Watching the little girls undress
A senior woman who expressed discomfort regarding a trans-identified male in the women’s changing room at her local pool has been banned from using the facilities she frequented for over three decades. Julie Jaman, 80, had been a guest at the YMCA-run Mountain View community pool in her small town of Port Townsend, Washington for over 35 years.
Interrupting for a moment to say I know that small town. It’s on the Olympic Peninsula, the remainder of the state west of Seattle and Puget Sound; it’s on a bluff overlooking the water and features a lot of gorgeous Queen Anne-style Victorian houses. It’s a lovely place.
Speaking to Reduxx, Jaman revealed that on July 26, she witnessed a trans-identified male using the female locker rooms at the pool, and became concerned due to the fact he appeared to be watching the little girls as they changed out of their bathing suits.
“I was showering [after a swim] and I heard a man’s voice … it was quite deep,” Jaman told Reduxx, “So I looked through the shower curtain. There was a man in a women’s bathing suit, and he was near four or five little girls who were taking off their bathing suits. He was standing there watching them.”
Jaman observed the male through the opening in the shower curtain for a moment. Shocked by his presence and becoming increasingly distressed about his proximity to the children, she quietly asked: “Do you have a penis?” The male refused to answer, prompting Jaman to demand he leave the locker room.
Rowen DeLuna, the pool’s aquatics manager, was in the area at the time, and when Jaman appealed to her to remove the male from the restroom, DeLuna told her she was being “discriminatory” and threatened to call the police.
“She said, ‘you are being discriminatory, you are banned from the pool, and I am calling the police.’”
Calling the police, because a woman told a man to get out of the women’s changing room. You couldn’t make it up.
Here’s the local newspaper report that the Reduxx account draws upon. It’s well worth reading, including the comments, including a comment from Jaman as well. Even in out of the way Port Townsend the issue of gender identity is emerging as one that does matter to ordinary people.
https://www.porttownsendfreepress.com/2022/08/02/mountain-view-pool-punishes-woman-for-her-gender-expression-and-identity-part-one/
FWIW, I’ve visited Port Townsend twice and it is a lovely place. Loved hiking around the old fort and battery there.
Isn’t it? I haven’t been there in decades, but there was a time when because the Hood Canal bridge was closed for repairs, the state ferry system added a route from Edmonds (just north of Seattle) to PT, which was a delightfully long trip as well as a delightful way to get to PT, so I made the trip several times (hitchhiking to and from Edmonds).
Obvious next questions: “Do you intend to use it in here at any time in the future? And for what purpose?”
This saga is unlikely to have a happy ending.
The 51 comments following the Free Press article are also interesting..
I found this part interesting:
For those who haven’t read the article, Adams is the trans woman.
This seems to suggest that there is a third dressing room and shower for employees (or possibly a third and fourth, for male employees and female employees respectively).
Assuming that’s the case, it precludes any sort of “we just want to go pee in peace!” claim. Adams was not forced to the choice of either using the women’s changeroom (and risking the kind of confrontation that resulted here) or using the men’s (and being forced to change with men). There was a third option.