Artist refuses to bow to demands from men to be let into her exhibition

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/world/australia/mona-ladies-lounge-tasmania.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eE0.UrMk.5N8xrORUMVhB&smid=url-share

Some good news from Australia. I was shocked that women weren't let into pubs there until 1965! The article is a share token and worth reading to the end for the immortal line from the artist : "I'm not sorry, and you can't come in."

😵‍💫 $250 ? I thought he paid much less ….

“I visited MONA, paid 35 Australian dollars,” or about $23, “on the expectation that I would have access to the museum, and I was quite surprised when I was told that I would not be able to see one exhibition, the Ladies Lounge,” Mr. Lau said at the hearing, according to reports in the Australian news media. “Anyone who buys a ticket would expect a fair provision of goods and services.”

I think the higher price includes champagne and nibbles. It's not clear if this is an extra or if paying for that is the only way for women to get in. I'm not sure but I'm inclined to think it's the former.

Man I love this! Experiencing discrimination is the art work blokes - feel our pain! Hats off to that woman and to her “I’m not sorry and you can’t come in” attitude. Shame it’s in Hobart, if it was local to me I would be volunteering for navy suit, pearls and champagne duty.

If they offered a discount of one cent to men, would it still be discrimination?

Men vs. women and the struggle against sexism have been going on since long before Ukraine or Israel-Hamas for example.

I liked the artist’s reasoning that being refused entry was as valid an immersive experience as being admitted, so those refused entry were getting their money’s worth of the experience, just not the same experience as the women being allowed in

It takes 'it's art because I say it is' to a whole new level. I wouldn't like to get into an argument with someone with that level of linguistic dexterity.

The Times article says it's 500 Australian dollars for two (sorry I misremembered it as 250). I take it that it's an extra ticket into that area.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-exhibition-only-admitted-women-so-a-man-sued-qlzdm5nxp

If you look at the website, its advertised as High Tea for two.

https://mona.net.au/stuff-to-do/experiences/ladies-lounge

For me, it doesn't really work as performance art.
Men refused access to the area aren't experiencing what women experienced at being excluded from spaces in the past. Women were excluded because they were seen as second class citizens, you can't really recreate that. Men are being excluded simply to make a point, it's artificial and doesn't have the same effect or meaning. Some men will be fine with it and perhaps clap themselves on the back for being feminist allies. Other men (like Lau) will resent it but, as the artist sees it, not on the same justified grounds that women resented their exclusion. So what point is really being made? If it's to mirror the injustice of single sex luxury spaces of the past, it doesn't do that, it's too tit-for-tat. If it's to make the point that women need our own spaces I don't think it does that either, because it's linking itself to practices the artist sees as unjust.

Wait, so if it's an additional thing you have to pay more for, what's the basis of this case? Did he try to buy a ticket for the high tea experience but was refused?

If it's $500 for tea for two it's already excluding most women to be honest, nevermind the men.

Exactly. Great way to flog 500 quid afternoon teas though! Make it a political statement.

@Flickersy - absolutely. We are only catering to rich people who identify as women. Everyone else is excluded.......including the vast majority of women.....

I’m surprised if the article said that. Since the ladies lounge at Mona is named the ladies lounge for precisely that reason- it was the room in the pub that ladies could go to.
I do find it so strange to have this adamant stance against men, unless they happen to identify as women. Otherwise I quite love it. I think they should have proposed back an alternative two ticket scheme, where the men’s cost more 😁

My early drinking days were in pubs that had a public bar (men) and a lounge bar for women and a few places that basically didn’t serve women at all. You’d go to the bar and never catch the barman’s eye but your boyfriend/male companion would.
It was a bad for all concerned as it reinforced the idea that men had to pay for women’s drinks. You would also never go into the pub to wait for your boyfriend as being alone in a pub meant you were seen as fair game . There were more and more places where this didn’t happen but it was v prevalent in local/trad pubs not so much in city centres. All this had largely gone in the mid 90s but I still have a couple of friends who are hesitant to wait in the pub if we are meeting up. I was amazed when living in Europe in early/mid 90s that you could sit as a single woman in a cafe bar with a beer and the paper.

In the late 70s I was sitting in a pub's snug with my boyfriend. There was a power cut so the place was only lit with candles, but when the power came back on and I was visible I was thrown out, for being female.

the patriarchy and discrimination against women has existed since time immemorial. Of course we should challenge it at all times.

And we can hold more than one thought in our dainty little heads at the same time. Today, for eg, i am thinking about the new cannabis laws in Germany; how to fix my printer; the awful situation in Gaza; what to ask DH to cook for dinner; what i am going to sew now my machine is repaired; and the new book i started last night.

Some would also refuse to serve women pints.

aged 19 i started working in a pub in 1983. Very traditional in many ways. But on my first day a group of people came in and ordered 6 pints. Which i poured and cashed up. The landlord was really angry because 2 were women and "we don't serve pints to women" so when one of the women came up to get her round in, i gave her 4 pints and 4 halves. And again the landlord said i should have just given them a half. Until i pointed out the absurdity and downright unjustness of women buying 4 pints every time but only getting a half. That is not how rounds work (unless you specifically ask for a half)

As i sipped the pint the group bought me. And he agreed that it would now be allowed.

In 2019 DH and I ordered the same bottled beer.
DHs came with a pint glass... mine with a half pint.

(

I used to go to a Working Men's Club with my grandad. He'd get me a half a shandy. And they always asked "is it for a lady" because they had these stemmed glasses (like a big bowled wine glass with a shorter, fatter stem) that took a half. For women.

Yes Brefugee, I used to work in a pub in the eighties as a student. If a woman wanted beer or a man ordered it for her, we were to ask if she wanted it in a “lady’s glass” - a half pint ballon with a stem.

Haven't been to a pub for ages but I'm sure that still happens around here. Here being west Oxfordshire.

Ah the old days of the bar (only had a male toilets in it) and the lounge (male and female toilets). Of course if you were a woman who wanted to play pool, darts or dominoes you needed to go in the bar and suffer the dirty looks and glares from the men for daring to enter the bar!

Here's Victoria Culf's story, in her own words. It's an archived version from today's Mail:

https://archive.ph/n3JuL

'Only people who identify as women are allowed in' is what the news presenter says in the video. So, potentially that's anyone at all. If Mr Lau had presented as a woman (ya know, dress, high heels, lipstick🙄), he could have sailed in no problem. I was buzzing when I read this article. Proper goosebumps. I loved the fact that men being denied access was an integral part of the exhibition. But ... they ARE allowed access.