Feeling “threatened”
The Times reports on the “we don’t allow feminist women in our pub” story:
A leading pub chain has been dragged into a transphobia row after police were called to a city-centre pub when bar staff complained of feeling “threatened” by the presence of a group of campaigners who oppose extending women’s rights to transgender people.
Yet another bad lede. Why can’t reporters write decent first sentences? Is it part of their contract not to, or what?
Also a factual mistake, the campaigners don’t “oppose extending women’s rights to transgender people,” they don’t believe that men are women and they of course opposed extending women’s rights to men, on the grounds that it’s women who need them, not men.
A Twitter user using the pseudonym “mebulous entity” said she was the bar server who ejected the group. ForWomen.Scot confirmed she matched the description of the person who asked them to leave.
Why “she”? His Twitter profile says he’s male.
A spokeswoman for ForWomen.Scot said some of those involved were considering legal action and added: “Our understanding is that on Saturday night police were called on a group of women who had booked tables in Doctors having been to a Fringe show . . . at no point was a complaint about behaviour relayed and staff continued to serve them.
“Having seen the Twitter feed of the employee in question, it is quite clear this was an act motivated by recognition of Marion Millar who arrived later.
“What was said to justify the arrival of five police officers to remove about 10 women, many of whom were already saying goodbyes, we cannot say, although we do wonder how Doctors copes with genuinely aggressive or violent customers.”
Maybe they had shiny new rainbow hate crime cars they wanted to show off.
A spokeswoman for Doctors said: “Our aim is for our pubs to be friendly and welcoming places for all and we do not tolerate any form of discrimination from our customers or teams.” They added that an internal investigation was under way.
They? Why “they” for a spokeswoman?
People seem to be getting downright addled about these pesky pronoun thingies.
The “mebulous entity” profile does say male, but also lists pronouns “they/she” and “siad/sí”. Huh.
The pesky pronoun thingies are often compared to remembering someone’s name, but it’s oh so much more ridiculously complicated than that. It’s remembering a whole set of different pronouns for different cases, none of which are guaranteed to match the standard language pronouns. It’s putting aside the standard cues for pronouns, the other person’s sex, and replacing them with a custom pronoun set for each individual. If “George” changes his name to “Barnaby”, you just have to remember he’s “Barnaby”, you don’t have to ignore the obvious information that he’s male (and only one person) and you don’t have to remember special words that apply to nobody else.
I wonder if the parent company will do the math in deciding exactly which demographic it is most costly to piss off; a tiny, but loud number of online TAs, or women. How many of the online activists making noise even live within the range of the pubs in question? However many there are, there are many, many more women who do. Which group would cost them more business?
I’ve decided it’s time to come out as genderfluid and declare my pronouns are water/wet.
I have declared myself cisinterested.
I get the impression from a few tweets, so take it for what it’s worth, that Mebulous would be a very difficult person to work for. He seems capricious, a liar, and self-centered. Plus, he’s public about his narcissism, so there probably isn’t a situation that comes up in Doctor’s that doesn’t lead to drama. In a just world, this would lead to Corporate deciding he’s a bit too much of a flake to keep him on staff where he can create more problems for their image.
The brewery can’t really win. Assuming the bartender is bad at his job and was at fault, they can’t fire him without raising a stink, protests and boycotts. On the other hand, they’ve had a lot of bad publicity that in the short term will have another set boycotting and possibly protesting at their pubs. Given that TRAs tend to be younger than GCs, and young people are drinking less these days, I’d go for the GCs’ custom.
OTOH the TRAs are more likely to vandalise the place with graffiti, while the most the GCs will do is tie some ribbons to the railings outside.
KB Player, sounds like an interesting cost-benefit analysis, the type that is probably leading to the capture of institutions by TAs, because it’s more than graffiti. It’s maliciously getting people fired or engaging in truly threatening behavior, against a bunch of “Karens” who will post some flyers, tweet a few tweets, stick a few stickers, but do you no real damage.
@5 I wonder what the staff turnover rate is at that pub?
My work sent round an email about the latest Stonewall LGBTQ* event (my work is very keen on Stonewall gold medals) and this time Stonewall’s remit includes “people of colour”. When did they get that gig?
And why, and how?
We are to be taught how to be a good ally to the alphabets plus people of colour.
My firm has about two “people of colour” among the 600 or so staff. Scotland is very white, the HQ where the bulk of staff work is in Edinburgh, a very white city.