Good news on the WI Spa incident

[PostingForTheFirstTime]

I just saw this reported on Facebook:

nypost.com/2021/09/02/charges-filed-against-sex-offender-in-wi-spa-casecharges-filed-against-sex-offender-in-notorious-wi-spa-incident/amp/?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR1e_ws81-vaALSlUfdhuYlufJNoLzR31q-WII_WCUISsfR5Rnvx-21RtFc

But this never happens

Yep, this chap has serially not done it. Hasn't done it six previous times, and definitely didn't do it this time either.

Yet the cops just keep harassing him.

He did do this though:

patch.com/california/santamonica/man-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-for-santa-monica-art-theft

So please don't make out he's just not doing sex offenses.

It’s actually sad news as well as good news. Good because the concerned women have been proven to be right. But sad because they now know for sure they were all victims of a sex offender. My thoughts are with them.

I remember his reporting on it being particularly unpleasant.

He strikes me as a particularly unpleasant, misogynistic man, an opinion which I first based on his article for the US Guardian in 2018 about U.K. feminism and trans politics and his disgust that the Guardian, a U.K. institution published a balanced piece considering both sides of the GRA self ID debate.

@PleasantBirthday

I think they're just going to ignore it and blithely sail on by. You can't make them acknowledge that this is what they are campaigning for and they just won't do it.

I completely agree. It won't get a mention.

FWIW I don't actually think it's impossible to have spaces that are nude, mixed sex and safe and respectful.

I think it's perfectly possible and would actually be a good thing for the nudity and privacy of both sexes to be less fetished. I just think it's impossible in our current culture.

So if that's where we as a society want to get to, the honest way to deal with it is to tackle the male behaviours that mean we need single sex spaces then get rid of single sex spaces.

What I can't get behind is this idea we should start by letting male bodies into female spaces and magicaly all their pre-existing male socialisation goes away and there will be no problems.

Law-enforcement sources revealed that Merager is a tier-one registered sex offender with two prior convictions of indecent exposure stemming from incidents in 2002 and 2003 in California. She declined to comment on the convictions. In 2008, she was convicted for failing to register as a sex offender.

SHE was never convicted; HE was.

I expect all the disrupters from the previous thread will be here to apologise shortly:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4281706-pushback-at-wi-spa-in-los-angeles

It's cultural. You have some laid-back North European societies where naked kids run around in front of adults, but definitely not vice-versa.

East European Banyas have become more censorious since communism fell, but even there you always had a busybody culture where anyone could call out anyone who wasn't following the unwritten rules.

So the women weren’t lying or being hideous transphobes. Well I’m sure The Guardian will no doubt give equal coverage to it turning out to be true as they did to smearing & accusing women of lying and Laurie Penny will be offering profuse apologies right??

I’m so fucking pissed off that this happens over & over and yet still even now we get cries of “it never happens” and “beeeee kind”

This will get next to no coverage of this & it will already be a zombie fact that the spa incident was “made up”

@Jaysmith71

It's cultural. You have some laid-back North European societies where naked kids run around in front of adults, but definitely not vice-versa.

East European Banyas have become more censorious since communism fell, but even there you always had a busybody culture where anyone could call out anyone who wasn't following the unwritten rules.

I'm trying to remember whether the kids in the Austrian spa I visited were nude. I think they were. Certainly the adults of both sexes were.

It's like the old joke "How do you get to X?" "Well I wouldn't start from here."

We are not at the right starting point culturally for mixed sex to be ok in places strangers are naked together unless they specifically signed up for it.

@yourhairiswinterfire

I'm sure all those that said we shouldn't believe the women because they were religious, those that victim blamed the children, and those that then called it all a hoax when that didn't go down too well, will be along any moment now to apologise for defending a sex offender and blaming the women.

Any second now....

I wish Mumsnet had a tumbleweed symbol.

I’m also waiting for the apologies - Laurie Penny especially for this

twitter.com/PennyRed/status/1409790944635883523

@ZuttZeVootEeeVro

What I'm saying, badly, is that this is a huge fucking mess that aids the guilty and harms the innocent (including some trans people).

As soon as a male person, trans or otherwise enters a spacing where girls and women are likely to be naked, he/they are not 'innocent'.

I don't entirely agree. As I said, I don't think they should be there. But if they are surrounded with people telling them they should be, as is currently often the case, then they may simply believe them. Thoughtless and self centred perhaps, or simply believing what they have been told about being welcome, but not necessarily guilty of more.

This is one of the problems; our safety has been given away and the colonists don't always realise we object.

[quote TinselAngel]I expect all the disrupters from the previous thread will be here to apologise shortly:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4281706-pushback-at-wi-spa-in-los-angeles[/quote]
Those incoming apologies will be here any minute now....

No, this never happens and anyone who suggests otherwise is a bigot

Sadly all the TRAs who accused the women of being liars ('why didn't they photograph the naked man, if it was true?') are going to pretend not to see this.

Sadly all the TRAs who accused the women of being liars ('why didn't they photograph the naked man, if it was true?') are going to pretend not to see this.

How stupid and/or ideologically blinded would you have to be to accuse them of being liars though?

It was almost certain there was indeed a man there as claimed. Did they really believe that this couldn't happen, so the story was implausible? Or did they just assume that the lie would never catch up with them?

The only thing that's a surprise to me exactly how much of a textbook serial-offender case he turned out to be - it could have been an opportunist with no previous record.

BTW @PostingForTheFirstTime, I think calling this "good news" may come across badly. It's good news that the women who were smeared as liars or bigots have been validated. It's good news there is more clarity about what happened and the risks of self id. But it's not good news that the person was a sex offender, it's kind of the worst outcome really. I don't want the worst to have to happen before people listen to the valid reasons females exclude males sometimes.

Now can we go back to the common sense school of safe guarding

Step one Where there are vulnerable people assume there are predators that will try and access them, and take all viable steps to prevent

Step 2, if they look like a nonce, act like a nonce and are exposing their dick to children, phone the fucking police, even if they have a glitter halo and fart rainbows

My flabber is well and truly ghasted.

Both that someone acting creepy in a women's nude spa could turn out to be a convicted sex offender. And that a convicted sex offender would use a loophole about gender identity to continue their offending behaviours.

Under normal circumstances, being proved right is a good thing. In this instance it’s just utterly depressing. Will the guy who went viral accusing the women complaining of transphobia, be also going viral to retract that? Will the Antifa counter-protestors who assaulted women be apologising? Will all the newspapers (looking at you Guardian) who referred to it as “anti-transgender protests”, be editing it to “anti-sex offender protests”? Will the spa that allowed a sex offender to commit further sexual offences in a women’s changing room be reviewing their policies?

It’s bullshit. All this person’s defenders will do is brush it under the carpet and carry on screeching “TWAW” at us.

BlibbyBlobby I am convinced that the response from TRAs and their submissive supporters will agree with Merager that the law regarding indecent exposure should be changed because, well, it's what men want innit.

What an utter mess, shocked not shocked - this is where trying to normalise 'ladydicks', 'girldicks' etc leads to - as so many have said.

@InvisibleDragon

My flabber is well and truly ghasted.

Both that someone acting creepy in a women's nude spa could turn out to be a convicted sex offender. And that a convicted sex offender would use a loophole about gender identity to continue their offending behaviours.

Yep, colour me surprised, after all we have been assured time and time again that no-one would do that, and a TW, even a self-id TW, would never do that because, oh I can't remember, something about being embarrassed.

Will the spa that allowed a sex offender to commit further sexual offences in a women’s changing room be reviewing their policies?

Wonder if in the supremely litigious US of A they could be sued for that?

How can people not see?

This looks a lot like Milgram Experiment material, where some people will do anything if authority tells them it's OK.