Women Seeking Civil Rights Stand Up to Mob Hatred and Intimidation in Port Townsend

by Jim Scarantino | Aug 16, 2022 | General

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.”

Mayor Deflects Backlash Over Men in Women’s Showers at YMCA, Virtue Signals About Trans Rights Instead

by Ana Wolpin | Aug 12, 2022 | General

“Wow!  Why are trans rights and trans feelings
more important than any woman’s? 
Why are women and children not worthy of protection?”
– Comment from Port Townsend Free Press Facebook post

————————

Dozens of citizens filled Port Townsend City Council chambers and joined by phone Monday night, August 1st, to address the council about the banning of 80-year-old resident Julie Jaman from the city’s public swimming pool. The near-hour of emotional and often impassioned public comments underscored a deep cultural divide in the Port Townsend community.

Jaman’s story, which went viral nationwide and then internationally following the Free Press‘s detailed coverage, involved her shock of hearing a man’s voice in the women’s locker room while she was naked in the shower after a swim at the pool. When she looked out from the thin plastic shower curtain and saw a biological man in a women’s swimsuit, she became upset and demanded the person leave. Rather than de-escalate the situation, the pool manager who intervened told Jaman that she was guilty of “discrimination” and that because of her objections she was banned from the pool for life.

The 60-year-old Mountain View Pool is at the center of this controversy and of a community complex, the Mountain View Commons. The former school campus also includes the Port Townsend Police Department, the Food Bank, and local radio station KPTZ. The Olympic Peninsula YMCA began operating the city-owned pool in 2021 in partnership with the City of Port Townsend. The city is ultimately responsible for all the public spaces at the site and for policies established at the pool.

After the distressing incident, Jaman wrote a letter to the Port Townsend City Council and state reprepresentatives. At the council’s August 1st meeting, she read from a follow-up statement during the 3-minute public comment period.

Julie Jaman leads off public comments about discrimination at the city pool at the August 1, 2022 Port Townsend City Council meeting. Click on this image to watch the archived meeting. Jaman’s comment begins at minute 7.

In measured tones, Jaman asked for “respectful and inclusive” policies for all pool patrons:

“There is no signage informing women the shower room is now all-gender. Have parents been informed of what they can expect with these policies? 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 instigate these new policies without clearly informing pool patrons and parents. Although in 2021 the Y reported that they were adding family and all-gender dressing and bathing areas, they’ve not done that. Instead, they’ve usurped the binary designations… with no choices. The staff seems to have received little professional training on how to handle reactions to such a radical cultural change — particularly for the most vulnerable, older female patrons, and children who may be exposed to inappropriate behavior… the dignity and safety of unsuspecting women who have trusted to use these facilities for many years.

This is not right. The YMCA, the city, the police and sheriffs, the parents, the professionals who assist victims of voyeurism, peeping toms, pedophilia and assault need to come together to figure out how to make the new policies work for all pool patrons, not just one group.”

More than 20 people followed Jaman, participating both in person and by phone in a heated comment session.

Half who spoke agreed that allowing biological men to use women’s facilities creates comfort and safety issues, and asked for a third shower and changing area to accommodate trans/non-binary individuals.

The other half believed that trans individuals should have access to whatever facilities they choose as their gender identity. Some went so far as to say that the people who don’t accept that are bigoted, hateful and deserve to lose their Y membership if they can’t get in line with trans ideology.

Some commenters tried to find a middle ground, also asking for additional facilities at the pool to accommodate the divide.

THE MANTRA: Trans Women Are Women, Trans Men Are Men

The reach and saturation of the trans narrative was no more evident than in the parroting of slogans by a small child who came with his family to address the council. The self-described “9-year-old non-binary person” stressed that it is not fair that people didn’t accept that a person is whatever gender they say they are.

At the podium, the nine year old explained through a mask:

“Since I’m so young people don’t often take me seriously. And they will use my pronouns, but I can tell that they are not really respecting me and they don’t actually think that a child can make this kind of decision. But I believe—that imagine this—that you know what gender you are, that’s the gender you are. And if you know you are not in the gender you are born, you know that’s a mistake. You are not someone who identifies as female, you are someone who IS female.  I believe that if you know what gender you are and you get sent into the pool and somebody gets mad at you because you’re not in the bathroom they think you should be, then that is not fair. You know what gender you are and if someone else says, Well, sorry we think you should be in this bathroom, how would that make you feel? It’s not fair that we don’t count these as the same as us, these are the same kind of people and I don’t believe that we should be treating them like someone who identifies as someone else. That is not fair.”

Andre Wilson reinforced that assertion. “I am a transgender man who identifies as non-binary. I lived a miserable life as a transgender child.”

“Transgender people are the person they identify as. So when a trans woman says they are a woman, they are a woman. When a trans man says they are a man, they are a man. There is no question about that.”

Washington state law affirms that contention, Wilson said, emphasizing a second time: “Trans women are women, trans women [sic] are men, non-binary people are non-binary. That’s it.”

Variations on that refrain were repeated by speakers throughout the comments. Asserting that a biological male identifying as a woman IS a woman, they championed their right to equal access of formerly binary bathrooms and showers.

Rebecca Horst announced that she had spent three hours in traffic driving from Sequim to get there. “This individual is NOT a man identifying as a woman, this individual IS a woman,” she said referring to the biological male in the swimsuit who had shocked Jaman.

Another person who chanted the trans mantra was Megan Doherty, “a lesbian who grew up in Port Townsend.” After saying how “brave and strong” the trans community was, she concluded her comment with:

“All that I heard today from the opposing side was ignorance and hatred and bigotry… If you don’t like it, you can choose to leave the pool and go somewhere else. But you do not have the right to pick and choose who gets to use the pool based on your own bigotry and your own ignorance. Trans women are women, trans men are men.”

A curious re-direct of the issue — neither Julie Jaman nor anyone else who spoke had ever suggested that trans people shouldn’t be allowed to use the pool. It was Jaman who had been banned from using the facility.

Speaking to the appropriation of the town’s community pool as a “Pride” agenda headquarters, Alby Baker said,

“I just have one question: Why would a public pool be turned into a marketing platform for sexual preference? And I’d like to get an answer from you guys.”

Facebook invitation:
Come down to Mountain View pool from 11-1 this week
to support Trans youth and the YMCA!

Mayor David Faber replied that responses would be given during the council’s discussion following comments. They weren’t.

Lema Constria (this name is hard to make out on the video capture and could not be clarified by the city) said she lives in Port Townsend with “my wife”, and identified herself as one of the counter-protesters at the picket that had taken place outside the pool earlier that day. She, too, said that the people who were standing for biological women’s rights to a private space were bigots. She repeated the falsehood that people protesting Jaman’s treatment were asking for trans people to be banned from the pool. Constria took the victimization a step further, protesting: “Trans people are people, they deserve human rights.”

It was a shift of focus that took place multiple times during the comments, painting the trans community as the ones being maligned in this discussion. No one had ever said or even implied that trans people didn’t deserve human rights; Jaman was appealing discrimination for being banned for a reaction to what she felt was a violation of her privacy as she stood naked in the shower.

“We are accused of hating trans people, of being Christians…”

Alison Hedlund had also been at the Monday afternoon action at the pool. Hedlund expressed surprise over the attacks she experienced from the group of counter-protesters, at the twisting of the story being told:

“The protest at the Y today… was full of rancor and accusations and insults by the people who showed up on the other side of this issue. We are accused of hating trans people, of being Christians at the Young Men’s Christian Association… and when we laughed, that we must be cultists… and then that we must be pedophiles.”

Annette Huenke, who had also attended that protest in the hopes of having productive dialogue, wrote of her experience. It started out, she said, as a civil conversation with 5 or 6 young people:

“The discussion was respectful until a couple of older women arrived and began to ratchet up the tone with raised voices and name-calling. We were accused of saying things we had not said. We were anti-vaxxers, eventually we were pedophiles, rapists, even Nazis.”

As more counter-protesters trickled in, wrote Huenke, the possibility for conversation came to an end:

“Julie’s friends left in frustration, leaving just the two of us. One of the older women began hectoring us, yelling that we needed a hobby… The slanderous name-calling continued. Some younger folks began joining her, creating a non-stop barrage of loud voices intentionally making it impossible for she and I to hear each other.

This is a common bully tactic used by trans proponents, the goal being to shut down reasonable debate and shut out the opponent. It is highly uncivil and undemocratic.”

The anger and rancor perplexed Hedlund. In her public comment, she asked council:

“But what about our needs as women? Do men transitioning to be women understand discrimination and violence are part of being a woman, and that we DO need protection from predators? Do women transitioning to being men understand that they are also vulnerable to male harassment and violence? I would think so. There is absolutely NO privacy in the women’s locker room, which means we are vulnerable.

I haven’t been there for years because of the lack of privacy… When men can decide that they are identifying as a woman, walk in, display their private parts, have the freedom to ogle or harass or assault anyone there, we have seen what can happen when pedophiles or rapists can and do populate careers and locations where they have easy access to women and children. Anxiety and PTSD is not uncommon when women feel vulnerable around men. Women’s concerns about our safety and privacy are and always have been legitimate, and we have long been accorded the natural right to these public facilities…

Locker room facilities should be upgraded to accommodate the safety and privacy needs of EVERYONE, instead of declaring that we now have a free-for-all to enter any bathroom or locker room.”

What became clear over the course of the comments was that the group asking for a shower/changing area that allowed traditional women to feel safe was seen by transgender advocates as an attack on Clementine Adams, the 19-year-old transgender employee who Jaman had told to leave the room while she was naked — and, by extension, an attack on the entire trans community. They were on the offensive to protect their right to use whatever facilities they chose. They were the ones being discriminated against, they said.

Those supporting the all-gender open policy repeatedly shifted the conversation to how oppressed and fragile trans people are.

“I am a transgender man myself,” phoned in Mo Wolfe from Brinnon.

“I have had surgeries, I have done hormones for years, I have a beard and I appear fully as a man. To say that people should go into the facilities that align with their biological sex can cause trans people extreme amounts of violence… Trans people have extreme high rates of suicide and violence. People should go to the restroom that they feel would be safe for them.”

But what about the sensitivities of elderly women? Where is the shower room that they will feel safe in?

Can we speak of pedophiles?

The mention of pedophilia held the biggest charge of the night.

The concern expressed that when men claiming to identify as women are granted intimate access to children, such access attracts pedophiles and other sexual predators, caused Constria to angrily retort: “People objected to being called bigots but are calling trans people pedophiles. Trans people are NOT pedophiles!”

“Calling and comparing trans people to pedophiles is absolutely disgusting,” said Mo Wolfe.  A phone-in comment from former mayor Michelle Sandoval added, “People who are expressing fear need to get ‘pedophiles’ out of their language.”

IS there any cause for concern that pedophiles and rapists will use trans-inclusive laws to “identify” as women and gain access to vulnerable women and children? In her letter to the city, Julie Jaman wrote:

“Nationally, women continue to lose their personal rights to choose; they, along with little girls, forced to use non-binary facilities, are experiencing increased encounters with peeping toms and assault in shower, dressing and toilet rooms – at schools, gyms, prisons and now, potentially, at Mt. View Pool.”

But that could never happen here. Or could it? An increase in sex crimes when gender-free access is allowed in formerly gender-binary facilities is addressed in the Free Press article, Mountain View Pool No Longer Safe for Women and Girls. It presents “empirical evidence that unisex dressing rooms, bathrooms, and showers are the sexual predator’s candy store.”

Phoning in from the county, Mary Bond used her three minutes to attack previous speakers who had criticized the Y.  She’d taken down their names: “I’m horrified to hear the bigotry quoted by [lists seven names] and others… They are bigots and I am ashamed, embarrassed and horrified. Trans women are women. Trans men are men,” Bond chanted.

Finally, almost an hour in, soft-spoken Addy Thornton, saying she had not planned to comment, carefully summed up what prompted her to speak:

“What I’ve heard is a lot of projection, that those of us who feel discomforted… that feel that decency and morality has been somewhat altered… we’re just hearing things that we’re not doing. The issue at hand is that there is not a place that can be separate, so that everybody is being allowed to be who they are.

Those of us who have grown up for however many years and have never encountered this until just recently—just the past few years where there is this agenda that has been foisted down our throats… I can’t help but feel that this is politically driven, that we are being not asked—but coerced—into accepting that which is impinging on our rights, our freedoms, our ability to operate in a situation where we feel comfortable…

There’s a mantra going on… and just because somebody says so many times that a trans woman is a [woman]… doesn’t make it real. It’s not scientific, it’s biological. So why don’t we agree to disagree… but we have to put conditions into place… for the majority of people.”

The City’s Response

Following public comments, Mayor David Faber opened the council discussion:

“I’m not going to speak to the particular incident that happened a few days ago, I think that the state law on that is very clear.

What I’m going to speak to is that Port Townsend is a welcoming community, and hate and discrimination has no place in this community. LGBTQ people, trans people in particular in this case, are entitled to basic respect. And they have not been receiving that in much of the commentary tonight, calling them pedophiles and rapists and predators. Given the rise in harassment and bigotry that trans persons have experienced recently, it’s important that cisgendered people like me speak out in support of our trans community.”

City Manager John Mauro then reiterated that the Y was following state law, an assertion that has been contested and may result in a lawsuit. He said there were conflicting reports about what had taken place and that the city’s agreement with the Y allows it to ban whoever it wants.

“I couldn’t sit here and say that we are not behind the Y’s decision based on abusive behavior and for the respect of every individual.”

End of discussion.

Faber and Mauro had made their declarations. Evidently, a response had been pre-determined. Circle the wagons.

The script:

• Avoid addressing the treatment of Jaman, question her story;
• Reinforce the Y is “just following state law” excuse;
• Dismiss the outcry for separate changing rooms as trans-hate;
• Focus on pandering to the transgender community.

No other council members spoke up.

Had a meeting been held that the public didn’t know about? Once again we saw the citizenry given their three minutes for public comment to satisfy legal requirements, but the city’s position had already been decided. Sitting through an hour of comments was a formality that had to be tolerated… barely tolerated, as you listen to Mayor Faber’s irritation increase throughout the hour.

Readers are encouraged to listen for themselves to the full public comments. Decide for yourself if you hear bigotry and discrimination from the community members being labeled bigots and trans-haters.  Without exception, not a single commenter who appealed for separate public shower/changing areas free from biological men denounced, let alone expressed hatred for, trans people. As Sebastian Eggert said. “I have no problem with alternative lifestyles.”

But he and others drew the line at allowing biological men in women’s private spaces. They voiced fears that biological women have held for millennia and in response were told that their discomfort and fear made them anti-trans bigots.

Jaman challenged this reverse discrimination in her letter to the city:

“The YMCA policies on gender identity use “pride” as a euphemism to prevent discrimination against one group of people but at the expense of another group – women who don’t want to use all-gender bathing/dressing areas.”

As Addy Thornton had put it, “The issue at hand is that there is not a place that can be separate, so that everybody is being allowed to be who they are.” The council never responded to that simple need that had been voiced by every speaker except the few demanding all-gender access.

People had simply asked that their needs be given the same consideration as the trans community.

So where did all that “hate” rhetoric come from?

“The trans-haters are planning to show up at the Mountain View pool…”

Not only did our mayor characterize valid fears as trans-hate, dismissing public outcry in deference to catering to the trans community, Port Townsend City Council member Libby Urner Wennstrom set her own example of how to be a city leader. Her social media posts fanned divisiveness, mirroring the hate language spewed by the counter-protesters who attacked Hedlund and others during pickets at the pool and at the city council meeting.

The day after the meeting, Wennstrom encouraged people to confront the “trans-haters” who were protesting the Y’s treatment of Jaman and the pool’s policy. On the Y’s Facebook page Wennstrom posted:

“The trans-haters are planning to show up at the Mountain View pool picketing again today (Tuesday 8/2) from 11-1.
If you feel that hate has no place at our public pool, and want to support the Y in creating a safe welcoming place for EVERYONE, show up today!”

The Y is meant to be “a safe welcoming place for everyone”… except women and their families who are uncomfortable sharing once-private spaces with biological males. They don’t get a color in the festive rainbow Pride banners permeating the Y. Those people, in Councilor Wennstrom’s words, are trans-haters. Haters who will be put in their place with a new statement forthcoming from the city council.

While no meaningful city council discussion followed public comments, in the final minutes of the August 1st meeting (at 2:41:40), long after the public had left the chambers, Wennstrom requested additional council action on the pool controversy.   She proposed adopting a statement opposing “discrimination against transgender people and to formally support the Y and its staff in their efforts to assure that everyone feels welcome to use our public pool.”  She made a motion directing the council’s newly-formed Culture and Society Committee to draft this statement. The motion passed unanimously with no council discussion.

Free Press writer Jim Scarantino attended the August 10th Culture and Society Committee meeting for the drafting of the city statement. The committee is comprised of three council members — Owen Rowe, Monica Mick-Hager and Ben Thomas.  Scarantino’s thumbnail report:

“The entire Port Townsend Police Department, minus one officer, provided protection for 9 citizens in the audience, 3 city councilors and 2 city staff at today’s City Council Culture and Society Committee. I observed 4 uniformed officers, one officer in plain clothes and the police chief also in plain clothes. Nothing happened. Only 1 comment. Safest place in Port Townsend. As for any 911 calls going unanswered this afternoon, or police taking a long time to respond, I suppose you will need to talk with City Manager John Mauro, one of those surrounded by superb law enforcement protection, at taxpayers’ expense. I wondered if they were paying the Sheriff to cover the city while the force was in city hall trying to stay awake. Totally boring. The Committee adopted a resolution in support of undefined transgenders, and was struggling with how to define cisgender, too. Supposedly some definitions will be in the resolution when it is presented to City Council at their next meeting, 8/15/22… Mauro was shaking with anger at Julie Jaman’s KIRO interview.”

The callous, abrupt and abusive treatment of a community elder who had been a pool patron for 35 years is not an issue for our city leaders. But the negative press she is bringing to the city is.

It’s all about damage control now.

What was originally called a statement has now been elevated to a special “Proclamation” from the mayor, formalizing the city’s fealty to the transgender community. As backlash continues to grow, the city is doubling down on its support of the Y’s abysmal handling of this charged and sensitive incident.

Protest planned against Mayor Faber at City Hall – “Zoopity boop.”

Jaman’s ban, the city’s inaction, and the council’s choice to focus its time and attention on a transgender “Proclamation” instead of listening to its broader constituency, has led to a planned protest outside City Hall. Amy Sousa, a nationally-known feminist living in Port Townsend, organized the event.

According to an exclusive in The Post Millennial, Sousa and at least 50 others plan to hold a press conference outside of city hall prior to the August 15th city council meeting. In a recent series of tweets between Sousa and Faber, Sousa posted notice of the mayor’s proclamation.

Faber responded by calling her and others who have issues with the proclamation, “transphobes”.

“The mayor of Port Townsend doesn’t seem to think my concerns deserve respectful consideration. I think women/girls deserve the sex based provisions that our foremothers battled for centuries to attain, privacy, safety, & dignity for our BODIES,” Sousa wrote in response to Faber’s tweet.

Mayor Faber’s reply: “Zoopity boop.”

Sousa described the mayor’s response as “juvenile”.

In the new “gender-fluid” reality, intrinsic fears and discomfort held by traditional women no longer matter. Jaman’s shocked outburst was “discriminatory” and per the YMCA’s “code of conduct” warranted an instant expulsion of her on the spot.

“It’s not fair that this woman here was judged to the extent of being banned from the pool for LIFE in the span of however many seconds it took her to react the way she did,” said Peter Robinson in his public comment. “We need to take into account that a lot of elderly people have lived through a lot of binary years and all of the pressures that society put on them back in those days.”

Much like Orwell’s Animal Farm—where All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others—terms like “inclusivity”, “non-discrimination” and “everyone” appear to be selectively applied in Port Townsend.

All people are entitled to basic respect, but some people are more entitled than others.

Community elders who raise their voices because they feel violated don’t make the cut.

——————————————

I did not vote for the T [in LGBT]… They lumped us all in without us involved. They are using LGBT and PRIDE to oppress, gaslight and bully people. They want more rights not equal rights. Trans women have more rights in today’s society then biologically born women. We fought for equal rights, not to take away the rights of others.
— #LGB

Only a woman who has children or has had children understands this response. That “Mama Bear Instinct” or the feeling of “I will do absolutely anything for the good of my children” can happen anytime… anywhere.
You know the feeling… it’s an emotional rollercoaster that can leave a mom shaking with fear or anger. I have been there!
— Edel Sokol

I know some Y employees who think the Y acted wrongly but they can’t/won’t speak up for fear of losing their jobs plus having to deal with the “mob mentality” that would tear them apart. So much for inclusiveness. Sounds like a hostile work environment to me.
— Nonsensical

It’s good to know somebody cares about how women might feel, especially as abuse survivors. True story, hardly anybody does care about what women experience and there is zero sensitivity. Sad too, because our compassion is often exploited, so we are shamed into remaining silent and putting the needs of others before our own.
— Gabrielle Guthrie

Gender Identity Ideology is a hoax. It masquerades as civil rights and compassion and science, and is the opposite of each of these. It is outrageous that men now declare themselves women, and are allowed to destroy women’s sex-based privacy, sports, etc. It is appalling that “progressives” applaud this misogyny. It is horrific that children are being fed to Big Pharma under the guise of this toxic ideology. See Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Transgender Galaxy for details.
– Carol Dansereau

(A few of the 300+ reader comments
posted under previous Free Press articles in this evolving story)

Mountain View Pool No Longer Safe
for Many Women and Girls

by Jim Scarantino | Aug 10, 2022 | General

A heterosexual male is authorized by the YMCA to enter the women’s showers and dressing area at the Mountain View pool while women and girls are naked. 

Clementine Adams, who also goes by “Clem,” though he wears a woman’s bathing suit on the job at the pool, is heterosexual. His Facebook page identifies him as “interested in women.” As Julie Jaman has recounted, she saw him looking at little girls as they peeled off their swimsuits. He also looked at her as she stood naked from a shower demanding he leave and grant her privacy. He refused. Jaman was banished from the pool for being “discriminatory.” She was told by another Y employee, who was in the shower room at the time of the incident, that police were called. It was Jaman who went to the police to report the incident.

Clementine Adams Facebook profile, August 8, 2022

Some may object to posting this information. But it is all public, available for anyone to see. Photos of Adams have appeared in the New York Post and other media, such as the feminist publication Reduxx, and in widely viewed tweets from feminists angry about his gaining access to the women’s showers merely by donning a woman’s swimsuit and declaring himself to be a woman.

More importantly, the information about Adams being interested in women, despite his choice of clothing and makeup, was and is available to his employer. The Olympic Peninsula Y manages the pool under an agreement with the pool’s owner, the City of Port Townsend. The Y says it is merely following state law. But no state law authorizes an employer to send men into women’s shower areas while women and girls are naked, and then banish women for objecting. As we explained in our first installment on this controversy, the state law upon which the Y relies did not grant rights to Adams. It protected Jaman. It is the Y that violated the state law protecting Jaman’s right to use to facilities consistent with her gender identity and expression.

Another reason for publishing this information and image is that women using the Mountain View pool have a right to know.

Good Men Don’t Go Into Women’s Bathrooms and Showers

Amy E. Sousa

“These policies put women and girls in danger,” says Amy E. Sousa, a Port Townsend advocate for the protection of women’s rights against oppression, appropriation and erasure by men who identify as or claim to be women. “Good men don’t go into women’s rooms. Good men stay out so bad men stand out.” Sousa is a rape survivor and says she well understands how the presence of a man in a woman’s shower area and bathrooms strips from sex violence survivors their sense of safety and can send them into panic and a state of terror.

Sousa has gained a nationwide following for her public speaking, activism and YouTube videos, such as “What is a Woman?“. Her widely followed twitter handle, “KnownHeretic” has received over 200,000 “impressions” for her reporting of Jaman’s story. Sousa has participated in organizing protests at the NCAA national women’s swim final against allowing L. Thomas, a very mediocre University of Pennsylvania swimmer who declared himself a woman (while continuing to date women) to compete against women as a woman (though he’s a man). Sousa has also protested at the United Nations against that organization’s erasure of sex-specific language and protections for women and girls. Sousa, who holds an M.A. in Depth Psychology and works as an embodiment expert, was formerly education director at Port Townsend’s Key City Public Theater.

“Our foremothers,” says Sousa, “fought long and hard for women to have sex based rights and provisions, for us to have boundaries around our bodies.”

“Our foremothers didn’t fight for us to have ‘identity’ spaces, but to have spaces for the safety, privacy, and fairness of our BODIES. It is a safeguarding failure to teach girls they have no right to boundaries around their bodies, to teach them they do not have the right of consent, that they don’t have the right to say NO to men in their spaces, regardless of the labels those men use to describe their ‘Identities.’

All men are equally physically men. And women/girls have the right to say NO to men in our spaces, this includes ALL MEN regardless of their claimed ‘identities.’ Men need to respect the boundaries women/girls have around our bodies. This includes all men.”

Sousa points to empirical evidence of the dangers of men in women’s private areas, including a longitudinal, nation-wide study done following the Target department store’s decision to allow all sexes to share dressing room areas. The study found that sexual incidents in Target’s dressing rooms, particularly Peeping Tom and upskirting incidents, very quickly increased 200% and more. The study concluded that its findings “support the theory that sex predators may take opportunities afforded by gender-inclusion policies to perpetrate sexual violence against women in public spaces.”

We will return to the extensive evidence of violence and abuse when men are allowed into formerly sex-specific private spaces for women.

YMCA: Fear and Terror is Your Problem, Rape Survivors

The Y has doubled down and declared that it will cancel the membership of anyone who “discriminates,” as Jaman did by objecting to a man standing at her shower seeing her and little girls naked. The CEO of Olympic Peninsula YMCA Wendy Bart issued a letter to all members stating the Y’s policy. Any actions based on sex or sexual orientation—and she was addressing Jaman’s situation specifically—will result in banishment. Women and girls are being told to stuff it. The best a woman can do now is scream and keep screaming, but not explain why if they don’t want to be banished from the pool permanently.

I have spoken with two other rape survivors who told me they would have been terror-stricken being surprised by a man in their showers. The prospect of encountering a naked man while they are coming out of a shower would be a living nightmare for them. We have also received comments from victims of child sexual abuse echoing those fears.

The Y’s policy of sending its male employee into the women’s showers requires women and girls to submit, to surrender, to feel shame and maybe even blame themselves. Mattie Watkins, a mother of four and published author, once struggled with gender dysphoria.  “[T]he realization that I grew out of it is what initially brought me into the conversation,” she wrote the PT Free Press.

“Being a stay-at-home mom has put me in a position to talk about these things openly in a way many women can’t. I get messages daily from women telling me that they agree with me but that they are scared of getting doxxed, losing their jobs, losing their social support system, and generally fear a complete derailment of their lives. When women can’t talk freely and openly, the problem is undeniable.”

[The Y is now doing this to Jaman, launching a character assassination campaign against her with unspecified allegations that she has a history of bad conduct that led to her banishment. Jaman, who has been swimming at Mountain View for 35 years, says she’s never been informed of any infractions. The Y has not responded to her request for details and documentation of these alleged incidents. The Y has also not responded to our request for details to verify their claims to media that Jaman was a problem before she objected to encountering Adams in the women’s showering area.]

Watkins, like Sousa, has used social media to spread Jaman’s story, receiving about 100,000 impressions of her tweets and scores of replies. She shared with us this heart-breaking account from a survivor of sexual violence about what it is like to have to share showers with a naked man who says he is, despite an erect penis, a woman:

“Okay, please be kind here; I’m struggling to do the right thing here. I’ve been practicing yoga for two and a half years. I’m a very shy and introverted person and after going to several yoga studios, was very grateful to find one where I’m comfortable. Also their schedule and location are very convenient to me; thanks to this combination I’ve been able to really deepen my practice and I feel like it’s been a miracle in my life. 

So there is a new person coming to the studio who’s also new to yoga in general. This person is a transgender woman and I warmly welcomed her to the studio. I do believe and support trans people in using whatever bathroom facilities they feel most comfortable in. Or so I thought, anyway. I was in the open shower area and she and I ended up being the last two people in there. 

She is definitely very masculine. She had an erection and took an extended look at my body. I wish I had loudly said “Why are you looking at me?” or “Stop looking at me!” but I didn’t. I have a lot of compassion for the challenges faced by the LGBTQ plus community, but I also have my challenges. I was molested as a girl and this is the strongest I’ve ever been triggered as an adult. This time and another time in college when I had a guy aggressively grind against me. But her locker room etiquette was BAD to have looked at me for so long.

Now I have anxiety. If I stop going to that yoga studio, I won’t be able to do yoga before work. I could go to the owners and what??? Be a little tattletale? Be very unpopular and say I’m not comfortable with a transgender person? That goes against everything I thought I believed in; I have fought to bring kindness and understanding to difficult situations. Trust me, I do understand that me being triggered by an erect penis is my problem; I’ve intermittently been in therapy for most of my adult life. I feel disempowered and old-fashioned and vulnerable and stupid and confused. I hope nobody guesses exactly where I’m talking about and please please be kind with any feedback.“

Biological males invading women’s safe, vulnerable spaces revictimizes women who have suffered sexual violence and abuse. The Olympic Peninsula YMCA does not seem to care. Indeed, it is literally sending a man into those spaces. The YMCA in Washington state has a history of promoting men gaining access to women’s areas and has been deaf to the concerns of women who have been raped, assaulted and abused. We asked Olympic Peninsula YMCA what it has done to make survivors of sexual violence and abuse feel safe in its showers, or whether they should just stay away from the Mountain View pool. They have not responded.

Kaeley Triller Harms

One former Y employee, Kaeley Triller Harms, survived sexual abuse that started when she was in diapers and lasted ten years. Her abuser “liked to watch me in the shower.” She worked in YMCAs for 17 years but was fired for objecting to allowing biological males into women’s bathrooms and showers. That was before Washington’s access law was passed, when the Y on its own permitted the invasion. She says the trans agenda that is claiming women’s and girl’s safe, vulnerable spaces is creating a “rape culture.”

There Is Reason For Fear: Mounting Evidence That Men in Women’s Locker Rooms, Bathrooms and Showers Hurt Women and Girls

The revictimization of women and girls who have survived sexual violence and abuse should be enough on its own. Only a sick institution run by sick, malignant people would disregard their trauma and pain. But there is also empirical evidence that unisex dressing rooms, bathrooms, and showers are the sexual predator’s candy store. The Target study cited above is just the tip of the iceberg.  We have aggregated a few of the reported, growing number of incidents where women have been assaulted, peeped, humiliated and stripped of their sense of security and dignity by men in women’s supposedly safe, private spaces.

Transgender woman convicted of sexually assaulting 10-year old girl in bathroom.

Man arrested after grabbing woman in Walmart restroom

Man dressed as Barbie in bathroom attack

Man dressed as woman arrested for spying into bathroom stall

Sex offender wearing fake breast and wig arrested for loitering in women’s restroom

Five times transgender men abused women and children

University of Toronto Dumps Transgender Bathrooms 

Sexual predator jailed about claiming to be transgender in order to assault women

Man caught undressing in front of girls at Green Lake locker room

Cross-dressing sex predator sentenced for assaults in Clackamas aquatic park

Women at risk in unisex changing rooms

Teenage trans “woman” raped girl in bathroom

Man dressed as woman recorded hours of video in women’s restrooms

Transgender woman violently sexually assaulted girl in bathroom

Cross-dressing man secretly videotaped women in Macy’s bathroom

Public high school closes gender neutral bathroom after student sexual assault

Council Watch August 1 – Road Repair vs Calming

by Stephen Schumacher | Aug 8, 2022 | General

Mayor David Faber opened the Port Townsend City Council’s August 1 meeting by moving public comments to the top of the agenda in consideration of the many members of the public present intending to comment. Nearly an hour of comments concerned YMCA management of Mountain View Pool, the subject of past and future Free Press reports, so here’s what happened during the rest of the meeting.

In non-YMCA comments, disabled musician Mark Daniel Hoskins described the city harassment he’s experienced while performing and in his own trailer.  State law allows 71 decibels in mixed residential areas like downtown, so he asks why he is harassed for playing near the ambient loudness in a town that is promoted as being artist-friendly. He is not breaking laws and just wants to be left alone to perform his music.

Jaisri Lingappa remotely attended the July 18 council workplan retreat, but found the audio was incomprehensible leaving no detailed public record of an important all-day planning meeting that covered affordable housing.  She noted that currently touted developments on Madrona Ridge and Cook Avenue are almost certain to be unaffordable. She requests a redo discussion at an upcoming council meeting with proper audio, and that councilors make their stands and plans available to the public.

Stephen Schumacher asked how many PT police officers have resigned or retired in the past two years, whether exit interviews were conducted with the departing officers, whether summaries of such interviews are available to the public, and how many city officers have left for Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and Kitsap County positions.

In response to public comments, City Manager John Mauro apologized for the audio at the retreat, but members of public could and did attend in person, materials and minutes have been posted, and the public is invited to participate in the city/county/port/PUD conversation about housing on August 18.  Regarding police staffing, he intends to bring a status report to council from the police chief later this summer, having made some good progress there.

Taking Care of Business

Following an executive session to discuss an employee’s performance, the council discussed and unanimously approved several items of new business:

• Contracting with GeoEngineers to perform a seismic stability study (required by the State Dam Safety Office) costing up to $134,000 (all but $47,000 paid by a FEMA grant) on Lords Lake’s poor-condition East Dam.
• Disposing of $31,638 unused COVID-19 Financial Assistance Utility Bill Relief Grant funds ($25,000 from the Utility Fund, $8,138 from community donations, only $1,455 ever used to help people). Staff proposed clearing the books by offering debt relief grants to about 15 utility accounts averaging $1,900 in arrears due to lockdown impacts (2/3 residential, 1/3 landlords or small business), with remaining funds sent to OlyCap. Normally such gifts of public funds would be prohibited, but the State Attorney General allowed public funds to be spent for “promoting public health which may have an incidental benefit on private citizens.” Councilor Libby Wennstrom would like council to learn from this experience, where it set up a large amount of money that couldn’t be optimally used. Deputy Mayor Amy Howard clarified the original program limited grant amounts so the most number of recipients could benefit, but it should have been reviewed after 1 not 2 years.
• Extending deadline from August to October 1, 2022 for proposing to levy up to $900,000 in additional 2023 property taxes out of the “banked capacity” that would have been paid annually to East Jefferson Fire Rescue prior to its 2019 annexation agreement (note $600,000 was levied in 2022).
• Contracting up to $100,000 from the Stormwater Utility Fund to repair extraordinary June 5 storm damage to Walnut Street (between T and V Streets) and to the Logan Street storm pond outfall.
• Relinquishing an unnecessary utility easement to clear title for 346 Logan Street (which should have been done 60 years ago when 4th Street was vacated).

Transportation Improvement Board Grant

Public Works Director Steve King asked council for authorization and guidance applying for this year’s big state transportation grant. From staff’s summary statement:

Staff described their list of projects that might score well, including 7 to repair pavement:

1. W Street — Cherry to Walnut
2. San Juan/49th — Admirality to Fairgrounds
3. Washington Street — Van Buren to Sims
4. 12th Street — Landes to Sheridan
5. Tyler Street — Jefferson to Lawrence
6. Lawrence Street — 19th to F
7. San Juan — 19th to F

… and one to enhance crossings and calm traffic:

1. 19th/Blaine Street — Sheridan to Walker

Since staff had concerns about delivering a quality application on the first four (which are much larger Urban Arterial pavement projects), it recommends applying for either the Tyler or 19th Street projects. Grants have a 15% match requirement paid from Real Estate Excise Tax funds.

King emphasized that it’s always helpful to make TIB applications, since they garner helpful feedback even if not successful, but staff feels stressed to get this one in before the August 19 deadline. Ideally the city would receive a big grant like for Discovery Road every 3 years, and a smaller one every year between.

Councilor Owen Rowe asked about possible traffic calming measures on 19th Street, and King answered they “could be islands, raised crossings, bulb-outs, tables … could do safety islands in the middle.”

Rowe also asked about the concurrent Safety Grant for 19th Street, which King explained was for a planning study, saying “If we don’t get the Safety Grant money, then we would need to fund that study to make sure we get it right in the public process, but at least this [TIB] grant would give us implementation dollars.”

Transportation Grant – Public Comment

In public comment, Schumacher asked how patchwork pavement repairs, newfangled projects like Edge Lane Roads (ELRs) preserving not repairing pavement, and big-ticket TIB grants fit together. He’s unclear whether the city has the money to do basic bread-and-butter repairs without depending on grants. There’s general discontent about roads not being fixed; looking at ELRs and the traffic-calming islands put on Washington Street that just make you go a little slower, they look pretty, but don’t seem cost-effective compared to just fixing the roads. So he wonders about the actual realities on the street and how these big grants relate to the city’s regular repair program.

Debbie Yanke commented, “The intersection of 19th Street and Landes is the only place we’ve had a bicycle/car fatality in our city. I’ve sat at that intersection, having cars going both directions on 19th, both directions on Landes, with pedestrians involved, and bicycles, in both directions.  And yet on Landes at 14th we have 3 crosswalks within 50 yards on Kai Thai. So I’d really like to see crosswalks for safety purposes at Landes and 19th, and wherever else on 19th it can occur.”

King responded that grant applications are periodic, not part of normal maintenance, but it’s great when a grant can take a big pavement repair job off our list. Rebuilding Lawrence Street will cost an arm and a leg, but if some pavement had been preserved, it would only cost an arm. Safety improvements can be achieved by striping at no additional cost. So the city is trying to get the best outcome it can by marrying grants within its comprehensive maintenance program.

Faber clarified that traffic calming on Washington Street was paid predominantly by neighborhood donations.

Counselor Libby Wennstrom provided an educational response:

I get this question a lot, so it tells me that people don’t understand this. Prior to 2003, municipalities got a great deal of street funding from the state, and with the rollback on car tab fees, that funding disappeared.  And that’s the point at which municipalities – and it’s not just Port Townsend, but everywhere in Washington – stopped being able to repair our streets. People say, we haven’t fixed these in 20 years – that’s why.

Port Townsend has a unique challenge, most cities of our size and tax base have far fewer miles of built road.  I believe we have 88 miles of paved roads here, and a city of 10,000 people would normally have half that or less. … We don’t begin to have the budget to fix these.

Do we pay $900,000 to pave one mile, or do we use that for grant match money so we get 20 times our amount? So that’s part of our tap dance that’s happening here.

This is how we’re going to be able to fix the streets. And if you’ve got real problems with street funding, you need to take it to the state legislature, because that’s where that’s going to get fixed.

Transporation Grant – Discussion and Decision

As the meeting was running long, Faber asked each councilor which project they’d support on the grant application.

Wennstrom deferred to staff’s expertise, but when pressed went for 19th Street as “the area of greatest pain.”

Rowe said, “These are all fantastic projects, it was when I got to 19th Street – that’s the one we’ve got to do. As Ms. Yanke pointed out, we have actually had a bicycle fatality there, and it’s been recognized as a problem area for a long time. So if we can have any chance of getting funding to address that, that’s the one to go for.”

Amy Howard expressed that, “19th Steet is bizarre, it is built like a race track. I catch myself going down it and going, ‘Oh no!’ and having to brake. And I try to follow the speed limit. … That is a place where we have a known issue.”

Councilor Monica MickHager agreed with 19th Street, since “it hits the most bullet points the way I read them.”

Councilor Aislinn Diamanti also agreed with 19th Street, but would love for the next big project to be on Washington Street.

Councilor Ben Thomas explained, “I pretty much fall with everyone here on 19th. I’m concerned about developing a piecemeal approach to traffic calming. This Washington Street thing has come up a few times, I think rightly so – it’s one of those gifts we’ve given to the public to unite everybody, unfortunately, against us. [general laughter]  I don’t know how these choices were made before my time. Do we have a sense of an ongoing strategy for traffic calming? That [19th Street] seems to be the #1 street in town that’s way out of balance with the speed limit and the desired speed there.  So it seems really important, but I want to make sure we’re ready to do something that will look good 20 years from now.”

King replied that “The comprehensive street program is going to have a chapter dedicated to traffic calming. There is no one size-fits all on traffic calming, you need to really figure out the psychology of the street and why people are speeding. We want a cohesive effort on 19th Street.  And that’s why we applied for the study money to develop a cohesive plan before we implement. We’ll need to do that regardless if we get the study money or not, need to budget accordingly with the TIB grant.”

Thomas asked King “for clarification what we as a city have contributed to the Washington Street roundabouts. The question keeps coming up, and I keep telling people we didn’t really pay for them, but have of course have maintenance to deal with. Am I wrong to say we did not pay for them?”

King answered that “the traffic calming islands on Washington Street were funded by the neighborhood; the city provided staff time, part of that for testing it out. It’s basically modeled after the Seattle traffic-calming circles that they have in their neighborhoods. I try to use the term ‘traffic calming island’ because they are really not a roundabout. They’re really designed to obstruct the line of view, so you don’t have that open runway look on the street. … yes, the maintenance is ours.”

Faber agreed that 19th Street is essential, but wondered what is the cost difference between the Tyler and 19th Street projects. King answered that 19th Street would be a little more expensive.

Faber figured it would have been the other way around, so concluded, “If 19th Street is more expensive, then that settles it.  I was going to suggest, if it would be more cost effective to take the same money for Tyler Street, and then just ask that maybe 19th Street could be considered in some of the annexation dollar project so we could do both – but great … do the expensive one.”

However King clarified that banked capacity can’t be used on federal aid routes like 19th Street, whereas TIB grants can’t be used on anything but federal aid routes.

MickHager began moving to support a TIB grant application for 19th Street project with up to $75,000 match from Real Estate Excise Tax funds, when King interjected that the match needed to be increased to $150,000 to correct an error in the staff report. With 15% match, 19th Street could be a million dollar project.

Incorporating this amendment, MickHager moved, Wennstrom seconded, and council approved unanimously.

Request for Reconsideration

As the meeting wound down, I felt uneasy about the decision to focus this year’s big street improvement grant on slowing down 19th Street instead of repairing roads in bad condition, so I wrote council on August 4 requesting reconsideration of their choice:

Speeding problem or speed limit problem?

Years ago I attended a traffic planning meeting where expert consultants advised raising the speed limit on 19th Street to the 85th percentile of traffic speeds per transportation engineering best practices:

Research shows that the speed limit has little effect on how fast people drive. … While many drivers ignore speed limits altogether, others do try to follow them out of a sense of safety or obedience. This difference in speeds is actually more dangerous than if everyone were driving at a faster speed. We’ve all felt the frustration of being behind slow drivers and annoyance at aggressive drivers weaving through traffic. Both of these situations are dangerous and make traffic worse.

Raising the speed limit also has other benefits. It improves credibility of the speed limit sign if it consistently marks a reasonable speed for most drivers, not the speed at which politicians wish they would drive. It also improves relations with law enforcement. Rather than having to reflexively brake when seeing a police car, or worrying about selective enforcement of speed laws when everybody is traveling over the speed limit, rational speed limits mean that average drivers can simply go about their business. No one should have to worry about being pulled over for driving in a safe manner.

I wonder about the rationale now for reducing speeds on this arterial whose speed limit is arguably already too low. Does 19th Street really have a bad safety history over the decades?

Reading old Leader articles about the 2018 tragedy where a bicyclist flew over his handlebars into a car that turned in front of him, an accident that could have happened on any street in town and where car speed was not involved, it seems perverse to use this singular tragedy to prioritize up to a million dollars worth of irrelevant “safety islands”, “raised crossings”, “bulb-outs”, and “traffic calming” on a safe arterial in preference to repairing pavement or widening shoulders on roads that really need fixing.

Much of this is based on the backwards notion that if the majority of drivers have a hard time staying inside the speed limit on 19th Street, that proves there’s a dangerous safety crisis on this arterial — whereas the 85th percentile engineering approach takes this to indicate its speed limit has been set too low.

I drive or bicycle along 19th Street nearly every other day, and I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it having any problems or “speeders” going more that 5 mph over the limit. It’s been probably my favorite stretch of road in town for forty years, and is practically perfect as it is, not Port Townsend’s #1 problem to solve. There is no need to mess with 19th Street and make it worse, at great taxpayer expense.

Give 19th Street some love and some paint and occasional maintenance, and it’ll be okay.

Censored: Men’s Eyes in Women’s Shower Room

by the Editors | Aug 4, 2022 | General

Editors Note: In the Free Press‘s ongoing efforts to expose censorship by local media, we are publishing a letter to the editor written to The Leader by long-time Port Townsend resident Julie Jaman. The letter, printed in full below, was submitted on July 28th following her experience at the Mountain View Pool, a City of Port Townsend facility operated in partnership with the Olympic Peninsula YMCA. The Free Press reported in detail on the episode the letter describes. Other information outlets have since picked up the story, including The Post Millennial, The Distance, and the feminist REDUXX.

Not only did The Leader not publish Jaman’s letter, Jefferson County’s weekly “newspaper of record” provided no coverage of any kind about this significant incident. The violation of a biological woman’s right to privacy and her subsequent banning from the pool led to a police report, protests and counter-protests at the Mountain View Commons, as well as dozens of public comments at the August 1st Port Townsend City Council meeting. Rather than publish Jaman’s letter and/or a news story, however, this week’s Leader featured a public relations article promoting the Y on their front page. A call from Jaman to the editor was never returned, she says. Once again we see censorship by the legacy media in deference to local institutions and their biases.

Below is the letter The Leader chose not to print. The title was provided by Julie Jaman as part of her submission.

————————

Men’s Eyes in Women’s Shower Room

Editor, The Leader

Showering after my swim at Mt. View Pool, I heard a man’s voice. Peeking out I saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit watching little girls pull down their swimsuits In order to use the bathroom. “Get out of here,” I said.

This is the incident that caused a Y staff person to condemn me as discriminatory and banned me forever from using the pool – the pool with binary changing areas that my family has supported and used for 35 years. I sense I have arrived at the center of this topsy turvy world.

There is no signage on the door informing pool patrons that men will be using the women’s shower/dressing room if they identify as women. There is no place at the pool for women and girls to use who do not want men watching while they shower and dress.

I spoke with a Port Townsend police detective and with the Y’s CEO, Wendy Bart. This, so far, is not a legal incident. However, the CEO provided some information of concern. Ms. Bart told me she assumes the posted “pride” signs indicating the Y welcomes all people are adequate for women to know crossdressers and men who identify as women will be using the women’s dressing/shower room. And she told me that it is the law not to discriminate against such people and that she was standing by her staff person’s decision to exclude me from the pool.

However, there is no way around discriminating against someone in this sex classification vs. gender identity issue when it comes to modesty, dignity and safety. Someone is going to be trespassed. This time it was me: the pool manager, with no inquiry for my well being or concern for what I saw and while I was still in the shower, told me I was discriminating against this man and booted me from the pool.

“Pride” signs act as a euphemism allowing men into the spaces women have always trusted as safe from the eyes of men. The Olympic Peninsula Y is remiss in not posting clear signage on the dressing room doors and for not providing a unisex or family place for those who want to mix it up.

Julie Jaman
Quimper Peninsula

————————

Additional coverage by the Free Press is forthcoming.

Mountain View Pool Punishes Woman For Her Gender Expression and Identity
– Part One –

by Jim Scarantino | Aug 2, 2022 | General

An 80-year old woman who expressed extreme discomfort and fear about a male in the women’s shower area of the Mountain View Pool was permanently banned from using the facility.

For 35 years the Mountain View pool—a City of Port Townsend facility now operated in partnership with the Olympic Peninsula YMCA—and its women’s showers had been a safe place for her. But not that day. The woman had to stand naked in the presence of the male, a YMCA employee, despite her pleas and demands that he leave. She was also very concerned that this male was watching little girls as they peeled off their swimsuits. Another YMCA employee called the police on the woman. The woman was initially instructed by a Y employee to leave, but then prohibited from exiting the building by two YMCA employees. She exclaimed, “Bullshit! I need the police!” and left to report the incident immediately to the Port Townsend Police Department.

Julie Jaman has been in Port Townsend for about 40 years. She has been swimming at the Mountain View pool for most of those years. She raised children in Jefferson County. She has been a Democratic voter. She describes her gender identity and expression as rooted in her biological sex. “I am an XX woman,” she says, referring to the chromosomal characteristics that make women women and distinguish them from men. Her gender identity and expression, she says, have been shaped by eight decades of womanhood and life experiences that implanted feelings, reactions, intuition and wisdom, strengths, vulnerabilities and preferences.  Jaman is a woman whose gender expression and identity recoil at being naked against her will in the presence of strange males and whose mothering instincts (“the momma bear in me,” she says) surfaced when she saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit looking at nearly naked little girls.

Julie Jaman’s Story

Jaman says that on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, she was swimming when the Y’s aquatics manager, Rowen DeLuna, told her that a group of children were going to use her lane. Julie left the pool and went to the women’s showers. There are no private showers. They are all clustered in a common area that requires users to step into and out of the showers in the view of others. The light curtains on each shower stall do not provide much of a shield from the eyes of others.  One can see out as well as in.

Rainbow flags and “pride” stickers fill the rooms and corridors of the Mountain View Pool facility, with no signage warning users that biological men identifying as women can use formerly women-only showers and toilets.

While lathered up in the shower Jaman heard a definite, low male voice. She saw a male in a woman’s swimsuit very close to where she was showering. Julie says he was “looking at the little girls as they were taking off their suits.” She remembers about four little girls being in the room.

Jaman says she was shocked. “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. 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 then noticed that DeLuna was also there just outside her shower stall. Julie said to her, “Get him out of here.” DeLuna responded, according to Jaman,”You’re discriminating and you can’t use the pool anymore and I’m calling the police.”

Jaman remembers standing there stunned, naked and wet. “There was no concern for what I was experiencing.” DeLuna never asked “if I was okay.” Nobody explained anything to her. The male in the woman’s swim suit did not display anything identifying him as a YMCA employee. She does not remember getting dry and dressed. She exited the showers and entered the foyer to leave the building.

DeLuna was at the door and told her, “You have not abided by our principles and values.” Jaman said, “I am respectful, but I’m not a Christian and I don’t follow Christian ideology.” She told us she was referring to the “C” in YMCA which once stood for “Christian”. Jaman said she raised concerns about her loss of dignity and being stripped of her sense of safety when she was in a vulnerable state. She raised concerns about the little girls being naked in front of the male in the swimsuit. DeLuna dismissed her concerns by sharing a past trauma of her own. Another YMCA staff member then appeared and told Jaman that she could not leave. DeLuna said the same thing, either before or after this other person. Jaman said, “Bullshit! I’m going to the police right now. I want help and I need it immediately.”

The police department in the Mountain View Commons complex is just a few yards from the door to the pool. Jaman filed a complaint about what had happened and was told she would be called. Port Townsend Police Officer Marc Titterness called her and she told him what happened.

Jaman also called Wendy Bart, the CEO of the Olympic Peninsula YMCA and left a message. They were able to talk later that day.  Bart said she had talked to her staff and stood by their actions, including banning Jaman from ever again using the pool. Bart said a staff member told her that Jaman said to the male in the woman’s swimsuit, “You’re going to stick your fucking penis in those little girls.” Jaman adamantly denies saying any such thing.

Ms. Bart told Jaman she assumes the posted “pride” signs indicating the Y welcomes all people is adequate for women to know that crossdressers and men who identify as women will be using the women’s dressing/shower room. In a written comment to the Port Townsend City Council, Jaman stated:

“The YMCA should immediately post clear signage indicating the existing dressing/shower rooms will be used by the opposite sex who gender identify differently. Also, all parents who send their children to YMCA programs should be informed that men who identify as women are allowed to accompany little girls into the dressing and bathroom areas.”

“This is unbelievable,” Jaman says. She says she did not sleep for days following the incident.

The YMCA’s Side of the Story

We have asked Bart, DeLuna and Clementine Adams to state what they say happened. Adams, a first year college student, is the male who was in the swimsuit and in the shower area while Jaman was naked. We let them know that we always publish verbatim and in full every word written to us in response to questions. None of them have responded to telephone calls or Facebook messages.

Police Call Records Support Key Parts of Jaman’s Story, are Vague on Others

Officer Titterness summarized his conversation with Jaman in a police call report obtained by the Free Press. He says that “Julie,” as he refers to her, was using the “restroom” and “heard a man’s voice and observed what appeared to be a man in a female bathing suit assisting a small female child.” Jaman became “very triggered” and “had an emotional response to a strange male being in the bathroom and helping a young girl take off her bathing suit.” Officer Titterness and Jaman “had a long discussion about the complex issue.” [Jaman states she did not claim to see any touching; see author’s note at the end of the article.]

The report we obtained also records calls made by someone from the YMCA who refused to identify themselves. The anonymous caller told the police that “Clementine was in the bathroom with a child in the day camp and Julie asked if she had a penis and started screaming at her to get out.” In another call, the anonymous caller said that “Julie” has “been asked to leave and is refusing.” Another call from the same person was recorded as Julie “was screaming at employee and calling names and refusing to leave.” Nothing appears in the contemporaneous call records about Jaman saying anything like what the YMCA’s CEO says was reported to her sometime after the incident.

A Word on Words: He, Her, Trans, Male, Female, Man, Woman

What Jaman saw is what will be described here as “a male in a woman’s swimsuit.” How Adams sees himself does not alter the physical facts in the shower room on that day. Jaman was very upset at finding herself naked in front of a male in a woman’s swimsuit, and seeing this male looking at little girls in various stages of nudity. Adams was not excluded from the facilities. It was Jaman who was told to leave when she expressed her gender identity, sensitivities and vulnerabilities. State law imposes obligations upon and prohibits actions by the Y and its employees; state law imposes no duty upon Jaman to overcome or hide her concerns, fears and humiliation about being suddenly naked, without consent, in front of a male unknown to her in a place she had considered safe for more than 30 years.

What is a woman? Adams declared himself to be a woman in March of 2022 according to his Facebook page; Jaman has been “an XX woman” for eighty years since the moment of her birth. To describe Adams as a woman would be disrespectful to “XX women” shaped by immutable biological blessings and their life’s journey, joys, struggles and wounds as a woman.  Anything less implies there is nothing all that special and profound about womanhood. Uttering the word “woman” cannot change biology nor instantly give a biological XY chromosomal male the intuition, strengths, vulnerabilities, emotions, powers, and wonderous, incomparable gifts unique to those astounding and amazing human beings who are, in fact, women.

The YMCA’s Violation of Washington State Law Against Discrimination of the Basis of Gender Expression or Identity Protects Jaman

WAC 162-32-060 states that all public accommodations “shall allow individuals the use of gender-segregated facilities, such as restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms and homeless or emergency shelters, that are consistent with that individual’s gender or expression or gender identity. In such facilities where undressing in the presence of others occurs, covered entities [like the YMCA] shall allow access to and use of a facility consistent with that individual’s gender expression or gender identity.”

Julie Jaman’s gender expression is that of a woman in the traditional sense, the sense understood by most of her generation and all past generations until a few people have attempted fairly recently in human history to erase that identity by asserting it can be claimed by declaring oneself to be a woman. Jaman’s gender expression and identity recoils at and rejects appearing naked in front of men in public restrooms or showers, or seeing naked men in similar places, all without her consent and against her will. In this way, it is similar to a sexual assault, though Jaman has not used that terminology explicitly. For her it is palpably wrong, humiliating and threatening. This gender expression was strongly displayed when she was “triggered” and lost her sense of safety upon finding a male in a swimsuit just a few feet from her while she was naked during her shower.

This law is not a law exclusively for those humans who identify themselves the opposite gender of their biological sex. It is not so limited by its language. It is a law that protects ALL gender expressions and identities, including those of Julie Jaman. It prohibits the YMCA from denying use of its facilities to even the most puritanical, unyielding, judgmental, heterosexual, even bigoted male or female to the same extent such discrimination would be illegal against an inconsiderate male or female expressing their sexuality as other than their biological gender. Jaman’s discomfort and concerns are entitled to the same unquestioning deference and response as it would have to grant anyone asserting their gender expression or identity.

She had never before in her experience been subjected to, against her will, being in the presence of a male while naked in the Y’s showers. The first time it happened, and the first time she vocally expressed her gender identity, the Y called the police and has forever now denied her use of this public accommodation. Julie Jaman was under no legal obligation to surrender the sensitivities and preferences that spring from her gender identity. The state law applies to the YMCA and its employees, not to her.

Instead of ignoring and condemning Jaman’s gender expression, Y employees DeLuna and Adams were legally obligated to accommodate her gender expression and related preferences. They should have acknowledged and honored Jaman’s preference that Adams grant her privacy by removing himself, at least until she was dressed. DeLuna and Adams have not responded to our questions as to why they acted as they did instead of allowing Jaman to use the facility she had for decades been using in a manner consistent with traditional gender expression and identity.

State Law Recognizes the Legitimacy of Expressions of Concern and Discomfort

WAC 162-32-060(2)(a) states “If another person expresses concern or discomfort about a person who uses a facility that is consistent with that person’s expression or gender identity, the person expressing discomfort should be directed to a separate or gender-neutral facility, if available.”

This is what Julie Jaman is asking for now. The Legislature legitimized such concerns by providing a procedure for addressing them. Jaman believes that if biological males will be in the women’s shower room—where there is no privacy—then the YMCA should provide a separate or gender-neutral facility for women (or men) with gender expressions and gender identities that experience discomfort, insecurity and humiliation from as the result of being naked in front of unknown persons of the opposite sex, or being exposed to their nakedness.

I asked Erin Hawkins, who is identified as the YMCA’s person for marketing and communications, what the Y is doing now to protect the dignity and gender-based sensibilities of someone like Julie Jaman. Hawkins said such a person should do their best to wrap themselves in a towel and deploy the shower curtain while washing. She acknowledged that the shower area is not private and had no answer for how someone like Julie Jaman would be shielded from a male exposing his genitals. As for employees like Adams, she said, the Y provides separate dressing and shower facilities.

Protest and Obfuscation

Jaman and supporters held a protest outside the Mountain View pool on Monday, August 1, 2022. They argue that in 2021 the YMCA promised, quoting Y literature, “the addition of family changing rooms/all-gender bathrooms…” but instead “took over the traditional binary areas” to accommodate individuals with gender identities different than their biological gender. Jaman and her supporters want the Y to provide three separate dressing areas: men, women and gender-free.

After the protest, a large number of concerned citizens also addressed City Council that evening. Though they don’t address the state law in their list of demands, the Y could not require a man in a women’s swimsuit to use a gender-neutral room, but it would be available to resolve conflicts between gender expressions and identities. A male in a woman’s swimsuit could show respect and compassion by using the alternative area voluntarily instead of forcing himself and his preferences on non-consenting women, and vice versa. At least there would be an option to resolve conflicts.

Trans activists who organized a counter protest have been trying to tear down Jaman as a bigot, though she is only asking what the trans people they advocate for have been asking: a place that fits her gender expression and identity where she can be herself and feel safe and dignified. The activists are trying to make the question one of an attack on trans people instead of a plea by Jaman and other women with similar gender expressions and identities to have their rights equally recognized and served by the YMCA. As the sign of one of Jaman’s supporters said, “Women’s rights are human rights.”

What is becoming clear in the attacks on her, as Jaman wrote to us in an email, “It seems everything is about them. No one else’s needs matter.” The Y and the trans activists are demanding that women like Jaman surrender their gender expressions and identities, change who they are and their gender-based emotions, values and sensibilities, in order to accommodate people such as Adams.

Jaman says she is considering her options, including pursuing legal remedies for violation of her rights. As things now stand, despite the Y’s pledge of inclusivity and respect, its facilities are not a place where everyone can feel safe and assured that their dignity is being respected.

A facility like the Y must take at face value a person’s assertion of their gender expression or gender identity. Washington’s law on nondiscrimination in use of public facilities does not permit questioning the basis for a person’s preference for facilities consistent with the asserted gender expression or identity.  A man dressed as a lumberjack, or in a cut off shirt to revealing massive biceps, who comes across as very macho and stereotypically masculine, may use the women’s facilities. If questioned, he need only say they are at that moment consistent with how he identifies—even if this is but a ruse so he can gratify himself by seeing naked women and children or gratify himself by exposing himself to them.

If a women who identifies as a man objects to biological males sharing the same showers with her (asserting to be comfortable only around people with their same gender expression and identity or women in general), the YMCA must allow them use of a space consistent with that preference. Just as a man who identifies as a woman need not substantiate feelings and objections to using a shower or bathroom inconsistent with who they say they are, Jaman need not undergo cross-examination in the assertion of her feelings of invasion of privacy, humiliation, vulnerability and fear. In the next installment, we will, though, examine the justification for concerns about biological males in women’s facilities. These are not frivolous concerns. We will also report on an extraordinary, impassioned session of Port Townsend’s City Council where both sides of this controversy shared their views.

[Author’s note: The police records say that Jaman reported seeing the male in the woman’s swimsuit “helping a young girl take off her bathing suit.” That would have required some physical contact. In comments to the article Jaman says, however, she did not see any physical contact, but saw the male in the woman’s bathing suit looking at 4-5 young girls pulling down their swimsuits. The use of the word “touching” in the original posting of this article was based on the police report of the interview with Jaman. That word has been deleted at Jaman’s insistence. To her credit, she wants the story reported as accurately as she can recall events.]