Members of The Wing Say They Were Blindsided by Its Terms

The Wing's full membership contract contained a non-disparagement clause that few saw.

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

When Study Hall reported Monday that The Wing had stuck a non-disparagement clause in its (largely hidden) membership terms, the apparent hypocrisy of such a measure from an organization pushing female empowerment didn’t sit well with many. Media Twitter erupted in widespread criticism, blogs picked up the controversy, and some Wing members expressed their concern in public.

The Wing’s official line is that the clause was created to protect members, though the language specifies the company and its leadership. The clause has never been enforced, the company noted. Hours after the story ran, The Wing CEO and co-founder Audrey Gelman tweeted a Keeping up with the Kardashians screenshot often deployed to dismiss someone making much ado about nothing: Kourtney telling her sister, “Kim, there’s people that are dying.” (A spokesperson for The Wing said Gelman’s tweet was unrelated to the controversy around the clause. If that is the case then it was poorly timed.)

Some members see Gelman and The Wing’s reaction to the controversy as something of a microcosm for the broader criticisms dogging the young company — basically, that its progressive branding is not much deeper than a tote bag slogan. No matter your marketing, customers care when you sneak them an exploitative contract, as our conversations with Wing members has made clear. It’s “really disappointing,” said a Chicago Wing member of Gelman’s tweet. “Somebody needs to tell her why this is bad and she needs to listen and follow some instructions. Their tote bags say ‘Take up space.’ Ok, well silencing women doesn’t really mesh with that.” Besides, she added, they’re still getting plenty of positive coverage.

The member, who is a lawyer, said she was shocked to learn about the clause, which prohibits members from making disparaging statements about The Wing, its leadership, and other members, including on social media. When she became a member, she was only given a small “rule book” (basically: be nice and respectful towards other members). “I guess I assumed if there were things I needed to know they would be presented to me upfront,” she said.

A spokesperson for The Wing said the membership terms are provided upfront. “They must accept the agreement in order to become members, and the agreement is always accessible in our member portal,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.  “Further, whenever we update the agreement, we notify all members.”

That doesn’t comport with what members themselves have said. Study Hall spoke to two current members and one former member, none of whom knew the document existed. Members who weighed in on Twitter expressed shock as well, with one noting terms and conditions “weren’t clear when I signed up.” (There is a “Terms” page on the website that is incomplete and mentions, six sections in, the actual “Membership Terms and Conditions” which it says are made available to those whose applications are accepted).

On Monday, The Wing also said it will change the language in the agreement. A spokesperson for The Wing on Friday told Study Hall that it will remove language referring to the company and its employees so that it focuses on protecting members. But disgruntled members are still alarmed by its existence, and don’t buy the explanation that it was written to “create a safe space for our members and protect their privacy, considering that The Wing has members with public profiles” (per the statement to Jezebel). It doesn’t add up. “Either you, a major company, have a terrible attorney, which I don’t believe is the case — someone who literally doesn’t know how to write a contract — or it’s completely dishonest [to say] that was the original intention, in which case, don’t lie to us,” said the Chicago member.

The terms also contain a forced arbitration clause, meaning any dispute a member has with the company would be settled behind closed doors in a process that often favors the more powerful entity. This is made somewhat clear in the company’s online terms, which says The Wing may force arbitration, but the language in the full document is definite and severe. Forced arbitration clauses are standard, said the member, but it is disappointing. (Forced arbitration clauses have increasingly been subjected to scrutiny — Google employees recently had one removed from their contracts.)

Each person we spoke to said the non-disparagement clause would have made them reconsider their membership. “I would not join if I had known,” said a New York-based member. She had some initial embarrassment around joining, rolling her eyes at what she saw as faux-feminist branding, but The Wing is cheaper than competing co-working spaces, plus it’s “the one with the nice products in the bathroom.”

***

Even for members, The Wing’s use of the clause and response to the backlash point to an innate disingenuousness at the heart of the expanding millennial-pink empire. The company pledges empowerment, advocacy, and transparency, they say, but instead seems to offer little more than a beautiful workspace. The Wing has been accused of representing a hollow corporate feminism, and has been criticized for being financiallyexclusionary and largely for elite white women.

In October of last year, right after the Kavanaugh hearings, The Wing named a pink and gold Instagram-ready conference room after Christine Blasey Ford, a move celebrated by some but criticized by others as opportunistic and trivializing. Writer Katie Fustich, in a Medium post, called it “a PR stunt to capitalize on a moment and sell memberships, wrapped in a pussy hat costume.” (The Wing has said it obtained Ford’s consent to name the room after her.) In February, activist SX Noir, who is still a Wing member, called out the company for not compensating her for organizing a panel on sex work, which the company handled clumsily, disputing her account and using her legal first name (being in sex work, she goes by SX Noir in public spaces) before admitting its errors and pledging compensation to all panelists.

Smaller controversies abound. The Wing prohibits members from bringing their own food into the space — if you’re hungry, you have to buy food inside. “[The policy] feels financially exclusionary,” said the former member. “You’re literally policing women’s eating in your female empowerment space.” The current New York member said members frequently break this rule. Lunch in the space is generally priced between $15 and $20, she said, and snacks are “absurd,” comprised of “$5 or more for tiny bags of dried fruit.”

The current New York member said she had complained to management about ongoing construction making it impossible for her to work in the space, asking if she could cancel her membership or move to a different space. She said got a lot vocal sympathizing but never a resolution. “They would just smile at me — keep the smile totally plastered and not offer any sort of human response,” she said. (A Wing spokesperson provided notices distributed during construction that say members may utilize other locations during construction and further said members were given earplugs to alleviate the noise.)

Gelman has in the past expressed frustration with the unending criticism, attributing much of it to a discomfort with female ambition. To a certain extent her frustration is understandable. In many ways, the company visibly puts its money where its mouth is, giving even its hourly employees, paid $16.50 an hour, full benefits and stock options. It also provides affordable childcare for parents using the space. The company has made intentional strides to include trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming members, and changed its membership policy earlier this year to reflect that (the policy change came on the heels of a lawsuit from a man alleging gender-based discrimination, but The Wing has maintained the two are unrelated).

And so the level of scrutiny applied to The Wing’s every misstep is likely grating for its leaders. WeWork and the social club Soho House, after all, are not prodded for their woke bonafides. But those spaces have never marketed themselves as politically or morally meaningful. The Wing built its value on its moral claims, and that pretense clearly fuels members’ irritation with the company’s shortcomings. A clause that seems to suppress speech will be viewed through the lens of that moral promise, as will the response from the company and its CEO.

At the end of the day, of course, The Wing is a business, and a very successful one at that — it continues to rake in hefty investments, with its most recent round of funding yielding $75 million. In two years, it has ballooned to nine locations, with two more coming in 2020. However sincere, the fact that its savvy messaging around social issues also serves its bottom line is not lost on members or observers. Trying to be both activist and profitable has bound the company in something of a corporate catch-22. Its activist efforts will be viewed cynically because it is profiting from them, but to ditch those efforts would be to validate that cynicism while abandoning what differentiates its brand.

“[The Wing should] drop the gimmick and just be a space, but I know they can’t do that and still be as successful as they’ve been,” said the former New York member. Despite the controversy, backlash only goes so far; it helps when a chunk of your business is owned by WeWork, which needs any upside it can get. “Frankly, the enlightened critique or whatever it is that we’re all doing doesn’t appear to be hurting them. I think they’re probably making all the right business decisions.”

---