Shereen Ali

The most re­cent ex­am­ple of strange night­club poli­cies may erupt in­to a demon­stra­tion this Fri­day night at the chic Aria Lounge at the cor­ner of Fitt street and Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Port-of-Spain, as men in high heels and women in "un­fe­male cloth­ing" gath­er to protest an act of per­ceived club dis­crim­i­na­tion last Fri­day against a young woman.

The gath­er­ing may be a test, of sorts, of the up­scale club's pos­si­bly sex­ist ad­mis­sion poli­cies. The two small protest groups are un­re­lat­ed and de­cid­ed in­de­pen­dent­ly to act.

Last Fri­day night, Aria Lounge night­club staff de­nied the "ladies on­ly free en­try 9.30–10 pm" pol­i­cy to a fe­male club pa­tron, Shan­non Ja­cob-Gomes, be­cause, ac­cord­ing to Ja­cob-Gomes in an out­raged com­ment she post­ed to her face­book page on Sat­ur­day, the club said she was "pro­ject­ing the im­age of a man" and there­fore had to pay a man's ad­mis­sion fee. She was dressed in pants and flat dress shoes.

Ja­cob-Gomes is a young ac­coun­tant and UWI grad­u­ate who is a woman. She was not dress­ing for shock val­ue, just ac­cord­ing to how she felt com­fort­able, which hap­pened to not in­volve any miniskirts, dress­es, or high heels. She met the club's stan­dards for the male dress code but not for the fe­male dress code. The club did not de­ny her en­try; just re­quest­ed that she pay the male ad­mis­sion price of $120. She found it dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and said so to the club staff and lat­er, on a pub­lic Face­book post.

Aria's dress code is un­clear, but the In­ter­net news site LoopTT in a Sun­day De­cem­ber 13, 15.33 post, quot­ed Aria man­age­ment as stat­ing:

"We do not al­low women in­to the club who are not dressed in el­e­gant­ly ca­su­al at­tire which in­cludes no flats, ca­su­al wear or shirts. We do not al­low men in­to the club who are dressed in 3/4 shorts, slip­pers, T-shirts or hats. Ms Gomes at­tempt­ed to en­ter the club wear­ing male cloth­ing and we did not de­ny her en­try, how­ev­er, she must pay the rel­e­vant costs as it will at­tribute to a male dressed in male cloth­ing...The sole pur­pose be­ing that, we can­not de­ny an­oth­er fe­male en­try for wear­ing flats and in the same breath let Ms Gomes wear flats and ob­tain en­try."

When the T&T Guardian called Aria Lounge yes­ter­day to clar­i­fy their po­si­tion on the in­ci­dent, they said: "I don't think we have any­thing to say about that."

Ja­cob-Gomes de­scribed her ex­pe­ri­ence with Aria ad­mis­sion staff last Fri­day on her Face­book Page as fol­lows: "She (the Aria ad­mis­sions staff mem­ber) re­it­er­at­ed that be­cause I do not 'project the im­age of a fe­male in heels/flats', she can­not and will not al­low me free ac­cess to Aria be­cause I am 'not a nor­mal girl' and since I project the im­age of a man, she has to charge me the male price. She stat­ed that if I do not por­tray the im­age of a fe­male I can­not reap the ben­e­fits of be­ing a fe­male. She stat­ed that I was in breach of their dress code."

Ja­cob-Gomes said she de­serves a pub­lic apol­o­gy "from Aria's man­age­ment for the dis­crim­i­na­tion and em­bar­rass­ment en­coun­tered last night. I nev­er felt so bla­tant­ly dis­re­spect­ed in a known pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tion as this be­fore." An Aria staff mem­ber has since apol­o­gised on so­cial me­dia.

Stephanie Leitch, an out­spo­ken fem­i­nist writer and ac­tivist, has is­sued a "Call to ac­tion" this week via her Face­book page to all T&T women. It reads, in part:

"We can­not al­low night­clubs in T&T to tell women they are–not women, not re­al women, not a 'nor­mal' woman, not woman enough, too male, or ex­ist too far left of fem­i­nin­i­ty for the sex­u­al­i­sa­tion of the male gaze (as is our du­ty). I in­vite all women to join us on Fri­day De­cem­ber 18 to stage a protest out­side the Aria night­club on Ari­api­ta Av­enue at 10 pm. We will wear our most un­fe­male cloth­ing to dis­guise our fem­i­nin­i­ty...We will not stand for body polic­ing, gen­der polic­ing, body sham­ing or dis­crim­i­na­tion of any kind."

Ac­tivist Ian Roy­er, a mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­al, com­ment­ed: "I have worked in the bar in­dus­try be­fore; I was gen­er­al man­ag­er for More Vi­no for two years. While man­agers have the right to refuse ad­mis­sion, what is not ac­cept­able is the way they did it.

At­tor­ney Mar­tin George said, "Was there doubt about Ja­cob-Gomes' gen­der? If so, did the club ask to see her ID? If her ID proved she was fe­male, then the club would re­al­ly have no rea­son to de­ny her ac­cess to the 'fe­males free 9.30-10 pm' pol­i­cy, un­less it was on some oth­er ba­sis such as not meet­ing a dress code, but they would have to clear­ly show how she breached that dress code and it should be some pub­li­cised code and can't be ap­plied capri­cious­ly or wan­ton­ly nor in a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry man­ner so that if it is ap­plied it must be ap­plied even­ly across the board."

An­oth­er at­tor­ney, Dou­glas Mendes, ex­pressed his pri­vate opin­ion on the mat­ter:

"Aria clear­ly has un­re­solved is­sues about gen­der and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. If women are not al­lowed in with­out heels, then Ms Ja­cob-Gomes should have been de­nied en­try al­to­geth­er. But they couldn't do that be­cause they would run afoul of their de­clared pol­i­cy of not dis­crim­i­nat­ing on the ba­sis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. So they agreed to let her in, but on­ly if she paid the male price of en­try. But that in it­self was dis­crim­i­na­tion on the ba­sis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion be­cause it de­nied Ms Ja­cob-Gomes the right to ex­press her­self with­out penal­ty and as­sump­tions made about her sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

He added: "There is al­so this con­tra­dic­tion. The fact that she was not de­nied en­try means that Aria was sat­is­fied that she was el­e­gant­ly dressed, just not as a woman, which con­sti­tut­ed an over­ly nar­row view of what a women needs to wear to be el­e­gant. It sug­gests that in Aria's view, a woman wear­ing flats is not sexy, and there­fore not fe­male enough. Aria would do well just to re­quire sim­ply that all pa­trons dress el­e­gant­ly with­out im­pos­ing dif­fer­ent stan­dards for men and women."