It wasn’t going to happen. This was not going to be a problem. Only honest-to-goodness women who were trapped in a men’s bodies by genes were going to use women’s locker rooms. Everyone would be well-intentioned and everyone would be comfortable. No big deal. Any concerns some might have about opportunistic voyeurism were an overblown panic.
Except it wasn’t. Recently, a man who did not claim to be a trans-woman just walked into the women’s locker room at a Seattle public pool and started changing and watching the women change. A woman reported him. Staff asked him to leave. He resisted, asserting he was allowed to be there. He went for his swim and then returned to the women's locker room when he was finished. A girls’ swim team was using the facility. Mothers complained, and he eventually left. The police were not called because if he identified as a woman, then he was within his rights, and if he did not, then the staff preferred to settle the issue without involving the police. The story got out when a witness called a radio station.
Two things that stand out to me, besides the “told ya” point all of us maligned panic mongers can claim: One, the staff person interviewed said, “We want everyone to feel comfortable at our facilities.” Well, the woman who asked him to leave did not feel comfortable with a man changing in the women’s locker room. Nor did the young girls’ swim team or their mothers who were in the locker room when he returned to assert his legal right to change in the women’s space. When does their comfort count?
