Planet Fitness Drops Member After Gender Identity Complaint

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Then what right exactly is it that means transgender people can use facilities that are for the opposite sex? I'm seriously asking. Is there even a law?

The facilities are separated by gender, not by sex. Or, at least, I have never been to a gym where I had to show my genitals or my chromosomes before I was allowed to use the women's locker room.

Now, in some states, there are laws banning discrimination against transgender people, including in the use of public restrooms. For example, Maryland has such a law:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-usa-transexual-maryland-idUSBREA4E0Y420140515

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Planet Fitness doesn't have to "warn" anybody of anything.

The woman who was dropped violated reestablishes company policy. I don't see any problem there, and she's not seeking reinstatement of her membership, anyway.

So we allow businesses like Planet Fitness to turn people away because they complain, aren't politically correct, disagree with sharing a changing facility with a person who is not biologically female,
But we say that other businesses cannot turn people away when they place orders that disagree with the owner's conscience. We penalize bakers who won't bake cakes for gay weddings, flower arrangements, etc.

I'm a big LGBT supporter and I would not have done what the woman in this situation did. However I do think that figuring out where one person's rights end and another person's rights begin is very tricky. Of course I don't want anyone to be policing public restrooms for X and Y chromosomes, however an actual locker room where you are in a large open room, getting naked, taking showers, with my naked kids, etc., I don't want a male in there, however he claims to self-identify. Just as I don't want moms bringing in little boys over a certain age. That's why they have a family dressing room (at my gym).

I think that like other laws that apply to businesses over a certain size, businesses with more than x number of employees should have to accommodate all comers. So just as the pharmacy has to have someone on staff who will dispense your birth control if the pharmacist has a conscientious objection, a florist has to have someone to fill the orders for gay weddings etc. once they have a certain number of employees.

Not sure how to resolve an understandable wish for same-gender locker rooms and self-identification that might not match biology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is that transgender people aren't worth MORE than non-transgender people. That means that the rights of non-transgender people have to be just as equally protected as the rights of transgender people. So just letting one transgender person use the locker room they want to can cause 50 people to feel awkward, be scared, feel threatened etc. That is NOT the solution. The solution are gender neutral facilities that need to be added everywhere. If they end up meaning transgender people are allowed by law to use the facilities THEY feel they belong to and everyone bothered by it can then use the neutral facilities - OR the transgender people are required to use neutral rooms and everyone else uses gender specific facilities to ME doesn't matter...as long as everybody and NOT JUST the transgender people are respected here.

But you don't have a right to feel comfortable. There is no such right.

Now, I'm all in favor of adding single-user facilities that anybody may use. For example, people who don't feel comfortable sharing a locker room with other people, for whatever reason. As you suggest.

Then what right exactly is it that means transgender people can use facilities that are for the opposite sex? I'm seriously asking. Is there even a law?

Not pp, but human beings do not have a right to "comfort" - but they do have a right to safety.

As has been repeatedly mentioned time and time again, transgender persons have been, and continue to MUCH more likely be the victim of violence in a locker room, than perpetrator of violence. A transgender woman is safer in a locker room with other women. And there have been no cases of women harmed by a transgender woman in a locker room. It's a safe arrangement for all parties.

Making sure transgender people are safe in the proper gender facilities would be another way of taking care of that right. Women have been sexually assaulted in women's facilities...so what are we doing about that? Children, too. Keeping facilities safe is what it should be about - letting transgender people use opposite sex facilities is not a proper solution. It's a band aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Making sure transgender people are safe in the proper gender facilities would be another way of taking care of that right. Women have been sexually assaulted in women's facilities...so what are we doing about that? Children, too. Keeping facilities safe is what it should be about - letting transgender people use opposite sex facilities is not a proper solution. It's a band aid.

Exactly. Everybody should be safe while using the locker room appropriate to their gender. Girls/women should be safe while using the women's locker room, and boys/men should be safe while using the men's locker room. If they are not safe, THAT's the problem.

(Transwomen are women. Transmen are men.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering how many of you walk around truly believing you will be attacked in your gym locker room. It must be crazy to be that paranoid all the time.

the only time a person is more vulnerable is when they're asleep. If you're going to protect yourselves a place when you're likely to be naked and vulnerable is a good place to do it. Do you wear a seat belt? Lock your doors? Protect your banking passwords? Make your kids wear a bike helmet and appropriate car seats? If not then that's your business, but most people protect themselves in those ways. Why wouldn't they protect themselves against potential harm when they're naked and vulnerable? Who wants to go running out of the locker room naked if a sociopath posing as a Transgender person wanted to commit a crime? No one has an issue with a true trans person, esp the ones who have ambiguous genitalia and we're truly raised the wrong sex due to a birth defect. What worries people is psychos who exploit the Transgender in the locker room for nefarious reasons.

Has this happened often, in your experience?

Here is how often it has happened in my experience: never.

It will. Once this transgendered thing catches on, you'll find some perverts using it to their advantage. Just like teachers and priests use their positions of trust to dupe people...the fake transies will be signing up for memberships at planet fitness. I think it's hilarious how some people be all stupid to show how "progressive" they are.

So in 2014, there were over 10K reported cases of violence against transgender persons. There were no documented cases of cross-dressing attackers. So you want to prevent a business from doing what they can to provide protections to a class of people that are currently and routinely significantly harassed and assaulted thousands of time a year just to possibly prevent an assault that has never happened, but may happen.

A business can provide protections to this class of people while providing protections to the masses, no? And even though assaults are rare, they still happen...think public schools, Penn State locker room, the metro....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering how many of you walk around truly believing you will be attacked in your gym locker room. It must be crazy to be that paranoid all the time.

I don't think this will happen in an all female locker room. But introduce a male - yes, I would be nervous. I have large breasts and caught a boy who was probably only 5 or 6 staring at them as I was getting changed. And he proceeded to ask his mom questions about them. It bothered me and I was embarrassed. So was the kid's mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering how many of you walk around truly believing you will be attacked in your gym locker room. It must be crazy to be that paranoid all the time.

the only time a person is more vulnerable is when they're asleep. If you're going to protect yourselves a place when you're likely to be naked and vulnerable is a good place to do it. Do you wear a seat belt? Lock your doors? Protect your banking passwords? Make your kids wear a bike helmet and appropriate car seats? If not then that's your business, but most people protect themselves in those ways. Why wouldn't they protect themselves against potential harm when they're naked and vulnerable? Who wants to go running out of the locker room naked if a sociopath posing as a Transgender person wanted to commit a crime? No one has an issue with a true trans person, esp the ones who have ambiguous genitalia and we're truly raised the wrong sex due to a birth defect. What worries people is psychos who exploit the Transgender in the locker room for nefarious reasons.

Has this happened often, in your experience?

Here is how often it has happened in my experience: never.

How often have you been raped?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is that transgender people aren't worth MORE than non-transgender people. That means that the rights of non-transgender people have to be just as equally protected as the rights of transgender people. So just letting one transgender person use the locker room they want to can cause 50 people to feel awkward, be scared, feel threatened etc. That is NOT the solution. The solution are gender neutral facilities that need to be added everywhere. If they end up meaning transgender people are allowed by law to use the facilities THEY feel they belong to and everyone bothered by it can then use the neutral facilities - OR the transgender people are required to use neutral rooms and everyone else uses gender specific facilities to ME doesn't matter...as long as everybody and NOT JUST the transgender people are respected here.

But you don't have a right to feel comfortable. There is no such right.

Now, I'm all in favor of adding single-user facilities that anybody may use. For example, people who don't feel comfortable sharing a locker room with other people, for whatever reason. As you suggest.

Why doesn't she have a right to feel comfortable, but a trans person has a right to feel comfortable. Totally f**cked up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering how many of you walk around truly believing you will be attacked in your gym locker room. It must be crazy to be that paranoid all the time.

the only time a person is more vulnerable is when they're asleep. If you're going to protect yourselves a place when you're likely to be naked and vulnerable is a good place to do it. Do you wear a seat belt? Lock your doors? Protect your banking passwords? Make your kids wear a bike helmet and appropriate car seats? If not then that's your business, but most people protect themselves in those ways. Why wouldn't they protect themselves against potential harm when they're naked and vulnerable? Who wants to go running out of the locker room naked if a sociopath posing as a Transgender person wanted to commit a crime? No one has an issue with a true trans person, esp the ones who have ambiguous genitalia and we're truly raised the wrong sex due to a birth defect. What worries people is psychos who exploit the Transgender in the locker room for nefarious reasons.

Has this happened often, in your experience?

Here is how often it has happened in my experience: never.

How often have you been raped?

I, personally, know people who have been raped. I have also read about people being raped. I do not personally know anybody who has been assaulted by a transgender person in a locker room, and I have never read about assaults by transgender people in locker rooms. If you know of any such cases, please provide the information here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Then what right exactly is it that means transgender people can use facilities that are for the opposite sex? I'm seriously asking. Is there even a law?

The facilities are separated by gender, not by sex. Or, at least, I have never been to a gym where I had to show my genitals or my chromosomes before I was allowed to use the women's locker room.

Now, in some states, there are laws banning discrimination against transgender people, including in the use of public restrooms. For example, Maryland has such a law:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/us-usa-transexual-maryland-idUSBREA4E0Y420140515

This, among many other reasons Maryland is sinking very fast. It has gone too, too far left even for many reformed liberals like myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why doesn't she have a right to feel comfortable, but a trans person has a right to feel comfortable. Totally f**cked up.

No, you misunderstand. A trans person also does not have a right to feel comfortable. However, both the PP and a transperson do have a right to be safe. And there is plenty of evidence that it is not safe for transwomen to use men's bathrooms, whereas there is no evidence that it is not safe for ciswomen to use women's locker rooms with transwomen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering how many of you walk around truly believing you will be attacked in your gym locker room. It must be crazy to be that paranoid all the time.

the only time a person is more vulnerable is when they're asleep. If you're going to protect yourselves a place when you're likely to be naked and vulnerable is a good place to do it. Do you wear a seat belt? Lock your doors? Protect your banking passwords? Make your kids wear a bike helmet and appropriate car seats? If not then that's your business, but most people protect themselves in those ways. Why wouldn't they protect themselves against potential harm when they're naked and vulnerable? Who wants to go running out of the locker room naked if a sociopath posing as a Transgender person wanted to commit a crime? No one has an issue with a true trans person, esp the ones who have ambiguous genitalia and we're truly raised the wrong sex due to a birth defect. What worries people is psychos who exploit the Transgender in the locker room for nefarious reasons.

Has this happened often, in your experience?

Here is how often it has happened in my experience: never.

How often have you been raped?

I, personally, know people who have been raped. I have also read about people being raped. I do not personally know anybody who has been assaulted by a transgender person in a locker room, and I have never read about assaults by transgender people in locker rooms. If you know of any such cases, please provide the information here.

You said in your experience you have never been raped by a transgendered. You have never been raped period. The poster you dismissed with your lack self-righteousness said that she felt unsafe and uncomfortable with male and their genitalia while she was in a vulnerable position of undress. She had been raped. You have no standing to dismiss her feelings. Until you have been spread eagled begging for your life while some person with male organs penetrating you shut the fuck up about what's possible and what's not. You have no standing. She does. I do. All the reading in the word will never make you understand or feel that time. You have no right to Poo Poo her feelings you helfer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You said in your experience you have never been raped by a transgendered. You have never been raped period. The poster you dismissed with your lack self-righteousness said that she felt unsafe and uncomfortable with male and their genitalia while she was in a vulnerable position of undress. She had been raped. You have no standing to dismiss her feelings. Until you have been spread eagled begging for your life while some person with male organs penetrating you shut the fuck up about what's possible and what's not. You have no standing. She does. I do. All the reading in the word will never make you understand or feel that time. You have no right to Poo Poo her feelings you helfer.

I did not dismiss her feelings. She has a right to her feelings. However, she does not have a right to require other people to do things that are not safe for them, based on her feelings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You said in your experience you have never been raped by a transgendered. You have never been raped period. The poster you dismissed with your lack self-righteousness said that she felt unsafe and uncomfortable with male and their genitalia while she was in a vulnerable position of undress. She had been raped. You have no standing to dismiss her feelings. Until you have been spread eagled begging for your life while some person with male organs penetrating you shut the fuck up about what's possible and what's not. You have no standing. She does. I do. All the reading in the word will never make you understand or feel that time. You have no right to Poo Poo her feelings you helfer.

I did not dismiss her feelings. She has a right to her feelings. However, she does not have a right to require other people to do things that are not safe for them, based on her feelings.

NP here. Most facilities are safe. In fact most of them are as safe for cispeople in appropriate facilities as they are for transpeople in 'wrong gender' facilities. Bad things happen. But they happen to ciswomen in women's rooms just as well as to transwomen in men's rooms. You can't seriously suggest keeping ONE kind of people super duper awesome safe and for the rest of the humans on earth to just deal with the possibility of having an intruder in their facilities who is going to molest, rape or murder them. Doesn't make sense.

Make facilities safe. That's the solution to this problem.
Make gender neutral facilities is the solution to the comfort/discomfort type problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

NP here. Most facilities are safe. In fact most of them are as safe for cispeople in appropriate facilities as they are for transpeople in 'wrong gender' facilities. Bad things happen. But they happen to ciswomen in women's rooms just as well as to transwomen in men's rooms. You can't seriously suggest keeping ONE kind of people super duper awesome safe and for the rest of the humans on earth to just deal with the possibility of having an intruder in their facilities who is going to molest, rape or murder them. Doesn't make sense.

Make facilities safe. That's the solution to this problem.
Make gender neutral facilities is the solution to the comfort/discomfort type problem.

The bad things that happen to ciswomen in women's rooms are not done by transwomen. (Unless you know of some cases that nobody else knows about?) Therefore, banning transwomen from women's rooms will not make ciswomen safer. But it will make transwomen less safe.