Last week it was Etsy, this week it’s Costa Coffee. Yep, TERFs are at it again, boycotting stores and businesses because those places decided to [checks notes] respect that trans people exist.
So what happened? Costa, the popular UK-based coffee shop, so happens to have included a design of a post-op trans man on a mural on one of its vans. That was it! That was all it took for the TERFs of British Twitter to have a complete and utter meltdown. For example, here we have Laurence Fox, darling of the far-right and all-round bad actor (in both senses) weighing in:
But enough about him. The tweet that really caught my eye was this one from a Dr Heather Leask, declaring that she would be boycotting Costa by drinking coffee at Marks & Spencer’s cafes instead.
Except! TERFs are also supposed to be boycotting Marks & Spencer! They’re trans-inclusive too, remember? I guess being transphobic affects one’s memory. Especially that of Leask. PinkNews pointed out, less than a year ago she too joined in the M&S boycott after tweeting that her friend once saw “an obviously male-bodied person parading around outside the cubicles in a women’s bikini.” Said tweet seems to have been deleted now.
Costa’s response to the boycott
Costa stuck by their guns when it came to this bizarre boycott. A spokesperson for the company said on Aug 1, “At Costa Coffee, we celebrate the diversity of our customers, team members and partners. 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. The mural, in its entirety, showcases and celebrates inclusivity.”
It’s also worth pointing out that TERF Twitter boycotts never seem to affect the targeted company much at all, certainly not as much as Laurence Fox and his ilk seem to think. The DIY company Wickes faced a boycott a few months ago after the CEO of the company quite rightly called them bigots, and yet it’s still doing fine.
What can TERFs even do for fun now?
If there’s one thing I’ve picked up from my years on Twitter, it’s that being a TERF makes a person’s life utterly miserable. Let me see if I’ve got this right: They can’t buy from Etsy, have a coffee at Costa, do both those things at Marks and Spencer, or purchase DIY equipment at Wickes. Going back a bit further—they can’t have a relaxing bath with Body Shop products. They can’t buy clothes at Primark. They can’t drink Bud Light. They can’t have Flora in their sandwiches. They can’t watch Doctor Who. They can’t build LEGO sets. Before long, they won’t have anything left to do at all.
(featured image: Pexels)
