We may be witnessing the start of the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of “Get Woke, Go Broke.” This one comes to us all the way from Alaska, where Patricia Silva ran into a strange situation. She was working out at Planet Fitness when she entered the women’s locker room, only to find a man in there shaving. Making matters worse, he was doing so in front of a young girl wrapped in a towel who appeared to be around 12 years old. Silvva asked the man to leave but he responded by saying he was “queer” and refused. At that point, she took a photograph of him and sent it to the gym’s management along with a complaint. In response, Patricia Silva’s membership was canceled. When news of this incident went out online, it wasn’t difficult to see where the public sentiment was coming down. The stock value for Planet Fitness plunged by almost 15% on Tuesday. (NY Post)
Planet Fitness saw the valuation of the company’s stock drop this week after an Alaska gym canceled a woman’s membership when she photographed a male using the women’s locker room.
The company’s stock price, which traded at a monthly high of $66.92 on March 7, plummeted to a low of $56.46 on Tuesday.
The price drop followed an incident in which Patricia Silva encountered a “man in women’s locker room shaving.”
For their part, Planet Fitness is claiming that Silva’s membership wasn’t revoked over any sort of transgender policy issues. They say that she violated a rule against photographing other members. But it seems fairly clear that they were taking sides in this scuffle and they decided to side with the trans person shaving in the women’s locker room. The company’s stock fell by more than ten dollars in a brief period of time in response.
This battle is slightly more complicated than some other trans bathroom issues we’ve covered here in the past. Planet Fitness does indeed have a clearly stated policy prohibiting the taking of photographs of other members without their consent. That makes sense, particularly for females who are changing in the women’s locker room. Nobody wants to wind up inadvertently showing up nude on some adult website.
Also, the company’s posted transgender policy is less than clear. They state that they allow members to use “the facilities that best align with their sincere, self-reported gender identity.” But at the same time, they state that if a member is “acting in bad faith and improperly asserts a gender identity, they may be asked to leave and their membership may be terminated.”
That type of reversible policy is simply begging for legal trouble in my opinion. Precisely how do they plan to determine if someone is “acting in bad faith” or “improperly asserting a gender identity?” And who will make that determination? The members can tell who is or isn’t a woman when they’re stepping into or out of the shower. But gender “identity” isn’t real, so it’s virtually impossible to put to the test beyond asking the person and taking them at their word. The dude who ran into Patricia Silva could make that claim and stick to his guns, threatening to sue the gym if they cancel his membership.
This is a perfect example of why it’s a poor business decision to have your company get involved in all of this nonsense. When setting up your bathroom and locker room policy, there will be a certain number of people – particularly women – who will oppose sharing the showers with a man and some percentage who will not object. The ones who don’t mind trans members sharing their space are unlikely to quit if they show up and there are no men in the shower. But the ones who are opposed may be very motivated to take their business elsewhere. Also, the lawsuits that you’re inviting could be ruinous to the business. Setting things up the way Planet Fitness has done sounds like the worst of both worlds.