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“This morning, we became aware of a situation that occurred last night at our establishment Boots & Saddle Drag Lounge,” they wrote on Saturday. While managers for Boots & Saddle were not involved during the actual event, the company has released a statement on their Facebook page, and believes this event wasn’t about gender identity, but about behavior in the bathroom. “He was telling me trans women have to look a certain way, basically denying my transness.”įor Steaphon, this was the first time they had experienced this sort of discrimination at a gay bar in New York, though it had happened in Columbus, Ohio where he lived before. “While all of this is happening friend is yelling in my face that I’m not trans and that I can’t be trans unless I have titties and a pussy” Steaphon claimed. What’s more, the event touched on interpretations of what transgender is. The exchange seems to be a part of a larger conversation right now that nods to the erasure of LGBT safe spaces.Īfter events like the Orlando Pulse Massacre and gay men being roughed up on Riis Beach, it seems that locales where the gay community can feel comfortable expressing themselves in ways that they feel adequately represent them are growing smaller. “He said ‘Well we cater to straight women here so if you are making them feel uncomfortable in the bathroom, you have got to go.’” “This is exactly what the security said,” Steaphon recalled. However, club security got involved after a verbal altercation and Steaphon’s identity became a footnote. In Steaphon’s account of the event, which is chronicled in a Facebook post, what followed seems to be something that one would assume to happen in a state like North Carolina where transgender people are legally prevented from using bathrooms they identify with. “My first reaction was to try to educate her that we were at an LGBT bar and we don’t really follow those rules in that location,” she continued. “I was just kind of stunned, shocked and surprised that this was even happening at this place. “She told me that I shouldn’t be because I don’t have a pussy or a vagina or whatever,” Steaphon, who identifies as trans-genderqueer and uses both female and male pronouns, told Out in a phone interview.
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Transgender performer Valentine Steaphon was kicked out of Boots & Saddle Drag Lounge, a New York gay bar, after a cisgender woman discovered her in the women’s restroom on Friday night, sparking immediate backlash on social media.