Starbucks India launched a transgender acceptance ad campaign last week. It was met with considerable anger by customers in the Hindu-majority nation, who resented the coffee company for attempting to infuse American “woke” politics into Indian culture.
Baffled customers who were unfamiliar with totalitarian “wokeness” wondered why a coffee company was lecturing them on sexuality.
“At Starbucks, we love and accept you for who you are. Because being yourself means everything to us,” the political/coffee ad declared.
The ad campaign, launched under the hashtag #ItStartsWithYourName, shows an Indian couple accepting their male-to-female transgender child by saying the child had merely added a letter to the name, changing it from “Arpit” to “Arpita.” This seems like a massive underselling of what transsexualism actually entails, but Starbucks makes a big deal about names because its baristas write them on customers’ cups.
Your name defines who you are – whether it's Arpit or Arpita. At Starbucks, we love and accept you for who you are. Because being yourself means everything to us. #ItStartsWithYourName. 💚 pic.twitter.com/DKNGhKZ1Hg
— Starbucks India (@StarbucksIndia) May 10, 2023
Starbucks occasionally writes things besides the names of its customers on cups. The company touched off an enormous backlash in March 2015 by urging its baristas to write racial politics slogans on cups and hold impromptu consciousness-raising sessions with customers who objected to having their mocha lattes politicized. The disastrous campaign was abandoned within a matter of weeks.
India’s WION News reported the campaign “faced severe backlash on Twitter” and gave some examples, including customers who said the company has lost their business forever:
“Fail to understand the need for a multinational to get into sensitive topics in a country of hypersensitive people. Huge dent in the brand!!”, wrote a user. Starbucks be like “We are WOKEs! So let’s all be WOKEs together!!”, another user said.
“Tata is big time woke. They own Starbucks, Tanishq (remember that ad?). They fund The Wire, Harvard, Cornell, etc. But are smart enough to sell their products with nationalism (desh ka namak, desh ke truck, army themed ads). Funds all political parties good as well,” wrote a social media user.
“Seriously, we will deal with our issues when they come up; the last thing I need is preaching by a Western MNC [multi-national corporation]. You take care of serving coffee,” commented another user.
Tata Consumer Products, referred to by one of the tweets above, is Starbucks’ partner in India. The partnership now operates 341 stores in India.
WION quoted some supportive responses as well, including the predictable charges that anyone who dislikes the transgender ad must be a narrow-minded bigot.
“The campaign has been launched at a time when the issue of legalising same-sex marriage is being debated in the Supreme Court and the decision over the matter is yet to come,” WION noted.
Newsweek found some “right-leaning social media users” who compared Starbucks India’s ad to the Bud Light transgender beer debacle, including calls for an organized boycott of Starbucks like the one that crushed Annheuser-Busch sales in the United States.
Several of the Indian critics quoted in Newsweek complained that Starbucks would never dare to run such a campaign in a Muslim-majority country.
“You will bring such adverts to India but you wouldn’t dare talk like this in the Middle East would you? Am going to show this to my colleagues and friends and then let’s see how they treat Starbucks UAE,” one said, referring to the United Arab Emirates.
“No, Starbucks India, it does NOT start with the name,” said another. “If it did, you would have showed an ad where Asif becomes Asifa or John turning into a Jane. But you don’t have the guts to do that, because your ad guys want their heads attacked to their necks! So you give gyan only to Hindus!” fumed another. Gyan is a religious lecture.
As Newsweek pointed out, transgenderism was legally recognized as a third gender by an Indian court in 2014.
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