Picasso artworks put in female toilet as part of art gallery response to court ruling ( www.abc.net.au )

  • In short: Tasmanian art gallery Mona has hung artworks by Pablo Picasso in a female toilet cubicle in response to a failed court bid to exclude men from a women-only art installation.
  • In April, a court ruling found Mona discriminated when it refused a New South Wales man entry to its Ladies Lounge.
  • What's next? Mona curator Kirsha Kaechele is appealing the discrimination ruling in the Supreme Court.
Nougat ,

If your socio-policital point requires the infringement of someone’s rights, I’m immediately inclined to disagree with you.

tacosanonymous ,

I think it’s a problem of enforcement. It states they weren’t letting in people self identifying as ladies.

I get the point of the exhibit and it’s fair to make the statement. Her point was made and she got international attention. She loses me at the concept of having herself or staff determining genders at the point of access.

MindTraveller ,

"Ms Kaechele described the Ladies Lounge as a response to the lived experience of women forbidden from entering certain spaces throughout history," Mr Grueber said.

Fortunately, modern legislation prohibits sex-segregated art displays, so the practices Ms Kaechele is responding to are no longer legal in Australia.

If Ms Kaechele would like to campaign for a return to sex-segregated art displays, I am certain she would be displeased by the outcome of abolishing sex discrimination laws.

hanrahan ,
@hanrahan@slrpnk.net avatar

Sex segregated spaces are allowed thogh?, is it just art spaces that aren't.

Women's only gyms, women's only swimming pools.etc

Some guy who lived near a ladies only pool in Sydney sued becase he wanted to use it but he lost.

MindTraveller ,

That's a shame. Between all the men's only spaces and the women's only spaces, nonbinary people lose.

Kayel ,

It does seem to go against the thought provoking point of a modern art gallery

MindTraveller ,

You know, in Australia, there's men's only homeless shelters and women's only homeless shelters, but no nonbinary only homeless shelters. And of the mixed gender homeless shelters, very few of them have a designated space for nonbinary people or people of all genders. If you're nonbinary and homeless, chances are you either live on the street, or in a men's section or a women's section. Now, given the issues nonbinary youth tend to suffer with transphobic parents, I daresay nonbinary people are one of the groups most in need of homeless shelters. Some homeless shelters have a mixed gender space, and that's the right way to do it. This is more common with shelters that house families as well as individuals.

Speaking of, recent studies show that nonbinary people are more common than both trans men and trans women. As societal gender issues literacy increases, the number of nonbinary-identifying people just goes up and up, and it's showing no sign of slowing down. Given that there are a billion nonbinary genders and only two binary genders, I wouldn't be surprised if the current gender revolution ends up with most people nonbinary. Nobody fits the ideals of masculinity or femininity perfectly, and there's more and more young people opting out of the binary entirely, even if they're the kind of people who could have gone their whole lives being happy with their assigned gender in the old world.

Kayel ,

That would be good. Non binary was rare among the queer community when I was a teen. Already, friends have asked me to chat with their kids who are coming out. I don't have much to say, they're more onto it than I ever was. I was surprised by the number until you mentioned it's more common now

MindTraveller , (edited )

There's plenty of people who think binary gender is just a phase humanity briefly went through. They think there'll be no such thing as men or women within two hundred years.

I can say with certainty that there are no binary babies, because babies don't have gender. Gender starts developing at 2-3, solidifies at 4, morphs to its adult form at puberty, and continues developing either until 25 or until death. There's no such thing as a baby boy or a baby girl, and it's barely even fair to call a toddler a boy or a girl. In a few generations, gendering babies will be seen as barbaric, the same way many people see circumcision or female genital mutilation today. Children will choose their own pronouns when they're old enough to talk, and it'll be they/them or it/its until then.

Kayel ,

That's the point of the court ruling right? It recognises the current climate when determining safety and disadvantage, not the past.

TWeaK ,

No she thinks it's fair for women to discriminate against men, "for at least 300 years".

Anticorp ,

Unfortunately this is what a lot of people who claim to be advocates of equality want. They don't want actual equality, they want harmful inequality for the group that used to benefit from it. That doesn't provide justice for anyone, it just perpetuates injustice, especially since many people who never actually benefitted from the previous inequality will be harmed by the reversed situation. We need true inclusivity, not this role reversal bullshit that so many popular ideologies espouse.

Edit: see this comment as evidence.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works avatar

and did not recognise how the experience of the Ladies Lounge can promote equal opportunity.

What a ridiculous argument, I don’t have much respect for the legal system but it got it right this time.

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