Women-only Spa Stirs Controversy after Transgender 'Woman' Turned Away

Transgender author Jia Qing Wilson-Yang tweets that her wife was told

she wasn't allowed in

CBC News 

The King Street East location of Body Blitz in Toronto is a women-only spa whose policy around transgender women is under fire. (Google Maps)

A popular women-only spa is at the centre of a social media maelstrom after a transgender woman said she was not allowed to enter because of a policy forbidding male genitalia.

Transgender author Jia Qing Wilson-Yang tweeted on Friday that her wife had hoped to make her a surprise appointment at Body Blitz, a water circuit spa with multiple locations in Toronto, but had been told that Wilson-Yang would not be allowed in.

Since then, a flurry of tweets and posts on the spa's Facebook page have seen people lining up on both sides of the debate, with some slamming the policy as discriminatory and others applauding it.

"My home girls and I love this spa!! Thank you for keeping women safe," reads one post on the Body Blitz Facebook page.

"As this city prepares to celebrate and honour its great wonderful diversities, your cowardly bullying actions are truly a revolting juxtaposition," reads another.

NDP critic for LGBT issues wades in

On Tuesday, High Park member of the Ontario Legislature and NDP critic for LGBT issues Cheri DiNovo released a statement criticizing the spa for what she described as "blatant transphobia and violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code." 

"Remember lesbians and gays banned from change rooms of health clubs? This is the same thing," DiNovo was quoted as saying. 

Other people have shared similar stories to Wilson-Yang, with one commenter reporting that a transgender friend had been called shortly before their booking to tell them not to come due to the spa's rule regarding male genitalia. 

Another woman said a staff member told her that the spa's rule was "as long as this is gone," before waving her hand over her pelvis. 

Former client calls for apologies, training

Adam Abramovich, a transgender man who was a client at Body Blitz before transitioning, expressed disappointment in what he described as a poorly thought out policy, in an appearance on CBC Radio's Here and Now on Tuesday.  

"I think it's archaic and narrow-minded for a facility to grant access to people based on their genitals," he said. 

Abramovich, who works with LGBT youth in his capacity as a doctor at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said the comments supporting Body Blitz that focus on women's safety are also missing the mark. 

"I don't really understand what people are so afraid of. Are they afraid that a trans woman who was enjoying a day at the spa like anyone else is going to assault them?" he asked. 

At least one in five Canadian women over 18 have been sexually abused. That percentage increases of women in their twenties and thirties. A number of those women suffer from PTSD from the abuse and some are barely hanging onto their sanity. Body Blitz is a safe place for these survivors to feel like a normal woman for a change. 

The sight of male genitalia in the midst of a refuge presents a needless risk of triggering someone's PTSD. Also, it is flagrant sexual assault - exposure is still against the law in Canada, although with far-left governments in Toronto and Ottawa, and an extremely sympathetic media, I'm sure it will come off the books soon.

Liberals tout safe-places for LGBTQs, but the thought of one for normal women seems to be untenable for them.

Abramovich is calling on Body Blitz to apologize to the trans community and give staff a "trans 101" crash course. He said the spa should develop a new policy and "understand that when you open up a service that says women only, that trans women should be included because trans women are women." 

Trans women are women in their heads only; they are men in their genitalia! Isn't that obvious?

Body Blitz responds

Body Blitz, whose management declined an interview with CBC Toronto, wrote in an email that they "support the LGBTQ community and recognize that this is a sensitive issue. However, because Body Blitz Spa is a single-sex facility with full-nudity, we are not like other facilities." 

The spa had also responded previously in a Facebook post, saying that the owners are working with a "civil rights professional" over the summer to help create a "clear and fair policy."

What do other women-only spas do?

A representative of Sweetgrass, another women-only spa in Toronto, told CBC Toronto that it does not have any policy in place regarding transgender women — but it plans to seek legal advice to ensure that it's being inclusive to all clientele. 

The situation is different at Sweetgrass, said spa director Monique Joustra, because clients are not nude together and typically wear robes during treatments. 

She said she was "never aware" of a transgender woman coming to the spa, but that doesn't mean none have come, because it's possible they came in and received services without incident. 

Professor who Tweeted Against PC Culture is Out at NYU

Michael Rectenwald Photo: Douglas Healey

By Melkorka Licea, NY Post

An NYU professor crusading against political correctness and student coddling was booted from the classroom last week after his colleagues complained about his “incivility,” The Post has learned.

Liberal studies prof Michael Rectenwald, 57, said he was forced Wednesday to go on paid leave for the rest of the semester.

“They are actually pushing me out the door for having a different perspective,” the academic told The Post.

People have no tolerance for perspectives that run counter to their own. Everyone assume their truth is the truth and anyone who disagrees with them is completely wrong and has no right to question their beliefs. This is why American politics has become so insane.

Rectenwald launched an undercover Twitter account called Deplorable NYU Prof on Sept. 12 to argue against campus trends like “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings” policing Halloween costumes and other aspects of academia’s growing PC culture.

He chose to be anonymous, he explained in one of his first tweets, because he was afraid “the PC Gestapo would ruin me” if he put his name ­behind his conservative ideas on the famously liberal campus.

“I remember once on my Facebook I posted a story about a kid who changed his pronoun to ‘His Majesty’ because I thought it was funny,” he told The Post. “Then I got viciously attacked by 400 people. This whole milieu is nauseating. I grew tired of it, so I made the account.”

On Oct. 11, Rectenwald used his ­internet alter ego to criticize “safe spaces” — the recent campus trend of “protecting” students from uncomfortable speech — as “at once a hall of mirrors and a rubber room.”

Two weeks ago he posted on his “anti-PC” feed a photo of a flyer put out by NYU resident advisers telling students how to avoid wearing potentially offensive Halloween costumes.

His caption read: “The scariest thing about Halloween today is . . . the liberal totalitarian costume surveillance. NYU RAs gone mad,” he wrote.

“It’s an alarming curtailment of free expression to the point where you can’t even pretend to be something without authorities coming down on you in the universities,” Rectenwald told The Post.

But the Twitter feed soon sparked a “witch hunt” by the growing army of “social justice warriors,” he said.

In an interview published Monday in the Washington Square News, NYU’s Independent Student Newspaper, the eight-year instructor admitted he was the Deplorable NYU Prof.

“My contention is that trigger warning, safe spaces and bias hot-line reporting is not politically correct. It is insane,” he told the student paper. “The crazier and crazier that this left gets . . . the more the alt-right is going to be laughing their asses off [and] getting more pissed.”, he was quoted as saying.

The divorced father of three came forward because “I thought there was nothing objectionable about what I had said.”

But Rectenwald says he began getting “dirty looks” in his department and on Wednesday figured out why: A 12-person committee calling itself the Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group, including two deans, published a letter to the editor in the same paper.

‘Academic freedom: It’s great, as long as you don’t use it.’

 - Michael Rectenwald

“As long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas,” they wrote of the untenured assistant professor.

“We seek to create a dynamic community that values full participation. Such efforts are not the ‘destruction of academic integrity’ Professor Rectenwald suggests, but rather what make possible our program’s approach to global studies,” they argued. Rectenwald likened the attack to “a Salem witch trial. They took my views personally. I never even mentioned them and I never even said NYU liberal studies program. I was talking about academia at large,” said the professor, a popular instructor who was graded 4.4 out of 5 on ratemyprofessors.com.

The same day the letter was published, Rectenwald was summoned to a meeting with his department dean and an HR representative, he says.

“They claimed they were worried about me and a couple people had expressed concern about my mental health. They suggested my voicing these opinions was a cry for help,” Rectenwald told The Post. “Then they said I should leave and get help.”

He said, “They had no reason to believe that my mental health was in question, unless to have a different opinion makes one insane.”

Students told him that professors openly discussed with students how he may be fired.

The leave has “absolutely zero to do with his Twitter account or his opinions on issues of the day,” said NYU spokesman Matt Nagel.

But Rectenwald is disheartened.

“I’m afraid my academic career is over,” he said Rectenwald. “Academic freedom: It’s great, as long as you don’t use it.”

If there is no freedom of speech in universities, there can be no freedom of speech anywhere. God help America.