Editor's Note: This article has been changed to reflect corrections.
Faereedun wanted to put on some goofy shoes and have a fun date night at Splitz bowling alley.
It was Ladies Night, so Faereedun brought her female partner hoping one of them could bowl for free. But they left before they even saw the lanes.
“They asked if we had two men coming with us,” Faereedun said.
The couple wasn’t able to redeem a ladies’ night discount Aug. 23 after managers at Splitz told the two they needed a man with them.
The Ladies Night deal, according to the website, gives a woman a night of free bowling, but only if a man buys an all-you-can-bowl pass.
Will Lariscey, a manager at Splitz, said the bowling alley had the promotion to bring more men into the amusement center, something the alley has struggled with.
“We’re not biased or against gay rights or anything like that,” Lariscey said. “That’s just how our promotion is set up. You can bring your nephew or your dad. As long as a guy buys it, you get yours free.”
Faereedun’s situation is complicated — she was assigned female at birth, but identifies as Trans*.
Faereedun prefers to be described as QT*, where the Q stands for queer and the T* is an umbrella term for people who do not adhere to the gender binary of male and female and are not in the process of transitioning from an assigned gender to the opposite gender.
While Faereedun often passes as a female, she said she was misgendered at Splitz, meaning the managers mistook her for a biological female and refused to give her the discount.
The dispute began when Faereedun approached the cashier, who told the couple they had to have a man with them to get a deal. The cashier called management, who told Faereedun the same thing.
“Personally, I felt incredibly invisible,” she said. “My partner was crying. She was very upset. She’s not very comfortable being out in public, so to have this happen during one of our first times out together was horrible.”
Katie Connolly, Splitz spokeswoman, said no one meant to make the couple upset.
She said Splitz values their LGBT customers and hosts the Rainbow League, a local gay bowling league, each week.
“We have 21-and-up nights, and 20-year-olds get mad,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what we do. We’re always going to offend someone.”
Contact Shelby Webb at swebb@alligator.org.
