Hotel Guard Barges Into Women’s Restroom, Accuses Lesbian Guest Of Being A Man

What was meant to be a festive afternoon at a Kentucky Derby viewing party turned into a humiliating ordeal for Ansley Baker and her girlfriend Liz Victor, after a security guard at a Boston hotel accused Baker, who is a cisgender woman, of being a man and forcibly removed her from the women’s restroom. The ordeal ended with the couple being asked to leave the hotel entirely.

The incident took place at the five-star Liberty Hotel on May 3. According to the couple, a simple trip to the restroom quickly devolved into a frightening confrontation when a male security guard stormed into the women’s lobby bathroom and began banging on the stalls.

“All of a sudden there was banging on the door,” Baker told WBZ News. “I pulled my shorts up. I hadn’t even tied them. One of the security guards was there telling me to get out of the bathroom, that I was a man in the women’s bathroom. I said, ‘I’m a woman.’”

Her partner, Liz Victor, waiting by the sinks, was stunned. “I looked down and I saw her shoes, and that’s when I was like, ‘What is going on?’” she recalled.

Despite explaining her identity, Baker was ordered out of the restroom. As she exited, she was subjected to verbal abuse from other women in line.

Related: Trans Woman Arrested Under Florida’s Bathroom Ban

“Someone said, ‘Get him out of here,’ referring to me. ‘He’s a creep,’ also referring to me,” she said.

Adding insult to injury, the security guard demanded to see their IDs to verify their gender. The couple was ultimately told to leave the hotel.

The Liberty Hotel initially defended the guard’s actions in a now-retracted statement, claiming “several guests alerted security about two adults occupying a single bathroom stall” and asserting that a physical altercation occurred. Baker and Victor denied those claims outright.

“If that’s what he thought the issue was once he opened the stall door, obviously there was only one person in there, so it should’ve been case closed,” Victor said. “Let her tie up her shorts and go about her day.”

After public backlash and media coverage, the Liberty Hotel reversed course. The hotel has since suspended the guard and issued a new statement acknowledging that he acted in error. They have also pledged to retrain all staff on “inclusive practices and guest interaction protocols,” and to make a donation to a local LGBTQ+ organization.

But for Baker and Victor, the harm has already been done, and the hotel’s response doesn’t go far enough.

“We have not seen any public statement with an apology nor a retraction of their original claims to clarify that Ansley was the only one in the stall,” they said in a statement to NewsCenter5.

Related: A Man Mistook Her For Being Trans In A Walmart Bathroom—Then She Got Fired

Nina Selvaggio, Executive Director of Greater Boston PFLAG, sees this as part of a larger trend. “For gender nonconforming, lesbians, women in general, being harassed in public restrooms is a tale as old as time,” she told reporters. “I do think the surge in national anti-trans rhetoric is contributing to an increased policing of women’s bodies and their expression of gender.”

While Massachusetts law has protected the rights of individuals to use restrooms aligning with their gender identity since 2016, incidents like this show how those legal protections are far from a guarantee of safety or dignity.

Victor reflected on the broader implications. “It was a very scary situation,” she said, “but trans women experience this every single day in the U.S. and across the world.”

The couple has shared their story in the hopes of preventing similar mistreatment for others in the LGBTQ+ community.

“We know we’re not the only ones that face this kind of thing and just hope it doesn’t happen again,” said Baker. “And that other people who go through this receive the same support.”