This past week has felt like a throwback to when there were several viral stories all happening at once, and everyone had big, loud opinions on those stories. Currently, we have intellectuals and advocates fighting over Nikole Hannah-Jones’ bonkers admissions about screwing up her only child’s education. We also have a generational battle over Gen Z applicants bringing iced coffee to job interviews. And now this, a story about a lesbian bar in Massachusetts which has been completely derailed by too-woke LGBTQ people. The quotes in this piece read like a right-wing parody of what they think “woke people” sound like.

The August 31 Instagram post from Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, was upbeat, teasing a new DJ lineup and a volunteer meetup. But partway down the rainbow-hued post labeled “UPDATES!” was a sentence that would splinter the queer community in this small Pioneer Valley city and beyond.

“It is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional,” wrote Last Ditch. Previously, patrons were required to wear a well-fitted KN-95 mask “or better” at all times. The new policy was not received with love.

“Just say you’re being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with,” wrote one commenter.

“people like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience,” posted another.

“I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic],” wrote a third.

The thread grew to 442 comments, some supportive, but many furious. The people running the bar were accused of being ableist — eugenicist, even — for relaxing their signature policy in the face of what commenters consider an ongoing pandemic (Greenfield hasn’t reported any COVID cases in more than two months).

Two days later, Last Ditch posted an apology. “We are sorry for our passive and dismissive tone of our change to the norms and schedule impacting the most intersectional of us,” management wrote on Instagram. “We understand everyone faces different intersections and we are always working to consider all needs fully.”

Instead of defusing the situation, the apology seemed to make things worse. The bar had erred: it posted an Instagram card without providing alt-text for the visually impaired. This set off a fresh round of accusations of ableism. “This is not an accessible post,” wrote one user. “It indicates the lack of care or interest in Disability intersectionality.”

[At a meeting discussing the masking situation], there are some 10 people, seated in a circle on the dance floor, all wearing masks: Matellian, a handful of volunteers, some bar patrons, and two designated mediators who will facilitate conversations between parties who disagree. Another 10 or 15 people join the meeting via Zoom. The plan is to go clockwise, sharing views on the masking decision and the financial future of the bar. Each person has two minutes to speak. It begins with a calming breath exercise. Almost immediately, the proceedings are derailed.

One of Last Ditch’s most vocal critics, the head of another queer COVID-conscious collective in Western Massachusetts, a performer and artist who goes by Soe Noire, has been posting complaints about Last Ditch for days. Now, Noire joins the meeting on Zoom. He and other critics begin to flood the Zoom chat with irate messages, which are dutifully read aloud to the group. When it comes time for one of the mediators, a licensed therapist, to speak, she takes a conciliatory tone.

“I love that you are here online,” she says. But “these platforms alienate us from each other. I’m talking about social media.” She asks whether participants can try to remove themselves from “places of righteousness.”

“I would love to get to a place where we all know each other’s face, where we all know each other’s name,” she continues.

“It’s messed up that the mediator is dismissing those attending virtually. That’s not accessibility,” someone responds in the chat.

“A lot of people are calling for an acknowledgment of harm and I’m hearing a WHITE therapist … center[ing] the feelings of a majority white and white adjacent staff,” writes Noire, who is Black. Moreover, the Zoom attendees speculate that the mediator’s licensed status makes her a mandated reporter — an agent of the state, akin to police. One person going by “Moss” asks if the mediator could have them hospitalized against their will, adding that her presence is “wildly unsafe.”

[From Boston Globe]

No, but this is what it’s like online with the woke warriors, and this is probably the best example I’ve seen in years of how their complaints work in real life. To be clear, I love woke. I love inclusivity, I love conversations about structural inequality and disability access and multicultural spaces and anti-racism. I love all of that and I’m all for creating a more woke society. But this sh-t is WILD!! And here’s the thing… these people are treating a bar as a public utility rather than a business trying to make money and increase their clientele. The misunderstanding of the business side of this is the wildest part, to me. That and the firebombing part. And the part about how therapists are cops.

Photos courtesy of Antoni Shkraba, Ketut Subiyanto and Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.