Four ol' terfs walk into a bar ......

Four ol’ terfs walk into a bar ……

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, eh? Well, although what happened after that isn’t a joke in the real sense of the word, it’s still as funny as feck.

In truth, it wasn’t a bar we walked into, but a vegan pizzeria and pasteria in central woke-Wellington called Nolita.

In hindsight - wonderful thing that it is - the restaurant being vegan was kind of a massive clue that things weren’t going to go well when one of our terf quartet forgot to remove the small sticker on her t-shirt which read “Transwomen are men, and most have a penis”.

A week ago, on Sunday 26 March, my two sisters and I, and a friend, had planned to attend the Let Women Speak rally in Wellington. But after the horrific events at the previous day’s rally in Auckland, the rally in Wellington was cancelled due to credible fears for the attendees’ safety from trans activists if it went ahead. However, we made the decision to still go to Wellington as we already had our aeroplane tickets. A lot of us were in shock, too, at the violence against women we had witnessed in Auckland, so gathering for the comfort, support, and humour we could share just by being together very much appealed to us. And it was fantastic!

Around mid-afternoon we decided to leave where we’d gathered and go and get a meal in the city. Younger sister texted her son to find us a vegan/vegetarian restaurant we could go to, because that’s what sons are for. This suited the whole terf quartet who happened to be a mixture of vegan, vegetarian, and not bothered.

He chose Nolita as being most suitable for us.

Upon arrival there, we bought drinks and then sat on stools at the dining bar in the window to wait for the menus to be brought to us. No menus arrived. Instead, a young male staff member arrived, and peered closely at our friend’s chest. Somewhat disconcerted, but no way letting that pass unchallenged, she asked him in a very clear and carrying voice: “Are you looking at my breasts?”

“No, no”, he assured her (and probably thinking that looking at an older woman’s breasts is the last thing he’d want to do).

Not convinced, she jumped up from her stool, spread open her jacket and said: “Here, have a closer look”, much to my sisters and my widely grinning amusement.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, because the sticker on your t-shirt is hate speech”, he said.

Now we all looked at her chest.

Sure enough, the sticker she’d been given at the place we’d gathered by big, bad terf Rex was still stuck to her t-shirt, forgotten, and unnoticed by any of us four till now.

A lively discussion ensued, whereby we said that we weren’t going to leave, because we believed we’d done nothing bad enough to warrant being ejected, and the sticker would be removed. But that wasn’t good enough. Apparently, we had traumatised the staff, most of whom admittedly looked as though they were school kids with a weekend job. He insisted that our continuing presence couldn’t be tolerated, as the restaurant had to be a safe space for the staff and other customers. One of latter tried to stare very disapprovingly at one of my sisters, but lost that contest. We told him to call the police, if he wanted us to leave.

The young man called the manager of the restaurant over, who was a young woman not much older than him. To give her her due, she did her best to be stern and authorative, but by our time in life we’ve batted away more annoying sandflies, to be honest. We reiterated that we weren’t going to budge, and if she wanted us gone she’d have to get the police to do it. She wasn’t happy – and fair enough.

After a while, though, we left of our own volition, as we realised that the police probably weren’t going to arrive anytime soon, and we were getting hungry. We reckoned that they probably had these types of situations well sussed, and knew that 99% of the time the people eventually left of their own accord for the same reasons we did if left long enough. We went to another restaurant down the road, sans sticker.

It’s doubtful that any of the staff in Nolita would have thought deeply enough to understand it was probably about the worst day to take on four ol’ terfs, and expect meek obedience. We had seen what the trans activists and trans ‘allies’ had done in Auckland to the women there. We’d had our rally in Wellington cancelled because of them and the fear of what they’d do, so weren’t feeling a whole lot of love for the woke brigade.

We did, however, feel that we would probably chortle over this ‘lived experience’ for some time to come.

My sister’s son feels that his part in the fiasco is hilarious, and is totally unrepentant.

And we feel that the restaurant staff may possibly need counselling.