Last week, a feminist mom was booted from an English pub because her t-shirt with the dictionary definition of “woman” was not “inclusive” enough. A gay man complained to management and she was asked to leave the bar she’d frequented for three years. The man later took to Twitter, using the slur TERF (Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminist) and calling the mom “disgusting.”
Rebeka Wershbale, 34 and a mother of one, told Britain’s Daily Mail that her t-shirt — which simply reads “Woman/women/noun/adult human female” — caused her exclusion.
A female staff member named Heather “told me that the T-shirt I was wearing was upsetting people because it was transphobic and not inclusive so I was barred,” Wershbale told the Daily Mail. “What she meant was that I was somehow offending men who say they are women because my T-shirt did not include them in the definition of a woman.”
“There aren’t even any transgender staff or patrons at the pub,” the mom added. “It’s crackers.”
Wershbale supports the feminist group Fair Play For Women, which opposed a recent effort to alter the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to enable people who identify as the gender opposite their birth sex to change their legal status without any medical diagnosis. Feminists like Wershbale argued that the change would harm the safety and privacy of women, in part by enabling biological men to access women’s restrooms without sufficient evidence that they truly suffer from gender dysphoria and are not merely perverts.
Wershbale was kicked out last Sunday. That evening, she had spoken with a gay man identified as Mika Johnson.
“I sat down next to him and asked him how he was,” the mom told the Daily Mail. “He said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you to be honest — please leave me alone.’ So I said OK and left it.”
Half an hour later, Heather told Wershbale she was no longer welcome at the bar. “Heather said I’d been upsetting people and Mika was crying,” the mother recalled. “She told me that the way I talk about radical feminism was a problem and said, ‘The T-shirt you’re wearing is upsetting and not inclusive.’ I replied that it simply said the dictionary definition of being a woman — how can it be offensive?”
According to Wershbale, the staffer “mumbled a bit about it being transphobic and that I had been transphobic previously. She then said I was barred and that she had been nominated by the other bar staff to come tell me that. I asked if she thought it was troubling that I was being removed from my own local [bar] because I was wearing a feminist T-shirt that had upset a gay man.”
The Daily Mail reported that on the same day, Mika Johnson tweeted, “When you’re trying to relax in your fave pub and there is a TERF wearing an anti-trans T-shirt… it’s disgusting and I’m so upset by it.” The tweet now appears to have been deleted.
Tom Lewis, the owner of Five Clouds Tap and Bottle Brewery, confirmed that Wershbale had been ordered to leave, but insisted that she is not permanently banned from the bar. He said the mother had upset staff and customers by disagreeing with transgender identity before. Wershbale dismissed these claims as “untrue.”
“It is a very sad day when a woman is barred from her pub for wearing a T-shirt that states the obvious because it might offend transgender people,” David Davies, a Tory MP, said in a statement on this case. “Terrifyingly this insidious creep of open debate no longer being tolerated and freedom of speech being suppressed is now spreading from our university campuses to the streets of our historic market towns.”
Last year, a group of lesbians called “Get the L Out” sparked controversy in London’s Pride parade by marching with a sign reading “transactivism erases lesbians.” The very first lesbian U.S. Army veteran to be reinstated after being kicked out for her sexuality, Miriam Ben-Shalom, has denounced transgender activism.
Lesbian feminists argue that transgenderism targets women who do not conform to traditional gender norms, attempting to turn lesbian women into straight men. Feminists attack this as “conversion therapy.” They also object that under transgender ideology, lesbian women are expected to be open to having sex with biological men who identify as women, a form of “rape culture.” Many feminists have been blasted as TERFs and even beaten for their disagreement on transgender issues.
It is truly tragic that a dictionary definition of “woman” is now considered “transphobic” and not “inclusive.” Increasingly, liberals are turning on even gays and lesbians who dare to disagree with their ideas.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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