By Rona Jamieson
As much as it pains me to admit it, I did in fact attend the St Patrick’s Day Fruity club night in LUU on 17th March 2023. Even though I only went because my friends wanted to go, the bouncers' treatment of me was very disrespectful and ruined the whole night for me.
As many Leeds students know, to get down into Stylus, you have to go past the Co-op. This queue was split into two genders for male and female. As someone who prefers to not identify with binary labels, this was the first tip off that this night wasn’t going to go to plan. As any rational person would, I went up to the bouncer in charge of the ‘male’ queue to ask what I should do. There were considerably fewer people standing in that queue, so it really wouldn’t have made any difference to them if I had been shown through that queue. However, I was astounded to be told that because I presented feminine and ‘have breasts’ I wasn’t allowed to join the male queue.
I prefer to use she/they pronouns, so this made me visibly upset, especially as there was no clear reason for this. If it was so that a female bouncer could search me to make it more comfortable, then I would understand, however all the bouncers doing the searching were men. This means that there was precisely no reason to segregate the queues by such outdated binary rules. In many other night clubs I have been to in Leeds, they haven’t even searched me, never mind segregated the queues by strict binaries.
The comment from the bouncer invalidating my gender identity by saying ‘you have tits’ was not only objectifying but made me feel very dysphoric in a way that I haven’t experienced before. And to top it all off, the gender neutral toilets were locked the whole night. This means that even the disabled student population couldn’t access them. LUU prides themselves on being very inclusive, but how can you claim that when the bouncers are actively transphobic?
I have two words for Leeds University Union and their bouncers: Do Better.
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