A Californian teenager sobbed before the city council as she told of her trauma at seeing ‘a naked man’ she says was a transgender woman inside the women’s changing rooms at her local YMCA.
Rebecca Philips, 17, addressed the meeting in Santee, a city suburb of San Diego, on Wednesday night to demand reform to the existing policy after encountering the unidentified individual.
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Just two weeks after my shift at my job, I went to the gym to swim laps. As I was showering after my workout, I saw a naked male in the women’s locker room.
I immediately went back into the shower, terrified, and hid behind their flimsy excuse for a curtain until he was gone.
I ran into a bathroom stall to change as quickly as I could, organizing my thoughts to share with the people at the front desk. As I did so, I could only think of my five-year-old sister, who I bring to this gym during the summer….sorry…to enjoy their water slides.
This is the YMCA, where hundreds of children spend their summer afternoons in child care camps.
This is the YMCA where my little sister took gymnastics lessons.
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When I asked YMCA management what they policy was regarding transgenders, they confirmed that the man I saw was indeed allowed wherever he pleased. As long as you are not a red flag on Megan’s Law, the California Sex Offender Registry, a grown male can shower alongside a teenage girl at your YMCA location here in Santee.
I was made to feel as though I had done something wrong when I talked to people at the YMCA.
Somehow, the indecent exposure of a male to a female minor was an inconvenience to them.
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She informed my dad that I was not in any danger at the time of the incident. That I was safe.
But I ask you this…I’m assuming all of you have either a wife, a sister, daughters or granddaughters or are a woman yourself.
Could you knowingly send an underage girl into a room with a naked male and say she was not in danger, that she was safe, or more importantly, that this right?
The fact that we are now tailoring our privacy policies and bathroom laws around transgenders, ignoring the blatant threat to safety that this poses is obscene.
The safety of children, girls, is on the chopping block.
