Dear Katie Woolf,

Katie Woolf is Darwin’s Donald Trump. See what I did there? Just like you, I started this article the same way you started yours – with a statement of irrefutable fact. Before getting to the sizeable piece of aged beef I have with you, allow us to get to know one another. Unlike you, I do call myself a feminist – although, just as an aside, given your blossoming career as an NT News columnist, you would do well to learn the art of ‘show don’t tell’: that is to say, anyone who read the first line of your article in today’s paper (‘Barbers are for men’) could be left in no doubt that women’s rights are very far from you ‘agender’.

Not only am I a feminist, but I am a queer woman. My partner would proudly describe herself as gender fluid, she is the kind of woman many people address as ‘sir’; she buys her clothes from the men’s section and yes, she regularly gets her haircut at barbers. In fact, last weekend while we were in Sydney for the 40th anniversary of Sydney Mardi Gras, she did just that. In fact, the first time she got her haircut at a barber was at my urging. I remember her hesitation that day – 10 years ago mind you – wondering if she would be allowed to go in there because of her biological gender. I now smile to myself each time I see her proudly walk into a barber, or a men’s clothing store, or when I see her walk around the house in her y-fronts.

I am happy that little by little, and very gradually, queerness and non-binarism are chipping away at corners, nooks and crevices of our world. I am happy that – although the struggle is far from over – my non-binary, trans, cross-dressing and butch-identifying friends are challenging and shifting and shaping people’s conceptions of gender. I am happy that a friend of mine joyfully announced this week on Facebook that he will be transitioning to his ‘true self’ – a woman – to an outpouring of love and applause from family and friends. I am happy that because of the efforts of queer people, feminists and their allies, we are inching, in what sometimes feels like slow motion, closer to making and claiming space that everyone, regardless of their identity, whether sexual, gender or racial, can occupy – live, work and play in.

I was extremely disappointed to read the articles about the attitude of Darwin’s Star Barbers this week. I was, as always, even more disappointed to read the comments of people decrying the lack of ‘safe space’ for men. I was downright depressed when I saw that one of my favourite local restaurants, PM, had posted an article in support and defense of Star Barber owner Joy Arnott and her ‘men’s only’ policy. Frankly, by the time I got to your article Katie Woolf, I could barely manage an eye roll, but as I thought about the cruel, or at least cheaply provocative on the part of the NT News, irony of this article emblazoning that paper’s front cover the same day of the International Women’s Day March, I became enraged. ‘Fuck you Katie Woolf’ I thought, and you’ll forgive my lack of eloquence I hope.

Fuck you because everyone who reads the patriarchal bile spewed forth in your article – including your children who have apparently been brought up to be believe they can be anything they want, except presumably a gender-queer woman who likes to get their hair cut at a barber – will be taken on the worst kind of time warp back to a time where unisex bathrooms at VCA were but a distant dream, rather than a soon-to-be reality. Back to a time where men like Tony Abbott lounged around drinking martinis shaken by their dutiful wives, who were more than likely seething with repressed homoerotic tendencies directly caused by the oppressive shackles of patriarchy. Fuck you because some young people, the kind of young people my partner and many others like her once were, will read your article and will be forgiven for thinking that there is no space for them in this world. They will not yet know of the arduous campaign against gender binarism that their sisters and brothers have been toiling away at. They will think that there is something wrong with them for not fitting into what feels like, to the queer community, one of two ancient, prehistoric even, gender labels.

The path you are so actively paving is leading us in a very scary direction. That path leads in the opposite direction of all the people who have been patiently hoeing a trench towards rights for trans people, queer people and women. The path you are leading us down, dear Katie, is a path towards transphobia, antiquated gender norms and heteronormativity. Yuk!

Because, dear Katie, riddle me this. How does one assess who is ‘man’ enough to get their hair cut at a barbers? Where does this – very straight – line get drawn? Question time! If a femme trans woman or butch trans man enters Star Barber will they be refused service? Will a little frisking for bulges in the nether regions become part and parcel of the standard short back and sides? A barber is not a ‘gentlemen’s club’ (although I am told that apparently a topless barber does exist in Darwin) where business is conducted behind the sensuous opacity of velvet curtains. What bloody difference does it make if the person in the chair next to you has a penis, a vagina, or both? Your path Katie, means that a transgender person could very well be refused service at Star Barber. And that dear Katie, is illegal, because “people who are transgender are protected from discrimination by law” (cf: Australian Human Rights Commission). Look, in fact, at what the AHRC use as an example of discrimination of a transgender person: “A shop assistant refused to serve a person who identifies and presents as a woman because that person has a deep and masculine-sounding voice.” Sound familiar?

What you, and Joy Arnott, and the owners of PM, and everyone commenting in support of the practice of not allowing women to get their hair cuts at barbers because they are necessary ‘safe spaces’ for men is teetering dangerously towards a precipice, a precipice that if we fall off, will undo all the good work towards a nuanced, non-binary understanding of gender and how we express, perform and represent that. It is also teetering dangerously into the grounds of seriously illegal discrimination. And for that Katie Woolf, I say, fuck you.