OPINION:
What planet are these people living on, anyway?
The Planet Fitness gym chain has been in the news of late after a self-described “queer” man who says he identifies as a woman was allowed to use the women’s locker room at a Planet Fitness in Fairbanks, Alaska.
When Patricia Silva, an actual XX-chromosome female member of the gym, understandably complained of the invasion of privacy, Planet Fitness didn’t ask the wannabe woman to use the men’s facilities. Instead, it canceled Ms. Silva’s membership for having the temerity to complain loudly and publicly.
That’s because Planet Fitness’ gender-identity policy states: “All members will have access to restroom and locker room facilities that correspond to their self-reported gender identity to the extent permitted by applicable law.”
Apparently, the locker room interloper and the honchos at Planet Fitness aren’t familiar with the truism “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” In this instance, it was a part of his anatomy other than his fist at issue.
Suppose aliens from another galaxy were to come here and were made aware that Planet Fitness was not just indulging this transgender lunacy but emphatically enforcing it. In that case, they’d quickly depart, declaring, “There’s no intelligent life on this planet.”
The suits at the Hampton, New Hampshire-based Planet Fitness chain apparently learned nothing from Bud Light’s “go woke, go broke” debacle, which exploded in the news a year ago this week — on April Fools’ Day 2023, aptly enough.
After Anheuser-Busch’s then-vice president of marketing for Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid, decided it would be a good idea to hire transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as a “brand ambassador” for Bud Light, the ensuing consumer boycott cost the beer giant not only $27 billion in market capitalization but also Bud Light’s status as the bestselling beer brand in the U.S.
One-upping New Coke as an epic fail caused Ms. Heinerscheid to lose her job and be banished to the obscurity she so richly deserved (although, according to her LinkedIn profile, she remained on AB-InBev’s payroll until last November). Whoever at Planet Fitness decided to give Ms. Silva — rather than the “queer” customer— the boot deserves to meet the same fate as Ms. Heinerscheid.
I had a membership to Planet Fitness, but not anymore. I canceled it over the weekend in protest of its pro-transgender policies and in solidarity with Ms. Silva.
It will cost Planet Fitness my $39 annual membership fee (auto-pay debited from my bank account on March 1, which I will insist on a prorated rebate of) and the ongoing $10 monthly fee, most recently debited on March 18, for which I will also ask for a partial refund.
Canceling my membership won’t be much of a sacrifice on my part because I have been to my Planet Fitness in Springfield, Virginia, only twice in the past two years. If I ever get serious about working out regularly, my employer has a full gym on-site.
By itself, my $159 a year probably isn’t much of a loss to Planet Fitness, a corporate giant with 2,400 locations. But if you multiply it by the countless others who are presumably doing likewise, it will cost the gym chain plenty for genuflecting to the LGBTQ lobby.
Planet Fitness “saw a $400 million dive in valuation from $5.3 billion to $4.9 billion just days after revoking an Alaska woman’s membership,” Fox Business reported March 21.
In the bigger picture, how many Bud Lights, Targets, Rip Curls, and now Planet Fitnesses losing millions or even billions of dollars will it take for left-wing executives to get the message that they shouldn’t bend over backward and forward for a vanishingly small (an estimated 0.003 of 1% of the population) but vociferous minority?
In Planet Fitness’ case, it risks alienating the vast majority of its female customers, who understandably don’t want to be forced to share private spaces with gender-confused men. (Just as an aside, where is the left’s commitment to “safe spaces” in this case?)
The Planet Fitness debacle came amid a March 21 House Judiciary Committee hearing on the subject of transgender females interloping in girls’ and women’s athletics. As tallied by the site SheWon.org, in close to 300 instances, they have deprived real girls and women of titles, medals, trophies and opportunities to advance to next-level competition.
Regrettably, but perhaps not surprisingly, Democrats on the committee defended the interlopers, and the Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act barely passed out of committee on a party-line 16-15 vote.
Planet Fitness aside, the broader issue here provides a big opening for conservatives to seize upon in this fall’s election campaigns to counteract the left’s forthcoming pro-abortion onslaught in appealing for the suburban women’s (aka “soccer mom”) vote — assuming conservative candidates are smart enough to recognize it.
• Peter Parisi is a former editor for The Washington Times.
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