‘I felt scared and very uncomfortable,’ Abbigail Wheeler, 16, told NR.
A teenage girl was banned from her local YMCA after she peacefully protested an encounter she had with a man in the facility’s women’s locker room.
“It was a very sad thing because I personally did not want to have to leave the Y,” Abbigail Wheeler, 16, told National Review. “I swam there for about eleven years, and it was a very heartbreaking thing.”
In late April of this year, Wheeler entered the women’s locker room at the Springfield, Ill., YMCA after swim practice. There, she noticed a man changing.
Abbigail reported the matter to her coach, she said, but was told nothing could be done. She spoke to the Y about the issue “multiple times” but was told that “if I was uncomfortable that I had to go to the family locker room,” she said.
In protest, Wheeler and her teammate displayed posters in the locker room that were reviewed by National Review and read: “Women deserve to be safe here!” and “Biological females only!”
The next day the pair were pulled aside by the coach and the YMCA Springfield CEO, who allegedly told them that the messages were considered hate speech and were disrespectful to trans YMCA members. They were told to report to them if they knew anything about who put the posters up.
The duo admitted they made the signs, noting that the YMCA’s decision to allow men into the women’s locker room contradicted the organization’s original Christian mission. The coach then told them that it was no longer appropriate for the two to practice with the team, and that their parents would be receiving follow-up emails.
“I was heartbroken,” Abbigail said. “For them to go that low as to tell a 15 and 16-year-old girl that putting up something in support of women is disrespectful or hate speech is really sad.”
The YMCA then called Wheeler’s parents and her friend’s parents, informing them that they were banned from the premises, adding that they were prohibited from even parking in the parking lot. Abbigail could only return to the YMCA if she and her parents attended a conduct meeting with staff.
“The YMCA is an inclusive organization proudly open to all,” a spokesman for the YMCA told The Center Square. “We welcome all people and do not discriminate based on ability, age, cultural background, ethnicity, faith, sex, gender identity, ideology, income, national origin, race, and sexual orientation.”
Representatives of the YMCA have argued that Illinois anti-discrimination law requires them to allow members to use locker rooms that align with their gender identity, though state Republicans have disputed that claim.
Abbigail’s father, Dan Wheeler, a 13-year veteran of USA Swimming, then took the precaution of asking a representative of the Safe Sport program, which focuses on abuse prevention in sports, to attend the meeting. Kenzie Primus, the branch director for the YMCA, at first okayed the representative’s attendance, Dan told National Review. But he then received an email from the chief human-resources officer of the Springfield YMCA informing him that the Safe Sports representative would not be allowed to attend, he said.
Wheeler, not wanting his daughter to be further reprimanded and penalized after she was temporarily kicked out of the YMCA, called off the disciplinary meeting.
“It’s really a safety issue for our kids,” he said. “At a minimum,” he said, their family wanted a joint meeting with the other affected family, an idea which the Y rejected.
“We determined at that point that it was the Y’s goal to divide and conquer to have a meeting with individuals individually and to dictate punishment based on what they felt was a violation of their rules,” he said. “We had a membership, and my daughter could not participate with the team because we were not subscribing to their list of demands for her return.”
The mother then sent the YMCA an email, which has since been circulated, saying the family would be canceling their membership and removing Abbigail from the swim team.
“We did not leave of our own accord,” said Abbigail’s older sister Kaitlynn, a former teammate of Riley Gaines on the University of Kentucky swim team who was herself forced to share a women’s locker room with male athlete Lia Thomas at the NCAA championship. “My family was forced to cancel our membership and Abbigail was forced out of her swim team due to the conditions that they set for her to return to the YMCA.”
Asked for comment, the Springfield YMCA said that Abbigail’s story was “debunked and admitted as false by the accusers last Thursday.” The spokesman was referring to the fact that Abbigail conceded during a press conference at the Illinois state capitol that the male she encountered in the locker room was not nude at the time, despite saying otherwise in a previous Fox News interview.
Her father pointed out at the press conference that the male should not have been in the locker room regardless of whether he was nude.
“It’s not whether a biological male is naked, whether a biological male is leering, whether a biological male has a camera out. It’s the fact that there’s a biological male in the girl’s locker room,” he said in response to a question from a reporter.
Abbigail now swims and trains with a local club team, which she said has been very supportive.
“I wish that they would not put even the transgender individuals in an uncomfortable position by allowing the biological men into the women’s locker room,” Abbigail said. “I felt scared and very uncomfortable when I learned that I was changing in the same locker room as a biological man.”
A similar incident to Wheeler’s happened at the San Diego YMCA in January, when a 17-year-old female encountered a naked man while showering in the women’s locker room after her swim workout.
“The purpose of me speaking out about this is to let people be aware of what’s going on because my family was in the dark about this, let alone minors being in the dark about this non-consent,” Abbigail said.