News (USA)

A cis woman got banned from a gym for insulting a trans woman. She thinks she’s the victim.

ivey-gardner
Photo: Screenshot/WFTV 9

Another cisgender woman’s membership at Planet Fitness has been canceled for harassing a transgender woman in the locker room.

The cis woman, who has not been named in the media, said that this past May she saw a transgender woman in the locker room putting on make up at her gym in Leesburg, Florida.

“Thought maybe, possibly he had the wrong locker room,” she said.

She said that she tried to talk to the trans woman, but didn’t get a response. So she went to the front desk to complain.

When an employee told her that Planet Fitness permits customers to use the locker room appropriate for their gender identities, she decided to wait for an hour outside the locker room before going back in.

She called her husband to pick her up, and when she left, the trans woman was calling 911 about sexual harassment and following her into the parking lot.

“It’s not about being transgender. It’s about a man in the locker room,” the cis woman said, misgendering the trans woman and not understanding the issues involved. “He never told me he was transgender. I did not know. All I could see was there was a man in the locker room. He did not identify himself as transgender.”

Several days later, her membership was canceled for violating the gym’s “No Judgment” policy.

“I did not judge anybody,” she said. “I just did not feel comfortable with a man in the locker room. I feel like my rights were violated and we’re only hearing about his right being violated as a transgender.”

Well, that’s not how the trans woman remembers things, and now she’s speaking out.

“I had to step out and say something because I’m not going to be made into a monster,” said Ivey Gardner, the trans woman.

“She told me I looked like a clown. She told me I looked like a man and I need to stop trying to appear as a woman,” Gardner said.

Gardner said that privacy isn’t even an issue here since the locker room is big enough.

“I was using my part of the locker room that I was in. There were several other parts of the locker room that she could have gone to,” she said. A company representative also said that there are private dressing rooms in each locker room.

She also said that she realizes that she should not have followed the cis woman into the parking lot, but she said that she was just trying to get a description of her for 911.

Gardner said that it’s her privacy that was violated. The cis woman has contacted SPLC designated hate group Liberty Counsel for legal representation in the matter, and the hate group used her dead name in a letter it sent to Planet Fitness.

“She may feel uncomfortable, but I feel like my life’s in danger anytime someone approaches me like that,” Gardner said.

In a similar case that has been working its way through the Michigan court system for the last three years, a cisgender woman at a Planet Fitness in Midland, Michigan, complained about a transgender woman in the locker room and her membership was revoked for causing a scene and violating the gym’s “No Judgment” policy.

The woman’s case wasn’t going well at first, but this past week an appeals court sent her complaint back to the trial court.

The court ruled that Planet Fitness may have violated a state consumer protection law when they represented themselves as having separate male and female locker rooms, which the court said it did not have because the gym allows trans people to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identities and does not force their sex assigned at birth.

This post was updated to include the name of the city where the incident occurred.

Don't forget to share:

Support vital LGBTQ+ journalism

Reader contributions help keep LGBTQ Nation free, so that queer people get the news they need, with stories that mainstream media often leaves out. Can you contribute today?

Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated

President Obama is ‘having sex with 10 dudes a day’ in latest far right lunacy

Previous article

Prosecutors say this gay student was stabbed 20 times in a hate crime

Next article