Daily Signal Claims Xenia Woman Groped Friend Over Coffee

A lengthy story on the Heritage Foundation’s website includes the stories of women and girls who saw a trans woman behaving appropriately in a YMCA locker room and new allegations of sexual assault.

by Evan Urquhart

The Heritage Foundation’s most committed anti-trans reporter has returned with a lengthy story for the Daily Signal (a news-like website maintained by the right wing think tank). Writer Mary Margaret Olohan has written a lengthy piece on a trans woman in Xenia Ohio who was previously targeted by local officials with misdemeanor charges after changing in the women’s locker room at the YMCA. Rachel Glines was found not guilty after a court found she never exposed her privates and was not trespassing or anywhere she was not legally allowed to be.

Olohan's story is ugly and cruelly transphobic, focusing intensely on details about Glines’ body and weight. It also includes an allegation of inappropriate sexual behavior by Glines, though one outside the context of the YMCA. Kateisha Young, who works at another local YMCA, told Olohan she befriended Glines and then, when the two met for coffee at Waffle House, a hug Young initiated resulted in unwanted groping from the other woman.

It’s difficult to say much about this incident, because it has only been covered by far-right media outlets who are prone to distortion and error. These outlets describe a police report filed by Young, and no subsequent criminal case resulting. Young reportedly filed a protection order, and felt uncomfortable with Glines continuing to visit the YMCA where she works.

Apart from the allegations of unwanted groping at or near a Waffle House, Olohan’s story otherwise consists of accounts from local women and parents of girls who claim that they or their children saw Glines change. One woman is described as the wife of a local pastor. Another, a man who spoke with the Daily Signal about his daughters having encountered Glines, is apparently a local minister at a Christian church.

screenshot from the Daily Signal

None of the incidents described involve a woman or girl who saw Glines’ genitals, a fact which Olohan takes great care to continually link to Glines being overweight. Notably, while the stories center feelings of fear and discomfort among the women, none of the accounts suggest Glines behavior in the YMCA locker room would have been inappropriate, threatening, or sexual if a cisgender woman was being described.

Whether a trans woman is a sexual predator seems to be in the eye of the beholder. Olohan and her sources are saying that Glines behaved inappropriately by being present in a women’s locker room and changing into or out of her swimsuit there. For people who are inclusive of trans women as woman, inappropriate sexual behavior would involve a person, cis or trans, doing something overtly sexual and outside the norms for behavior in that space. Glines may have acted inappropriately towards a then-friend after coffee, but nothing in this story published by a notoriously trans-hostile outlet suggests that she acted inappropriately in the locker rooms of the YMCA, apart from simply being there and being trans.