It’s always the ones you most expect.
Some of you probably remember the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the weird American rock band founded in 1996 by producer and composer Paul O’Neill along with Jon Olivia, Al Pietrelli, and Robert Kinkell. The group produced a unique sound created by a fusion of heavy and symphonic metal that often sounded like a hand grenade in a dishwasher. This, combined with crazy light shows and over-the-top performances, made the group frequently go viral 10 or 15 years ago.
I hadn’t heard about the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in a decade or so, but they’re making headlines again. From the Daily Mail: “The Trans-Siberian Orchestra faces legal action from a woman crew member who says she had to shower with an ‘aggressive and muscular’ transgender man-to-woman roadie during the arena rock act’s recent tour.” The woman, 38-year-old Jessica Featherston of Texas, filed complaints with the Texas Workforce Commission on the grounds of employment discrimination.
The details of her complaints should be, by now, unsurprising. We’ve all read this script before. It’s the same story that plays out wherever “trans rights” trump women’s privacy rights, and wherever the woke brain virus persuades people to accept that men can become women. Featherston says that a man identifying as a woman “exposed himself” in the locker room and then asked his female co-workers to “get naked and have girls’ shower time.” Featherston complained to management; the man escalated his harassment, leaving his dirty underwear beside her bed on the tour bus.
She first complained to the tour managers, telling them she wasn’t comfortable — according to the blond lightning rigger, they “mocked her for needing ‘safe showers’ and she was blacklisted from future tours, including a Foo Fighters gig in Texas.” Featherston’s lawyer, Gene Hamilton, filed complaints against the New York live events company Production Resource Group and the shell company Showpay, stating, “Women have the right to private spaces. Women have the right to be free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.”
Featherston’s complaint alleges that she and two other women on the tour were asked to share their locker room with a man from California who had very recently, in the wake of his wife cheating on him, begun to identify as a woman. Featherston described him as three inches taller than herself and “incredibly muscular and strong”; he has functioning male genitalia and “appears male” in spite of “long hair and tight-fitting clothing.” Although he was initially asked to shower 45 minutes before the women, he “allegedly loitered in the locker room and pressured the women to take a ‘group shower’ with him.”
That wasn’t the only incident. The following day, in Greenville, South Carolina, he loitered again. An hour after he was supposed to be out of the locker room, he was “still showering, fully naked and exposed”; Featherston reported that she felt “uncomfortable” because she “could easily be overpowered” by the muscular roadie. She secured a different bathroom for the women; this “appears to have angered the trans crew member, who became ‘verbally and physically aggressive.’” The harassment, Featherston says, “felt like some territorial act intended to further intimidate me and make me feel uncomfortable.”
According to Gene Hamilton, Featherston’s lawyer, “Imagine telling a woman in the midst of the 1960s women’s rights movement that, after achieving much good, the culmination of the movement would result in her daughter or granddaughter not being able to shower at work without being exposed to a male penis. And then being told that if you object to that biological male in the shower, you’re just a bigot. Well, sadly, that appears to be where we are today in critical parts of society.”
Rock n’ roll has always been an incredibly misogynist industry. This, however, is something else.
