Two Pride Center of Vermont board members have resigned amid growing uproar over the proposed Mister Sister gay bar in Winooski.
The board members, Bailey Cummings and Timber Adamson, told Seven Days Tuesday that they wanted the Pride Center to issue a statement criticizing the name of the bar, which they view as an insult to trans women.
Instead, the board’s executive committee decided to hold a town meeting-style forum on trans issues Thursday and get more feedback from the community. The resigning board members saw that as a cop-out.
“Basically the name of this bar is a transmisogynistic slur,” Cummings said. “And I feel strongly as community leaders that the Pride Center is responsible for standing up for our trans community members, and coming out against a slur.”
Adamson cited similar reasons for quitting the board of the gay rights group.
“I can’t continue to support an organization that doesn’t feel the need to stand up and make a statement in regards to a transphobic slur in our community,” Adamson said.
The resignations came after the executive committee of the board met Monday night. Members considered three possible statements but ultimately decided to get more input before taking a public position, said Paul Sisson, co-chair of the board.
He expressed dismay about the two resignations, which drop the board from nine to seven people. He noted the board is composed of volunteers.
“We’re doing the best we can to manage a crisis situation we kind of got thrust into on Sunday,” Sisson said. “I think the whole thing is unfortunate.”
The Pride Center has long been supportive of the trans community, Sisson said, adding: “I’m disappointed that we lost two valued board members as a result of this situation.”
The Pride Center issued a statement on the Mister Sister issue later Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the owner of the proposed bar, Craig McGaughan, continued to defend the Mister Sister name. He’s a gay man, and some critics of the name have said he is being insensitive to other members of the LGBTQ community.
He plans to close his wine bar Oak45 after Tuesday and reopen the new bar in the same space on Main Street March 10.
He issued a statement late Monday night indicating he will stick with the name. Tuesday morning, in a brief online exchange with Seven Days, he declined to comment further.
The name is anything but a slur, McGaughan said in the statement.
“Like all names, Mister Sister will have different associations, interpretations and will be perceived differently by individuals. My interpretation of Mister Sister is one of inclusiveness. It is a term that has been used among gays and Drag Queens for decades intended to be positively gender-bending. Mister Sister is for the misters and the sisters, those that identify as both and everyone in between.”
The statement continued: “The official description of Mister Sister is ‘a gay bar for him, her and them.’ I have been very intentional in using a pronoun that isn’t specifically male or female as a way to include anyone that identifies as part of the LGBTQ community.”
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This is ageism! The bar name, and variations of it, have been in use for decades (if not centuries) as code for queer. To now say it is unacceptable smacks of cultural cleansing and ignoring history to suit the tender sensibilities of the current set of politically correct snowflakes. Pick your battles folks. There are plenty of other real enemies to be addressed. I am seriously offended at this tempest in a teapot.
Penelope: “Do you have any understanding of slavery? Of Jim Crow laws? Of lynching a black child for being rude to a white person? … If black people can deal with overt racism and being shot by police and being denied voting rights, you can deal with a guy naming his bar something you don’t like.”
It’s funny you bring up murder here because trans women – and especially trans women of color – are disproportionately the victims of violent hate-motivated crimes and homicides. They are more so than any other minority group in the USA, when you consider how tiny a percentage of the population they are. The majority of hate homicides against LGBTQ people in 2013 were actually perpetrated against trans women (e.g. http://www.avp.org/storage/documents/ncavp_transhvfactsheet.pdf). Trans women also experience disproportionately high rates of sexual abuse and assault; some studies actually estimate that again, the *majority* of trans women have been sexually abused or assaulted. That’s horrifying to me.
Personally I feel pretty disappointed, as a gay guy from Burlington, that there are so many comments from gay men who are so attached to this name that they want to pick a fight over it with some of the most vulnerable members of our community (who supported us back in the early days and then got promptly thrown under the bus by our most visible activist group, the HRC).
Hope to see all at the meeting,
What I have been told by trans people is that saying the name Mister Sister is intended to be taken as “inclusive” is like opening a bar in the south and calling it “Cracker Ni**er” so that both rednecks and blacks will feel welcome there.