I would love to go a month—or even a week—without having to address this, but the cycle of social madness continues unabated, all centered on the “T” of LGBT, namely, transgender.
To repeat what I have said many times before, I have compassion for those who struggle with their gender identity, and we should do whatever we can to help them find wholeness from the inside out (in other words, working to help them be at home in their bodies without having to undergo radical surgery and be on hormones for life).
At the same time, we cannot impose the struggles of an extremely tiny minority (estimated at 3 per 1,000 people) on society as a whole.
Yet that is exactly what happened at a Planet Fitness gym in Midland, Michigan.
The basic story is not disputed. A woman named Yvette Cormier was in the locker room when a man, dressed as a woman, entered the locker room. This shocked Cormier, who reported it to the front desk and was told that the person in question was allowed to be in that locker room, since he identified as a woman.
According to local ABC News, “Cormier, who had been a Planet Fitness member for two months, said she went to the front desk immediately. The man at the desk told her that Planet Fitness policy is: ‘Whatever gender you feel you are, that’s the locker room you’re allowed to go in,’ she said.
“And then he said, ‘We’ve had lots of complaints about him but we told him to go change in a stall,'” Cormier said.
“He said, ‘If you’re uncomfortable with that you can wait until he’s done in there,'” she said. “I stood back and said, ‘How about he waits until I’m done in the women’s locker room. Or get a unisex bathroom.’ He asked if I would like to talk to the manager and I said, ‘I’m calling corporate.'”
When she persisted in voicing her complaint (which, according to Planet Fitness, she did inappropriately), her membership was revoked, since she was in violation of the company’s “Judgment Free Zone” policy. (If I wanted to make something up, I would not make up something this absurd.)
Now the transgender individual has identified himself as Carlotta Sklodowska, and he states that Planet Fitness told him, “You can use the locker room that corresponds with how you are dressed.”
Sklodowska did understand, of course, why Cormier would think he was not a woman. As explained in the Daily Mail without a hint of irony, “She added that she understood why Cormier would see her body structure as masculine, because many people tell her she looks like a man.”
Could it be that many people tell “her” that “she looks like a man” because she is a man?
Again, I mean no harm to this individual, who may be a very gentle soul and who surely suffers enough rejection already. I’m simply drawing attention to what seems obvious: Carlotta Sklodowska is a biological male, and as such, his presence in a women’s locker room, however innocent, is rightly considered inappropriate.
