying towels, and at no point did I feel a need to know about the cross-dressing bondage activities of the sales staff. Whether the person bagging my towels likes to dress up as a pantomime dame while brandishing instruments of torture was not, it has to be said, foremost in my mind.
Well there is your problem, John Lewis’ “Identity Project” gomers don’t have clue one what a female actually looks like.
A self-professed gamer into comics, anime, “nerd culture”, and furryism not knowing about parenthood? I am astounded you would think that, must be some kind of compound phobia not yet invented.
and:
I’d be slightly uneasy about buying groceries from kooks with kinks. Do their obsessions include rubbing their genitals on bath towels before store opening, or doing any of the myriad other illegal paraphiliac things likely to appear in the letters to porn magazines?
“Carrion items must be securely stowed.”
Then there’s the conceit that gay people – sorry, “queer” people – might feel unwelcome or downtrodden in John Lewis, home of upscale “fag shopping.” It’s almost funny.
AROOOGA!
AROOOOGA!
Oh-oh.
[ Klaxons, smoke, muffled screaming. ]
Another hapless victim of the Link-O-Matic 9000™. Sad.
Carrion items…
Oh, I’m pretty sure that one was human error. Don’t badmouth the Link-O-Matic 9000™.
[ Stares at pst314. ]
I have a suspicion that a temporal connection between Ruby “accessing mental health support” in 2015 and “her” subsequent epiphany should not perhaps be entirely dismissed.
[ hastily fixes link ]
What problem?
[ Room falls silent, everyone stares at pst314. ]
No, only my own clumsy, early-morning, coffee-deprived typing.
I do like a confession while I’m pondering lunch.
See? Human error. It’s always human error.
I personally prefer this klaxon. Seems somehow appropriate for so many occasions.
I am ready to report to Castle Anthrax for appropriate punishment.
I’m pretty sure that one was human error. Don’t badmouth the Link-O-Matic 9000™.
Right, I can see the Link-O-Matic 9000™ salesman now down at “Honest Johnson’s New And Used HTML” lot.
“Sure kick the tires and take this little honey for a spin, none of that nasty actually having to think about let alone look at the link while you type! This is truly a miracle of these modern days in which we live in! Why, there is no chance, nosiree, no chance at all of human error with this sweet baby!”
Emphasis on queer. This compulsion to publicly public display private behavior is a very “queer” thing. Only a few of the gay men and heterosexual couples I’ve known were like that, and it was always awkward and unpleasant seeing hard core porn and fetish wear, especially since so many insisted that tolerance meant refusing to dislike such behavior much less comment upon it. I do wonder what all those fools are saying today.
What sort of alternative do you envision for an interface? The Link-O-Matic merely requires you to paste the link into the text box. In contrast, Instapundit’s Link-Not-So-Matic synthesizes the HTML and requires you to replace the “#” with your link, which is trickier. And many blogs require you to write the HTML from scratch.
Perhaps there are department stores in which discernibly non-heterosexual people are chased by mobs armed with pitchforks, but John Fucking Lewis ain’t one of them.
Several years ago Publix started this annoying policy of having the cashier engage in personal conversation with the customer at checkout. “What are you doing this weekend?” , “How’s your day going so far?”, yesterday it was a very mumbled “What are you having for dinner tonight?” (the assistant manager was bagging the groceries). You can tell the new teenage employees by how uncomfortable they are forcing it, just as how the girl yesterday mumbled it. The older employees, unless particularly annoying themselves, do not do this as much. Just imagine combining that policy with this one! Ooh, what fun!
Surely that’s what hairdressers are for?
Well exactly. Or barbers. Or bartenders. I can go either way with polite personal social interaction. If I’m in the mood to talk or new in the area or whatever, I enjoy it. But most of the time, checking out at a store, I’m deep into a thought or idea or something totally unrelated to “my day” and it annoys the p*** out of me to be dragged into some idle chit-chat just for pretend BS. I get so tempted to say, “None of your damn business”. Initially I would say that we’re in the Witness Protection Program and we’re not supposed to talk about it, but that joke got a little tired the second time I used it. I feel real bad for the teenagers because being mostly introverted at that age I used to loathe being forced into unnatural conversations. Hell, even talking to girls that I didn’t know was like venturing into a mine field.
I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a normal teenager and knowing that people like this freak are in your schools and businesses and you are going to be judged by adults in authority for how you interact with them. There is something very, very wrong with a society that tolerates this, let alone promotes it…amongst children no less.
*snort* That.
Appropriate reply: “It’s going to be great! We have two virgins this time for the ritual deflowering, and six goats to sacrifice to Baal. Which reminds me, I have to buy more incense and scented oils and then clean the altar.”
I was once cruised in John Lewis. Which still makes me chuckle.
I’m just going to leave that there, before exuding an air of mystery and erotic intrigue.
As I have mentioned before, I think this tiresome crap arises because people no longer view their job/business as exciting or morally worthwhile so they latch onto something “meaningful” like boasting that they buy carbon credits or put rainbow stuff up in the children’s dept. One might ask why in no case does a company put up something praising parents or patriotism (like they actually used to do—see old Sears catalogs). Oh and boundaries? What are those?
People are bizarre and often creepy. I really don’t want to know about the clerk’s private life, no matter what it is. Spanks his wife? No thanks. Goes on nudist vacations? no thanks. Don’t want to know. Civilization is built on the separation between public and private lives.
Public displays: heteros can get in on the act too. When my kids were little we visited an inlaw, young couple. They had nicely framed nude portraits of themselves on the walls. Most awkward visit ever. And talk about narcissism!
This.
I laughed and I’m not sorry.
Cashiers chatting me up: being asked my plans for the weekend is rather startling when I am actually going to be doing plumbing and washing floors–makes me feel rather unpopular. And uncomfortable. The cashier is not my “friend”. Sorry
Indeed. While I can number on the fingers of a maimed hand the number of gay males who have displayed inappropriate things or who have gotten hands-y with me, I have encountered many women who dressed extremely inappropriately or who liked to play cock-teaser games with random men. And then there was the twenty-something man and woman who liked to wear bondage fetish items to parties…
I wonder how their picture framers felt.
And many blogs require you to write the HTML from scratch.
AKA, the Good Old Days™ here…
Publix started this annoying policy of having the cashier engage in personal conversation with the customer at checkout.
Must have been a Florida thing, never happened in the Publix in the civilized states, but then we don’t get near the infiltrators. Was probably due to upper midwesterners wanting to babble.
Hey, speak for yourself, sunshine. I remember the hours I had to spend un-up-buggering all the HMTL screw-ups of this blog’s otherwise glorious patrons.
And, occasionally, my own. But alas, we don’t have time for any details on that front.
[ Cuts to commercial break. ]
Possibly related to the growing corporate fetish for “sharing” in the workplace. My employer started going in that direction around 2015, and I am very glad to be out of there.
The need to remember correct HTML syntax was a continual frustration. It’s unreasonable to expect commenters to be familiar with HTML (except in the eyes of IT industry snobs.)
Quite. Hence the Link-O-Matic 9000™, pictured below, and which – for everyone except Mr Muldoon here – makes life that tiny bit easier.
Because I care so much, you see.
Anyone remember this poor sod’s treatment for bringing his whole self to work?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-comet-dr-matt-taylor-apology-sexist-shirt
If only he’d claimed to actually fetishize women, rather than only enjoying the aesthetic on occasion. He’d have been doubly-celebrated.
I remember the hours I had to spend un-up-buggering all the HMTL …
“Hours”, sheesh, the occasional forays into odd HTML spills merely added to the charm and mystery. – and got you out of whatever household drudgery you otherwise would have been doing. We are helpful that way.
It’s unreasonable to expect commenters to be familiar with HTML…
Bold, italic, and a link. The first two (or four if you throw in underline and strike through) are identical except for b, i, u, or s. We’re not talking command line Linux here.
We have an ambition to become the UK’s most inclusive employer, because celebrating diversity will make us a better business.
I wonder when they will start to celebrate the diversity of their, say, evangelical Christian employees. There must be some, if they have a workforce of over 80,000. Reminds me of what Thomas Sowell used to say to academic types who boasted about the “diversity” of their institutions: “How many Republicans do you have in your Sociology Department?”
Just saw Thomas Sowell on C-SPAN in a rerun of Milton Friedman’s 1980 Free To Choose series. After 50 years of dealing with idiots and liars, I’m impressed that Sowell has not yet hauled off and punched anyone.
It’s the internet, I keep saying.
Never before has there been such a machine that
a. makes it easy to identify weaponizeable people and convert them to your “cause”
b. simplifies organizing the idiots who used to be isolated in their own villages
c. can amplify and multiply your own message while silencing and minimizing the enemy’s
d. provides direct access to your enemy’s impressionable and rebellious children
e. encourages and rewards bad or questionable behavior
All while being anonymous.
It’s the printing press, it’s newspapers, it’s the dimestore novels, it’s the radio, it’s the alcohol, it’s the movies, it’s the TV, it’s the guns, it’s the gangster rap, it’s the crazy rock and roll, it’s the drug culture. No. It’s the thing Dostoyevsky said.
Regarding the workplace and employees’ “whole selves,” I’ll just leave this here.
from the link:
If this is a Democracy then I vote to send a military expedition to Mytilene.
Ah, the heady days of Typepad.
[ Eye twitches. ]
Here, have a little something to calm your nerves.
This is about the Henchlesbians, isn’t it?
Dude, get serious.
“John Lewis?” [smokes cigarette] “oh, yeah, the makers of the ad that said, “I’m fabulous, so fuck you and your possessions!”
Regarding the woke leanings of John Lewis, see also this by James Esses.
Not sure how it works across the pond but judging from that commercial I’m guessing similar…I have been trying to explain to people here, the dumb, dumb conservatives especially, that the big players in the insurance industry have little incentive or care to shut down frivolous claims and frivolous lawsuits because they have cut deals with the lawyers and other companies to just charge the consumer more. The more claims filed, wth. That’s just more billable hours. Just jack up next year’s premium. Most people have a mortgage thus they have to have insurance. It’s required to operate a car, a business, sell a product, every damned thing. So the dumb schmucks go to another company. They jerk the details around such that what you think you’re paying for isn’t really what you’re paying for. It gets lost in the fine print until you file a claim. The lawyers get their friends in government to jack up the reserve requirements or enforce some other excessive regulation such that only the biggest insurers will survive. The long game works for the big boys. And the schmucks pay and pay. It’s a form of shadow government with its own tax structure.
This looks intriguingly useful.
These… er, beverages… are outside of my experience.
It’s time to embrace new experiences. Or something.
I shudder to think of what the 2024 John Lewis & Partners Christmas advertisement will look like.
Thunderbird…
Ahh, memories. My first project after school was a Mil-Spec (boo! Hiss!) thing code named Thunderbird. I was given a bottle like the one pictured, and displayed it prominently at my bench. Until Upper Management said that the insurers (boo! Hiss!) would frown, and I was required to remove it posthaste.
As I recall, I dumped it into a gutter, while making witty remarks about Silicon Valley Superfund sites.
Sorry to say, the torturer’s on half-day. Do the best you can with a kitchen knife.
What? Zoot, Midget, Piglet, and Dingo? And yet it is my duty to face my peril.
Best place for them.
Excerpt:
Remember Office Space and “flair”?
Any of you folks have this magic coffee table?
I’m sure you’ll be shocked SHOCKED to find out that this proposed bill is in California.
There’s the problem right there. You should have stood back, pointed, and laughed at the posters who up-buggered their links instead.
The only thing shocking about it is that it hasn’t been made part of their constitution.
In other stupidity, the Chief Social Purpose Officer (whatever the hell that is) of the London School of the Arts has thoughts. Utterly asinine ones, but thoughts nonetheless.
PLEASE may I edit that headline?
As it is, it sounds like the passengers fell from the overhead compartment.
How about making it criminal to utter true statements about fossil fuels? https://nationalpost.com/opinion/adam-pankratz-the-ndps-loathsome-pitch-to-criminalize-climate-dissent
Of course, it has long been known that the best indicator of a convincing argument is that you jail anyone who disagrees.
Sure, but I’m sure as hell not stupid enough to tell the wife about it. Suspicious as she is, she’ll think it’s another woman. I just let her believe it’s me taking care of those things. Much easier that way.
“…while clutching what appears to be a whip:“
It’s definitely a whip. Maybe I should wander into John Lewis this lunchtime, and ask exactly which section I should look for one – home and garden, or accessories?
[ Post updated. ]
I wish they’d stop ‘helping’.
Heh. Absolutely.
But as we’ve seen many times, those claiming to be educators and role models – to be acting selflessly, “for the kids” – are very often the kinds of activist monomaniacs and psychological misfits one would not wish to emulate or be associated with. Likewise, those invoking authenticity and the unleashing of their true selves tend to have true selves that require props and elaborate fancy dress, and which are affected, unconvincing and bizarrely cartoonish.
For instance,
And,
But it seems that being gay automatically means that you must feel some deep affinity with the self-absorbed and the psychologically marginal.
How far we’ve come.
Update on the situation: https://twitter.com/JamesEsses/status/1759519570014974098
Also on X.com: https://twitter.com/Jonnywsbell/status/1759705321595978016
Late-night twXXer is producing absolute stinkers.
[ Post updated again. ]
Morning, Di.
[ Slurps coffee. ]
“When they go low, we must go high.”
Disdaining your own customers doesn’t strike me as a winning strategy.
All it does is remind me I don’t have a lot in common with a mentalist tranny or Tristan the bondage queen.
Hoping it also works to keep your community clean and tidy: Knock a “progressive” unconscious, set them on the table, and in the morning they’re gone.
Heh. But… but…
Do you not feel all that kinship and affinity…? Or an urge to be inclusive…?
All those “similarities” you apparently share?
I don’t have a lot in common with comic book and model train enthusiasts, but I don’t start hating them until they insist on talking about their obsessions at length and every day. Normal people learn that lesson, but lunatics and “activists” don’t.
Only by asking the bosun to take his cat out of the bag and give them
twentythirty lashes to show them what it’s really for.The whole thing is just bizarrely misconceived. The tone of the project is almost that of an ice-breaker, a friendly conversation starter. But I’m not convinced that customers want to start a conversation about the sexual kinks of store employees while standing at the checkout, or while enquiring after the whereabouts of a particular kind of houmous. “So, I hear you like squeezing into rubber dog costumes and being dragged around on a leash…”
I mean, the metaphorical ice is there for a reason – the relationship is one of employee and customer. It’s not drinks at Madame Tara’s House Of Spanking.
Ah, the male version of – it’s not about the nail.
Band name.
“See discount code in video description.”
It seems the “I think people should get votes from birth” dimwit there is missing a trick. Why wait? Shouldn’t ALL future generations be able to vote now to save their heritage? All we need to do is to calculate the likely number of descendants each citizen is going to produce over the course of Britain’s future existence, and allocate everyone their number of current votes on that basis.
Simples.
Votes for children, 1984: Think Footloose or any TV ad. Suburban dad’s vote not only cancelled out by that of his eye-rolling wife, but submerged by the votes of his 2.4 sassy children.
Votes for children, 2024: Ethnic block votes, a dozen per household, hundreds per cousin-marriage extended family.
Kommissar.
Sooner or later, “progressives” will demand the vote for all the relatives still living in Pakistan.
Same lack of radical thinking as with this other leftie fucktard.
Look – if you just legislate for everyone to be paid $1,000,000 an hour – WE WILL ALL BE MILLIONAIRES.
Simples!
I have known college-educated people who made that argument: If we raise the minimum wage to, say $50 per hour, the result will not be that far fewer people can afford to eat at McDonald’s. Rather, everyone will will enjoy a higher salary and thus have more spending money and thus will eat at McDonald’s at least as often as before. Nothing I said could persuade them that they might be mistaken.
Yes, they want to “affirm” their employees, except the ones who coach little league, help their kids with homework, or go to church. Not those employees, ewwww.
$50/yr min wage. I have tried to convince people that certain jobs do not create much value for the employer and thus they either must pay a low wage or automate it. Jobs like bagging groceries or cashier. People accept that low wage because either nothing else is available or they have no skills. Some people simply say “well, they should pay more”. I’ve pointed out that raising the min wage makes such jobs off-limits mainly to the youngest and poorest job seekers. It is all simple really but if you have a magical view of reality…well.