An angry white crowd screaming at a Black woman pleading for civil rights. Threatening her. Intimidating her. Senior women linking arms to protect a rape survivor trying to speak. A lesbian being shouted down by a mostly male mob decked out in Pride colors. A man with an AR-15 imposed over a Trans flag on his ball cap, the impression of a handgun in his left cargo pants pocket, hiding behind sunglasses and a mask that made identification difficult.
This was the face of rage and hate Port Townsend showed to women who asked for equal rights, to have their spaces respected, to be able to go to the bathroom and showers in pubic facilities and not suffer PTSD flashbacks from memories of being raped and assaulted because there is an adult male human being where they once could feel safe.
Most of the jeering, intimidating mob of hundreds pressing elder women against the wall of the Cotton Building appeared to be from out of town. According to another journalist covering the event, the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club was there, the group that provides armed “security” at Antifa riots. Antifa was there, clusters of men dressed in black with black face coverings. Several women were knocked to the ground by large men who broke through their linked arms. They tore down flags and tried to steal equipment being used to amplify and record the event.
Notice a pattern to the violence? Men attacking women. “They must be very afraid of us,” says Amy E. Sousa, the event’s organizer. “Strong women speaking for their rights are very threatening to them.”
The event was billed as a press conference at the Pope Marine Park on August 15, 2022, for supporters of Julie Jaman. Her story went viral and international after it was first reported here. Jaman says she was showering in the Mountain View pool’s women’s showers. The pool is owned by the city of Port Townsend and managed by the Olympic Peninsula YMCA. Jaman heard a male voice. She saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit not far from her shower opening watching little girls peel off their swim suits. He was able to see her nakedness. She asked him if he had a penis. He told her, “None of your business.” Thereupon she shouted for him to leave. The man in the bathing suit was the only other adult in the shower area initially. Unbeknownst to Jaman, he is an employee of the YMCA. Another Y employee entered the room and yelled at Jaman that she was being “discriminatory” and was prohibited from ever using the pool again and that the police were being called.
Jaman says the pool needs to provide an area where women—adult female human beings, not males who identify as or claim to actually be women—can dress and shower with dignity and privacy.
Sousa is a local women’s rights activist with an international reach. She has been a leader in the movement to reclaim and protect women’s rights against encroachments and appropriation by Trans ideology. One of the organized chants of the angry mob was, “Trans women ARE women.” Not “men who identify as women,” but women. As Jaman said in an interview with the feminist publication Reduxx, if the man she saw in a woman’s bathing suit is a woman, “Then what am I?”
Sousa (white-on-purple outfit) holding hands with weeping supporter of Julie Jaman,
The event began with Sousa and two other women singing a refrain from Sarah Hester Ross’s Savage Daughter: “I am my mother’s savage daughter. I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice.” At this point a wide circle of women holding hands surrounded the singers. Sousa next spoke and the mob that numbered in the hundreds closed in tightly around her and her group, forcing them backwards. Their once wide circle collapsed so that they were pressed into each other. When Sousa spoke about the foremothers of the women’s rights movement the mob screamed to drown her out. When she spoke words honoring mothers, the crowd booed her.
Port Townsend police had previously been there, stationed loosely between the groups. But as soon as Sousa started speaking they disappeared. The crowd closed even tighter when Jaman spoke. It was impossible to hear her over screams, whistles, banging on metal and a cacophony of other overpowering sounds. She was assaulted when she finished speaking, with the live feed going black during the scuffle.
The assaults on other women in the group began immediately when Jaman finished, ratcheting up from being screamed at, face-to-face, to pushing and shoving and grabbing at and breaking through the perimeter of linked arms. Dr. Elizabeth Kreiselmaier, the GOP candidate running for Congress against Derek Kilmer spoke inside a small protective circle of women.
When I saw a large man pushing an elder woman up against the wall, then another woman being knocked to the ground, I ran out to Water Street to look for the police. Earlier I had seen maybe ten officers in Highway Patrol and Port Townsend police uniforms, including Chief Tom Olson. Now all I found was Port Townsend Police Officers Kamal Sharif and Marc Titterness across the street, a good ways from and out of sight of the growing melee. I asked them if it was their policy to do nothing. They said they wanted both sides to be able to “protest.” I told them things were getting violent. They did not move.
When I got back to the speakers I saw things getting worse, as the mob had completely enveloped the women, some of whom were using open umbrellas to protect themselves. It was madness and many of the older women were being pushed around, with more stumbling to the ground. One woman went sprawling on the ground when she was pushed from behind.
At that point I called 911 and described the escalating violence. The dispatcher said words to the effect, “Law enforcement is on the scene.” I replied, “No they’re not. They left.”
Thankfully, in several minutes a line of highway patrol officers followed by PT police marched in from Water Street and removed several of the mob from entanglements with the speakers and their protective perimeter. I had to wave for police again when some of the mob grabbed a man’s camera and a scuffle broke out. It is hard to describe how bad things were as men pressed into and pushed elder women, some frail, as they blasted air horns in their faces.
But the nine or so speakers did not fail in their resolve. Every one got through their statements. Some of the elder women linking arms to protect the microphone were weeping. The Black woman the crowd had jeered draped herself over the amplifier to protect it from being stolen.
The women supporting Jaman stood there bravely in the face of hatred and rage that sent one or two supporters’ men home.
This man attacked multiple woman supporting Jaman, including Rachelle Merle who he knocked to the ground.
The Black woman the White mob tried to silence and intimidate is Gabrielle Clark, a Nevada mom who filed a lawsuit against her biracial son’s school for retaliating against him when he resisted forced indoctrination in Critical Race Theory. She describes herself as a fighter for civil rights against woke oppression. That includes erasing and subjugating women to satisfy Trans ideology. After she was done speaking she calmly faced a muscular male provocateur who hurled insult after insult into her face. This same male provocateur body slammed Port Townsend Free Press editor Annette Huenke from behind and knocked Rachelle Merle to the ground.
Half of the woman who pleaded for safe spaces for women are survivors of sexual violence, according to Sousa. We have written why the Mountain View pool is no longer safe for many women and girls who have suffered such violence and abuse from men.
When Crystal Cox spoke from the perspective of a lesbian who believes males should not be in women’s showers and bathrooms, the crowd did not relent. If anything, they grew louder as an air horn let loose about a yard from Cox’s head.
Four Highway Patrol officers walked Julie Jaman and her daughter to their car to ensure their safety.
I am old enough to remember the civil rights movement for Black Americans. What I saw in Port Townsend is similar to what happened at Woolworth’s lunch counters, bus stations and voting registration lines. I can’t say that I saw the birth of the next phase in the struggle for women’s civil rights in Port Townsend on August 15, 2022. But I did see history made when these brave women stood up against a maelstrom of hate and intimidation. They were attacked for making a simple request that should be noncontroversial. As their press release for the event stated:
We support the sex based rights of women/girls’ to facilities designated to us based on our sex. We are against sex based discrimination, which includes depriving us of rights and provisions on the basis of our sex. We support women/girls’ right to boundaries around our bodies. We support women/girls right to say NO to men in our spaces/sports. We support the right of consent for all women/girls. We demand that men respect the boundaries we have around our bodies!
I spoke to Sousa afterwards. “If it had just been me and our 30-40 supporters holding a press conference, this would have gone nowhere. But by their actions [the mob] made this go viral, around the world.” She ended our conversation saying she had to respond to the media inquiries pouring in. Before I had finished drafting this story Matt Osborne’s widely-followed The Distance had already published, “Angry Gender Activists Disrupt Speakers, Assault Elderly Women to Celebrate Diversity.”
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our "About" page for more information.
It seems pretty simple to me– if a human has a penis, he is male and has no business in a female-only area, regardless of how he identifies himself. And, if a human has a vagina, she is female and should not be in male-only areas. You can call a plug, a socket, but that does not change its function.
As far as violence is concerned, it’s best to leave if violence begins…[moderator edit] There should be zero tolerance for assault.