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

Are other cafes in the area displaying the poster? Before the fuss? Afterwards, through fear of similar treatment?

Yes the ice cream parlour next door where the trans individual works has a fundraiser for them. I have noticed this person shamelessly ask for money in Facebook groups too.

Needmoresleep what a lovely offer! I'm sure we'd have a fantastic lunch and thoroughly enjoy politely disagreeing with one another.

If you read her email and blog you will see the biphobia is in someone else’s head.

Next.

@jj1968

Is anyone going to address the biphobia?

Come on women of FWR - there's a woman in Brighton in need of chastisement. Join in the pile on

Genuinely troubling that biphobia and treating workers like crap is now defendable

because these people sound like such reliable narrators and obviously we should take every word they say at face value.

if they have complaints about zero-hours contracts that's what they should be organising around! Not about the refusal to put up a begging poster. The fact that they've put absolute bullshit complaint about the poster front and centre suggests that their other complaints will fall apart on closer examination.

Just so everyone else goes to bed with a truly horrible ear-worm, for those of you of a more recent vintage than I, who may have mercifully missed this first time round when it made number 1, here is the offending song (and I use the word "offending" advisedly - take this as a trigger warning):

Sub in "sea-lioning" for "star-trekking" throughout.

@jj1968

Is anyone going to address the biphobia?

What biphobia? What did she do or say exactly? I've read her account on her blog but I haven't seen what her accusers are saying.

I agree that it's high time this kind of "activism" was formally considered a form of terrorism.

As to where the bandwagon will be off to next, my money is squarely on disability rights. But it won't be actually real things that people with real disabilities want or need, it'll be things like:

1. the state should pay for women in prostitution to work for men with disabilties
2. ban women getting terminations due to medical anomalies
3. banning XY DSD athletes from women's sports to be considered disibility discrimination.
4. refusing to act as a surrogate for someone with infertility to be considered disibility discrimination (or better yet, a hate crime)

You get the gist. It'll be 101 ways to use the phrase "disability rights" as a way to abuse, assault, and remove rights from women.

@keepwomensportforwomen

If you read her email and blog you will see the biphobia is in someone else’s head.

Next.

Firstly, in the case of a workplace dispute I would generally not accept the bosses claims as being a sacrosant version of what happened.

Secondly, you may think it's not biphobic to claim that bisexual people don;t really exist. I would argue it's textbook biphobia. But even if not, it is not appropriate to rant on about it in the workplace. If an employee did that they would very likely be sacked in many places so why should a boss get away with it.

I believe in a God and in loving design, which for me includes the concept that we have one literal other half of our soul, our soulmate which can be of the same or different sex.

This reads like the opposite of biphobia to me. That she thinks we don't know the sex of the person who is our soulmate until we meet them. So we have to be open to them being of either sex.

Or have I misunderstood?

Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow...

Thank you.

I really don’t need it as I am still trying to get my head round the conformity of thought required to run a cafe in Brighton. I am a bit of a Nando’s girl myself, so had assumed that people running vegan cafes in places like Brighton were likely to be independent thinkers. (No views on people working in ice cream parlours, beyond memories of the Italian places on Tottenham Court Road.)

Personally, I've decided my online life is better if I ignore obvious derailers.

People genuinely wanting to argue in good faith, who hold different opinions from mine, are fine. But there are other posters I choose not to waste time on.

"Sea-lioning, across the universe..." on repeat.

You think that if a worker said this

"I believe in a God and in loving design, which for me includes the concept that we have one literal other half of our soul, our soulmate which can be of the same or different sex. I feel this is a beautiful concept. Whether you believe that or not and whatever sex/sexes you or I choose to sleep with I have zero issue with or judgement towards and I definitely don’t feel that anyone is invalid. But if you believe in soulmates which many do, the logic is, there is only one other half of us."

in the workplace, they would be sacked?

What planet are you on? Do they not have a tribunal process there?

@Needmoresleep

Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow...

Thank you.

I really don’t need it as I am still trying to get my head round the conformity of thought required to run a cafe in Brighton. I am a bit of a Nando’s girl myself, so had assumed that people running vegan cafes in places like Brighton were likely to be independent thinkers. (No views on people working in ice cream parlours, beyond memories of the Italian places on Tottenham Court Road.)

Sorry Needmore

It won't go now you've remembered it... you're doomed.

But yes, it would be nice to think that Brighton was exactly the sort of place that would tolerate independent thinkers and a diversity of opinion, but it would appear not.

(If you can be bothered scrolling back that far to my attempt at a more serious contribution, I can really recommend the extract from Vaclav Havel I posted upthread - plus thinking about the context in which it was written: Soviet tanks rolling into Czechoslovakia.)

I find it very interesting to see their pile on. I wonder if they would so such a thing if the owner was Muslim. I don't think so, do you?

Thoughts experiment, let's remove the trans and change it just a bit.

10 cafe workers have quit their job after claiming gay workers were forced to endure homophobic comments by the business owner. The workers also claimed many had not been given proper contracts and that there had been problems accessing sick pay and holiday pay to which they were due. The former staff claimed when they tried to problems with their employer they were accused of being aggresive. In a lengthy blogpost the business owner denies any wrongdoing and stood by her comments about lesbian and gay people saying they reflected her religious beliefs.

Whose side are you on now she's not a transphobe?

@EarthSight

I find it very interesting to see their pile on. I wonder if they would so such a thing if the owner was Muslim. I don't think so, do you?

I'm 100% sure there wouldn't have been a pile-on if the owner had been male.

CaraDuneRedux

If you can be bothered scrolling back that far to my attempt at a more serious contribution, I can really recommend the extract from Vaclav Havel I posted upthread - plus thinking about the context in which it was written: Soviet tanks rolling into Czechoslovakia

That was a very powerful post - and well worth those currently engaged in bullying women remembering the implications and where this type of institutionalised / state bullying of citizens leads.

@HartnellAvenue

This. This right here is why MN is accused of being transphobic. You brush off her absolute batshit crazy cultish "religion" which was only started in 2007 by saying "it's a bit out there" and you think that her acting directly discriminating on the grounds of someone's gender identity is OK. 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 cafe owner didn't say "no because I don't allow posters". Unbelievable the things some posters here will shrug off. Oh and when I was on twitter I would have been called a terf so I don't subscribe to the TWAW mantra and I do believe in sex based rights... but you and she are in the wrong here.

Such a silly post. I know it's been mentioned before but it bears repeating.

nobody needs an expensive operation to be gay