Democratic Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen suggested that barriers should be placed in women’s locker rooms to address the issue of males who identify as transgender using female facilities during a House hearing Thursday.
Cohen argued that transgender people have always existed and that their rights need to be respected, and he condemned critiques of transgender ideology as an effort to win over voters with emotional appeals. In response to the testimony of Paula Scanlon, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and sexual assault survivor who was required to share a locker room with a male athlete, Cohen said her university had mishandled the situation and should have erected “barriers” within locker rooms. (RELATED: Dem Rep Says Religious Leaders Assured Her Transgender Ideology Is Totally Fine)
“Transgender people have been around for a long time and they have rights and these need to be respected,” Cohen said. “I think Penn didn’t deal with your situation like they could have and should have, putting some type of different barriers in the women’s area of the locker room, but that’s another issue.”
Scanlan said Cohen’s statement prove her point about the necessity of sex-segregated changing facilities.
“I think by Representative Cohen admitting that we need barriers acknowledges there are biological differences between men and women and by acknowledging that we need to have private spaces that are separate from each other… Why can’t we just use the locker rooms that we’ve always used? Men’s and the women’s,” Scanlan said. “If you’re acknowledging that we need protection and privacy from these men, then you’re acknowledging that the locker rooms we’ve always used are the correct ones.”
.@PaulaYScanlan, a former NCAA swimmer forced to changed in front of a man, called out Rep. Cohen’s inadvertent admission that men & women are different.
“I think by [Rep. Cohen] admitting that we need barriers acknowledges there are biological differences between men & women.” pic.twitter.com/Ot6WcKErFw
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) July 27, 2023
Scanlan shared that she had been sexually assaulted in a bathroom in 2016 and that changing clothes alongside Lia Thomas, a male swimmer who began identifying as female and swimming on the University of Pennsylvania women’s team midway through college, impacted her. She also described the stonewalling she received from Penn when she spoke out against having a male in the women’s locker rooms. (RELATED: Former Athlete Denounces ‘Gaslighting And Fearmongering’ Campaign UPenn Waged Against Female Swimmers)
“To sum up the university’s response, we, the women, were the problem, not the victims. We were expected to conform, to move over and shut up. Our feelings didn’t matter. The university was gaslighting and fear-mongering women to validate the feelings and identity of a male,” Scanlan said.
Cohen did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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