How To Destroy A Lesbian Bar - Atlantic article by Helen Lewis

[Brefugee]

Couldn't find a thread about this - an article about how left-wing activism eats its own young. It is how a Lesbian bar that announced mask free evenings (as the Covid pandemic was waning) was absolutely slaughtered.

How to Destroy a Lesbian Bar - The Atlantic

archive article here

archive.today/rkPpg

Couldn't you just say you simply disagreed with me?

Goodness! Its all kicking off on here

The irony of posters on a thread about purity spirals and bullying being criticised for not being nice enough....

It makes me exhausted to read this story. At first I felt sorry for the last remaining owner but she's choosing to still participate and make excuses for people. Even when she's in tears and trying to put herself down they still lecture her, it's crazy 😂

It sounds like Massachusetts has got its own little niche cult doesn't it.

Noone here is revelling in the predicament the remaining owner is in.
Noone is happy a woman is living in a car.
My ex best friend chooses to live in a car, it's not good
We're commenting on the fact that she's partly to blame for where she is, and an overall culture that led to this, and the fact it's a left-coded behaviour pattern seen time after time after time.
For me, the frankly batshit concept of forcing people to mask, and this being a big part of the Omnicause meaning that once this cause is questioned, the pile in commences, is an amazingly prescient commentary of where the activist left are today.

Just a reminder the suggestion was for one night a week and it was optional, if a customer or staff member wanted to stay masked they were free to do so.

It just occurred to me how frustrating it must have been to try to rob the place. The staff probably wouldn't have realised amongst all the other masks and there was probably fuck all to steal.

At least the place had an atmosphere. Toxic is an atmosphere isn't it?

Noones yet answered, how the Hell do you suck down Bud Light thru a mask? Eat a vegan burger? Smoke a vape? Kiss? Lip read? Stop your glasses steaming up?

I’m surprised you’re asking. Don’t you know that all of those things are literal acts of violence against [insert name of pet oppressed group here]. Just wear your mask and be happy you’re not them and, I dunno, drink the air or something.

I mean, is virtue signalling and "IDentarian deference" (as Helen brilliantly coins the act of shedding one's white privilege to one's peers and world at large) a turn on for lefties?
"Babe, you look <so> good in that mask, giving the white cisheteropatriarchy the bird is <such> a turn on", lol.

It was literally impossible to rob because the shop of stuff, like clothes, safe sex supplies and n95 masks was free to take and if you couldn’t afford the club charge, then they’d let you in anyway. People weren’t paying! Is it robbery if they’re giving you the stuff for free anyway?

Hell of a business model.

I agree with a lot of your points, however I think by equating any mandatory masking with the omnicause, you're doing the same thing you're accusing the 'activist left' of. Are you in the USA?

I (and many others) worse a mask when it was appropriate. That doesn't automatically make us part of the omnicause mob. Just like being GC doesn't make me 'far right'.

Behaviours can be seen by society as right or left coded without that actually being a correct descriptor of the person's politics. In fact, its likely to not be.

I dunno, I’m pretty sure I could guess the communist lesbian bar owner and patrons’ view on Palestine.

It's enforced masking that's the issue. And all that was touted was <one evening> of masks being optional. And that was still too much.

Blocked & Reported podcast the other week got hold of the whole audio of the struggle session and played some highlights, That Soi Noir individual sucked all the air out of the room and just whined endlessly, also sounded pretty male.
I can’t feel particularly sorry for anyone involved, it was an obvious clusterfuck of a business idea from the get-go, and one of them leaving to go to clown school pushed the whole thing even further into parody. My one hope is that a few involved saw the light and have now found themselves a less batshit acquaintance circle.

I refuse to call contemporary progressives left wing, they’re far too wedded to a libertarian individualism, and the proletariat give them the ick. It’s all incredibly bourgeois; they’re still obsessed with their version of social status, respectability and conformity, they just reject a few narrow aspects of capitalism (I will not listen to someone rage about capitalism when they’re wearing £120 plastic leather Dr Martins, carrying a Lucy & Yak tote, and is waving their iPhone around). They should never be in charge of anything, they couldn’t run a greasy stick up their own backsides.

Love your second paragraph, sums them up so well!

Not sure about the end of that final sentence, lol.

I think the issue is this is happening in 2026. It's not about who did what in covid times. There's a group who are still adamant masks are worn now and not wearing them means you hate disabled people.

Agree in some ways. Maybe they're ultra libertarians fused with anti-liberal sentiments. Where that is on the political spectrum, I'm not sure.
Reminds me of the Ayn Rand Foundation that applied to the govt for funding during COVID.

Yet nobody mentions the obvious ableism of making it impossible for those who are deaf or hard of hearing to lip read, also the difficulty of mask wearing for those who have sensory issues.

Do you remember when Ben Affleck's daughter addressed the UN regarding mask wearing?

I am sure the people in this article would say it was ... interesting? Most of the rest would say - utterly nuts and more than a little privileged.

You’re quite correct that their place in the political spectrum is muddy at best. They’d claim to be leftists, but it just feels like cosplay, politics as fashion statement with as much substance as a £2 Primark T-shirt.

I always thought the last great civil rights battle after gay rights culminating in same sex marriage, was going to be disabled rights and the push to genuinely securing women's rights against violence etc
A battle we could all have gotten behind, stopping the invisibility, lack of funding and opportunities for the disabled, taking on the deep malaise of MVAW.
Right now, we could have had a decade of bringing the disabled in from the cold, women properly protected.
No, it was chosen instead that the binfire of trans rights would be the recipient of all this energy, all this societal upheaval.
A decade where the most disdvantaged could have been held up, women's rights strengthened and councilling services for trans IDing youth within the neurolodiversity spectrum could have been ramped up.
What a missed opportunity.

Then again, I naively thought Brexit would lead to a push to train lots of British care workers in a professionalized British Care Service, and borders would be enforced, foreign criminals sent home.
I guess that was daydreaming from me.

These people really need to study history. The leftist meetings sound like the struggle sessions of Maoist China.