*Editor’s Note: Ariel’s last name has been removed at her request to protect her identity.
Ariel didn’t expect to be called out when she wore her pinkest outfit to go see the Barbie movie with her friends on July 25.
“I was wearing a pink button up short sleeve shirt with shorts and pink crocs,” Ariel told CityBeat. “I went out to have a good time with friends.”
The Starlite Drive-In theater where Ariel and her friends went was hosting a double screening of Barbie and Legally Blonde. She wanted to wait for the Barbie movie to end before going to the restroom, but instead hurried off to the women’s room with some time left in the movie.
“I was in there for five minutes. I peed, washed my hands and left,” she said. “As I’m walking away with my back towards the concession, I hear a voice go, ‘If you’re not a woman, please don’t use the women’s restroom.’ It sounded like it was said on an intercom of some sort.”
Ariel, who is a trans woman, didn’t know what to do.
“I wanted to turn back around and say something but I felt so humiliated and overwhelmed that I just kept walking back to my friend’s car,” she said. “I actually almost had a panic attack from feeling so overwhelmed. It took everything in me not to start crying.”
Morgan Bochenek was back at the car waiting for Ariel to return from the bathroom. When she didn’t come back to the car after 30 minutes, Bochenek went looking for her. She found her looking for the car, frazzled and shaken.
“Her whole demeanor was different, for obvious reasons but she coherently was able to tell us what happened,” Bochenek told CityBeat. “Based on the optics of the situation (it being dark, us being three small women and feeling suddenly outnumbered, the seemingly hostile nature of the announcement) we decided to leave and take it up with ownership privately.”
The next day, Ariel said she brought the issue to Starlight’s attention through their email and Facebook.
“All I asked for was an apology and an acknowledgment of the situation,” she said. “Only to be met with silence from the business and pure harassment from two women who made me out to be some predator who harms women and girls.”
The Facebook page for Starlite has limited comments and reviews ever since Ariel made her complaint, which Starlite appears to have deleted.
Starlite did not respond to CityBeat’s request for comment, but the business addresses complaints in a Facebook messenger conversation with one of Ariel’s friends. Screenshots of the conversation obtained by CityBeat show Starlite only denying the fact that the transphobic comment was made over an intercom.
“We did not announcing (sic) anything over the intercom that is incorrect information,” the message from Starlite reads.
After Ariel’s friend pushes further, saying the comment was “still bigotry,” Starlite shuts down the conversation.
“Nothing else will be said about it,” the business writes.
“I believe they are actively attempting to push this under the rug,” Ariel said. “I have been called a rapist, a predator, a man. I have been made out to be some sort of criminal simply for using the restroom.”
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This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 8, 2023.
