Prague’s public transport company (DPP) has come under strong criticism from LGBT groups after using the slogan “I identify as a trolleybus!” in an anniversary campaign.

The company used the phrase as a humorous way of giving its vehicles human characteristics in connection with the 90th anniversary of the city’s first trolleybus. The aim was to attract attention and raise a smile about the city’s everyday public transport services.

Humour has an uncomfortable ability to hit a raw nerve

The campaign consists of two eye-catching purple-and-white buses and one tram.

Prague Pride and several other LGBT organisations have condemned the slogan, calling it “disrespectful” and “condescending” towards trans people. They argue that it ridicules the concept of gender identity:

“The slogan perpetuates the misconception that individuals identify as objects and generally contributes to discrediting discussions about human rights. The attack is not directed solely at trans and non-binary people. It forms part of a broader discrediting of an entire younger generation concerned with its identity and unwilling to be forced into the ready-made boxes of their parents and society,” according to Prague Pride.

Dopravní podnik spustil kampaň k výročí trolejbusů v Praze. Za slogan „Identifikuji se jako trolejbus!“, kterým polepil část tramvají a autobusů, teď ale čelí kritice.https://t.co/bT4RiWL9vg

— iROZHLAS.cz (@iROZHLAScz) June 5, 2026

DPP spokesman Daniel Šabík rejected the criticism, explaining that the slogan was intended as a harmless “personification” of the vehicles:

“The visual design and the slogan are a personification, or ‘anthropomorphisation’, of the means of transport. They are given human characteristics as a form of advertising exaggeration.

This is a combination of visual imagery and a slogan used in a very positive spirit to illustrate the transformation of diesel buses into a modern, locally emission-free trolleybus service. It is in no way a comment on the personal identity of any group of people.”

Politicians bristling with indignation

The matter has reached Prague’s political leadership. Zdeněk Hřib, the former Deputy Mayor responsible for transport, described the marketing campaign as “inappropriate”, and was supported by the current Deputy Mayor, Jaromír Beránek:

“I consider the slogan inappropriate and will raise the matter with DPP’s marketing department.”

The Prague municipal authorities are expected to take the matter up directly with DPP’s marketing department.

That a joke about a vehicle “identifying itself” as something other than what it is should be interpreted as a malicious comment about trans people, etc., is generally met by the average citizen with little more than a shrug: “Identity politics has gone too far. So has woke hypersensitivity.”