Will Etsy Be the Next Company to Get the Bud Light Treatment?
#BoycottEtsy trended on Twitter when it was revealed the e-commerce site was banning merchandise with slogans by detransitioner.
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.
Boost 🚨
Etsy has f-cked with me for the last time. After banning my ‘Funky Human Female’ shirts last month, I’ve now received notice that my ‘De-Trans Awareness’ and ‘Believe De-Transitioners—First Do No Harm’ shirts are removed.
This is my Final Warning before my store will… pic.twitter.com/wu8Z8rIm9r
— Laura Becker🦎| Funk God (@FunkGodArtist) July 26, 2023
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:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022
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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Comments
Not very inclusive of Etsy to ban this person. Where is the diversity of their product line of this is the only vendor?
diversity, equity and inclusion is a one way street
Etsy is a lot smaller and more fragile than AB Inbev. They might want to reconsider this before another website puts them out of business.
Sure but what other website?
What demographic supports Etsy?
Has that demographic boycotted anything else?
Kind of like asking what demographic supports Pier 1 or Alibaba. It’s not someplace you go to do your daily shopping, but when you need something they’re likely to sell, they’re probably the only place you will find it.
Etsy is my goto for personalized animal identification items (dog collars, bridle wraps) — permanent embroidered names and phone numbers, for our little escape artists.
My guess is women between 35 and 60, with several cats. But what do I know?
Etsy alternatives….simple Google away.
https://www.cloudways.com/blog/etsy-alternatives/
I am foursquare behind punishing businesses that discriminate based on politics.
“Republicans buy sneakers too.” – Michael Jordan
Erronius
Leslie, you’re missing three zeros. Etsy Q4 2021 income was $717 million, and all 2021 income was about $2.33 billion. Their current market cap is about $12.3 billion.
I was about to joke about them selling etsy betsy teenie weenie yellow polkadot bikinis but thought better of it and decided not to.
Um, LI, you do realize that those numbers are in thousands? I suggest actually looking at their Ks and Qs. Their 1Q23 10-Q showed revenue of $640,877,000 v $579,266,000 in 1Q22, a 10.6% increase. Of course, operating expenses were up 14.1%, so operating income and operating cash flow declined in Q1. Looks like this happened because they had to raise the pay of their employees, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.
In any case, is there some reason why you’d base your post on data from 2H22 rather than look at more recent financials? I might suggest that, if you’re going to complain (however justified the complaint is) about a company’s policies, and then cite financial information, that you start with their SEC filings rather than use old data from something called “startupbonzai.”
I used to be a working professional analyst before I retired. We used Ks and Qs, and went from there. You should too. Word to the wise, and not-so-wise: Get the latest facts before you do anything else.
Oops, I wrote that you used data from 2H22. Nope, it looks like you used data from 1H22 over 1H21. Incidentally, Etsy is scheduled to report its 2Q23 results on Wednesday. If you’re really that interested in their financials, you can update them in two days, and construct 1H23 numbers and compare them with 1H22.
Somehow I doubt you’re capable or interested in really looking at their numbers. LI, you’ve been very good on the legal front, and you might want to consider staying in your lane or finding someone with experience in business and financial analysis. Otherwise, people who know anything might laugh, and then come here to scold you as if you were a group of eager yet errant children.
In any case, I know what I’m talking about. The little financial commentary I’ve seen in posts and comments here ranges from amateur to ridiculous. I’ve described how it’s really done, in case anyone cares.
In a different thread, someone declared that Disney is “losing money hand over fist,” and actually tried to argue with me when I pointed out that, for all of their many screwups, the company made about $3.5 billion last year and posted operating cash flow in a similar amount.
Those are facts, and I’m a facts kinda guy. Ignore facts, and your career as a financial analyst will be blessedly and brutally short. In my career as an analyst, I analyzed public companies and their industries all across the spectrum with the exception of oil, media, and automobile makers. I learned some uncomfortable lessons along the way — just try analyzing and insurance company — and wound up avoiding some industries, retailers being one.
So I truly have no opinion about Etsy’s financials, and Disney’s are too complicated to tackle for purposes of a comment section argument. Still, if you’re even going to stick a toe into those waters, you either go to the Ks and Qs or don’t bother to start.
Etsy has no business censoring the one shirt, and Disney is a fustercluck in so many ways. On those points, I’d agree on steroids, but still: They who dive into the numbers had better look closely at the financial reports before yammering about the finances. There’s actual skill involved, and I have yet to see it on this website. Oh well. LOL