Happy Women’s History Month. To honor all the great ladies, one gym chain is working up a sweat for the patriarchy.
Patricia Silva entered the women’s locker room at a Fairbanks, Alaska, Planet Fitness and claims she saw a “man” in there shaving.
Also present: “a little girl sitting in the corner. She could have been 12-years-old … in a towel kind of freaked out,” Silva said in a video posted to Facebook.
“I was offended, I took a picture of him,” she said, adding that she asked why he was there because he is “a man with a penis … you shouldn’t be in a women’s locker room’.”
Silva said the man, who had been shaving his face, responded that he was “queer.”
After Silva complained to the gym, she said, Planet Fitness gave her the boot for violating their rules against photographing other members.
I’m firmly on the side of a locker room being a private, camera-free zone. But I am also against scaring the bejesus out of people and making them feel the need to document what goes on in there.
The gym backed up its decision in a statement: “Our gender identity non-discrimination policy states that members and guests may use the facilities that best align with the sincere, self-reported gender identity.”
Forget gym goers — the word “sincere” is getting the biggest workout.
If a man can self-identify as a woman, can’t a woman self-identify as someone taken aback by a dude shaving in their single-sex locker room?
These crazy corporate policies prioritizing self-identification over reality have turned women’s spaces into open houses for men, regardless of their intentions.
Dudes are free to roam where they want as long as they believe they belong, biology or physicality be damned.
More and more, business policies tell women to simply get used to it.
Planet Fitness acknowledged that some people “may feel uncomfortable with a transgender member using the same locker room facilities, bathrooms, showers or other facilities separated by sex … This discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender member.”
The club, it writes, will “work with members and employees to address this discomfort.” (Forget her discomfort.)
I’m here for a treadmill and maybe a yoga class, not a re-education camp, thank you.
This feels eerily reminiscent of how the UPenn women’s swim team was treated when trans swimmer Lia Thomas crossed over from the men’s squad to the women’s, male genitalia intact.
According to former teammate Paula Scanlan, the school’s athletic department made it clear to the biological women that if they felt unease with Thomas on their team — and undressing alongside each other in the locker room — it was their problem to sort out with therapy.
“Another thing they said is, ‘Lia swimming with us is non-negotiable’ and then they provided us with counseling services to help us be OK with it,” Scanlan has said.
Never mind that, as Scanlan — who was sexually assaulted in a bathroom at age 16 — previously told The Post, “I would be at my locker and then all of a sudden hear a masculine voice, and I would just jump … I had nightmares for weeks about men being there while we were dressing.”
Planet Fitness’ policy reportedly notesthat if “a serious concern or significant doubt” arises about a person’s identity, the staff is urged to investigate. But if you lead with the rules of “self-reporting,” how do you police what’s in someone’s mind?
It’s a slippery slope that ends nowhere good.
In September, a 25-year-old man was arrested after exposing himself to a 15-year-old girl in the ladies’ room of a Monroe, Georgia, Planet Fitness. According to police, he allegedly had done the same to a female employee — twice.
Planet Fitness did not return requests for comment.
And this isn’t just a Planet Fitness problem. There have been numerous complaints of trans women with male organs still intact undressing in women’s locker rooms at YMCA locations across the country. And who could forget the MVP of locker room interlopers, Melody Wiseheart — a 50-year-old Canadian trans woman swimmer — competing against and changing clothes among young girls.
The reality is, illiberal rules like these pick a side — all under the guise of compassion and empathy toward the biological man. The latter is given the benefit of the doubt, and women are put on the defensive. Any objection is seen as transphobic.
It also sends a message to ladies to disable that inherent danger alarm that exists in us all.
Put up and shut up.
Everyone should have a right to safety in a locker room. If that means providing a third space, then get to building one. But don’t tell a female that, if a man is sincere in the belief that he’s a woman, she has to welcome him — along with his penis and 5 o’clock shadow — into her intimate space.
