A Florida bakery refused to write the word “trans” on a cake requested by two social workers who had hoped to bring the treat to an event they had organized for the local transgender community.
Dandelion Hill, co-founder of the Orlando-based non-profit Peer Support Space, was heading to the organization’s Trans Joy Event on April 26, and stopped at the Colonialtown Publix to pick up a cake for the celebration.
Hill, who is trans and uses they/them pronouns, asked if the bakery could write a simple, “wholesome” message in pink icing on the sheet cake: “Trans people deserve joy.”
Hill immediately began to feel like something wasn’t right after the bakery worker hesitated.
“The person working at the bakery said, ‘I will be right back’,” Hill told The Post on Thursday. “I was kind of stewing in anxiety because I had a feeling like, ‘Uh oh, I think something’s brewing, I think something’s wrong.”
After waiting for what “felt like an eternity,” a manager from the bakery “comes back, looks me directly in the eyes and says, ‘I’m sorry we can’t write that. Publix is not allowed to take a stance on this issue,’” Hill said.
The refusal made Hill “shut down” from shock.
“I’m trying to give a message of hope to our community and I feel like I’m getting shot down right at that moment,” they said. “It was really just hurtful.”
Yasmin Flasterstein, who co-founded Peer Support Space with Hill, then came back out from the store’s restroom and “took over” the conversation, Hill said, telling the bakery employees, “You cannot take a stance on whether or not trans people deserve joy.”
Numerous employees reiterated to them that there was nothing they could do, as it was company policy.
“I don’t think it was any of the staff’s fault,” Hill said, noting that one employee, who told them she had trans friends, “tearfully” agreed to write “people deserve joy.”
The girl then gave the two pink icing and left a space at the top of the cake so they could write in “trans” themselves, which they did out in their car, Hill said.
Since the incident, Flasterstein has been in contact with Publix’s corporate officer trying to determine whether such a company policy exists that would prohibit an employee from writing “trans” on a cake.
“There was a miscommunication somewhere that [the employees] really felt that they could not write something like this,” Hill said. “All we want to know and all we want clarity on, is like where did that go wrong? … What’s the narrative where people are fearful to write this and where did it come from?”
In an email from Publix sent to Flasterstein, which she shared with the Washington Post, the grocery store giant admitted that the employees should have agreed to write the message.
“Our policy indicates that our associates may write statements that are not copyrighted or trademarked, support a charitable cause, are factual and considered to have a positive connotation,” Publix said in the email.
“As we indicated in our Facebook conversation, our associates should have fulfilled your request,” the company said. Publix had previously offered an apology in a comment on a Facebook Flasterstein posted about the incident.
Publix did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Flasterstein pushed the company further, and demanded they apologize for Hill, “who faced the brunt of this incident and broke down in sobs in front of other shoppers,” she said in a letter to the store.
The incident comes at a particularly “hostile time” for the transgender community in Florida, Hill said.
Just last week, Florida lawmakers passed a bill banning transgender people from using public bathrooms associated with their gender identity.
The Sunshine State additionally approved a bill that would permit health care providers and insurance companies to deny services “on the basis of conscience-based objections,” according to the Washington Post.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also signed in March the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, which bans classroom instruction about gender identity up to third grade. A new bill would expand the law to make it illegal for educators to talk about gender identity up to 8th grade.
Peer Support Space is an LGBTQ-community-focused nonprofit founded by Hill and Flasterstein in the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub mass shooting — a targeted attack on the gay nightclub in which 49 people were killed and 53 others were wounded.
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