Andrew Allis, Granville

“Go Woke, Go Broke.” So the saying goes, and its truth has been borne out with companies like Anheuser-Busch and their Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light advertising fiasco, and Target with its own marketing geniuses coming up with transgender children’s “tuck-friendly” clothing. Disney and Netflix are other examples of big companies who have taken large financial hits for their preachy progressive programming, the latter just starting to claw its way back from fiscal devastation via a major woke-reversal.

Planet Fitness just recently took a 400 million dollar hit in its market value in just five days due to an incident at one of their facilities in Fairbanks Alaska, when a man was reported in the women’s locker room by a woman, Patricia Silva, and Planet Fitness canceled her membership (not his) for sharing a photo of the “trans-woman” (i.e. a man) using the female locker room.” Silva also reported there was a little girl sitting in the corner, approximately 12-years-old, wrapped in a towel, who was scared by the man’s presence.

Planet Fitness’s policy reads as follows. “All members and team members, including transgender individuals, may use Planet Fitness locker room facilities and programs based on their self-reported gender identity; these facilities include bathrooms, showers, and all other facilities separated by sex.”

Marxist Revolutions, including the current cultural one here in America engaged in its “long march through all the institutions,” are notorious for “eating their own.” Feminism is dead; transgenderism has devoured it. Women now have less rights than before transgenderism gained unimaginable momentum and went mainstream. (e.g. Besides this privacy issue, look at transgenderism’s decimation of women’s sports).

Those looking to protect women and young girls here in North Dakota from this kind of shameless invasion of their privacy, may be surprised that a legal remedy may not, at least presently, be a possibility. I inquired of both the Minot and Bismark police, asking competent and helpful high-ranking members of each department this hypothetical question: “If you got a call from a distressed woman, or an employee at a fitness facility, to come because a man “identifying” as a woman was showering in the women’s locker room with not only women, but prepubescent young girls, could you arrest him for being in violation of any present statute? Both were in an agreement that it would be very difficult to do so, even on the charge of indecent exposure.

Therefore, this is a call for our legislature, when in session again, to pass specific state laws against men or women using plainly marked facilities (bathrooms, locker rooms, shower-rooms, change-rooms, etc) other than which corresponds to their birth sex.

In the meantime, Baseline Fitness LLC, the Planet Fitness franchisee group headquartered in Fargo that operates some 100 clubs across the Upper Midwest, Colorado, California, and in North Dakota (Minot, Bismark, Grand Forks and Fargo) has a decision to make. Will they abide by Planet Fitness’ woke policies, even in those more conservative states in which they have a presence, and most of their customers oppose this woke nonsense, or will they break with them and protect those they serve from abusive and dangerous privacy violations? Yes dangerous; just reference the incident at a Planet Fitness in Monroe, Georgia, in September of 2023 when a 15-year-old girl was inside their women’s locker room, and a naked biological male deliberately exposed himself to the teenager, and although the Planet Fitness staff was aware of his past history of such activity in the women’s locker room, they did not take action because he “identified as a female.”

My inquiry to the Executive Director at the YMCA here in Minot returned a more hopeful and rational response, saying they would limit plainly marked women’s and men’s locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms to the birth sex of their members and staff. The response from Baseline Fitness LLC in Fargo to that same question was merely to refer me to Planet Fitness’ website or corporate office.

Until new state laws protect some of our most vulnerable citizens (women and children) the marketplace will have to do so, but remember the adage businesses, especially in a conservative red state like ours, “go woke, go broke.”