Everytime I write about this it causes violent reactions…. Sometimes
directed at me sometimes directed at Osento, but I still need to say
it… I sometimes am shocked to find out when a friend of mine supports
Osento the womyns spa here in SF.
My most recent experience was when a close friend and transally started
her 32nd birthday party at Osento, she’s one of those lesbians who have
no male friends and so thus it was a very womyn centered party. She
called me the next day and asked why I wasn’t at the party and to let me
know she was really saddened by this. When I explained to her that since
I wasn’t allowed at Osento I decided not to attend, she quipped “I know but you could have come
to the rest!” I was so angery I could spit bullets, it seemed okay to
her that this organization could ban me on the grounds that I was born
“male” and happen to still be poor enough that I could afford 50,000+
dollars worth of surgery.
I’m all for womyn only spaces and often fight for them myself. I am conssitantly fighting men(and some womyn) on the
need and importance of womyns spaces. I have helped create womyn spaces
through groups like the SF girls of Leather(which I’m a founding member)
and Exiles. So thus it infuriates me that after all of that work I get
told I’m not allowed in these spaces due to one lousy percieved
cromosone(we can talk about my intersexuality someother time.) Logic
says that I should no longer fight for these womyns spaces, but that
would be giving up on a cause and right I believe in, and I don’t give
up!!
I do understand the complexity of the issue womyn with PTSD around men
might be triggered etc… But also I understand that your average
transwomyn is not going to be flaunting her genitalia, something most of
us would rather chew off than live with… I also believe that I deserve
a space free of men whom I most deffinately do not want raping me with
their eyes. And what about my own PTSD around men, as a womyn who’s been
raped twice by men once by a cop….
Many womyn that I talk to tell me but where else can we go if we band
Osento? The answer is simple, if the amount of womyn who have told me
that they would ban Osento if they had an alternative actually banned
Osento they would feel the punch and be forced to re-evaulate their
policy, and most likely the ban would not have to last for very long.
Can you really not go without a spa for a month or two?
I’m reminded of the ban on badlands about a year ago(a bar that was
being heavily racist) I ran into a dyke friend, whom I had many a
conversation about Osento, wearing a ban badlands t-shirt. I found it
interesting that she could ban a bar she’s never been to but she can’t
ban a spa she knows is also doing wrong.
Brooklynne
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