Illinois Anti-Trans Teen’s Story Exposed as False
Abbigail Wheeler’s story fell apart in the face of evidence she never saw a trans woman naked at the YMCA and her family chose to pull her from the team.
by Evan Urquhart
The story of a transphobic teen that Fox News claimed had been kicked off her swim team after seeing a trans woman changing has completely fallen apart. Abbigail Wheeler, a 16-year-old who was asked to leave the YMCA for the evening after she admitted to being behind signs with anti-trans messages that had been tacked up all over the locker room the night before. Wheeler’s misbehavior, and the mild consequences it engendered from the Y, were portrayed as victimization of the teen on Fox and elsewhere in the right-wing press. As the full details of the incident have become clear it seems that Wheeler and her family made misleading and false statements that helped to inflame public opinion resulting in an anti-trans protest at the Kerasotes branch where this occurred.
According to LGBTQ Nation, the protest was where Wheeler first admitted that parts of the story were false. Calling the widespread reports that she’d seen a trans woman naked a “miscommunication” Wheeler clarified that she did not see any trans women naked or observe their private parts. This concords with the description of events by two trans women who believe themselves to be the ones Wheeler was targeting with her signs. Christina Newton and Candice Clotfelter have come forward to describe their interaction with the teen to the Illinois Times as well as local TV news. They describe an interaction starting with Wheeler staring at them when they were sitting together talking on a bench at the Kerasotes Y. When they asked if they could help her, the teen told them they were in the women’s locker room, to which they replied that they were women. Both women had their bathing suits on during this interaction (they further explained to the local reporters that they changed their clothes inside of bathroom stalls).
According to the YMCA, Wheeler also left out details about the signs she’d tacked up without permission targeting the women she saw. Wheeler described posting signs saying “Biological Women Only” and “Women’s Rights” and “Safe Sports” but there were apparently many others as well.
screenshot from LGBTQ Nation
Perhaps most damningly, the Illinois Times reports that Wheeler’s father admitted that emails showed the family voluntarily withdrew the teenager from the YMCA’s SPY Typhoons Swim Team and canceled their membership under questioning from reporters who had access to the email chain. The family had previously insisted that the girl was kicked off of the team.
The false stories are part of a pattern of exaggerated stories about interactions between cisgender girls and trans women at YMCAs across the country. This story most closely resembles one from a California Y in January where an older teen was widely reported to have seen a penis when, in reality, the woman in question was post-surgery and had no such organ to see. In Ohio this past February, a trans woman was targeted for prosecution by local officials, charged with indecent exposure for changing in a YMCA women’s locker room. She was found not guilty due to not having broken any law, and again no evidence of any cisgender woman or girl seeing her private parts while she was changing was ever presented. The existence of three such similar YMCA scandals in a few months suggest there may have been some effort on the part of anti-trans activists to manufacture flashpoints of this type.