Small Business in Michigan Caught Banning Transgender Customers

(Originally written July 2023) A Michigan small business owner may have earned legitimate criticism following offensive comments directed toward individuals of a “non-binary” gender identification.  As reported by Ken Meekins of MRCTV.com, in the article Michigan Salon Owner Receives Backlash for Banning ‘Anything Other than a Man/Woman’, Studio 8 Hair Lab in Traverse City, Michigan was caught banning transgender customers and alternative pronoun use.  The original Facebook post, now deleted, from owner Christine Geiger, included oddly personal and excessively disparaging remarks suggesting the physical or verbal expression of transgenderism warrants alternative patronage at a pet grooming service.

After Geiger’s declaration predictably resulted in social media backlash, she responded further, suggesting in a slightly more diplomatic manner that the exclusionary tactic was a means of protecting potential trans-gendered cliental from an unaccommodating environment where alternative pronoun use is rejected.  If decency truly was Geiger’s primary motivating factor, then why publicly initiate this rule through an offensive attack with divisive and abusive language? 

Why ban an entire group of people based on alternative thinking and belief systems when they can decide for themselves whether or not to patronize a non-accommodating business?  If banning alternative pro-noun use in a private business is viewed as a fair, legal, constitutional right, do those feelings endure when confronted with comparable mandates against “Maga” paraphernalia, which we could just say is designed for their protection in an unaccommodating environment? 

Does banning “preferred pronouns” or banning transgender customers who use them reinforce patriotic conservative ideals of “free speech”, freedom of choice, and the pursuit of happiness?  In fairness, that all depends on how it manifests and who is subjected to the corresponding consequences.  It is important to distinguish between private disputes and institutional mandates exclusively favoring a singular ideological narrative inconsistent with democratic approval and directly attributing to varying degrees of harm. 

Who Pays the Price of Freedom?

Free speech must go both ways.  If you are a woman who will not comply to preferred pronouns (at this point let’s call them mandated pronouns) how would you react if a person consistently referred to you as “he”?  Would that not wear on you after a while?  Is that how a “trans” person feels when they don’t hear what they identify as “their” pronouns?  An important contextual distinction lies within the spirit of associated speech, whether “pronoun” use is framed as a request of inter-personal respect, or an un-negotiable demand.

Is it also unfair to characterize all “trans” people as the same?  Some people are “trans” because they are confused by what they are taught and attracted to a social movement advertising appealing ideals and a desperately desired sense of belonging.  Some people are “trans” because they are genuinely experiencing “gender dysphoria”.  Some people are “trans” because they have a rare “inter-sex” condition.  Should we treat every “trans” person the same when transgenderism manifests for a variety of reasons? 

If a person has the physical manifestation on some level of both sets of sexual equipment (which is rare but entirely possible), what is the correct pronoun to use and who decides that?  Ironically, both sides of the aisle treat the trans issue in a very binary way.  Is it logical to be exclusively for or exclusively against entire categories of political doctrine with an incalculably diverse mix of variables and potential assertions?  If being fair, it’s very easy to make valid arguments in both directions when addressing specific points versus blanketed support.

Let’s take an alternative look at mandated “pro-noun” use.  What if an African American man decides his preferred pronouns are “my *****”?  If you were a white liberal, would you comply to that?  What happens when failure to comply to preferred pro-nouns is declared a hate crime?  What if a Christian decides their gender identity is Christianity and their pronouns are “child of the King” and “follower of the one true God”?  Can the government mandate pro-noun usage that arguably endorses a specific religion or utilizes historically racist terminology? 

How does being “inclusive” include overtly offending people excluded from your political initiatives?

If gender, and subsequently pronoun use, is a subjective social construct predicated upon personal determination, then the sky is the limit.  Are we really going to ban certain “pronouns” or argue they don’t meet a traditional dictionary definition, which would be ironic?  Wouldn’t that compromise the entire premise?  Could someone claim that these examples aren’t pronouns by definition…absolutely.  But if we can change the definition of man and woman to accommodate liberal transgender ideology, then we can change the definition of a pro-noun also, to accommodate equitably executing a concept the liberal political complex designed and qualified.

Since more than 99 percent of the population identifies their “gender” and “sex” congruently (more recent data shows slightly under 99 %), and in the vast majority of cases “assuming” someone’s “gender” would prove accurate, are we not already potentially “misgendering” someone if needlessly asking for their pronouns, when most people will base this on how a person looks?  What happens when you offend a “butch” conservative lesbian by asking for her pronouns when “she” is “clearly” a woman? 

Is being offensive or offended a one-way street?  Asking everyone for “their” pronouns would be tedious and superfluous since most people statistically speaking don’t need that qualified.  Are we really going to mandate pro-noun declaration for EVERYONE when such a small portion of the population is affected?  What happens when you offend 75% of the population by doing this?

How does being “inclusive” include overtly offending people excluded from your political initiatives?  How is it the crowd that struggles defining anything, struggles applying asserted standards in an equitable manner, and denounces the “assignment” of “gender” based on reasonable observations and historically accepted science, can manufacture and indiscriminately assign any conceivable judgement under the sun?  I can’t “assign” someone’s “gender” identity, but you can assign racist, supremacist, extremist, bigot, toxic, phobic, misogynist, anti-fill in the blank, or whatever judgmental label comes next…often as a knee-jerk reaction to disagreeing and strong emotions?  How can you expect people to “co-exist” if you can’t even consistently make your own ideas do that?

Divided We Fall for It

Superficial reactions to the idea of banning transgender customers from a salon encompass predictable trappings and inevitable regurgitation of ultimately meaningless accusations.  While the typical “right wing” versus “left wing”, trans-phobic degenerate versus hysterical leftist mob polarized construct dominates related commentary, whatever happened to objective, impartial journalistic inquiries and analysis? 

When reading modern news articles, I look for reasonable questions seemingly unaddressed.  Why is seemingly no one asking what motivated the salon owners’ actions?  Were Ms. Geiger’s actions based on a particular incident?  Is there an above average transgender population in this part of Michigan where this issue commonly occurs?  Or do these divisive reactions result from the general state of liberal gender ideology and related legislative action?  Should individual people be held to the same standard as the politically compromised systems initiating and perpetrating incoherent assertions and related policy? 

Are Ms. Geiger’s reactions much more than needlessly offensive, misdirected frustration?  But this is what the establishment wants: people fighting each other.  “We the people” have no power if we are divided.  That’s the point… 

Situations such as this are unfortunate fodder for a political movement desperate to counteract legitimate intellectual talking points with predominantly erroneous accusations of “phobic” and “intolerant” behavior.  The opportunistic mainstream narrative characterizes entire populations as ignorant and hateful through qualitative manipulation, ironically engaging strong and often irrational emotional responses. 

How do we qualify our response to an individual making poor choices (like indiscriminately banning transgender customers) and propagating insulting inferences?  Do we accomplish this through stigmas, stereotypes, and antagonistic generalizations of other conservatives who reasonably debate the intellectual validity of liberally mandated constructs and the harmful aftereffects? 

Ironically, what the mainstream media and political pundits often characterize as “right-wing extremist transphobia”, typically encompassing any expression of non-conformity to supposedly subjective non-conformist gender constructs and associated assertions, is an increasingly diverse cast of characters.

This includes formerly transgendered individuals such as Jazz Jennings or Chloe Cole, women athletes like Riley Gaines fighting to keep sports about physiology rather than feelings, and traditionally more “liberal” leaning personalities such as Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, and Dave Chapelle (see more on that here).  However, it doesn’t help when “conservative” commentators, republican politicians, or right leaning media outlets sprinkle disparaging characterizations and offensive humor over strong arguments, tarnishing otherwise inarguable logic and facts. 

In the instance of the aforementioned Michigan salon banning transgender customers, outrage over unfair treatment would appear to be warranted.  Combating undesirable political constructs must exclusively exist through intellectually attacking ideas, not people. As tensions escalate amongst ordinary citizens over political indoctrination campaigns in public schools, unintelligible ideological assertions, and aggressively asserted social mandates in the name of tolerance and diversity, it seems we are increasingly losing sight of how to constructively channel opposition and where to direct that effort. 

The divisive nature of the modern mainstream political machine is motivated by interpersonal conflict.  Focusing on your skin color and your pro-nouns keeps you distracted.  Inventing 70 something different genders you could theoretically choose from keeps you confused.  You spend your time fighting battles that don’t ultimately matter, while a covert political regime slowly dissolves the legal fabric of a Constitutional Republic that allocates absolute power to the people, theoretically keeping the “establishment” in check.  While fighting worthy battles is important, we must fight fairly, remember what we are fighting for, and who the real enemies are.  Let’s fight bad ideas with good ideas rather than increasing the divide by attacking people.

The issue here isn’t interpersonal pronoun use; it’s everything else attached to it.  The issue is systemic indoctrination.  The issue is democratic freedom over authoritarian control.  The issue is applying irrational remedies to an actual problem.  The issue is mandated conformity in the name of tolerance and diversity at the majority’s expense and the expense of logic, reason, reasonable freedoms, and common sense.  The issue is taking a real concern experienced by an extremely minute portion of society, mandating blanketed socialization loosely related to the originating concern, and incorporating solutions that hurt people as a result, benefiting institutions and political conglomerates more than individuals. 

The issue is freely handing over personal political power to a corrupt establishment in exchange for meaningless currency they convinced you is valuable.  But let’s not needlessly antagonize victims of social engineering, half-baked rhetoric touted as unquestionable fact, and an education system producing self-focused people fighting their allies in democracy for power and control they already have but are freely and eagerly abandoning.  Our collective democratic power is needlessly neutralized when attention and energy is diverted toward each other, such as when banning transgender customers or targeting alternative pro-noun use.

My “Kindness” Versus “Your” Kindness

Under the overwhelming haze of social unrest and a seemingly insurmountable collection of contrary thinking, we often hear calls for unity, but what does that look like?  Should we unify around aggressive demands for social conformity?  Is unity an opportunity to come together for common good and common goals despite uncommon perspectives on what that means and how to reach the finish line, or a call to action mandating assimilation and eliminating intellectual dissent based on projected authority rather than content?  Why do your unifying inclusionary principles exclude a ginormous sector of society?  The gatekeepers of tolerance, unity, and kindness have a lot of “splaining” to do. 

In the meantime, to the best of your ability, fight ideas while showing kindness.  But let’s qualify kindness.  Kindness isn’t mindless name calling.  Kindness isn’t forced conformity or mandatory lying.  Kindness isn’t cancelation.  Kindness isn’t banning transgender customers from your business because of a fundamental, political disagreement. Kindness isn’t prioritizing ideology over people, who are more than their gender classification.

On the other hand, how can kindness in the name of inclusion be selective? Kindness isn’t antagonizing groups of Humanity based on qualitative experiences.  Kindness isn’t banning people over their identity or their politics. Kindness isn’t an unevenly paved one-way street.  Kindness means proportionately applied mercy. You can be kind without being perfect, while expecting perfection is unkind. Kindness isn’t always warm and fuzzy.  Kindness isn’t always self-edifying.  Sometimes kindness comes at a personal price.  Meaningful kindness can lead to strong words and hard conversations.  Kindness can mean an intervention. 

If calling for kindness…make sure you know what that means and make sure you are reasonably doing it. But how can you expect such a message to reach others…when it’s not even reaching you?