The birth of a genre

We're going to be seeing more and more of these confrontations

Two four-minute videos have been uploaded to YouTube of a male who claims to be a woman berating the shopkeeper of a Star Wars-themed store for having a ‘transphobic’ sign in the window which reads ‘if you are born with a dick you are not a chick’.

This is just the latest video in what is becoming a genre of these types of confrontations—confrontations that are inevitable when you insist that people must participate in the fantasies of crossdressing men. Like Wi Spa and It’s Ma’am before it, it shows what happens when wishful thinking and woolly notions of kindness hit the real world. Gender identity ideology is creating an untenable, highly volatile situation and that’s why these dramas play out in the way they do.

The crossdressing man is far more powerful than the shopkeeper - he is a city councillor in Washington, USA called Tiesa Meskis - but neither that nor his bulk and youth stop him aggressively shouting at the older man. ‘Trans women are women! That sign is bullshit!’ The shopkeeper responds with similar language, telling him “You know, what? Nobody confronts your ass, that’s your problem.”

Ironically, in the second video, a woman walks past the store, sees them shouting at each other, and intervenes to tell the shopkeeper that she is ‘totally on her [Meskis’] side and you’re going to lose my business’.

As it becomes clear that the shopkeeper will not stand down, Meskis makes repeated threats that he will expose the shopkeeper’s ‘bigotry’ to the world and will call the police. These too fail to elicit anything but derision from the older man.

The activists are therefore taking typically more extreme measures to get him cancelled.

His name, the shop’s name and his phone number have been broadcast online, with people encouraged to ‘give him a ring’ and there have been calls for people to leave negative reviews of his shop on Google, Yelp and TripAdvisor.

A protest has been called outside his store for this weekend while ‘other creative acts of resistance are always encouraged’.

Activists are also trying to get his licence to sell Star Wars memorabilia removed and are stating that his store sells ‘literal Nazi books’.

On social media so far, most of the comments have been in support of the shopkeeper. It seems that most can see another privileged, almost certainly AGP, man is trying to ensure a working-class person loses his livelihood because he refuses to lie. If Disney go along with this and withdraw his license, they’ll be giving another victory to this newly energised and coordinated bully class.

You could have a fight on your hands, old timer. May the force be with you.