That’s the message customers are taking to heart after an Alaskan woman had her membership revoked for complaining about a man in the women’s locker room.
The gym is a “no judgment zone,” Patricia Silva was told. Well, it’s about to become a profit-free zone, too, thanks to angry Americans who are putting the company’s stock in a $400 million free-fall.
In a video she took from the Fairbanks location, Silva said, “I just came out of Planet Fitness. There is a man shaving in the women’s bathroom,” viewers find out later after she posts a picture.
“I love him in Christ,” she makes clear. “He is a spiritual being having a human experience. He doesn’t like his gender so he wants to be a woman, but I’m not comfortable with him shaving in my bathroom. I just thought I’d say it out loud.”
When Silva confronted the man in the restroom, he replied, “Well, I’m LGB ....” She interrupted, “But you’re a man invading my space!” She ultimately walked away and went to the front desk. “‘Are you aware that there is a MAN shaving in the women’s bathroom?’” she asked. “‘... I’m not OK with that.’ The two men standing at the desk, put their heads down and their tails between their legs!” Silva recounted. “As I was walking out the door ... at my back, a woman shouts, ‘It’s a girl!’ ... I shouted back, ‘It’s a man!’”
Silva was especially irate that a young girl, who “could have been 12 years old,” was exposed to the same man. She stood in the same room in a towel and “kind of freaked out.”
And yet, even now, flooded with complaints and nationwide criticism, the company stands by its decision, telling Libs of TikTok that the staff will “work with members and employees to address this discomfort [sharing facilities with transgender members] and to foster a climate of understanding consistent with the ‘Judgment Free’ character of Planet Fitness.”
Then, doubling down, the business vowed to continue calling trans-identifying customers by their preferred pronouns and “other terms consistent with their self-reported gender identity, if reasonably known to the Planet Fitness staff.”
“Freaked out,” she complained to the desk that there was a man in her restroom. She was shocked to find the on-duty staff taking his side. Stunned, she contacted Planet Fitness’s corporate office—where she heard more of the same. The gym, she was told, is a “no judgment zone”—but apparently not for everyone. When Cormier started warning women about the policy, Planet Fitness revoked her membership.
“This is very scary,” she told reporters at the time. “I feel like it’s kind of one-sided. I feel like I’m the one who is being punished.” She sued.
In Leesburg, Florida, six years ago, the same thing happened. “Mrs. H” confronted the man in her locker room and told him to leave. For more than an hour, he refused to go, watching every woman coming and going from his spot near the door. “Despite a male employee observing that [Jordan] Rice’s behavior was ‘over the top,’ staff did not intervene and ask him to finish his business, but permitted him to monopolize the women’s locker room.”
For Mrs. H, who’d survived an attempted rape, it was a traumatic experience to say the least. All she wanted was the privacy to change and shower—instead she got something else; namely, a notice that her membership had been canceled. She took the gym to court.
Conservatives remember the company’s one-sided trans advocacy well. The Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon thought back to those cases, pointing out, “Planet Fitness was an early adopter of insane policies that allow adult men in women’s locker rooms with women and children. And of course the policies changed with little notice to customers.”
“When women complained,” she explained, “they were ignored or kicked out. Women need to stand up for ourselves, but we also need the men who love us to stand up for us as well. I am grateful that so many good men do. If it takes hurting them financially to make a difference, I’ll take that. But it’s cold comfort.”
