Incident & Reporting
Koreatown’s Wi Spa At Center Of Controversy After Complaint About Transgender Customer
30 JUNE 2021 – CBS Los Angeles
KOREATOWN (CBSLA) — In a rant posted to social media, a woman claims that a naked man was in the women’s section at Wi Spa in Koreatown.
“He is a man,” the woman can be heard saying the video. “He is not no female.”
The woman who posted the video to Instagram goes by the username Cubana Angel with the words “Christ is King” in the name field.
In the roughly three-minute video, the woman repeatedly asks employees whether men are allowed in women’s areas.
“I think this is one of the horrible things that we experience every single day within our society,” Bamby Salcedo, CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition, said.
Wi Spa declined to comment on the specific incident, but said employees follow state law, which makes discrimination against transgender customers and other gender non-conforming people in business establishments illegal.
“California is the state in the whole nation that has the most trans-inclusive legislation,” Salcedo said. “And, obviously, different local governments also adopt some of those laws.”…
DISCUSSION
PROTESTS
UPDATE – INTERVIEW WITH DARREN MERAGER
EXCLUSIVE: Transgender Fugitive Who Spurred Wi Spa Riots Bares All
Darren Merager, the just-arrested Angeleno who launched a firestorm from a women’s locker room, spoke with LAMag while on the lam
JEREMY LEE QUINN & JASON McGAHAN – 19 December 2022 – LA Mag
Darren Merager, the transgender Angeleno at the center of an indecent exposure row that began in the summer of 2021 at a Koreatown spa and then exploded into a national scandal, has been arrested in Los Angeles after 15 months on the lam.
It was on June 23, 2021, at Wi Spa on Wilshire and South Rampart when 52-year-old Merager caused a near-riot by exposing his—or was it her?—penis to a locker room full of women. In September 2021, the L.A. county DA filed five felony counts of indecent exposure against Merager, and since, the Arcadia native has been the red-hot center of a huge blowup over trans rights. The controversy caught the eye of media, from local outlets to Tucker Carlson, as it triggered pitched protests around Wi Spa’s K-Town-adjacent neighborhood that grew violent and led to brawls among activist militants, scores of arrests and lawsuits over excessive force by police.
Following Merager’s December 13 arrest, the lightning rod for controversy is being kept in a male inmate facility in L.A. Bail has been set at $350,000 and a court date has been scheduled for Dec. 30, according to L.A. County Sheriff’s Office records.
So, is Merager a trans martyr simply exercising the legal right to disrobe in a women’s locker room? Or a pervert using California’s progressive trans rights ordinances as a loophole to flash his private parts? Nearly a year-and-a-half later, nobody has an answer to that question, but LAMag did speak repeatedly with Merager—who tells us he/him and she/her pronouns are just fine but loathes they/them—about what happened that summer night at Wi Spa and in the weeks afterward.
The following exclusive Q&A, edited for clarity by LAMag, comes from several conversations Jeremy Lee Quinn recorded with Merager in September…
BACKGROUND
Sex offending suspect claims transgender harassment in Wi Spa case
ANDY NGO – 2 September 2022 – New York Post
In June, a group of women complained that a person who identified as female exposed their penis at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles. The incident led to months of sometimes violent protests, with media outlets declaring it an example of bias against the transgendered, or even that it didn’t happen. Slate said it was a “transphobic hoax.”
But on Monday, charges of indecent exposure were discreetly filed against a serial sex offender for the Wi Spa incident, following an investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Sources with knowledge of the case but not authorized to speak publicly say four women and a minor girl came forward to allege that Darren Agee Merager was partially erect in the women’s section of Wi Spa. Besides being a suspect in this case, Merager is facing multiple felony charges of indecent exposure over a separate incident in Los Angeles.
Merager, who spoke exclusively to The Post, denies the allegations and says that she is actually the victim of transphobic harassment.
On June 23, several women confronted staff at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles’ Koreatown over accusations that a person exposed male genitalia in the women’s section. Video of the interaction was posted the following day on Instagram by a woman using the name “Cubana Angel.”
“It’s okay for a man to go into the women’s section, show his penis around the other women, young little girls — underage — in your spa?” she asked the staff. “He’s a man! He is a man!” The three-and-a-half-minute video was reposted across social media and promptly went viral.
“Cubana Angel” spoke at a press conference on July 7 in Pasadena next to her attorney. “As I was walking, I noticed something that was really disturbing, something that caused me to feel that I was transported into the men’s locker room,” the woman said.
She said some women and girls were uncomfortable and began putting their robes back on. She complained to staff, where the video was recorded, but they legally could not do anything because of California law. “We as women have rights to be safe in public spaces and they are being violated by men,” she said…
FURTHER COMPLAINTS
Five Women Have Filed Police Reports Alleging Indecent Exposure at Wi Spa
GWYNEDD STUART – 31 July 2022 – LA Mag
Reporting and research by Jeremy Lee Quinn
A total of five women have filed reports with the Los Angeles Police Department regarding a June 23 incident at Wi Spa, all of them claiming to have seen male genitals exposed in the women’s section of the Wilshire Boulevard health club.
One of the reports states that a woman “observed [the suspect] exit a jacuzzi fully nude. Victim observed male genitals on the suspect and became scared and upset.”
The incident went viral last month when one of the alleged victims—a woman known as “Angel”—posted a video to social media of her confronting the spa’s staff, claiming to have seen a nude man in the section designated for women. “So, it’s OK for a man to go into the women’s section, show his penis around the other women, young little girls—underage—in your spa? Wi Spa condones that, is that what you’re saying?” Angel could be heard saying to a masked spa worker, who seemed to assume the patron in question was transgender. “I see a dick! It lets me know he’s a man. He’s a man. He is a man. He is not no female.”
The video led to two weekends of out-of-control protests, with opposing political forces squaring off in the streets outside the spa. It also bred widespread suspicion that the video was a hoax meant to generate outrage about a hot-button topic. The video got major traction on Twitter and was aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.
Almost immediately, the discussion turned to trans rights, although it was never confirmed the nude person the women report they saw in the spa was trans. When Los Angeles contacted Wi Spa in June, management provided a statement pointing to California Civil Code 51 (b), which makes discriminating against trans and other gender non-conforming people in business establishments illegal in the state. “Like many other metropolitan areas, Los Angeles contains a transgender population, some of whom enjoy visiting a spa,” the statement goes on. “Wi Spa strives to meet the needs of all its customers.”…
LAPD Officer Blamed a Mother for Exposing her Daughter to Male Genitals at Wi Spa
ANNA SLATZ – 27 July 2021 – 4th Wave Now
Last week, an Instagram video went viral and sparked a conversation about women’s access to safe, single sex spaces. Filmed at Wi Spa in Los Angeles, California, a woman took out her phone and recorded her confronting Wi Spa staff about the presence of a naked, male-bodied individual in the women’s changing room where young girls were allegedly present.
Since that day, internet sleuths have uncovered a similar incident taking place at that spa as early as 2018, and another woman has come forward to share her own story of what happened to her and her daughter at Wi Spa in January of 2020.
Agreeing to give 4W an exclusive interview, Linda (not her real name) provided verification to us that she had been at the spa on January 7th of 2020 with her daughter. We have agreed to protect her identity as she has expressed concerns about her and her daughter’s safety.
Linda explained that she’d received a recommendation for Wi Spa from L.A. Parent magazine, and had wanted to take her daughter, then 6 years old, for a spa day. She said the facilities included a co-ed area where nudity was not allowed, and a sex-segregated area which included showers, hot tubs, massage rooms, and other amenities that were intended to be used either nude or in a robe as per the Korean traditional customs of a jimjilbang.
Linda says that her daughter expressed an interest in going for a swim, so she took her to the hot tub in the women’s area. At the time, she said they were in the tub with two other women when a group of three individuals approached – one of which was a male.
The male, completely nude, sat on the edge of the tub with his legs spread where her daughter was playing. Linda described him as having a “five-o-clock shadow beard” and “long, scraggly hair.” She also states that he had a “confrontational air” that unnerved the women in the hot tub…
REPORTING & OPINION
The Guardian’s Ideological Dead-end
Sacrificing clarity and truth on the altar of dogma
DAVE HEWITT – 4 September 2021 – Void If Removed
Today, The Guardian released an updated report on the controversy of a report of indecent exposure at a spa in LA. This piece contains new information that was first revealed by right-wing outlets, and serves to demonstrate how The Guardian – by doggedly pursuing a specific ideological angle and denigrating anything that does not fit – has become wedded to a pernicious false consciousness that prevented them from breaking this news themselves.
At the start of July, they reported on the protests that the incident kicked off, which they framed as triggered by hateful, baseless, viral conspiracy theories. They made completely unevidenced and partisan statements, such as:
Calls to defend “female spaces” and “women’s shelters” have become rallying cries of anti-trans groups, who have falsely suggested that trans-inclusive policies endanger cis women.
They followed up at the end of July with a piece that again stressed that the story was unconfirmed and spreading amongst right wing forums, while credulously providing links to opposition sources just as prone to spreading biased misinformation. This report suggests variously that the incident was fabricated, staged, exaggerated, or that if it even happened it was itself mere bigotry. As such, it was immediately lauded by those who felt this confirmed what they already believed to be true:
Anyone who expresses concerns about where we are or where self-id policies are leading is regarded as – either actively or unwittingly – a tool of right-wing disinformation networks. That is the only possible explanation – because the authors are on the side of “good”, so anyone else must be bad.
The Guardian here is acting not as a purveyor of balance or truth, but of equivalent, oppositional disinformation.
This continues in today’s story, which – despite finally conceding that the incident occurred and that it involved a repeated sex-offender – studiously avoids using the pronouns of the male person at the heart of it, and returns focus to their initial obsession: that this propagated virally because of the far-right, proving their long-standing contention that those who are critical of self-id are at best far-right adjacent…
The Guardian channels Alex Jones
RIP4XNUTMEG – – The Glinner Update
The Guardian, which recently asked its readers how they recognise misinformation and protect themselves against ‘fake news’, has published a piece on the Wi Spa protests that would not have looked out of place in Pink News, or on Alex Jones’ InfoWars.
To recap: Last month Wi Spa customer Cubana Angel posted a viral video to social media from inside the Los Angeles spa in which she told a front desk employee that a man had exposed his penis in a female-only steam room to women and girls – only to be told that there was nothing staff could do because the man claimed to be transgender.
Protests followed a few days later, which attracted counter-protests by Antifa, which resulted in individuals who do not believe that men should be in women’s and girls’ changing rooms being violently attacked by people who do.
This weekend, more protests took place, and The Guardian sent reporter Lois Beckett to cover it. In a tweet, Beckett, seemingly in a bid to discredit the protesters who don’t want males flashing at young girls, described them as ‘right-wing anti-pedophile protesters’, a startling and revealing phrase that did not make the final cut in The Guardian piece.
6:39 PM ∙ Jul 17, 20215,869Likes2,256Retweets
The article is co-written by Sam Levin. Sam was the lead name on this 2018 Guardian editorial which claimed that a recent Guardian comment that ‘feminists are entitled to question whether [self ID] could adversely affect other women’ was ‘transphobic’, and that ‘cis women’s intolerance should not be a legitimate reason for limiting the rights of trans women … our journalism should be grounded in the principle that trans women are women’…
‘A nightmare scenario’: how an anti-trans Instagram post led to violence in the streets
SAM LEVIN & LOIS BECKETT – 28 July 2021 – Los Angeles – The Guardian
On 24 June, a woman claimed on Instagram that a Korean spa in Los Angeles had allowed a “man” to expose himself to women and girls in the women’s section.
The unsubstantiated allegations about Wi Spa in LA’s Koreatown neighborhood quickly spread from social media to rightwing forums to far-right news sites to Fox News, and were distorted by anti-transgender groups across multiple countries.
The massive media attention resulted in two weekends of chaotic rallies in LA this month, in which anti-trans and trans-rights protesters fought in the streets, and women carrying “protect female spaces” signs paraded alongside members of the far-right Proud Boys. Trans counter-protesters and their supporters described being Maced, stabbed and chased by rightwing demonstrators, as well as injured by police.
The episode, experts said, offered a case study in how viral misinformation can result in violence, and provided clear evidence of the links between anti-trans and far-right movements, including QAnon conspiracy theorists, who believe that a cabal of elite pedophiles is manipulating the American government…
The trans-identified male who keeps popping up in the Wi Spa story
GRAHAM LINEHAN – 25 July 2022 – The Glinner Update
This is the guy who was named on the first night by Genevieve Gluck, Big Bill Moon and others as the Wi Spa flasher. Many have pointed out that his non-denial/non-confession statements can’t really be seen as proof that he was present, so I’ve amended the piece to reflect that.
2:14 PM ∙ Jul 3, 2021871Likes260Retweets
Bill Moon pointed to this exchange.
Heartrending, is it not?
Well, no, not really. This is what he looks like when he’s not camping it up for the camera or laying it on for a critic.
PRECIOUS CHILD @_preciouschild
behold baby’s first 98lb #kettlebell cleans. More than 60% of bodyweight. sharpen the knife ☺️
12:41 AM ∙ Jun 23, 202128Likes1Retweet
And this is what he looks like when he’s just, you know,. thinkin’ about stuff!
Remember the women attacked at the protest? Here’s how he promoted it.
PRECIOUS CHILD @_preciouschild
1:53 AM ∙ Jun 30, 202176Likes20Retweets
This is how his online friends helped.
Vishal P. Singh (They/He) @VPS_Reports
7:34 AM ∙ Jul 2, 2021173Likes60Retweets
He’s not a woman. He’s a violent, abusive male who does not respect female boundaries. He knows he could expose himself to women and children because, in California, in 2021, under a slightly too-slow President, he’s wouldn’t be breaking any law.
And this guy has the world’s media running interference for him…
Dozens arrested in Los Angeles as anti-trans protest outside spa turns violent
SAM LEVIN & LOIS BECKETT – 28 July 2021 – Los Angeles – The Guardian
Dozens of people have been arrested in Los Angeles following a chaotic and at times violent demonstration by anti-transgender protesters who targeted a Koreatown spa that has a trans-inclusive policy allowing trans women to use women’s facilities.
Saturday marked the second weekend of violent protests this month in the streets around Wi Spa, a neighborhood business that has found itself at the heart of a right-wing media storm over an alleged incident in which a customer filmed herself complaining about a trans woman in the women’s area of the spa.
The far-right protesters called for a boycott of Wi Spa and chanted baseless claims about paedophilia, as women carrying signs reading “protect female spaces” and “It’s worse in women’s shelters” marched alongside men wearing helmets and masks that covered their faces.
Calls to defend “female spaces” and “women’s shelters” have become rallying cries of anti-trans groups, who have falsely suggested that trans-inclusive policies have led to increased crimes against cis women. California has for years had laws in place that allow trans people to use facilities that match their gender, and research has found no evidence that the introduction of such legislation in the US has led to increased safety risks.
The chants and signs in Los Angeles on Saturday highlighted the convergence of anti-trans activism with other strains of far-right activism. Many demonstrators chanted “Save our children,” a slogan taken up by QAnon conspiracy theorists, whose ideology is centered on an elaborate narrative about a cabal of influential paedophiles. Other demonstrators wore shirts pledging to murder leftwing activists, with reference to rightwing death squads in Chile in the 1970s. Arthur Schaper, the leader of the California chapter of MassResistance, an anti-LGBT organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) classifies as a hate group, arrived early at the protest outside Wi Spa and took refuge behind a line of police officers as trans rights protesters heckled him…
Violence Over an Alleged Transphobic Hoax Shows the Danger of Underestimating Anti-Trans Hate
Police reportedly suspect the viral L.A. Wi Spa video is fake—but it still got two people stabbed
EVAN URQUHART – 9 July 2021 – Slate
… On July 3, an anti-transgender protest outside a Los Angeles spa resulted in two stabbings—all over a social media post that police are now treating as a hoax. Back on June 24, a user called cubanangel posted a video on Instagram showing her and at least two other women confronting a staff member at Wi Spa on Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown about having seen “a man with a penis” in the women’s changing area. “I’m recording this because I’m gonna make a big deal. I’m gonna take this very worldwide,” she explains, kicking off four minutes berating the staff member over the queer-friendly spa’s nondiscrimination policy.
Soon after the video began to go viral in transphobic corners of the internet, members of the trans community began to raise questions about it—chief among them why the video cuts out as the woman marches downstairs to confront this person she’s allegedly seen, conveniently ending before the trans woman she’s so angry about is shown. The woman also repeatedly mentions children being exposed to a penis, while no children appear on the video and the group don’t appear to have any children with them. These early doubts have been bolstered by reporting from the Los Angeles Blade that police suspect a hoax after failing to find witnesses who saw a trans woman at the spa, and that Wi Spa claims none of their trans clients had scheduled appointments that day.
To understand why this incident is so disturbing, it’s worth being clear about what the hoax is even claiming: that a trans woman used a changing room that she was fully allowed to use … on a day when no trans women actually happened to be using it. There was no specific claim of wrongdoing or inappropriate conduct on the part of this alleged person, although the colorful language used in the video certainly sparks the imagination, likely leading those with a transphobic cast of mind to fill the vacuum of facts with horrific acts of lewdness or indecency. Perhaps this is why outrage over the possibility that a trans woman may have changed her clothes in the appropriate facilities grew and grew, culminating in the protest outside Wi Spa, which included a contingent of violent extremists from the far right. The two stabbing victims were attacked by an anti-trans protester: One was a counterprotester; the other apparently a “friendly stab” incident where a fellow protester was hit by mistake.
Anti-trans activism is often thought of as a sideshow or a distraction, but these events show the real dangers of an increasingly extremist anti-trans backlash. In this case, an uncorroborated suggestion that a trans woman was using a women’s space ignited a protest that resulted in violence and led to a woman being hospitalized. That there was likely no trans woman there to begin with only underscores how thin a pretext is needed to prompt these sorts of outbursts from the far right. Trans people and our allies should not ignore the growing anti-trans sentiment in this country….
The wrong side of history
The Wi Spa incident confirms that the Left are an absolute shitshow at the moment
JL – 9 July 2021 – The Glinner Update
… This article in Los Angeles Magazine implies that the Wi Spa Wonder Woman is the unreasonable one and describes her as ‘losing it’ and causing ‘a ruckus’. It also claims she ‘seems to deny the existence of trans people’ because she objects to a naked man in a female space. The man showing his dick to children in the ladies’, by comparison, is referred to as ‘a trans woman with male genitalia’.
The Washington Post @washingtonpost
A trans woman undressed in a spa. Customers said they were “traumatized,” and a protest ensued. wapo.stA trans woman undressed in a spa. Customers said they were ‘traumatized,’ and a protest ensued.Customers complained about a transgender woman undressing in the women’s section. This Koreatown spa is now the latest site of the debate over transgender rights.11:31 AM ∙ Jul 6, 2021335Likes75Retweets
The Washington Post is also obfuscating the entire story to imply that the female customer is at fault, not the ‘transgender woman’ ie the intact male.
Zac Boyer, a manager at LGBTQ+ organization, Stonewall Columbus, said that women-only spaces should be protected but added, “That doesn’t mean all women have the same genitals.”
That magic word – ‘identify’ – now means that women cannot challenge a naked man exposing his genitalia to children in a female-only space. This is the rabbit hole down which the cult of gender must ultimately lead. And many of its evangelists have dug themselves in so deep, they cannot turn back.
Fauxminist and gender sycophant, Laurie Penny, was asked about the experience of a 15-year-old girl encountering a naked man in her changing room. She replied “How am I supposed to know how she should feel? …I’d advise her not to stare at other people’s genitals without their permission, because it’s rude.”
She then tried to maintain that “Nobody’s body is a threat” (no reason why transwomen can’t use the gents, then?) and she described women’s wholly justifiable need for male-free spaces as ‘supremacist thinking’.
Ligneous bit-part actor and ligamentophobe, David Paisley, tried to argue that caring for a loved one in the home is the same thing as a total stranger getting his tackle out in a women’s changing room….
CUBANA ANGEL
‘..it was slightly erected’: Woman at center of spa/transgender/genitals controversy speaks out
BRODIGAN – 12 July 2021 – Louder with Crowder
A woman went viral last month complaining to staff at Wi Spa in Los Angeles. The woman was in the women’s locker room. She looked up to see a naked man in the locker room, junk hanging out and all. When the woman complained to staff, she was told that the man was a woman. Or, the man identified as a transgender woman. Therefor, she (the transgender woman) was allowed to be naked in the women’s locker room.
The woman who made the complaint is speaking out. Her name is Cubana Angel. In a mostly ignored press conference, Angel claims the transgender woman was fully exposed, nuts and all, and her penis was slightly erected.
This was not normal. I’m in a safe place. But now I’m not. Little girls are there, their mothers are there, other women are looking about, and they begin to put their robes back on them. I went to management. Management did nothing. I even told the guy he should leave, “This is not right,” and he didn’t leave. We had no help whatsoever. I did not know what to do.
I experienced what no woman or little girl should ever experience.