That’s an interesting idea.
Ignoring the legal side of things, since that’s already finished and I’m not familiar with Aussie laws anyway.
The concept of a restricted space for an art experience that works for both the admitted and refused parties as a different experience is pretty damn intriguing. The execution of it in this case arguing after refusing admission to someone seems to defeat the purpose to a small degree, but that’s nitpicking.
The core concept is, I think, something that should be expanded. Other locations, and other dichotomies. I don’t know if it would pass legal muster here in the states, but I’d love to have a seat and watch how it played out in a busy place here.
observes_depths@aussie.zone 5 weeks ago
It was reopened because section 26 of Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 allows discrimination on the grounds of promoting equal opportunity for a disadvantaged group of people.
Obviously women are a disadvantaged group, but can anyone tell me how this space promotes equal opportunity?
Interesting that there are still groups excluding women and I hope they get challenged soon too, but I don’t think that answers my question.
beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It fosters empathy. There are centuries worth of examples of positions of power that were nominally open to men and women, but lo and behold, through some weird coincidence (most certainly not structurally ingrained and unquestioned sexism) only men were selected and hired while women were most certainly equally entitled to apply, BUT just in this particular case, the man was chosen for some reason - once again: not sexism. Coincidentally every single of those cases went that way.
This art installation makes it easier to imagine what it’s like when there’s unfortunately only a limited amount of space in the exhibition that’s nominally open to men and women alike and -due to some strange coincidence- the visitor ticket went to the woman who wanted to visit instead of the man (once again: certainly not due to sexism, but some other absolutely not sexist reason that happened to justify why it turned out in favour of the woman). Just in this particular case. Which coincidentally led to the same result as in every single other case.