Brighton TRAs bullying female small business owner

[SapphosRock]

Urgh. This is happening in my home town and it’s shit.

Happy Maki is a small, vegan cafe and takeaway. It’s a very ethical business. All about sustainability and green energy. They plant a tree and feed a child for each wrap made. It’s a gift economy and the food is free with a suggested donation. All very hippy. You get the idea.

A FTM trans person approached the female owner of Happy Maki and asked for support in fundraising for their top surgery. I believe they wanted a poster in the window asking for money. The owner refused. When pressed the owner said it was against her religious beliefs - she is a follower of the Divine Truth which admittedly sounds a bit ‘out there’ but not entirely unexpected given the nature of her business.

Anyway the TRAs have really gone to town and are posting in every Brighton based Facebook group, Instagram and Twitter accusing the owner of Transphobia and calling for her to apologise:

twitter.com/makiunhappy/status/1314261939833446400?s=21

They seem to be getting a lot of support and gaining a lot of traction too with many saying they are now going to boycott the business.

I’m upset about this for a lot of reasons. Obviously the female owner being bullied and harassed in this way and them encouraging people to email her. The lovely takeaway losing business. It’s also pretty tone deaf to attack the hospitality sector in the midst of a global pandemic for not supporting one individual’s elective, life changing surgery.

Anyway, the reason I’m posting here is in solidarity with the owner Anna. And if any of you lovely lot are nearby then consider getting a Happy Maki takeaway. The food is delicious and I’m sure they could do with some support right now.

www.happymaki.co.uk

I remember when local shop owners around here were encouraged to ‘give donations’ to the local ‘entrepreneurs club’.

I also remember the local chemist chasing them out with a baseball bat.

@Vermeil

Funny, that about ten years ago the woke brigade were all about ‘respecting people’s deeply held religious beliefs’. Now? Fuck ‘em. I wonder where the bandwagon will trundle off to next? Place your bets, ladies!

10 years ago 'transphobia' actually meant something, and was rightly offensive.

Now? If thinking the person tantrumming all over the place because they can't put out a begging bowl is behaving like a petulant toddler counts as transphobia, well

Having said all that, if someone asked me to put up a poster basically begging for money for elective surgery, I think it is enough to say, 'no'. If someone asked me to meet up so I could learn and grow from saying to no to them, I would tell them to shove it up their arse.

@krustykittens

I have to agree with HartnellAvenue. The Divine Truth's views on transpeople would definitely come under the label transphobic. If this is what she believes and it is her religion though, you are not going to change her mind, so I don't see any point in waging a campaign against her except for pure spite. There are nutters everywhere, best off stepping around them. And no, I won't be supporting Anna, with her judgy as fuck, crackpot religion, just like I wouldn't be supporting a business run by evangelical Christians or any other religion that discriminates against others for whatever reason. I don't care how many hungry kids you feed, if you discriminate, you're not about love! And I would be considered as TERF as fuck!

You must think she should also be required to put up an EDF poster then as well - after all to refuse on the basis of belief would be discriminatory.

Maybe we should ask the local Labour Party to put up a poster advertising a fundraising even for the local Conservatives? Mustn't discriminate after all!

EDL not EDF - nothing wrong with their electricity

directly discriminating on the grounds of someone's gender identity is OK.

She's not discriminating on the grounds of gender. Why do you think that? Is it a hate crime to refuse to put money into someone's mastectomy fundraiser?

She's entitled to her beliefs (whatever they are). She's entitled to refuse to put a begging poster in her window. It's her business, her cafe, her choice of which charities to support.

I also would not support a fundraiser for someone to have their breasts cut off, or any other body part for that matter. It's not transphobic to make your own choices about what you do and don't believe, and what you will or won't support.

Ah sorry for some reason I only saw page 1 of this thread. I assume people have dealt with the above nonsense already.

Time for one of my favourite bits of Vaclav Havel (apologies: it's long, but it's worth it).

The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window,among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite! Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate tothe world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unityamong the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great thathe feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with hisideals? Has he really given more than a moments thought to howsuch a unification might occur and what it would mean?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in theirwindows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. Thatposter was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise head-quarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years,because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life “in harmony with society,” as they say.

Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocers superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocers existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient; he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quiten aturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, “Whats wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/01/the-power-of-the-powerless.pdf

I think if you actively raise funds for hungry kids - someone asking for £££ to fund cosmetic surgery probably isn’t really going to float your boat.

titchy you are missing my point. I don't agree with either side. They need to step around each other but everything has got to be a war now. People who don't mind her religious views can continue to work and be patrons of her cafe, people who do, don't have to. Yes, it's wrong that someone has chucked their toys out of the pram and is waging a war against her, but in this case, her views are transphobic. They are right to say she is transphobic but you don't fight bigotry with hate. It never works.

£5 on "fuck knows" Vermeil

Excellent point BTW.

£100 me getting through a post without a typo

She is being bullied by a bunch of immature children. Her business is being destroyed. For what? A poster, a friggin poster.

She has every bloody right to not put it up. It's her business. She shouldn't be bullied into doing anything.

@Cocothefirst

Gosh, another new poster who's a proud TERF. What a coincidence!

Sapphos has been around for ages. Used to be 100% TWAW, but was (unlike the ploppers) prepared to enter into respectful dialogue, has recently started to develop reservations about TWAW, but I think is finding it hard because of personal and family reasons (and also the same deep socialisation to "be kind" that most of us struggle with).

They won’t really be happy with the business closing down. They want her to suffer by the looks of it.

KK

No.

They are right to say she is transphobic but you don't fight bigotry with hate. It never works.

Declining to put a (presumably unpaid-for) poster in your window because you fundamentally disagree with its message on moral or religious grounds is not hate, however batshit the rest of us may think her beliefs are.

Compelled speech is always wrong, even when the person being compelled is batshit and the person trying to do the compelling is on the side of the angels.

FairFriday

They won’t really be happy with the business closing down. They want her to suffer by the looks of it

And how is Brighton and Hove doing in these times of lockdown. Everyone there still managing to pay their rent/mortgages in times of Covid-19?

Businesses and jobs going well?

Got jobs now, but what about 2021?

As long as someone and their supporters can illegally demand monies with menaces for elective surgery on the NHS (is the money really going to that by the way?) , who gives a shit eh?

www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk

Cara I wasn't referring to Sapphos, she's been here a while. I was referring to KK.

What a shower of bullying shits they are! Poor woman. I hope she has the strength to keep her business going. Brighton does seem like a hotbed of nasty nut jobs frankly !

Refusing to put up a poster so a women can cadge money off strangers to have a mastectomy is not transphobic

Because its a transman who wanted to put the poster up in a cafe window in the most LGBTQ friendly city in Britain asking for support from random people for top surgery.

The shop owner doesn't need to do this if she doesn't want to. The best solution would be from the transperson to approach another shop. But no, that's not logical is it. Far better to trash her business instead. If they approached me I would have also said no. End of.

Has anyone read the screenshots linked in the OP? Right at the end where they

1. ask people to email the owner asking for accountability and an apology.
2. ask people to repost raise awareness and
3. ask people to donate to the fundraiser.

So basically let's end the evil witch and while you're at it, some hard cold cash will help. And supposedly intelligent people fall for this?