Sunday, August 24, 2014

Have You Heard Of The Caliente Cab Company?

We are going to set the Wayback Machine to the year 2008 and the place New York City…

To set the stage… after the New York City Pride Parade.
The place… Caliente Cab Company Restaurant.
The incident… a lesbian goes the ladies bathroom and is denied access, then sues the restaurant.

The Village Voice reported,
Lesbian Settles Discrimination Lawsuit Against Caliente Cab Co.
By Julie Bolcer Tue., May 13 2008

Khadijah Farmer, the lesbian patron who alleged that Caliente Cab Company ejected her from the restaurant because she appeared too masculine to use the women’s restroom, has settled her lawsuit against the West Village establishment.

As part of the settlement to Farmer v. Caliente Cab Restaurant Company, Inc., the lawsuit she and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund filed in State Supreme Court in October, Caliente has agreed to add gender, including gender identity and expression, to its corporate non-discrimination policy; amend its employee handbook to state "persons patronizing or employed at Caliente have the right to use the bathroom facilities consistent with their gender identity and expression”; adopt a gender-neutral dress code for its employees; institute personnel training programs regarding its new policies; and pay $35,000 in damages to plaintiff Farmer.
The first thing that we can learn from this is that the gender identity non-discrimination laws apply to everyone not just trans-people. Also those people who want to police the bathroom to be used only for a person’s birth gender are going to exclude many whose looks do not conform to their birth gender.

This isn't an isolated incident, it happens many time to women. They are challenged when they go and use a public bathroom by the bathroom police. In one incident that I read about security guards cleared out the bathroom telling everyone that there was a man inside the bathroom. When the guards saw she was a woman when she came out to a crowd of people watching the security guards didn’t apologize, they just walked away.

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