What’s Current: Pool manager bans 80-year-old woman for questioning man in girls’ change room

Clementine Adams
  • An 80-year-old woman was banned from using her local public pool after she told a man in a woman’s bathing suit to leave the female change room. Julie Jaman asked the man, who was near a group of little girls who were taking off their bathing suits, “Do you have a penis?” The man, revealed to go by the name Clementine Adams, responded, “None of your business.” Jaman, a resident of Port Townsend, told Adams, “Get out of here, right now.” YMCA aquatics manager Rowen DeLuna told Jaman, “You’re discriminating and you can’t use the pool anymore and I’m calling the police.”
An August 1 protest in front of the Mountain View Pool. Julie Jaman holds a sign reading, “Men who identify as women are using the woman’s shower/dressing room.” (Image: The Port Townsend Free Press.)

In response to a protest, the Mountain View pool issued a press release, stating:

“We will not tolerate bias, hatred, or discrimination that leads to the oppression of individuals or communities. We will ensure sustained and meaningful progress toward equity and human dignity for all.”

  • The Telegraph reports that Stephen Watson, chief constable of Greater Manchester, believes police have been “overzealous in recording trivial online spats and legitimate debate as hate incidents at the expense of tackling mainstream crimes.” Watson said:

“We’ve become too assiduous at interpreting some of the rules to mean that if anybody at any time for whatever reason is offended, there somehow needs to be a police record.

We’ve got ourselves involved in stuff which is just not a policing matter, we’ve wasted our time as a result and we’ve caused people to question whether, frankly, we know what we’re doing.”

  • Portland public schools are teaching K-5 students that “gender is colonized,” that “some girls can have penises and some boys can have vulvas,” and that “any gender and kid can have any type of body.”

 

Meghan Murphy

Founder & Editor

Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist from Vancouver, BC. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including The Spectator, UnHerd, Quillette, the CBC, New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and is now exiled in Mexico with her very photogenic dog.