No, John Lewis, I don’t care how your staff identify, I just want to buy a toaster

Remember “Take your daughters to work day”? Many moons ago, I brought one of my daughters into the office. She was full of nothing but disappointment. An office is an office is an office. She was particularly disappointed because her friend’s mother was a vet. That was a proper job. Why couldn’t I be a vet?

Now it still goes on and it’s called, of course, “Take your sons and daughters to work day” because we live in a fantasy world where sexual equality has been achieved, although it is glaringly obvious that, in terms of pay and position, it hasn’t. Still, I suppose the point was to give kids a glimpse of what the world was like and what might be expected of them. The world of work is not the world of home. Different rules apply.

The pandemic may have muddied some of them but actually the culture was already moving in this direction anyway.

Work has become precarious and insecure for many, yet also a place where certain groups/ companies feel they must trumpet their values of inclusivity. Some of this is corporate groupthink and some coming from a desire from individuals to express themselves endlessly because of a vague notion this adds to the greater good. They must “be themselves”, a dull kind of nightmare. They must bring their whole selves to work… to which I go: “Unwanted item in the bagging area.”

Much fun has been had at the expense of John Lewis, which has issued its 70,000 staff members with the Identity magazine produced by the LGBTQIA+ network. The magazine has advice on preferred pronouns and gives the dates for all the days you need to note, from International Transgender Day of Visibility to International Asexuality Day; from Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day to People for Whom the Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak Day. Look, I am as keen as anyone else to celebrate Asexuality Day and I can’t imagine anything better than browsing energy-efficient appliances at John Lewis to do it.

But that homely place where reluctant girls got their first bra measured by middle-aged ladies with proper hairdos is now publishing articles about breast binders. “Pop this on, dear, I will be back in a moment to see how flat you are now.” It has also encouraged some employees to be photographed and reveal their true selves. One staff member who is trans, non-binary and pansexual, warbles on about it all being a bit difficult. “I struggle with the war of having birthed a child yet not being female and how society as a whole tries to erase my gender,” they say. I don’t imagine it’s easy for them as a disabled, non-binary parent but, sorry, what’s this got to do with the price of toasters?

The magazine also features a happily married employee revealing his bisexuality, and a young guy wearing a BDSM harness. OK, already TMI. Then there is a transgender person with a whip. As would obviously happen, a lot more pictures have emerged of them online displaying their fetishes. So it’s bring your fetish to work day? Earlier this week, these pictures were due to be part of an exhibition that would tour various John Lewis locations – but because of the amount of abuse the subjects have since received on social media, the exhibition has been canned. No surprises there.

But genuinely, who cares what the staff of a shop get up to in their spare time? I certainly don’t, but several things are going on here that are dubious to say the least.

Clearly, companies think that to become relevant they must jump on this identity bandwagon without asking who and what it is for. Not a single person here seems to have a clue. They all bang on about their authentic selves. This is, after all, today’s religion, isn’t it – “Being yourself ”. But why does being oneself always involve some expression of sexuality or sexual identity? There is more to life than this – even in a suburban Waitrose, surely? No one needs to know the sexual preferences of the bloke selling them a pushchair, do they?

Identity is complex. Race, sex, disability are visible, the rest we work with, but no one takes their “whole selves” to work. No one behaves exactly as they like the whole time. We socialise toddlers to co-exist with others or we would all lay on the floor having tantrums, snatch what we wanted and bite anyone who annoyed us.

Where does this idea come from that we must be true to some fictionalised inner self? This absolute muddle of inclusivity, identity and intimacy that such campaigns represent is a result of having no understanding of your customers, workplace culture or some fairly basic boundaries.

A shop like John Lewis was favoured for its knowledgeable staff. That was its identity. Now that identity is fractured. The idea that everyone can buy an off-theshelf identity and be taken seriously is crashing its way through society. It is entirely destructive of boundaries around what needs to be public and what is private. It never respects women’s needs for privacy, be it in a changing room or a prison, because the public expression of one’s identity is prioritised over others’ feelings.

Organisations like John Lewis, in their desperation to be modern, are tumbling backwards into good old-fashioned sexism. All identities are equal but some are clearly more equal than others.

‘No one needs to know the sexual preferences of the bloke selling them a pushchair’