An 80-year-old woman was banned from using a community pool run by the YMCA in Washington state after she expressed her anger because she said that a man dressed in a woman’s swimsuit was watching little girls undress and also saw her naked in the women’s showers, according to local media reports.
Julie Jaman, 80, had been swimming at the Mountain View pool, a Port Townsend facility, for 35 years, but on July 26, the Y’s aquatics manager, Rowen DeLuna, allegedly informed her that some children needed the lane she was swimming in.
Jaman said she headed to the women’s showers, where she soaped up before hearing a man’s voice, then turned to see a biological male named Clementine Adams, allegedly an employee at the pool, “looking at the little girls as they were taking off their suits,” the Port Townsend Free Press reported.
“There were gaps in the curtain and there I was, naked, with soap and water on me, and this guy, right there very close to me,” Jaman said. “I asked, ‘Do you have a penis?’ He said, ‘That’s none of your business.’ That’s when I told him, ‘Get out of here, right now.’”
Jaman said she turned to DeLuna, who was outside the shower stall, and said, “Get him out of here,” but DeLuna responded, “You’re discriminating and you can’t use the pool anymore and I’m calling the police.”
Jaman claimed that when she got dressed and tried to leave the building, a YMCA staff member told her she could not leave, echoed by DeLuna, prompting Jaman to respond, “Bull****! I’m going to the police right now. I want help and I need it immediately.”
Jaman said Wendy Bart, the CEO of the Olympic Peninsula YMCA, spoke to her later that day, and told her that she was banned from the pool, and said a staff member told her that Jaman said to Adams, “You’re going to stick your f***ing penis in those little girls.” Jaman, the mother of two adult daughters, said she reacted, “I am an 80 year-old woman and I do not talk like that.”
Jaman told the city council, as can be seen here, “My experience after having my swim was hearing a man’s voice in the women’s dressing area and seeing a man in a woman’s swimsuit watching little girls pull down their bathing suits in order to use the toilets in the dressing room. I reacted by telling him to leave, and the consequence is that I have been banned from the pool.”
“There is no signage informing women the shower room is now all-gender and what that means, nor have parents been informed of what they can expect with these new policies,” she declared. “The Y has not provided any dressing shower room options for women who do not want to be exposed to men who identify as women. It is unconscionable that the YMCA would implement these new policies without clearly informing pool patrons and parents.”
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