The truth about John Lewis’s trans takeover

John Lewis is, to most people, a department store that exists to sell toasters, cushions and lamps. But it turns out we have been labouring under a massive misapprehension all these years. John Lewis’s internal magazine Identity reveals that the shop’s purpose is rather different: it exists to affirm the bespoke identities of its staff.

The publication, created by John Lewis’s LGBT network, contains advice to parents on how to allow their child to express their gender identity. Identity includes testimony from the mum of a trans-identifying girl in a story titled ‘Raising Trans and Non-Binary Children’. She writes that ‘a (chest) binder is always safer than the alternatives. Among the magazine’s other delights is a gender wordsearch – sample clue: ‘Calling someone, often a trans person, by a name or gender identity they no longer use’; answer: deadnaming. A reminder: this is John Lewis, where your mum gets her curtains.

One is reminded of some of the more outré episodes of Are You Being Served?, but at least young Mr Grace’s bizarre executive brainwaves on that sitcom, such as pushing particular lines of imported stock – Mrs Slocombe in lederhosen, Captain Peacock with an Afro in a kaftan – had a kind of commercial logic to them.