Oh yes, many people beat up on Target for this bit of nonsense. Ourselves included. They deserved it, and they couldn't deny it was happening. But they tried to insist at the time that it didn't affect their business.
That seemed implausible at the time, and now even they aren't trying to pretend any longer. You simply can't announce a policy that is guaranteed to upset at least half your customer base, and then expect to suffer no conquences for it. So when Target brashly announced last summer that it would allow everyone to use the bathroom corrersponding to their "identity" (whatever that means), they were kidding themselves in thinking this would go well for them.
CEO Bryan Cornell now belatedly admits, it did not go fine
At Target’s Minneapolis headquarters, executives scrambled to control the damage, according to the people familiar with the aftermath, perplexed that they were pilloried for a policy common to retailers. Sales started to decline and have now in every quarter since.
After an internal review, executives determined the negative publicity was the tipping point for some stores, especially in the South, that were already not inviting or competitive enough to give shoppers a reason to come back. Target has now embarked on a multibillion-dollar revamp.
Mr. Cornell, 58 years old, expressed frustration about how the bathroom policy was publicized, and told colleagues he wouldn’t have approved the decision to flaunt it, these people said. Target didn’t adequately assess the risk, and the ensuing backlash was self-inflicted, he told staff. Now, it was too late to reverse course.
“You can’t take it back,” said one of these people, adding that Mr. Cornell “felt very stuck.”
Many gay-advocacy groups defended Target and dismissed arguments that gender-inclusive policies enable criminals. Some started campaigns urging supporters to shop there. Transgender people “have been going to the bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity for decades,” said Jay Wu, a media-relations manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality, “and it’s never been an issue.”
Mr. Cornell declined to be interviewed for this article. “We strive to make our guests and team members feel accepted, respected and welcomed,” Target spokeswoman Dustee Jenkins said. “We know our guests have many different points of view on this topic and we respect that.”
Ttransgenderism, Katie Couric's insistences to the contrary, is actually a psychological disorder
Target thought it had a defense of itself with its claim that other major retailers employ the exact same policy, but simply weren't as open about it as Target was. That misses the point entirely. It's one thing to make a decision you're not going to police who uses which restroom, wrongheaded though such a policy may be. It's quite another to come out with a boldly worded announcement that you're going to let men who think they're women use the ladies' room, and that anyone who doesn't like it is essentially a bigot.
Transgenderism is still relatively new phenomenon on America's cultural landscape, and despite the left's insistence that there are no legitimate concerns about it whatsoever, common sense tells people otherwise. There is some solid scholarship on the matter that suggests "transgenderism," Katie Couric's insistences to the contrary, is actually a psychological disorder. If I'm supposed to put aside every concern about a dude with a psychological disorder walking into the ladies' room when my wife is in there . . . you know what? I don't think I'm going to do that.
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I won't be shopping at Target any time soon
But here's the real story behind Target's miscalculation on this question. Despite their claims to the contrary, most corporations don't really have "corporate values." Their corporate values are profits, and if they do anything on the matter of social issues, they're doing it to try to minimize trouble for themselves and their business. The cause of transgenderism burned very hot and very quickly over the course of the past 18 months, and Target perceived that the most dangerous faction was the pro-LGBT crowd. They were loud. They were aggressive. They were willing to shame people for not agreeing with them. And they had the sympathy of the news media.
When a corporation makes a set of observations like that, it's going to conclude that its public relations interests are best served by pandering to such a group. They don't want any trouble, and the LGBT crowd seems to be the one most likely and able to give it trouble. The internal policy decision, as well as the blog post supporting it, were essentially a strategy designed to tell the LGBT crowd it could call off the dogs because Target had fully and completely capitulated to its demands.
That's why Cornell said he felt stuck. Having staked out that position, it would bring down even more fire and brimstone from the LGBT crowd if it backed off. But what Target didn't anticipate was how strongly people of conservative and Christian values would react. In its blog post, it essentially told these people that their concerns didn't matter and that they were lacking in virtue if they hung on to them. Target claims now to respect all points of view on the issue, but that's only because it realized belatedly that it would pay a price for disrespecting those of the conservative/Christian point of view.
This is good news in the sense that it shows Christians aren't just going to sit back and take this kind of garbage. But understand: Target doesn't care one way or the other about our values, or the values of the other side. They're simply calculating which group they're better off pandering to, and they realize they guessed wrong and paid a heavy price for it.
I won't be shopping at Target any time soon. I wouldn't really call it a "boycott" per se. I just don't feel like entering an establishment whose leaders I don't respect. And most of what they sell is crap anyway.
