Police called to National Theatre to deal with gender critical feminists sitting on chairs

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

twitter.com/DadRogd/status/1147181198231429124 has picture of the unfortunate police officer sent to investigate.

Earlier in his tweet thread he says:

National Theatre Green Room bar just refused to serve us. Their grounds? Allegedly, we are a political group with views a member of staff finds offensive. So they offend a dozen customers instead.

Problem is apparently with t-shirt worn by Anne Ruzylo sporting a dictionary definition of a lesbian. As someone else has pointed out the NT is in breach of the Equality Act, given that sexual orientation and sex are both protected characteristics. I wonder how this will play out.

I don't understand this at all - am I missing something? I used to work there as in usher. The theatre employs plenty of gay men and women at all levels, from bartenders to actors to the former artistic director. It doesn't make any sense to me that they would discriminate against a woman's slogan on a t-shirt.

Sorry Apollo missed your post before adding mine.

People in customer service normally get disciplined or sacked for refusing to serve someone for no good reason, but they're being pandered to because they don't like lesbians? This is disgraceful.

The National Theatre receives £16.7m of public money per year from the Arts Council. They need to receive complaints about this.

I suspect it wasn’t a lesbian thing - but a sodding trans thing.

A trans thing is a lesbian thing unfortunately. Trans is anti-lesbian.

Hmm. Photo from outside the NT today. Note the kids.

So why would a woman dressed like that be called a whore, tart, thick, slapped... but a man is something to be applauded?

In pride month of 2019 a lesbian was refused service at a bar for having a T-shirt that stayed what a lesbian was. When every other fucking company in the U.K. has emblazoned their logos and sandwiches and razors and banking apps with rainbows, for pride, an actual lesbian, stating what a lesbian is, gets refused service. In 2019.

I’m genuinely struggling to process this.

Rainbows are for trans and kids. Not for women and ‘female’ lesbians. Male lesbians are fine though...

This has upset me - homophobia from the NT! Horrible.

You can be gay, but it must be the Right Sort of Gay (translation: not a lesbian... wait for it... be a MAN).

This whole sorry war has shown how wafer thin that solidarity really is.

Showing their true rainbow colours. Refuse the rainbow, reject the rainbow!

Jeez homophobic idiots.

Are lesbians not welcome to have drinks

And they called the police to remove the women

FFS FFS

Was there an actual protest beforehand, that used pictures of someone's SRS without permission ?

Asking here, 'cos I'm only seeing it from 'the other side', and so I don't know if it's true.

If true, I have thoughts. But I don't want to express them if it's fake news.

Yes there was a protest and there were pictures of SRS but these images are widely available online. I don't even know for certain that the group at the national were part of the protest. I didn't see any images where individuals were identifiable so unless the images were copyrighted then I can't imagine any laws were broken but happy to be corrected if someone else knows differently.

Although not sure why it makes a difference with regard to the way the group at the National were treated.

Presumably if the NT found the t-shirt offensive, it is because they have an alternative view of what a lesbian ‘is’. I wonder what it is, someone should ask.

Yup. Lesbian = here to serve the menz would be just fine. Oh wait.

What's an SRS?

Sex reassignment surgery.

Happy to share my might- be- unpopular thoughts. I've certainly defended Posie et al in the past - for example, I thought the reaction to her trip to the US from more elite GC women was appalling. I had zero problem with that trip. So generally, I am not a disliker of Posie, although our politics more generally are a long way apart.

My issues with the type of protest outside the NT are around optics. If I had seen those images outside the NT, as someone who was not aware, or only somewhat aware of the debate, I would assume the protest was akin to anti-abortion protests. It would actively drive me away from GC arguments around surgery. So the optics themselves are ineffective, imo.

I also think using pics of someone's genitals as shocking protest imagery veers close to transphobia, relying as it does on eliciting a disgust response.

Those images can definitely be used as tools of education, but stuck up on placards ? For best educational effect, with someone considering transition, or with a loved one considering the same, you would use those images in as non-confronting way as possible, and combine their use with suggestions for non-surgical treatment of dysphoria.

Back to the bar. Although the bar tender was wrong to refuse service, an earlier protest using inflammatory imagery (to many) goes some way to giving context - a theatre bar is not the place one would usually find homophobia, and on the face of it, refusing to serve a lesbian seems odd for a theatre.

Having said all that - PP and others are absolutely entitled to protest, and although I disagree with the use of SRS images as part of that protest, I will defend PP and others' right to protest in ways they feel to be important.

I will also say that, given the lesbian woman in question was not currently protesting in the bar and was not intoxicated, he was out and out wrong to refuse service. Even if tensions were running high due to aforementioned protest imagery.

It's OK if other posters strenuously disagree! I won't be offended. I'm posting this because I felt uncomfortable not saying anything, but I don't have any expectation that others need to feel the same way.

Why the fuck are children watching that?! What is happening in this country!

SRS- sex reassignment surgery.

There was a poster with surgery images, whether it was copyright I wouldn't know.

What this has to do with the discrimination against lesbians I don't know.

That photo from outside the NT is awful. If a woman was walking around in the same outfit they would be called all sorts of horrific things yet this man seems to be being celebrated.

'Sex Reassignment Surgery'.

I believe there were pictures of scars from mastectomies performed on women who have chosen to remove their breasts at the Stonewall conference. Possibly pictures of arm and leg scars where skin has been removed to graft on to create a phallus shape. Not sure, but I've seen complaints.

Quite what that has to do with lesbians being refused service because they were openly lesbian, I really don't know. Is it ok to refuse service to lesbians if we disapprove of them or we think they've made a distasteful choice or whatever? Asking for a friend.

Would people call the police on any other kind of protesters? Even those protesting for/against Abortion? Or even Tommy Robinson supporters? I really don’t think so.