Well, Yellowknife’s Ragged Ass Barbers is apparently willing to give men’s haircuts to women. Here’s a freshly tweeted tweet:

See? No big deal. Change the rules and move on.

Original post below.


Judging from Facebook, Ragged Ass Barbers continues to have a lot of support for its trouble-making and divisive “no haircuts for women” policy. While some of its defenders are reasonable, unfortunately, this comment on my original post stood out as reflective of too much of RAB’s support:

“…this is such neo feminist bullshit.. she is trying to destroy an honest, well liked and successful business thats here to fill a small niche in the community. There are hundreds of other hair stylists that can fulfill her needs.. there are also places like ‘curves’ that only serve women. She has launched an attack campaign that amounts to no more than harassment and is doing nothing to further the needs of her lesbian rights movement. There are bigger problems in this world. I say either grow a pair or stay out.”

“Neo-femminsit [sic] bullshit?” Don’t have a clue what that is, sounds like a made-up thing.  “Grow a pair or stay out.” Charming! “She has launched an attack campaign [that’s] doing nothing to further the needs of her lesbian rights movement…” Her what-movement, who now? Most of Evie’s supporters are boring straight people like me.

And then, this:

“…trying to destroy an honest, well liked and successful business…”?

No, hard-part refugee Evie Ruddy is not trying to “destroy a business”. As Evie herself says in the comments:

“…if RAB had a change of heart and continued to offer traditional barber style haircuts to anyone, not just men, it wouldn’t affect their male-dominated atmosphere as I doubt that very many women would want barber-style cuts and this could end.” [Emphasis added.]

She’s absolutely right. There will be a ton of support for RAB changing their dumb policy. It won’t ruin the place, or even significantly change it (girls don’t have cooties!) and we’ll all have a lovelier, more civilized city.

I understand why everyone’s worked up: it’s terrifying to be accused of discrimination and threatened with a human rights complaint, and it’s especially head-essplodey when the business on the receiving end of such a major complaint isn’t evil. And yes, an argument could be made that Evie went for the big guns (media, human rights complaint) sooner than she needed to, and ideally, she would have found gentler, friendlier ways to persuade RAB to change their dopey, ill-considered rule.

(Then again, one should be hesitant to judge the actions of someone who’s just been discriminated against: i.e., the actual victim who’s now receiving threats).

If this fight doesn't end soon it  could escalate to an Ezra Levant-category disaster.

If this fight doesn’t end soon it could escalate to a full-blown Ezra Levant-category event.

I understand that many people love Ragged Ass Barbers and are just defending their friends. And I’m pretty damn sure that Ragged Ass is a great business run by great people. I think everyone wants it to flourish. But it’s getting more clear by the minute that this men’s only rule is too divisive. People aren’t going to let this go. A week from now, this stupid brawl will be national news and Ezra Levant will be flying in to get his hair cut.

Ragged Ass will not like that. NOBODY will like that.

Ragged Ass Barbers gets to pick how it presents itself and what services it provides, and they’ve done a fantastic job of that. They shouldn’t pick who they provide their services to based on the customer’s wiener situation.

To Ragged Ass Barbers: change the policy, cut the nice lady’s hair and everything will be fine.

Prairie Dog will even buy you guys a bottle of decent bourbon to celebrate this stupid fight being over.