Bathhouse and naked yoga hotspot Archimedes Banya recently announced that trans women would no longer be admitted to their monthly women-only “Women’s Day,” and after a furor, they’re now declaring two separate women’s nights in hopes of appeasing both sides.
You can imagine that trans people are understandably on edge these days, with the Trump administration’s federal onslaught against trans rights, manifesting in recent orders on gender identities on passports and trans people in sports. And frankly, these culture wars sure seem to pick on trans women more than trans men.
So there was some swift backlash when the Hunters Point bathhouse and spa Archimedes Banya abruptly changed their policy, apparently this past weekend, to ban trans women from their monthly women-only “Women’s Day.” This event had not previously discouraged trans women from attending.
If you’re not familiar, Archimedes Banya is a spa venue with pretty frequent nudity at its spas, hot tubs, and naked rooftop yoga-type events. So yes, it is natural that largely naked-people venues would have women’s night kind of events to limit the prevalence of creepy men.
This screenshot shows the original announcement, apparently from recent days, that “Archimedes Banya designated one day a month as Women’s Day to shelter religious preferences of women in our community. To further accommodate their religious beliefs we have to limit admission on Women’s Day to BIOLOGICAL WOMEN ONLY.” (Emphases theirs.)
That wording has since been watered down to remove the emphases, and with slightly changed verbiage now saying that “we have to limit admission on Women’s Day to sex assigned at birth.”
Archimedes Banya introduces women's night that bans trans women
byu/wordsthatoutliveus insanfrancisco
The Reddit post from Monday above, which appears to have been edited by moderators and getting flagged for further review, is getting a lot of comments (about 1,400 of them as of press time!) largely siding against the original poster.
But there has been a ton of similar blowback on Facebook. The Archimedes Banya Yelp page is now displaying the old “This business is being monitored by Yelp's Support team for content related to media reports” message, as the business is being bombarded with angry one-star reviews decrying the recent change. And many of these reviews and comments vow to escalate this issue as a violation of local anti-discrimination laws.
So late Monday, Archimedes Banya announced a change. Under a new policy, the venue is now holding two separate monthly “Women's Night” events. One is being billed as “Inclusive Women’s Night” which is billed as “Open to all individuals who identify as women, regardless of sex assigned at birth or gender expression.” The other is being called “Cultural & Religious Women’s Night,” described as “a female-only environment based on sex assigned at birth.”
And it’s drawing less attention, but the spa’s monthly Men’s Day appears to have also had the change in policy that “we have to limit admission on Men’s Day to sex assigned at birth.”
Regardless, the spa has acknowledged the social media uproar and changed their policy, seemingly in hopes for finding a middle ground that makes both sides happy. But will it really relieve the trans community that the venue just split the baby, and allowed the discriminatory policy to survive in some fashion?
Early indications are that this will not relieve the trans community, and the scab has been ripped off the wound here. As KRON4 reports, tonight (Tuesday night) is the limited-admission “Cultural & Religious Women’s Night” that will not allow trans women, but a bunch of trans women protesters are planning to crash. And KRON4 has a statement from protesters saying if they are not admitted, they are “prepared to pursue legal action for discrimination.”
Image: Archimedes Banya via Yelp
