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 explictly said that even if reaction to the protest imagery formed part of the context, it was not OK to refuse service to the lesbian woman.

I was interested in understanding the context, because theatres are not places you usually find overt homophobia or lesbophobia.

Perhaps it would be better to take the discussion of protest tactics to another thread ? I can do that if people would like.

And for avoidance of doubt, it was not Ok to call the police on a lesbian woman, protesting earlier or not.

Perhaps it would be better to take the discussion of protest tactics to another thread ?

There's already a thread about the protest.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3621123-Stonewall-protest-July-5th

This has to go to the wire. It has to go public. Someone has to be asked, in the public arena, what is the objection about the definition of the word lesbian.

Let the fucking country hear that a lesbian is transphobic by dint of her sexual orientation. And that it's endorsed, nay encouraged, by Stonewall.

Let's bloody have it ffs.

This is absolutely the way to bring it to the public's attention. Fucking chucking lesbians out of a bar, on the basis that they're lesbians?

Bring it on. The quicker, the better.

Yes, I think discussion about protest tactics belongs on another thread. In terms of 'optics', if a thread about inexcusable homophobia gets derailed by internal feminist wrangling about specific tactics used, then the posters here tend to get a bit suspicious.

FWIW, I don't use pictures of the mutilation involved in trans related surgeries because I personally feel it's not my place to do so. But then my daughter thankfully has moved on from the obsessive desire to have her breasts cut off, so I might have felt differently had she got to the stage where irreversible damage had been done to her.

JanesKettle
The protest was outside Stonewall where there was Conference about young people and children today. It was specifically about Stonewall's influence in RSE in schools and the confusion this is causing children. It was also about the abusive nature of transing children rather than letting them be themselves.
The protest was not outside the NT.

Here's the statement the National Theatre has just put out
mobile.twitter.com/NationalTheatre/status/1147248680724025349

I doubt the staff that refused service even knew about the protest.

Well it's neither here nor there. The statement makes it plain that a trans member of staff was unhappy that a lesbian was openly existing in the bar where they worked, and they kicked up a fuss. The fact that this lesbian has been involved in all sorts of activism is entirely irrelevant.

NotAnotherFeckingMuftiDay
Wonder what the behaviour was that made their staff feel unsafe? It's a bit lame isn't it.

at that thick as shit statement.

What does the definition of a lesbian have to do with trans people? how did that t-shirt have any bearing at all on the trans staff member?

This boils down to “they’re gender critical, I don’t like that, put them out”

Floral
My comment at 23.48 was an add on the one at 23.46 and not about the statement.

I mean fucksake, I'm sure Anne has been involved in all sorts of confrontational politics over the years and has probably pissed off Tories, and blokes of many guises. None of those people would be justified in refusing her service because she was an open lesbian who disagreed with them.

Oh my god, that twitter feed NotAnotherFeckingMuftiDay

What they really need is it a T-shirt saying the definition of lesbian one side, the definition of a woman the other, and some kind of naive endorsement of Stonewall standing up for homosexuality.

The brain implosion would be massive.

So if a trans member of staff can’t feel safe or supported, if a lesbian is in the building?

Turbo, I know. I'm just angry, too fecking hot, and ranting when I should be asleep.

This boils down to “they’re gender critical, I don’t like that, put them out”

Indeed

It says they wouldn't refuse to serve someone based on their sexuality or declaring it on a t-shirt.

But but but .... that's EXACTLY what they did.

Fucking gaslighting arses.

Well yes. If the trans person objected to the GC customers, and knew they were GC based on that T shirt, then basically, the trans person felt unsafe because they perceived there was a lesbian in the bar who in no circumstances would be prepared to fuck a person who ever had a penis.

There is no way to spin that in a non homophobic way.

Thanks Turbo and Old Crone for the extra info/thread link.

There is no way to spin that in a non homophobic way.

Absolutely.

This boils down to “they’re gender critical, I don’t like that, put them out”

It boils down to the same problem that Harrap had with Posie putting up an adult human female poster.

The very definition of a sexual orientation is objectionable. Whether the person is gender critical, or not.

A lesbian who's never even heard of the trans ideology and wouldn't know what gender critical meant if you hit her with it between the eyes, is still objectionable if she doesn't include XY lesbians in her dating pool.

There are freshly out lesbians, hitting the scene, who have no idea about the political ideology behind this. They are finding there are no bars, restaurants, or online dating sites that don't include men.

It's the very concept of same-sex orientation that's the problem. Not the political views of the person with the orientation.

With the extra info - that the protest had nothing to do with the NT - please disregard my posts previous.

The conflation of the protest and the NT lesbophobia being made elsewhere is bad faith rhetoric and is false. My apologies for bringing it into the thread. Shame MN doesn't have an edit button.

I'm taken aback at the idea of theatres showing such hostility to lesbians. I naively thought my lesbian dd was OK in spaces like that.

Datun, sure, but whoever complained knew that they were complaining about someone who was openly same sex attracted. They wouldn't have complained about a naive, rainbow festooned young woman with a different kind of lesbian t shirt. This is where the personal really is political, because it's the lesbians who are refusing to acquiesce that are the ones bearing the brunt of this.

I mean, it won't stop lesbian couples being beaten on the bus by heterosexual male thugs - but this is even more shocking because it's coming from the supposed 'community'.