A Minnesota teen is suing Buffalo Wild Wings after a server allegedly made her “prove” she was female to use the bathroom.
Eighteen-year-old lesbian Gerika Mudra filed a discrimination suit against the wings chain earlier this month claiming that the server forced her to show her her breasts after accusing her of being male.
While using the restroom in a stall in the women’s bathroom at the Owatonna, Minnesota location, Mudra says the server began banging on the door demanding that “the man needs to get out of here.”
Mudra, who is a cisgender lesbian, says the situation escalated to the point that she unzipped her hoodie to show the server she had breasts to get her to stop harassing her.
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Mudra is being represented by the legal team at the nonprofit Gender Justice.
Mudra says this isn’t the first time she has been accused of being male in a female restroom amid America’s idiotic trans panic.
But it is the first time, she said, that someone didn’t take her word for it that she is in fact female. She said the server would not stop harassing her until she clarified her gender.
Mudra told NBC News that the incident has left her afraid to use the restroom in public.
“She made me feel very uncomfortable. After that, I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it.”
Mudra’s stepmother Shauna called the incident “humiliating” and urged bystanders to speak up when they see incidents of transphobic attacks against LGBTQ+ people.
“It’s not okay. Don’t normalize this. If you’re in the bathroom and you hear this happening to someone else, you need to say something.”
Gender Justice says what Mudra experienced is a clear violation of Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, which forbids discrimination based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, sex or race and requires businesses to abide by its rules.
On social media, many were furious about what happened to Mudra and saw it as a reminder than transphobia affects everyone, not just trans people.
In a statement, Gender Justice executive director Megan Peterson said Mudra’s incident is an unfortunate sign of the times.
“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new.”
“Yet, in our current climate, we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person? Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”
All too often absent from this conversation is the simple truth: Being this invested in anyone’s genitals, let alone a teenager’s, is sick and bizarre, and it’s past time these deviants start getting pushed back on. As Mudra’s stepmother said, it’s time to stop normalizing it.
