Surfing through my Twitter/X stream this morning over coffee, I couldn’t help but notice #BoycottEtsy as a trending topic.
Etsy is an e-commerce site that allows merchants selling handmade and vintage items to make their wares accessible to millions of potential customers. As I have an interest in history, as do many of my friends, Etsy has been a go-to site for many of us for the items and craft supplies that we need.
It does big business:
As of June 2022, Etsy has had a revenue of $1,164,401 in the last six months. In the same period the year before, Etsy only had revenue of $1,079,546.The slight increase in revenue could be due to Etsy’s increase in its marketplace transaction fee from 5% to 6.5%….There are around 43 different Etsy product categories on the platform. These include knitted ware and cosmetics. Shoppers will notice, however, that the popularity of each category will change depending on the season.Etsy has at least 2.1 million sellers and gets around 40 million buyers.
Now it appears that Etsy may be setting itself up for the Anheuser-Busch treatment by customers. The e-commerce website has been accused by many of banning merchandise having slogans supporting detransitioners.
It all started after a Twitter user with the username @FunkGodArtist shared an email on the platform she allegedly received from Etsy. It warned her from further selling merchandise with slogans including “Believe Detransitioners – First Do No Harm” and “De-Trans Awareness” on it, or else she would be banned.The tweet also mentioned how the company banned the user’s “Funky Human Female” t-shirts last month. The user further accused the e-commerce major of disfavouring free speech, women, and medical trauma survivors” and requested fellow Twitteratti to “share and boost” her post as much as possible.
There is some interesting background to the ban, which is worth considering. Laura Becker is a detransitionher herself, after having the initial spate of sex change surgery at 19. The funds she obtains from her sales help fuel her detransition activism.
A detransitioner who had her breasts removed as a teenager claims doctors went ahead with the surgery even though she told them she felt suicidal that morning.Laura Becker is one of a rapidly growing number of young women and girls who are being given mastectomies – or ‘top surgery’ – after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria.The now-25-year-old, from Wisconsin, was referred for the operation at 19, just seven months after being prescribed hormone-warping drugs to make her more masculine….Becker said the surgery is her ‘biggest regret’. She has begun the process to detransition to her original female gender.She added: ‘Parts of my body that I had never even really gotten a chance to appreciate or understand or respect or use… I’ll never be able to experience that intact female form.’
Becker’s designs hold great meaning for detransitioners.
Laura Becker creates designs that advocate for “Detransitioner Awareness,” and her hand-drawn salamander art is used emblematically for the annual Detransitioner Awareness Day. The salamander is used as a symbol of resilience for detransitioners, and is frequently displayed on social media to find each other and foster a sense of community. Laura’s art promotes a positive message and is the only merchandise supporting detransitioners available.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall my post featuring the work of evolutionary biologist Colin Wright. Wright refuted the entire fiction of non-binary sex in his outstanding Substack column, Debunking Pseudoscience: ‘Multimodal Models of Animal Sex.’ In his article, he separated the relationship of individual characteristics and reminds everyone that sexual reproduction is binary: There are egg-producers, and there are sperm producers.
His Etsy shop was targeted by both PayPan and Etsy for his work against the gender identity insanity.
Not long after my PayPal ban, I received a notification from online retail store Etsy, where I sold various merchandise such as hats, mugs, posters and stickers bearing my website’s logo and a political cartoon I created that became famous when Elon Musk tweeted it to his 90 million (at the time) followers. Etsy said my account had been permanently suspended for violating their policy against selling merchandise that “promotes, supports, or glorifies hatred or violence towards protected groups.”
Here is that tweet, to which many of us I am sure can relate:
At the time of this post’s preparation, I could at least find Becker’s merchandise. However, I could not locate “Reality’s Last Stand” items, which is the name of Wright’s Substack account.
Perhaps the threat of an organized boycott worked in Becker’s favor this time. If Etsy’s corporate team is smart, they will learn from Anheuser-Busch’s experience and not their own.
Anheuser-Busch is laying off hundreds of positions in its company after Bud Light lost its spot as the top-selling U.S. beer for a second consecutive month, a company spokesperson said.The company said less than 2% of its U.S. workforce will be laid off, the Anheuser-Busch spokesperson said in a statement sent to USA TODAY Thursday. According to the company’s website, Anheuser-Busch says it employs “more than 19,000 employees nationwide,” which would mean roughly 380 positions or less being eliminated.
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