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Burberry’s LGBT ad campaign featuring woman with mastectomy scars from suspected cosmetic surgery called out for normalizing self-mutilation

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The British luxury brand Burberry no longer just sells fashion ephemera and apparel. Critics claim it now stands to normalize self-mutilation.

Burberry ran an ad on social media captioned “B:Mine” depicting a tattooed woman with surgical scars where her breasts once were in the embrace of another woman with a shaved head.

While women with breast cancer must frequently undergo traumatizing mastectomies in order to save their lives, women afflicted with body dysphoria are now, more and more, electing to have their breasts removed in order to pass as men.

Critics presume that the woman depicted in the ad, wearing a Burberry ring, belongs to the latter camp.

The image of the scarred woman is apparently part of a broader Burberry ad campaign depicting LGBT couples expressing affection.

Judging from the comments on Instagram, the ad was not well received.

One comment with 2,330 likes said, “Time to unfollow.”

Another, with 1,258 likes, said, “Hate this.”

One commentator wrote, “Damn. Now I can’t buy Burberry either. Stop pushing your ideology and just sell clothes.”

Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth Cancer Center, wrote, “Come on @Burberry, let’s not normalize mastectomies as though there aren’t millions of women (and men) living with the trauma of needing one to save their lives from cancer.”

Concerned Women for America tweeted, “Burberry’s new ad campaign has nothing to do with selling clothes but selling an ideology to young women that they were born in the wrong body and the only way to feel better is to become a boy. Stop glorifying and normalizing self-mutilation.”

A recent study in JAMA Pediatrics indicated that there has been a 389% increase in gender-mutilating operations.

TheBlaze previously reported on the study, which showed in 2016, approximately 100 adolescents had their chests mutilated. Only a few years later, there had been 489 of these mutilating surgeries performed in a single year, representing an increase of nearly 400%.

There were an estimated 1,130 so-called chest reconstructive surgeries performed on children from 2016 to 2019. That number continues to grow, as does the number of youths diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Reuters reported that there were 15,172 patients in the U.S. diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2017. That number spiked to 42,167 in 2021. Hundreds of these kids are reportedly having their breasts cleaved from their bodies.

While allegedly normalizing surgical efforts to cosmetically make women look more like men, Burberry has previously stated that it endeavors to be “the best place to work for all women in the luxury industry.”

This not the company’s only foray into LGBT activism. It has previously funneled money into transsexual activist groups like the ILGA and the Trevor Project.

Another global fashion brand appeared to normalize deviancy in November, running an advertising campaign that featured young children with teddy bear handbags wearing bondage outfits.

TheBlaze previously reported that the company was excoriated over its apparent efforts to sexualize children.

The company said in a subsequent apology, “We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused. Our plush bear bag should have been featured with children in this campaign.”

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Republican bill in North Dakota would ban LGBT activists’ reality-denying pronouns in state-funded organizations, including schools

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Republican state Senator David Clemens has taken a stand against the systemic embrace and imposition of LGBT speech conventions in North Dakota, enraging activists.

Clemens, a Vietnam War veteran and father of four, introduced Senate Bill 2199 on Jan. 10 with fellow Republican Sens. Shawn Vedaa and Kent Weston, as well as Reps. Karen Anderson, Austen Schauer, and Bill Tveit.

The bill would require “any entity receiving state funding, including a public school, an institution under the control of the state board of higher education, and a state agency or office,” to use the pronouns referencing a given person’s biological sex.

Accordingly, words referring to “an individual, person, employer, employee, contestant, participant, member, student, or juvenile must be used in the context of that person’s sex as determined at birth.”

If there is some confusion about a person’s so-called “gender identity,” determination will be made on the basis of the individual’s DNA.

This reality-affirming requirement would apply to the communications, policies, procedures, training, and records of state-funded institutions.

The penalty for using reality-denying pronouns in such documentation or policies is $1,500.

Clemens provided some clarity around the bill, stating, “Say they’re a boy, but they come to school and say they’re a girl. As far as that school is concerned in this bill, that person is still a boy. If it becomes contested, the burden will be on the girl, the so-called girl, or the boy, to prove that he is a girl.”

The senator stressed that the bill would not “outlaw an individual’s personal expression, but it does outlaw the use of public funds to promote or support anything that is contrary to a person’s biological sex at birth,” to preclude state-funded organizations from “promoting transgenderism.”

Republican Rep. Brandon Prichard intimated that this amounted to a defense of children’s innocence, reported the Bismarck Tribune.

“There is a broader assault on children’s innocence in this country, and if somebody — if I don’t step up to it, I’m worried that no one else will,” said Prichard.

KFYR reported that the bill did not pass the Republican-led state Senate Judiciary Committee, but since the committee lacks veto power, it will nevertheless advance to the Senate floor.

Activists keen on continuing to foist ideologically loaded neologisms on others are beside themselves.

Transsexual activist Katrina Koesterman of Tristate Transgender said the bill “the general atmosphere of hostility and hatred towards the transgender community.”

Christina Sambor of the so-called ND Human Rights Coalition told KFYR, “Respectfully, I see no way this law would pass any sort of legal challenge based on basic legal construction principles. It’s vague, fails to advance any legitimate state interests, and not only would cause impermissible, gender-based discrimination, its very purpose is gender-based discrimination.”

Some have taken to launching personal attacks, suggesting that Clemens looks like Captain Kangaroo, the titular character of a children’s show that reportedly aired on CBS from 1955 to 1984.

The Bismarck Tribune noted that if this legislation fails, as many anticipate it will, there is hope yet with Republican Sen. Larry Luick’s Senate Bill 2231.

Luick’s bill — introduced at the request of the executive director of the state’s Catholic Conference — would prohibit a government entity from requiring an employee to “use an individual’s preferred pronoun when addressing or mentioning the individual in work-related communications.”

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Catholic diocese lays down the law in Iowa: No made-up pronouns, no boys in girls’ sports, students to use bathrooms corresponding with their real sex

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The Catholic Diocese of Des Moines has taken a significant stand against woke ideology and LGBT activism. As of Monday, the southwestern Iowa diocese — headed by 60-year-old Bishop William M. Joensen — will be enforcing new rules in 17 schools, four Catholic hospitals, and 80 parishes, thereby buttressing old common sense and enraging radical leftists.

New rules

The diocese’s “Gender Identity Guide and Policies” document sets out seven policies, all binding for diocesan parishes, schools, organizations, and other institutions of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Des Moines. They do not apply, however, to passersby, occasional vendors, and others who “may be on church-related premises who are not acting in an official capacity.”

The rules are as follows:

  • All documentation that requires the designation of a person’s sex must reflect the person’s real biological sex. So-called “preferred pronoun[s]” are not permitted, since the embrace of made-up pronouns, “while intended as an act of charity, instead promotes the disassociation of biological sex and ‘gender’ and thereby confuses or denies personal integrity.”
  • All persons must use the bathroom or locker room that matches their biological sex. However, buildings are permitted to have individual-use bathrooms.
  • “All persons are to ordinarily present themselves in a manner consistent with their God-given dignity.” This rule primarily pertains to uniform dress, whereby girls are to wear girls’ uniforms and boys are to wear boys’ uniforms in schools.
  • With the exception of co-ed sports, males are to play in male sports and females are to play in female sports. There is to be no crossover.
  • Single-sex schools, buildings, and other programs or institutions (e.g., women’s shelters) are restricted to members of the designated sex.
  • Kids aren’t allowed to take “puberty blockers” on parish or school property, and “medications for the purpose of gender reassignment” cannot be distributed or stored on site.
  • Counsel given to vulnerable persons afflicted with gender dysphoria will be in “accord with the directives and teachings of the Church.”

The Diocese of Des Moines made clear that those who disagree with these practices can leave: “We acknowledge their freedom of conscience to withdraw or absent themselves from situations they find objectionable. Concomitantly, they must likewise respect the Church’s mission to witness to truths accessible to reason and faith if they are to fully participate in our faith communities, including our Catholic schools.”

The diocese told KCCI that these policies are “part of a lengthy process … to address questions that have come forth by leaders in [their] parishes and schools.”

Old wisdom

While the rules stand in the face of LGBT conventions and social constructivist illogic, the diocese’s policy document makes clear that it “fervently hopes that all persons experiencing gender dysphoria know what the Catholic Church tirelessly affirms, that they are unconditionally loved by Jesus Christ and by the Church, and that they are vital members of the Body of Christ who have a home in the family of God.”

The church may love them unconditionally, but it evidently can do without their made-up pronouns and leftist customs.

The new guidelines underscore how “any response that merely ratifies and reinforces the perceived disconnect between biological sex and gender-affiliation is not genuine compassion.”

Instead of mutilating or conferring puberty blockers to children afflicted with gender dysphoria, parents are instructed to “genuinely assist the child by acknowledging the suffering involved and to accompany him or her along the path to personal healing, self-acceptance, integration, and peace.”

“Integration” entails understanding that the “human person is a body-soul union, and the body—as created male or female—is an essential aspect of the human person. There is a complex reality tied to the sex of a person involving the physical (i.e., in the gonads and other evident characteristics), psychological, and social constituents. A healthy person is one in whom these dimensions are integrated.”

The diocese and the Catholic Church reject LGBT activists’ proposed alternative to integration.

“The Catholic Church teaches that the disruption of normal sexual development, or more dramatically, the removal or destruction of healthy sexual and reproductive organs, is a type of ‘mutilation’ that is medically and morally harmful,” the document states. “Procedures, surgeries, and therapies designed to assist a person in ‘transitioning’ his or her gender are morally prohibited.”

The document references Scripture as justification for this and other claims, but also Pope Francis’ indication that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated.”

Faddish outrage

Democratic state Senator Claire Celsi expressed her outrage that the Catholic Church in Iowa would stand by its values.

Celsi tweeted, “Diocese of Des Moines codifies ostracism of transgender kids. These schools want public dollars and want to treat kids in a way that might cause them to commit suicide. This is not what Jesus would do.”

The Democrat state senator suggested that the purpose of the new policies was to “implicitly exclude LGBTQ students and staff.”

Celsi has a track record of ridiculing the church and suggesting that Catholics whose politics she finds disagreeable are un-Christian.

Celsi recently suggested that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities puts his faith in doubt. She also lambasted a Catholic school for asking a teacher to remove an LGBT activist flag from a classroom.

The Daily Mail reported that the leftist Interfaith Alliance of Iowa slammed the diocese’s policies as “dangerous,” claiming they advanced “bigotry” towards transsexuals in the state.

Keenan Crow, director of policy and advocacy for the LGBT activist group One Iowa, suggested that the diocese’s policies sound “like conversion therapy,” despite the rules preventing children from undergoing transsexual conversion therapy on diocesan property.

Courtney Reyes, also an activist at One Iowa, said, “You cannot pretend to be compassionate while mis-gendering people and denying them access to any and all spaces under your control.”

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