#ItStartsWithYourName, but where does it end Starbucks?

The new advertisement by Starbucks India speaks about Arpit becoming Arpita. It says just one letter has been added to your name (Arpit to Arpita). And the # at the end of the ad is, #ItStartsWithYourName.

 

 

 

The advertisement has obviously evoked sharp reactions from various people on social media. But it must be analyzed beyond the initial reactions of anger or appreciation. Starbucks India’s ad is a result of an incident that occurred in Starbucks UK. There, one of the employees refused to address a customer with a pronoun because that employee did not agree with the pronoun and the customer's biology. This has nothing to do with India or the Indian society.

 

 

 

Starbucks is trying to address their target audience which reads and knows about all this stuff that happens in the UK and the US. They are aware of these happenings in Western countries on a regular basis because they either want to go there or have relatives there. And the type of people who have their ‘preferred pronouns’ in their social media bio. This kind of virtue signaling is what international companies with Western-focused markets have to do in order to not get canceled internationally. There have been many cases in Western countries where companies were canceled by the online mob with enormous purchasing power and influence because they did not participate in the social circus on such issues.

 

 

 

In the US many companies got canceled because they did not support the #BlackLivesMatter movement in 2020 after the George Floyd murder case. Many in the UK are canceled because they refuse to say that ‘Transwomen’ are women because they refuse to say that transwomen can participate in women’s sports. This is why in order to please their Woke masters with ESG (environmental Social Governance) and DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) standards. They do this to get their target audience who believes in all of this (or at least says so publicly) to be cool among their peers.

 

Also Read: Silence of the Vocal | Wokeism#15 

 

Before we go into the maliciousness of this advertisement, it needs to be said that any transgender person deserves to be treated with respect. There is no and should be no doubt about it. Transgender individuals deserve equal opportunities like men and women. But this ad and their masters do not stop there. It goes into the social justice aspect of it and talks about how it is not enough to have equal opportunities but the transgender (or any marginalized community) should be given preferential treatment and not equal. This is one of the most Transphobic arguments. Because this argument assumes that given equal opportunities, a Transgender person cannot compete with a man or a woman and hence require preferential treatment. This comes under the DEI part of their Woke masters. There they insist on gender diversity and their inclusion not on the basis of merit but because of the biological factors which no one can determine. Remember, this goes completely against MLK’s (Martin Luther King) dream. He wanted to live in a society where an individual will be judged by the content of their character (Merit) and not the color of their skin. Here these Woke masters insist on Judging an individual not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation, etc. This is why this approach towards Transgender or any other marginalized community is Bigoted.

 

Also Read: The dangers of DEI and ESG | Wokeism#17 

 

Considering the fact that the Tatas own 50% of Starbucks business in India, one would have expected them to show some spine and not get in line with the international woke agenda of virtue signaling. But sadly, they have failed to do so and as a result, we are seeing this completely out-of-context, Woke agenda-driven, highly melodramatic ad in India.