The conflict
I have been thinking about the potential conflict between laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” in places of public accommodation and criminal laws that prohibit voyeurism and indecent exposure at least since 2021, when a man named Darren Merager decided to parade his naked body (complete with erection) around the women’s section of Wi Spa, a Korean-style nude spa in Los Angeles.
You remember that incident, I’m sure.
A video of a woman named Cubana Angel complaining about the incident went viral. In the video, she is seen asking staff:
I just want to be clear with you: It’s okay … for a man to go into the women’s section … He’s a man … HE IS A MAN … He’s not no female.
The staff member refers to a law and Cubana Angel replies:
Really? What law?
The law the staff member was referring to is California Civil Code § 51, also known as the Unruh Act. That law, among other things, prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation (like spas, bathrooms, locker rooms, etc.) on the basis of sex. Section (e)(5) of the Act states that sex includes, but is not limited to:
a person’s gender. “Gender” means sex, and includes a person’s gender identity and gender expression. “Gender expression” means a person’s gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.
Ok but I was just reading about the Unruh Act, before I read Kara’s post, and here’s the thing: it was passed in 1959. Legislators weren’t burbling about “gender expression” and similar bullshit in 1959. Section (e)(5) must be a very recent update, perhaps written by the ACLU and smuggled in in a box of cough drops.
At any rate the point of it, of course, is that all these driveling idiots have made it, or are trying to make it, legal for men to prance naked into women’s locker rooms and illegal for women to insist on locker rooms without naked men prancing around, and the ACLU simply cannot contain its joy.
Can a gym or spa deny me service, or exclude me from gender-segregated spaces, because I’m transgender and/or nonbinary?
No. Under the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civil Code § 51), business establishments in California may not deny anyone “full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services” because of their sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression (as well as other traits like race, national origin, religion, and disability). This means people who are transgender or nonbinary have the right to full and equal participation in a gym or spa experience, including access to locker rooms and other spaces based on their gender identity.
But it also means that people who are women or girls do not have the right to full and equal participation in a gym or spa experience, including access to locker rooms and other spaces without boys and men in them.
I hate the ACLU with such a passion.
It says “transgender OR nonbinary.” Therefore, I, a man, can simply say I am non-binary and walk naked into a “women’s only” changing area, according to this. Not that I would–I’m gay–but it really sickens me to see EVERYTHING being snatched away from women like this.
You and me both, pal.
It’s a self-evident civil liberty, an inalienable right even, to present one’s engorged phallus to women and girls in various states of undress.
How could the ACLU do otherwise than provide legal support for this critical thread of our social fabric?
‘Sex’ is a category that can’t be discriminated against in the quoted law. If all other men can be given ‘full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services’ without entering female only spaces, then trans women can as well.
I can only see one way out of this mess. Governments, courts, police, civil liberties bodies, et al are all captured.
The only solution left is direct action by 100s of men, naked, with erections, and beards optional to take over all women’s spaces until the powers that be must see the stupidity of it all. We can only fight crazy with more crazy. And perhaps, when all the women’s changing rooms are filled with big hairy hetero men, the cocks in frocks will slink back to their cellars and women will be free to live again without fear.
I disagree, Rev Brindley. I believe the absurdity can also be exposed by dozens of women claiming to be non binary and entering male only spaces. Once there, I propose they whisper to each other and giggle from time to time. Likewise, men in dresses with wigs, heels, lipstick etc can also enter the male only spaces en masse, as their presentation is protected, and report back on how many times they were made unwelcome there.