As a liberated daughter of the ‘Free to Be… You and Me’ 1970s, I was weaned on delusions of grandeur. My reach exceeded my grasp to an extent I will characterize as ‘outlandish,’ but it did keep me on a path of seriousness and purpose long enough to earn a degree in political science from a university you’ve heard of, even if mainly for its football program.
After graduation, while not becoming the US Ambassador to France, I was at least supporting myself in a city far from home. The details aren’t important, but at one point in my twenties, I managed to command a window office with not just a door but a sofa, plus a whole other person to answer my phone!
By the time I was married and pregnant with our first son, I had traded the downtown sofa for a more meaningful calling: director of annual giving at a large nonprofit. This was not an advocacy organization but a provider of actual human services to thousands of people who needed them. It was the kind of place where baby showers are hosted in the lunchroom and no one complains about it later. After a leisurely maternity leave, they let me come back to work part time and even provided good-quality child care. When we relocated and had another baby, that ideal semi-work life proved unreplicable. Thanks to my husband’s ability and willingness to put the team on his back, I was now Free to Be… I think the term is ‘a Trad Wife’. This was a privilege conferred by my low earning potential measured against the preposterous price of childcare.
The commonness of this work trajectory must help to explain the phenomenon of Etsy, the global online marketplace for everything handmade or vintage; and not just those categories, as it turns out. To the extent that I’ve earned money since having kids —and I have, some —Etsy has played a key role.
By the time I became obsessed with understanding gender ideology, I was already making leather handbags in my ‘studio’, a.k.a. the spare bedroom, to sell on Etsy. This was an ideal set-up for consuming podcasts, recorded articles and audiobooks while working. Importantly, I could pause at a moment’s notice when some crisis at school demanded my attention on the phone or in person, as they did with increasing frequency since our daughter began presenting as ‘trans.’ During these years of peak productivity layered with a peak need for distraction, I made and sold hundreds of bags, shipping them to customers as far flung as Sydney and Dubai, as well as every U.S. state but one (I’m looking at you, Delaware).
I was also doing some interior decorating work, and even those projects often involved Etsy. In this kitchen, the table was custom made by an Etsy artisan in Turkey; the vintage photo printed by an Etsy seller in Australia; and I used Etsy-sourced leathers to upholster the banquette and make the pillow. Not shown: a neon sign from an Etsy shop in Tel Aviv, and cabinet hardware from yet another in China.
It’s not the career I envisioned as a wide-eyed seven year old or a still-ambitious 27-year-old; but the personal benefits of doing productive, creative work during an extended period of stress, alienation, anger and fear, have been significant. Etsy was the partner that brought it all together, until our relationship took an infuriating nosedive.
As Colin Wright and Laura Becker discovered before I did, corporate capture by gender ideology needlessly and mindlessly poisoned the well at Etsy. Colin is an evolutionary biologist and former academic who now makes his living as a writer. For subscribers to his Substack, Reality’s Last Stand, he designed some merch to sell on Etsy. He wrote about what later transpired in an article for Quillette which I’ll borrow from here:
“Earlier this month, I received an email from Etsy… informing me that the company had ‘elected to revoke [my] account privileges permanently’ for violating Etsy’s policy against selling merchandise that ‘promotes, supports, or glorifies hatred or violence towards protected groups.’ Etsy says the decision was made with ‘great consideration,’ following a ‘comprehensive review’ of my account.
“I’ll let readers decide for themselves whether the images I printed on my merchandise, reproduced below, fit that description. I am not presenting a biased sample. This is a comprehensive inventory of the imagery used on my Etsy-sold products.
“You’ll notice that none of these graphics contains even a glancing reference to gender, let alone transgender issues in particular. The word ‘reality’ appears three times, though—and apparently that’s now a forbidden theme (at least in the context of references to males and females). But I really have no idea what the thought process was here because not only did I get no substantive explanation of my ban, I got no warning either.
“My case isn’t an isolated one. At one point last year, Etsy purged any listing associated with Dr. Seuss, following a social panic centered on the view that the famed children’s author and artist was racist. And in 2020, Etsy officials asserted that the slogan ‘I 💜 J.K. Rowling’ promotes hatred, even while allowing the sale of products that read ‘Fuck J.K. Rowling’; and that instruct ideologically non-compliant ‘TERFs’ (a term of abuse that stands for Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists) to ‘shut the fuck up.’ Indeed, there’s a whole product sub-category dedicated to merchandise marked ‘Fuck TERFs.’ Amazingly, none of these explicit expressions of hatred has (to my knowledge) been judged as being offside Etsy’s rule against promoting hatred.
“As indicated above, Etsy doesn’t let users promote ‘violence.’ And yet Etsy is home to a thriving cottage industry of crafters whose products celebrate the infliction of various sadistic punishments upon ‘TERFs.’ One Etsy listing featured a Furby pointing a gun outward alongside the slogan ‘Shut the fuck up TERF.’ Another listing promotes the idea that TERFs are like insects (a popular theme of antisemitic Nazi propaganda in regard to the Jews, by the way) who must be ‘tazed.’ Other products feature the theme of TERFs being ‘choke[d]’ or attacked with knives. Again: All of this stuff is sold openly on the same site that deems ‘I 💜 J.K. Rowling’ and ‘Reality’s Last Stand’ to be hate speech worthy of a lifetime site ban.
Laura Becker is an artist and a detransitioner whose Etsy shop, ‘Funk God’ suffered a similar cancellation, which she recounts on her Substack, funkypsyche:
“Etsy abruptly removed several feminist and de-transition items from my online store. Designs on shirts, mugs, and pins with the slogans ‘Funky Human Female,’ ‘100% Groovy, 100% Woman’ and ‘Believe De-transitioners: First Do No Harm’ were banned by the e-commerce platform with no explanation other than a vague autogenerated notice about diversity and inclusion by the ‘Trust and Safety’ department.
“This was not the first time women’s items had been censored by the woke company, but this was the first time a detransitioner was shut down.”
When I heard about Laura’s case, I logged onto Etsy and searched for items associated with detransition and ‘detrans awareness.’ The search returned items that were specifically derogatory to detransitioners — a whole category of cheap junk made for the express purpose of shocking or insulting almost everyone outside this miserable vortex of disregulation. I curated a sample:
The earrings symbolize synthetic estradiol pills, while the t-shirt’s garish barbed wire marks the spot just below where amputated breasts once lived: just so everyone is clear.
I’m not showing you the offerings I found the most sickening, but I will describe them: Etsy sells stickers, patches, t-shirts — you name it — from multiple sellers, inscribed with this message:
Death Before Detransition.
Sit with that for a minute. I won’t patronize you by spelling out why I can’t do business with these assholes anymore.
I’ve changed the brand name of my bags, made new labels and secured my own website, diabloleather.com, but it won’t be live any time soon. This post isn’t intended as a marketing tool, and I don’t want to sound melodramatic about having to shop elsewhere for quirky home furnishings. It’s just another snapshot to underscore the ubiquity and the stupid, mean senselessness of ideological ‘trans’ capture.
As Laura Becker might say, it’s funking everywhere.
*In case you’re wondering, My Etsy shop will remain open until all my bags labeled AlchemyLeatherGoods.etsy.com are sold. If there’s one you like, send me a convo and I’ll make it yours.
That picture of you staying still while the political spectrum moves around you! Wow! That really summed up exactly how I feel! Thanks for that
Wow! Thanks so much for this illuminating article!