Dear Lush (cc Chelmsford City Council),
As a woman who had half a breast removed last year due to cancer, I am writing to raise my concerns about your “Proud of My Stripes” window display.
I am also, on behalf of other women who have experienced breast cancer, respectfully requesting its removal.
Because mastectomies are not a fashion statement, an identity marker or something to be celebrated.
They are something women undergo because they are ill, because they are frightened, because they are trying to stay alive.
Around 59,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK every year. Many will undergo surgery - a mastectomy, lumpectomy or other procedure.
Others choose preventive mastectomies because they carry a high-risk BRCA gene mutation.
If a woman chooses to have her breasts removed to affirm a gender identity, that is her personal choice.
I honestly don’t know the number of women who have elective mastectomies for this reason.
What I do know is that it is a tiny number compared with those for whom breast surgery is medically necessary and not something to be celebrated.
I think I speak for many women who have experienced breast cancer - and for their families - when I say this:
Breast removal surgery is not something I regard as cute, playful or empowering.
Nor is it something I believe retailers should be celebrating.
For that reason, I am requesting that the display be removed and that @ChelmsCouncil apologise for promoting it on social media.
Yours sincerely,
Janet Murray
'Israelis sniped a 4 year old child, and then wait for the grief striken parents to come, and murder them too. They are demonic.' - Ex Green Beret, Captain Joseph Cortina.
Nem uma única bola rolou no gramado até agora e este é o quadro da COPA 2026:
• As equipes do Senegal e do Uzbequistão foram tratadas na chegada como criminosos, com buscas completas em seus orifícios.
• O melhor árbitro da África foi enviado de volta à Somália, apesar de seu passaporte diplomático.
• O Fotógrafo da equipe do Iraque foi impedido de entrar mesmo com visto válido.
• Foi negada a entrada nos EUA de 90% dos fãs marroquinos com ingressos já adquiridos.
• Foram recusados vistos a 14 membros da equipe de apoio do Irã.
• Foi negada a entrada no país do principal atacante da Suíça, o camaronês Breel Embolo. A equipe viajou sem ele. Após a forte repercussão, o visto foi enfim concedido.
• A equipe iraniana, cujos jogos serão todos nos EUA, foi proibida de pernoitar no país. Imediatamente a após cada partida, os atletas voarão de volta ao México, onde se hospedam.
- Qual é o sentido de sediar a Copa do Mundo se não pretendem que o MUNDO faça parte dela???
It was bad enough when Stonewall were misrepresenting the law to anyone who'd listen. But so many MPs, organisations CEOs etc are still doing it!
For those at the back
1.The Law HASN'T changed
2.The guidance changes NOTHING
3. NO ONE has lost rights
You weren't following the law!
@podsavetheuk "Statutory codes play a supporting role to the law. They do not interfere with what the law actually says... [Rejecting the Code means] The law remains exactly the same. There is simply no new code to help people understand it." https://t.co/08Sc6nC79J
@podsavetheuk When will you get it into your thick heads that women can correctly tell the sex humans in milliseconds regardless of their clothes or make up.
@podsavetheuk "Statutory codes play a supporting role to the law. They do not interfere with what the law actually says... [Rejecting the Code means] The law remains exactly the same. There is simply no new code to help people understand it." https://t.co/08Sc6nC79J
When transactivists tell us grown men are being traumatised by being told to use the male toilet,
tell them about the little school girls in Scotland made to use what amounts to period huts because councils thought girl-only toilets might hurt boys' feelings.
This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.
The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.
And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.
Record-breaking temperatures.
A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.
The response?
Yank out the instruments and walk away.
That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.
For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.
The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.
That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv
The UK is spending £369m refurbishing Buckingham Palace for King Charles, who has £22bn and gets £500m more a year.
He can pay for his own renovations, £369m is more than England spends on building Social Housing in an entire year for the whole country.
The U.S. getting its first trillionaire while 771,480 are homeless, 48 million are food insecure, and 68,000 die each year because they can’t afford healthcare, will go down as one of our country’s greatest moral failures.
Charity Commission inquiry now. @stonewalluk spreads legal and medical disinformation, harasses the chair of the EHRC, goes after lesbian barristers and suppresses public debate. Charities are supposed to act to the public benefit. Stonewall does the opposite.
I've now seen a couple of the responses-to-constituents from MPs who signed the EDM opposing the EHRC Code. Suggest early signatories at least have been briefed with some familiar talking points and errors of fact:
-Strong focus on only one group with a Protected Characteristic (I'll leave you to guess which).
-Invoking costs as a barrier (would they do this for anything else?)
-Misrepresentation of the Relevant Equality Impact assessment with the idea of trans people being denied any service. (Rather ignores the fact that the Code itself deals with this issue and that the EIA is actually v positive about the clarifications the revised Code brings.)
-Invoking the spectre of people being challenged for not confirming to gender stereotypes.
-Vaguely specified concerns about lack of clarity and legal risk.
-Confusion between the Code and the law it represents (thus denying service providers a tool for improving clarity).
-Lack of understanding of what an EDM actually can achieve.
-A sudden desire for discussion about the conflicts between the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act. There is a court judgement that might help with this...
The brass neck of these politicians, union leaders and activists who have spent the last week or 3 deliberately misrepresenting the EHRC guidance only to turn around and demand that it’s disapproved on the basis that it’s “confusing” to people. Unbelievably shameless.