An 18-year-old woman who took a picture of a person appearing to be a fully bearded man in a women's locker room at a Pennsylvania Planet Fitness told Newsmax on Wednesday that she remains in shock because the person "did fully look like a man to me," even though staffers at the gym said the person may have been a woman transitioning genders and identifying as a man.
"I had just finished a workout and I was heading into the locker room, and as many locker rooms are the bathroom connected to the locker room," the woman, Mary Edwards, told "National Report." "As I was getting my things out of my locker, this what appears to be a man, though I'm not certain, came out of the women's bathroom into the women's locker room."
She said she felt "extremely uncomfortable." "There should be no instance where a person who is a man or displays himself as a man should be in a women's only space," she said. "Just to clarify, this is the women's locker room, so this person, whatever they truly are, should not have been in there."
Her father, Justin Edwards, also on the program, said he believes women "need their own spaces," but "what we're doing now just doesn't make any sense to me because I don't know where a young girl can go, and feel safe, if not in a locker room at a gym and not be exposed to what appears to be a man."
Mary Edwards said she went to the front desk to ask the "two young girls" working there if they were aware of "this bearded person in the women's area."
"They told me that it was a transgender, so they were unable to do anything, and I was not about to berate these teen girls," she said. "I went home but then immediately called the manager and was able to get a hold of them the following Monday, and no, they had no idea what this person truly was and they said that they had never spoken to them themselves to ask them about it."
But, she added, "From other people's hearsay that they had heard throughout the gym, they think it may be a biological woman transitioning to a man, but they were unable to give me a firm answer and to this day I have no idea."
The Planet Fitness gender inclusion policy specifies that all members and teams may use locker room facilities and programs based on their self-reported gender identity, not biological sex and that if a member is improperly asserting a gender identity, that person could lose his or her gym membership.
Mary Edwards said that she understands that it's "not normally right" to take a photo in the locker room. However, she added that she felt it was appropriate for her to take pictures because "they did not seem like they were supposed to be in there an if anything were to happen, I have no idea of the intentions of this person … God forbid anything were to happen."
Newsmax has reached out to the Downington, Pennsylvania, Planet Fitness for comment, and has gotten no response.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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