Illinois Teen Cries Victim After Posting Anti-Trans Signs in YMCA
Abbigail Wheeler posted a sign saying “Biological Women Only” after having been repeatedly informed by Y personnel that state law required the facility to allow trans women.
by Evan Urquhart
A misbehaving teen who posted a sign saying “Biological Women Only” at a YMCA in Springfield this spring is claiming to be a victim after being reprimanded by her swim coach and deciding to leave her swim team as a result. In a video interview for Fox News, Abbigail Wheeler described how she complained to her coach after seeing a trans woman in the YMCA. According to Wheeler, she was informed by both her coach and the Y’s CEO that excluding trans women from the facilities would violate state law, and offered other accommodations if she felt uncomfortable. However, the 16-year-old was not satisfied by the ability to use the family locker room or change at home, so she escalated the situation by illicitly posted multiple signs in locker room saying “Women’s Rights,” “Safe Sports,” and “Biological Women Only.” When the signs were discovered by YMCA staff, who did not initially know their provenance, they were referred to as hate speech. Wheeler “gladly” admitted she had posted the signs and was reprimanded by her coach.
“We decided we were going to put, uh, informative signs up in the women’s locker room to kind of let the members know what was going on,” Wheeler explained, describing posting signs she admits she knew were contrary to state law.
While some, including podcast host and former fifth-place NCAA finisher Riley Gaines, have claimed Wheeler was banned from the swim team for her misbehavior, the YMCA released a statement describing those claims as false to a right-wing wire service. In the Fox News interview Wheeler disagrees, saying the YMCA’s statement was untrue, although when she describes the events in detail she only says that she was asked to leave for the evening in the wake of having admitted to posting a sign she knew contradicted the facility’s rules.
The situation does not seem to have been covered in the local mainstream press, although rumors of inappropriate behavior relating to the Kerasotes YMCA locker room in Springfield do seem to have been circulating on social media, and the local ABC affiliate briefly covered a statement by the YMCA denying anything like that had occurred.
screenshot from ABC 20
Wheeler herself does not claim to have seen a trans woman undressed or to have experienced any inappropriate behavior on the part of trans women using the Springfield YMCA, only that she saw a trans woman in the locker room and complained about it to her coach.
There have been a couple other widely publicized incidents (at least in the right wing press) concerning YMCAs across the country in recent months. In Xenia, OH, a trans woman was charged with a misdemeanor for using changing facilities at the YMCA, and subsequently found not guilty on all charges. In Santee, CA a teenager who complained that she’d seen a trans woman at a YMCA locker room went viral, with misleading coverage falsely claiming the young woman had seen the woman’s private parts. None of these incidents have included any claim of inappropriate or sexual behavior on the part of the trans women involved beyond the normal use of a locker room to shower and change.