TOWN OF ULSTER – Barbers at a Town of Ulster “men’s only” shop told a transgender man on May 12 he looked like a woman, and they refused to cut his hair.

“Just cause you dress like a man doesn’t make you a man,” Kai McKenna-Rhatigan recalled a barber saying to him.

On Tuesday morning, McKenna-Rhatigan stood across Morton Boulevard from the Classic Cuts Barber Shop where the incident happened. Five supporters stood with him holding anti-discrimination signs and a faded gay-rights flag.

In the parking lot in front of the barber shop, clamped to the bed of a rusting pickup truck, stood two full-size sheets of plywood propped together posing a counter-argument. “Support local businesses,” it said on one side.

The divide was not only along Morton Boulevard. It has ripped open a chasm on social media. McKenna-Rhatigan’s Facebook group opposing Classic Cuts has more than 1,200 members. Classic Cuts owner Yevette Quick has nearly 900 supporters on her Facebook page. People have donated more than $400 toward a $15,000 goal to help Quick and the shop.

“I want all this to go away,” Quick said as she sat in her shop Tuesday, “and I want my life to go back to normal.”

'We don't cut women's hair'

Normal ended the morning of May 12, when McKenna-Rhatigan walked into Classic Cuts.

He said he went there because it is close to Panera Bread, where he works. He had on the same kind of baggy clothes then that he had on Tuesday. His hair is brown and short, cropped close on the sides and finger-length on top. He still had not had it cut as of Tuesday.

He is of medium build. He was born female, but decided in high school to transition to male. That is ongoing, he said.

In Classic Cuts, he asked for a fade, a style of haircut popular with the younger set. One barber said, “I won’t service you. Just cause you dress like a man doesn’t make you a man,” McKenna-Rhatagan recalled.

He argued the refusal was illegal, but that made no difference, so he left, he said.

Quick was there. “What we viewed was a young woman with a cap on, a baseball cap,” she said. “We told her we don’t cut women’s hair. We were very, very apologetic.” The individual told them he identified as a man, swore and then ran out, Quick said. “I wish I had handled it differently.”

McKenna-Rhatigan said he was willing to turn the other cheek, but then the firestorm ignited on social media. Commenters made threats against him and his supporters. Town of Ulster police confirmed Tuesday they are looking into some of those comments.

McKenna-Rhatigan is also looking into filing a complaint against Quick, charging discrimination.

In January, the New York State Division of Human Rights adopted new regulations barring discrimination against transgender people. Those determined to have discriminated can be fined up to $100,000 and ordered to undergo training to prevent it from happening again, according to Rachelle Dickerson, director of external relations for the Division of Human Rights.

Refusing to provide a service because of a person’s transgender identity would “definitely” be against the law, Dickerson said.

“People are basically rebelling, taking the attitude they can do what they want, saying ... ‘It should be my right to not serve you,’” she said. “You really can’t do that to people.”

pbrooks@th-record.com