A friend and I were assaulted by the staff at Barbarella in Austin last night.
We were outback and I kicked over an empty plastic cup with my heels and was about to walk back inside when this white guy with dreads grabbed my by the throat and started shoving me back to where the cup was and was screaming at me to pick up the cup and put it in the trash can “like a human being” and I wasn’t fighting back or arguing, just trying to pick up the cup but it was a little hard to gracefully bend over in my heels so my friend Pablo picked it up for me in the midst of the guys who worked there screaming at me and intimidating me. The guy with dreads grabbed the cup from Pablo and threw it back on the floor in front of me and told me to pick it up saying “your mother doesn’t live here.” I did so, daintily and asked where the trash can was. I put it in the trash can and they started shoving all of my friends and I, leading me out with their hands around my throat. They were imitating me with a gay lisp. They grabbed my friend Katie and pushed her and called her a cunt and as I was leaving they screamed “nice heels queer.” Katie and I tried talking to the supposed “manager” out front (apparently the manager is actually a woman, but this guy wemtalked to said the three men who assaulted us worked for him so we assumed he was either a manager or supervisor figure of some sort) who pretended to be too busy to talk, said he didn’t believe us because “what am I supposed to take your word over the guys who work for me?” and said it wasn’t possible for an employee at Barbarella to be homophobic because they host a gay night called “tuesgays” even though the DJ who plays on tuesgays has come out and said he has experienced shit like this from the men who work there before. Some friends in Austin who work in the bar scene have been twittering and facebooking about what happened to us and encouraging people to stay away from that bar. People have been commenting saying that they have experienced violence and sexism and homophobia from the bouncers there before and that they have the scars to prove it. Katie is working hard coming up with ideas on how to slam these assholes. We’re starting a Facebook group about it so more people can see it, contacting Equality TX and women’s groups, we’re calling the bar and leaving voicemails until they call us back (we got an answering machine when we called them last night but now the number seems to just lead to a fax machine) Katie even wants to make signs to post outside of the club. Ugh.
