There’s trouble brewing for the handmade and vintage goods auction site Etsy, over some questionable taste greetings cards offered for sale on the site.
Sellers have started a Facebook group calling for a boycott of Etsy until the cards are removed. The main cause of offence being a card featuring a drawing of a naked sexual assault victim curled up on the floor of a shower stall and the caption reading “Congratulations. You Got Bad Touched”. The card is even tagged on Etsy as “rape, touched, creeped, raped”
Protesters are also drawing attention to the other “bad taste” cards that include some “congratulating” breast cancer patients and mocking mothers of special needs children. One card with the caption “Congratulations you’ve got aids” has the suggestion “Know someone that has recently gotten AIDS and want to breach the awkwardness about it? Say it with a card! Hell, give it to your friends who’ve had sketchy situations and you just want to freak them out. Send it to random one night stands a couple days later just to play havoc. Have fun!”
Etsy do prohibit obscene items in section 5.7 of the Etsy Terms of Use, although they also state that “Etsy has no control over the quality, safety, morality or legality of any aspect of the items listed”.
If you want to sign the petition calling on Etsy to remove these cards it currently has over 15,000 signatures.
8 Responses
you guys have given this shop so much publicity that even if it were booted off etsy, it would still get business.
if you had left it alone, it would have died.
it’s offensive and the production values aren’t tops, either.
your protest has given it the greatest exposure it could have ever wanted.
you detract from and penalize all the amazing shops on there.
etsy is a platform. it’s not the offensive bad taste blocker police.
North americans need some british humor but it will be imposible by always trying to be pc.
Free worldwide shipping on those cards at those prices. Hardly making any profit. Motive? Indeed, and indeed.
I would rather sign a petition against Sarah Palin and her bad taste website with gun sight crosshairs over her political enemies. People who have contentious views (that is, not the view of the rabid moral majority or minority for that matter) are being killed all over the world. This is happening in the USA it is happening throughout the middle east, in Africa, in China or to people in Europe who draw questionably humourous cartoons about the prophet Mohammed (peace be his name – if you are that way inclined)
I don’t like the cards either but I don’t want to see the guy (presumably) shot for it.
The entire platform is not polluted by one seller of items in questionable taste. If they offend you don’t go look at them, don’t publicize them and don’t buy them.
In America our constitution guarantees the right of free speech to everyone, not just speech approved by the Christian right, yes ugly cards, posters and/or tee shirts are considered to be speech.
You can legally picket funerals with hateful signs, the Supreme Court said so. Is that repugnant? I think so.
If Etsy starts censoring the moral content of these cards where does it stop? I find images of the President as Hitler or a witchdoctor highly offensive, should we ban those too? Maybe criminalize being disrespectful to the head of state? Death penalty for gays?
I think people take everything too seriously. Obviously only a select group of people willpurchase these cards, and the rest don’t need to.
It’s like websites like T-Shirt Hell. People who don’t find it funny will not visit the site.
Relax, take a breather, and move on with your day. Free speech, and what not… get over yourselves.