IKEA Canada has launched a series of new display products featuring sexuality- and gender-themed “Love Seats” for Pride Month, but one couch is not going over well among social media users.
The couch in question, which was designed to highlight bisexuality and the bisexual flag, features a slipcover with pink and blue hands all over its structure and the message, “When you change OR to AND, nobody believes you,” on its cushions.
“[D]id they just turn bisexual trauma into a COUCH?” one Twitter user wrote.
“I love how the transgender couch is like, for children, and the bisexual couch seems more inspired by sex trafficking victim nightmare art therapy,” another tweeted.
The “bisexual couch” was trending Tuesday on Twitter, with some users joking about its meaning and others creating memes featuring the furniture piece.
“IKEA Canada collaborated with designers active in the 2SLGBTQ+ community to create ‘Love Seats,’ a series of one-of-a-kind slipcovers inspired by the colours of different Pride flags, and the lived experiences from a wide spectrum of gender and sexual identities they represent,” an IKEA Canada CMO Johanna Andren told FOX Business in a statement.
Andren continued: “We’ve received tremendous response to all of the collection of custom Love Seats to date and appreciate the dialogue and discussion each has created as a platform for sharing stories from across the 2SLGBTQ+ community.”
The bisexual-themed couch, Andren said, is inspired by the story of a bisexual man named Brian “and a poem he wrote when he was 15 years old” that he performed at a Canadian arts festival.
“At an early age, Brian knew he wasn’t straight. But initially, he wasn’t sure exactly what the right label was for the way he felt. When he did come out as bisexual in early high school he was confronted, like so many young queer people, with homophobia and bullying,” Brian’s story on IKEA’s website reads.
Other Pride-themed Love Seats, which are not for sale but will be on display at Canada IKEA locations, include a pansexual slipcover, a transgender slipcover, an asexual slipcover, a slipcover representing general LGBTQ+ “progress” and more.