Last updated on September 5, 2021, with reports that police have made an arrest for indecent exposure in connection to the Wi Spa incident. See Addendum.
An incident last month at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles was raised in the comments to my statement yesterday regarding the transgender debate. I see discussion continuing today on Facebook. I think the matter can be instructive and is worth covering here.
On Thursday, June 24, supposedly a pre-surgery transgender woman undressed in the women’s changing area at Wi Spa whereupon other women and girls could see the person’s penis and testicles. A female spa client — “cubanaangel” on Instagram — complained vehemently to staff and posted a video of this confrontation on her Instagram account saying she was going “to take it very worldwide.”
Click to view on Instagram.
The video shows no transgender people and the spa states that none of its registered transgender clients had an appointment that day. There also appear to be no witness from inside the women’s changing room beyond Cubana Angel who filmed the video, according to the Blade, a Los Angeles gay paper, and the Advocate, a national gay paper. The Independent spoke with the Los Angeles Police about the incident and events after. The paper was not told of any corroborating witnesses. Slate reports that police are now treating the incident as a hoax.
It should be noted that businesses in Los Angeles are prohibited from discrimination against transgender people, including denial of service and public accommodations. This protection is covered under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California Civil Code, Section 51(b).
I realize that settings like this, a women’s changing room, are flashpoints in the argument over transgender rights. I’m not addressing that here. My purpose today is to try and separate fact from rumor about the volatile June 24 incident at Wi Spa. Did it happen or not? It appears it did not. Only Cubana Angel can say why she did it.
Reaction & Protests
While the supposed incident appears to have been a provocative fabrication for anti-transgender propaganda purposes, the reactions afterward were quite real. Protesters on the pro- and anti-transgender sides came out and things got rough. NBC posted an article with a video showing some of the confrontations.
It appears that both sides engaged in physical violence that included two stabbings. A right-wing anti-transgender protester stabbed an LGBT activist in the leg, and also accidentally one of his fellow comrades.
The knife wielding far right extremist did not only stab a fellow anti-trans demonstrator. He also stabbed a pro-LGBT+ activist in the leg, hospitalizing them.
— Vishal P. Singh (@VPS_Reports) July 6, 2021
Far right extremists brought violence to Wi Spa & THEY were the ones who used lethal force.
🎥: @directedbyrocky pic.twitter.com/QgBPrjf3m9
I think most of my readers would agree that violence is not appropriate. Both sides have a right to protest — peacefully.
I think we’ve seen that the right is frequently inclined to violence or at least threat of violence. They like to show up in military gear with high-power weapons. We’ve also seen that some elements on the left are inclined to violence as well. Antifa and others came out during the George Floyd protests — and sucked the wind out what gave promise to be a powerful movement whose time had finally come. Violence is wrong on multiple levels, not the least of which is that it drives away actual and potential supporters and allies.
In this case especially, as transgender people are trying to get a foothold in public support, violence like this is poison. Too many people will scorn the entire transgender community because of the actions by a relative few.
A Previous Incident in January 2020
The Daily Mail this week has reported another incident that a woman says took place at Wi Spa in January 2020. The woman, going by only “Anita,” states that she was at Wi Spa with her 6-year-old daughter when they encountered a naked, bearded man in a women-only hot tub. She says she complained to management and the police but no action was taken.
I don’t know if this incident took place or not, but I’m inclined to give it more credibility as the complainant doesn’t appear to be politically motived like Cubana Angel. On the other hand, I can’t image any genuine transgender women choosing to sport a beard except perhaps at the very beginning of their transition, pre-hormone therapy.
If the bearded person was genuinely transgender, I think common courtesy in this case should have trumped exercising any technical right to use the hot tub. Otherwise either Anita isn’t telling the truth or Wi Spa allowed an obvious imposter to fake a transgender self-declaration.
Anita recounts her experience here, FYI.
Addendum
In chronological order, from oldest at the top to newest.
July 15, 2021 – As reported by the Blade, rightwing forces are coalescing around the Wi Spa incident including religious fundamentalist street preachers, QAnon with its fake “Save Our Children” campaign, and the Proud Boys. Another anti-trans protest is being organized for this Saturday, July 17 outside Wi Spa. A post on Twitter shows these forces are conflating transgender rights with pedophilia, a classic trope aimed against the gay rights movement since Anita Bryant and before.
Meanwhile, the woman who made and posted the video that started all this, Cubana Angel, has opened a website to fight against the transgender community and California’s Civil Code, Chapter 51.
July 18, 2021 – Demonstrations took place again as promoted on Saturday, July 17, outside Wi Spa in Los Angeles. Reports indicate the Proud Boys were there. I saw signs about pedophiles and heard chants of “Save Our Children,” the fake QAnon campaign, on a rightwing video posted to YouTube. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, “LAPD Det. Meghan Aguilar said authorities declared the unlawful assembly after protesters began throwing projectiles, including at officers. Videos posted to social media show police in riot gear shooting bean bag rounds and 40-millimeter hard-foam projectiles at protesters.” Several dozen people were arrested.
A reporter for the Guardian tweeted that she “thrown to the ground by right-wing anti-pedophile protesters.” Her Twitter feed dated July 17 includes numerous video clips shot during and around the protest.
KABC-TV broadcast this report:
July 19, 2021 – I was able to locate the Guardian article cowritten by the woman I mentioned yesterday (immediately above the KABC-TV clip). Lois Beckett and Sam Levin report the goings-on at Saturday’s protest including various tweets containing video clips. The article also included this Guardian video:
Also today I spotted an article in The Militant that I had overlooked this weekend. The article asserts that the fight for transgender rights is a threat to women’s rights. I disagree and will circle back soon to address this question in a separate post.
August 7, 2021 – A friend alerted me to an article in Los Angeles Magazine published a week ago reporting that five women have filed formal police complaints “claiming to have seen male genitals exposed in the women’s section of the Wilshire Boulevard health club.” The article doesn’t say much else except to recap the whole controversy. Several other reports I find online regarding the filings are virtually identical to the Los Angeles Magazine article. I will update this space if I learn more.
September 5, 2021 – As reported by LGBTQ Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, the Guardian and others, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) this week arrested Darren Merager, a registered sex offender, on five felony counts of indecent exposure. It now appears the incident was not a hoax, though reading through the coverage cited here it’s not clear whether Merager is a transgender woman. The LAPD report “alludes to Merager identifying as transgender,” per LGBTQ Nation, but police have not made any explicit statement specifying Merager’s gender identity. He also faces charges from an incident in 2018.
Andy Ngô interviewed Merager for the New York Post and appeared on Fox with Tucker Carlson.
KABC-TV in Los Angeles broadcast this report on Merager’s arrest.
Title image is a screenshot from NBC.
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In addition to the woman who posted the video (which I’ve watched four or five times now), I see one woman in street clothes asking for her money back and two additional women in robes with wet hair echoing the comments of the primary person making the complaint. I also her an employee saying something about security and that he should not have been there (the “he”, I’m assuming, being the person with the penis). To me, this doesn’t appear to be staged, unless there were at least four very good actors involved. In any event the truth will come out soon enough, one way or the other. I also don’t think the religious views of the person making the complaint, assuming she’s telling the truth, are germane to the situation one way or the other.
Thanks. I’ll be on the lookout for any official updates and add addendums or corrections as warranted.
And if I’m wrong I’ll happily admit so, and I’ll eat crow. One marker to look for is to see if the police press charges against the woman who made the complaint. I would think that would be the case, as people were stabbed as a result of her assertion. Also look to see if the Spa Wi asserts their right to seek financial compensation for the false claim. If no charges are filed by the police and no claim is made by the Spa Wi, I would say that gives credence to one version of the event, if charges are filed and a claim is made, to the other.
It’s been a few days and I’ve seen nothing indicating she filed a formal police report. Even with the stabbings, simply complaining and posting the video would be weak cause for the police to press charges against her — something I think both you & I would oppose. Doing that was her free speech right. It’s not the same as a falsified police report and, unlike yelling “Fire!” in a theater, she probably can’t be held directly accountable for the subsequent violence. As for Wi Spa not suing (yet), a lot of different factors would probably weigh into a decision whether or not to do so. They might see it as dragging out the bad publicity, making them appear cruel, and/or making Cubana Angel a sympathetic figure. Does all this lend credence to her story? Possibly, but it’s a stretch. The absence of one thing doesn’t necessarily prove the other.
You mention a Militant article you overlooked that, according to your take on the piece, asserts that the fight for transgender rights is antithetical to the rights of women. Doesn’t that depend on how you define “transgender rights”? I suspect I would define it in a more narrow manner than you. For example, I am for transgender rights in the sense that I am opposed to transgender people being discriminated against in terms of hiring, housing and education.
There are various quotes I can find in the Militant that run along the lines of this editorial published in the July 13, 2020, issue:
“What is seen by some as a revolutionary advance in the understanding of ‘gender’ is in fact a counterrevolution. The oppression of women as a sex throughout millennia of class-divided society is simply erased. The gains for women’s emancipation won through centuries of struggle by the working class, often led by women, since the consolidation of industrial capitalism in the 1800s — all this disappears with the wave of the same magic wand that allegedly turns a man into a woman, or vice versa.”
To me this clearly states that the fight for transgender rights is antithetical to the rights of women — if we accept that transgender people even exist at all. Herein lies the rub, I guess. It seems pretty clear to me that the Militant and many supporters I’ve debated assert that no such thing exists except in the minds of the people claiming to be transgender. People can claim anything, the argument goes, but that doesn’t make so. It’s argued that outward anatomy settles the question, period, for all time. I find no sympathy for even the legitimacy of seeking a deeper scientific understanding of human gender.
Transgenderism is at best a mental delusion that, at most, we should indulge by not discriminating against the afflicted in housing and employment, etc. It’s good if we do this, of course, but any true legitimacy and acceptance of their identity is ruled out. I find that a sad life indeed.