A fashion designer was ordered to leave a Hobbycraft shop after she questioned a badge reading ‘no TERFs, no Tories‘ worn by a staff member.
Rebekah Chapman, 33, was paying for pencils and ribbons at the Dundee branch of the arts retail chain on Sunday when she spotted the slogan on the cashier’s lapel and asked her what it meant.
The employee’s ‘demeanour changed’ immediately and she became ‘unpleasant’ as she explained the acronym stood for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist and began suspecting the customer might fit this description, Ms Chapman claimed.
The designer, who describes herself as ‘gender critical’, then asked to speak to the manager as a long queue of shoppers waiting in front of the tills grew larger.
But she was shocked when, instead of smoothing the situation over, he backed up his employee and told Ms Chapman and her partner to ‘read a biology textbook’.
The pair were then ordered to leave and, despite the promise of an internal investigation, the designer claims they have still not received an apology for what she describes as ‘a public dressing down’.
She told the Daily Mail: ‘I noticed her badge and being someone who is gender critical and highly aware of how we are hounded and often publicly shamed, I felt compelled to speak up.’
Ms Chapman added that things should have changed since the Maya Forstater versus the Centre for Global Development case in 2023 saw Ms Forstater awarded more than £100,000 after being ‘discriminated’ against for her gender critical beliefs.
Fashion designer Rebekah Chapman was ordered to leave a Hobbycraft shop after questioning badges reading ‘no terfs, no Tories’ worn by staff members
‘After that case, there’s a legal precedent set that people who hold gender critical beliefs don’t have to face that kind of stigma anymore,’ she said.
‘That badge, to me, said that she would exclude gender critical people if she could identify who they were.
‘As soon as I confronted her and she began to suspect I might be one of these people, her demeanour changed. She became really quite unpleasant, and locked eyes on me, kind of gritting her teeth and wasn’t taking on board what I was saying.’
The designer claimed that when the manager arrived on the shop floor, he did not listen to a word they said.
‘He just immediately put his hands up and said, “you need to go and read a biology textbook”,’ she added. ‘And then he told us we could write a letter of complaint and we could leave.
‘They are entitled to their beliefs and I respect they can feel the way they do and I can feel the way I do, but you can’t be discriminating against people.
‘It is helping create stigma against people who have the perfectly reasonable, lawful, mainstream belief that the reality of biological sex matters and is a fact.
‘But the manager wasn’t interested in a word we had to say and was really quite animated. Again, he told us to leave the store and we complied at that point, not wanting to escalate the situation further.
Ms Chapman pictured with her Hate Monster, in opposition to SNP ministers’ controversial Hate Crime and Public Order Act
‘It was incredibly uncomfortable, really quite stressful, and not what I anticipated when I went out.’
Ms Chapman said that the experience was particularly concerning given that crafting is popular among women, the group ‘worst affected’ by the kind of ideology extolled by the staff at that branch of Hobbycraft.
She added: ‘It’s really upsetting. I don’t understand why the representative of a public facing business would wear a badge like that as part of their uniform if it wasn’t to broadcast a message that persons who hold gender critical beliefs are unwelcome.
‘And when the manager came over, he appeared to be really relishing the opportunity to give us a dressing down publicly.
‘We weren’t interested in having an argument about who was right or wrong. We just wanted discrimination to not be condoned, but he really seemed to want to get into this conversation and tell my partner and I how wrong we are.
‘It was really unpleasant. We felt a little bit ambushed and definitely intimidated.’
Meanwhile, a crowd of customers at the popular crafts chain, which has more than 100 stores across the UK, watched on in silence, according to Ms Chapman.
But she has no hard feelings towards these bystanders, given the way staff treated her and her partner.
She was paying for pencils and ribbons at the Dundee branch of the arts retail chain on Sunday when she spotted the slogan on the cashier’s lapel and asked her what it meant
Ms Chapman added: ‘If there was another person in that shop who held the same views as me, I would argue they would have felt very unable to intervene. They would have felt really quite intimidated and pressured to conceal themselves having seen how my partner and I were treated.’
As an outspoken proponent of her views, the designer is not unused to such a reaction, but has never been confronted in a public store before.
‘When I speak openly about my views on the internet, I get a lot of abuse,’ she said. ‘They’re always appearance-based insults. They make fun of the colour of my teeth and my breasts.
‘There’s a lot of misogynistic abuse you get. You come to anticipate it.
‘There is a culture of cruelty and disdain towards gender critical people in Scotland, and great progress has been made by the women who have stood up for themselves, and because they’ve stood up for themselves, that’s empowered me to do so.’
Ms Chapman claimed that Hobbycraft only said they were sorry to ‘hear’ about the experience and had not yet issued a satisfactory apology.
‘I’m hoping that they treat it with the gravity that it deserves,’ she added.
An investigation is ongoing, and the designer said that she while she does not want anyone to lose their job, she would like evidence that Hobbycraft will not ‘tolerate’ the kind of behaviour on show that day in Dundee.
She said things should have changed since Maya Forstater, pictured, was awarded more than £100,000 from the Centre for Global Development after being ‘discriminated’ against for her gender critical beliefs
She said: ‘If it’s a case that one store has gone rogue and become a bit of a faction, I would really hope they will take steps across the entirety of their business.
‘We’ve all got a responsibility to treat members of the public with respect. And so if there’s a particular problem at this Hobbycraft store in Dundee, there needs to be kind of some targeted interventions.
‘The manager absolutely endorsed the wearing of this badge. He had no problem with his member of staff wearing it, and he very much had a problem with my partner and I for having confronted it.
‘Tone and culture and workplace practices are set from the top down. I’m led to believe that that is absolutely policy at that store.’
Has the experience put her off spending money at Hobbycraft in future?
‘There is absolutely no chance I’m going back to face similar treatment. I expect if I was to try to go back into the store, they would reject me on site. I am not going to put myself through that.
‘I will shop online. Even the Falkirk store, closer to me, I’ll avoid that too. I’ll avoid all of them.
‘I don’t want to give money to a business that permits what happened.’
Ms Forstater, CEO of sex-based rights charity Sex Matters said: ‘Even if they aren’t aware of the law, staff and managers should have the common sense to understand that a badge saying “no terfs, no Tories” would discriminate against customers of those beliefs and political views.
‘Over the past decade, many companies have adopted policies based on prejudice and hostility towards ordinary people with ordinary beliefs about the two sexes.
‘They have allowed radical transactivist training groups and staff networks to preach intolerance as corporate policy, and failed to understand the law which protects everyone. This could be the case at Hobbycraft.
‘Managers would surely recognise that a staff member wearing a badge that says that people of a particular race or religion are not welcome in the store as a cut and dry case of discrimination.
‘It is a relief that Hobbycraft says these staff members’ actions do not reflect company values or policies. The real test will come for Hobbycraft in their investigation into the incident and response to its findings.’
A Hobbycraft spokesperson said: ‘We are aware of the incident and are taking the matter seriously. We’re sorry that the customer was asked to leave the store, have apologised and launched an immediate internal investigation.
‘We will remain in contact with the customer throughout this process.’
