The ridiculous news rules for women dining alone

A woman on her own shouldn't be discriminated against. Photo / Getty Images

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the hassle I faced when trying to dine out alone.

Between restaurants that don't think to provide seating for singles and waiters who won't bother to hide their pity when asking someone whether or not they'll be bored sitting there alone, it can be a tough old world for anyone just trying to have a nice night out in their own company.

But it seems that I wasn't the only woman facing some issues when requesting a table for one.

Senior executive Clementine Crawford was hoping to grab a bite to eat in her favourite spot at New York restaurant Nello when she was approached by a waiter who told her she was "no longer permitted" to eat at the bar and offered her a table instead.

She accepted the seat, but a few days later the same thing happened. Only this time, after being told that nobody was allowed to eat at the bar, she watched a man sit there — on his own — and eat a meal.

Clementine raised the issue with a staff member and was informed that she was denied a seat at the bar due to the restaurant owner's recent "crackdown on hookers".

"I assume management had decided that upscale escorts working the bar lowered the tone of the place, and [it] would be less obvious if [I] escorted behind a table," she wrote for UK magazine Drugstore Culture.

Clementine wasn't upset about being mistaken for a sex worker, but she was rightfully angry that the simple act of being a woman and sitting alone could communicate so much sexual availability that she should need to sit out of view to avoid offending customers or staff.

"They had classified me, marginalised me, relegated me to the corner by the loos simply because I was an unaccompanied woman," she wrote.

And it seems it's not just restaurants that women need to be cautious about visiting alone.

Hotel chain Marriott International has recently announced that over half a million of its employees have undergone training on how to spot a potential victim of sex trafficking.

Hotel employees have been told to look out for people — most often women — who look like they "don't belong" with the party they're checking in to the hotel with, who might be intoxicated, or who may be stopped from "speaking for themselves" by someone they're with.

While human trafficking is a very real problem that urgently needs solutions, sex workers on social media have raised the point that Marriott's training could easily see consensual sex workers — or any woman travelling alone — singled out and profiled as a victim of human trafficking.

With further signs for concern including hotel guests who ask for a lot of towels, pay in cash, or decline housekeeping services, it's not difficult to see how any one of us sex workers could fit the bill of a trafficked individual.

There are also unconfirmed reports that some hotel employees also keep an eye out for women with long hair and women who carry sex toys in their luggage — it's downright alarming to imagine how closely our behaviour could be monitored next time we check in to a hotel for business, pleasure, or both.

Ask any woman you know about her experiences going out alone, and she's bound to have some horror stories to share.

Walking home alone at night can be frightening, and catching public transport solo can be frustrating if someone sees the empty seat next to you as an opportunity to strike up a never-ending chat about where you're going, if you're single, and why you're dressed the way you are.

But all of this is bare-bones, basic feminism stuff that we've been discussing for years.

We should all know by now that existing as a woman, alone, in a public space isn't an invitation for judgment.

So when a bloke does it at the bus stop or in a cafe, it's irritating. But when it's instituted as company policy, the implications are absolutely terrifying.

It's infuriating to think that all of the progress we have made towards gender equality has brought us to a present day in which women are being profiled for the length of their hair, the amount of towels they request from room service, or their choice to eat alone in a restaurant.

And the fact that all of these otherwise-innocent behaviours can be used to assume some kind of sexual behaviour on behalf of a woman and then restrict or refuse service to her based on that behaviour sounds more like something out of The Handmaid's Tale than out of any handbook on women's empowerment.

I am a woman, and I am a sex worker, and I should be allowed to dine alone wherever I please, and to stay in any hotel I want without being judged, profiled, or discriminated against.

And it is worth noting as well that for Nello, which made headlines in 2012 for surprising diners with a $275 bill for a single white truffle pasta dish, it could soon only be us "hookers" who can afford to dine there at all.