The Girl Spot: How an “All Inclusive” Women’s Gym Became TERF ONLY
By: Toni A. Wilson
🚨 Content warning: transphobia, misogynoir
This month is Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV), a day created in 2009 to celebrate the resiliency, power, and accomplishments of transgender and gender expansive people, while raising awareness about the gender-based violence, transphobia, poverty, and discrimination the community faces.
For KIMBRITIVE, part of showing up for and with our trans sisters and siblings means calling out transphobia and transmisogyny. At a time when the trans community is under severe attack, we will continue to call out transphobic spaces disguised as wellness spaces for what they are—hate groups.
When patriarchy and white supremacy shaped ideals of femininity, Black women were excluded from those visions.
Black women, especially those who are dark-skinned, fat, tall, muscular, etc.—are often not attributed femininity, nor the societal benefits that come with being a woman and experiencing womanhood.
However, we should not only care about transphobia because cisgender Black women are adjacent to it and feel its trickle-down effects. We must care about it in all spaces because trans women deserve to be and feel safe, and their unique experiences need to be amplified, supported, and fought for. You cannot elevate yourself on the backs of the trans community and then abandon them when it’s convenient.
The Girl Spot Gym & Transphobia
Natalee Barnett (@nataleebfitness), a fitness guru and entrepreneur from the U.K., took to X (formerly Twitter) in 2021 to share her vision for an all-women and girls' gym space. She revealed her commitment to creating a safe space for women and girls, rooted in her personal experience as a survivor of sexual assault in a local gym. Her experience ignited a passion to combat gym discrimination, sexual harassment, and assault—issues affecting 56% of women in gyms.
Gyms are notoriously seen and viewed as spaces where masculinity brews and we know many stories, including my own, of women and girls not feeling safe nor welcomed in gym spaces. For this reason, as a teenager I used to have a membership with Lucille Roberts , a women's only gym made popular in the 90’s and early 2000’s, and I refused to go to gyms to workout if it wasn’t an all women’s space. So when I saw that Natalee was making this her life’s mission, I was so excited and invested. Natalee began collecting donations to help fund getting her gym and wellness space, The Girl Spot, off the ground. Even though I didn’t live in the U.K, I still joined her subscription list so I would receive all the updates because I wanted to see it succeed and decided if and when I ever visited London, I knew where I’d be getting a fulfilling workout in an environment rooted in the safety of its patrons. Whether it was virtually fighting off misogynists on socials attacking The Girl Spot and the need for it for women of all ages and backgrounds aligning with Natalee in her mission, this was something I saw women being proud of.
However, as Natalee draws closer to her opening we have no choice but to question her now regressed beliefs and decisions rooted in discrimination and exclusionary practices.
On March 9th, only a day after International Women’s Day, Natalee took to social media to share a video detailing her pull back of The Girl Spot being an inclusive and safe fitness space for trans women. She expressed her views were now that The Girl Spot would only be a gym for “biological women” citing cis women’s experiences with sexual harassment and violence as the deciding factor. Natalee shared the gym would focus on “self defense classes, boxing, and Muay Thai as well as workshops and activations around PCOS which only occur with biological women.” She went on to express it would be a “single sex space for biological women” and a space to protect “biological women” from gender based violence and sexual assault in gyms. This comes four years after Natalee answered numerous inquiries from would be supporters on her stance for trans inclusivity, where she was open and adamant that it would be taking to X, stating:
“Respectfully, if you have a problem with trans women attending my gym then you can find another gym to train at. I have discussed this several times before; trans women are women and also a minority that need to be protected. Please keep your transphobia away.”
While singing the tunes of inclusivity and gaining initial support, Natalee began collecting funds and donations from folks, including trans women, who believed in her vision and recently met her funding goals. Her reversal, rooted in transphobia, is a blatant display of inconsistency and a lack of integrity. Natalee regressing in her politics and decision to create The Girl Spot as an inclusive safe place for all women isn’t surprising but is extremely disappointing.
It begs the question:
How can you create a “safe space” while excluding the most vulnerable?
Gender Policing is Dangerous
"La Belle Hottentote," a 19th-century French print of Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman taken to Europe and exploited as a sideshow attraction. After her death in 1815, her remains were displayed in France until their return to South Africa in 2002 for a long-overdue burial.
A gym run on exclusionary politics, rejecting trans women, is not a safe space for any woman—especially Black women. Historically, Black women were never included in the Western ideologies of femininity and womanhood. Blackness in itself is and has always been seen as “savage” and something needing to be tamed. White supremacy has been convincing society that the “proper” form for women to be is Anglo Saxon, thin, and petite; only this can be feminine. When colonizers invaded Africa, they found that Black people were “too big, too curvy, too sensuous.” Even though, at that time, white women were also curvy, they were still seen as the ideal. There needed to be a marker to separate the women and enforce inferiority. This dissonant perspective posed a problem for colonizers in Africa who quickly deemed African women’s larger bodies as “masculine,” and therefore, able to endure more physical labor and violence. This unfounded belief allowed them to argue that larger white women were still more feminine. In this way, colonizers could maintain their chosen “otherness” of African women.
Hundreds of years later, the legacy of colonialism continues to affect us, with Black women who are perceived as "too tall," "too muscular," "too dark," "too big," "too hairy," and so on, often being labeled as masculine and subjected to transphobia due to assumptions about them being trans. We’ve seen this with years of Serena Williams’ gender being called into question and the same can be said about Michelle Obama, Ciara, Megan Thee Stallion, Simone Biles, and more.
As Black women, what exactly defines our womanhood?
Natalee discussed offering workshops and classes on PCOS and PCOS support while PCOS disproportionately affects Black women leaving many of us infertile and without experiencing menstruation. Fertility, much like women’s body parts, are often used to determine our womanhood. Are women who experience infertility any less of a woman than those who can bear children? Does menstruation make us a women? There are so many ways to be a woman – so many different women from different backgrounds, living different lives, from different identities. Is it too much to ask that we all recognize, respect, and show up for each other? Trans women are our sisters. They are subjected to violence from cis men and are at a far greater risk of sexual assault than any other adult demographic and are worthy of a place to exercise, train, and decompress safely.
Gender policing bears so many volatile questions. Will entry to The Girl Spot be based on looks? Will genital checks happen at the door? Will there be an ultrasound machine at the door to ensure everyone entering is the owner of a cervix? And what about post op trans girls? What about masculine presenting women? Will The Girl Spot turn away women for simply looking “too masculine” leaning into the transphobic ideology that you can “always tell” when someone is trans? No woman is safe in this gym if this is the rhetoric being enforced. It opens up spaces for speculation, othering, and dehumanization. The truth is simply trans women aren’t oppressing anyone and they absolutely need to be prioritized when creating spaces for women.
Trickle Down Transphobia
Alexey Kim
The U.S. government has aggressively targeted trans people under the current administration, and this fascism will inevitably ripple into other countries, including the U.K. In just the first few months of Trump’s presidency, this administration has already declared to only acknowledge binary sexes – (cis) man or (cis) woman (folks whose sex they were assigned at birth and they walk through life aligning their gender with it), intentionally hoping to erase trans people, gender nonconforming people, intersex people, two spirit people, and gender expansive people. One way this administration is enacting this declaration is by force “correcting” folks’ passports and I.D’s to indicate the sex they were assigned at birth leaving trans and gender expansive people susceptible to state and federal violence when traveling or navigating their day to day lives.
Other efforts to erase trans people have included defunding federal agencies and non profit companies who provide gender trainings and focus on gender inclusive legislation and policy work calling it a “waste of taxpayer dollars,” terms such as “gender ideology” have been removed from federal government websites being replaced by “sex,” and there has been executive orders to move trans women to men’s prisons as well as a potential ban on trans people being able to serve in the military. America’s politics are often viewed as the country advancing politics across the world and countries tend to follow our lead. If America’s government is now taking these extreme conservative stances against groups of people, we can be sure our neighboring countries and countries across the world will soon reflect the politics of America’s newfound leaders.
It’s truly horrifying to see in real time business owners and companies quickly fold and lay trans people as sacrificial lambs simply to appease fascists. Trans women face harassment, sexual assault, and violence in public spaces. There is no ethical way to ensure your space will remain a space for “biological women.” In Natalee’s effort to isolate a very small group of people she inherently alienated herself from her much larger group of supporters. Trans women do not and have never posed a physical threat to cis women nor are they a threat to cis women’s womanhood.
We Must Reject Trans Erasure
This all women’s inclusive gym started out as a powerful concept to empower and protect women from gender based violence but instead turned into something centered on hateful judgement and transphobia. Trans women present no danger to cis women in any space and furthermore there are no stats nor evidence to prove that this trans panic is justified and that Natalee’s original stance of inclusivity should be backpedaled. Excluding an already vulnerable group and by default categorizing them among being as dangerous to cis women as cis men are is egregious.
As an organization and platform serving Black women from all walks of life, backgrounds, and identities, KIMBRITIVE recognizes the importance of rejecting fascist and conservative regimes to create the safe communities that all Black women deserve. We must resist any effort to frame trans women as aggressors, and we must reject the language and propaganda seeking to erase the experiences of trans women.
And to be clear, by acknowledging the ways masculinization and transphobia is ascribed to Black women is in no way replacing the direct impacts transphobia has on trans women. We shouldn’t care about transphobia because cis women can be subjected to it but we should care because trans women are women who deserve dignity and are living their very own unique experiences of womanhood. Their womanhood is no less important than that of cis women. Ensuring trans women are not erased from their own oppression and have equitable access to true safe spaces for all women is how we join them in their fight for liberation. Reproductive justice for Black women also means the right to have full autonomy over our bodies.
No one teaches us these beautiful lessons of bodily freedom more than trans women and we owe them so much more than an all women gym.
Toni Wilson (she/her/hers) is a strategic storyteller, social worker, organizer, plus size influencer, fat liberationist and BlackFeminist from Brooklyn born to Jamaican immigrant parents. As a first generation American, she grounds her work at the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, body, and culture. Through youth work, organizing, creative media, and writing, Toni uses her radical imagination to envision a world where everyone believes in the promise of all Black women, girls, and gender expansive people. Toni builds national strategies and conversations centering the needs of Black women across the country and keeps her hands on the pulse of policy and cultural moments that impact the material conditions of Black girls. Toni is a leading voice in body liberation activism spaces. She is a co-host of Stay In the Sun podcast and her writing can be found in ZORA, Prism Reports, Bacon Magazine, GrownMag, Medium, and Substack. Outside of her professional life, she enjoys traveling, visiting cultural museums, live concerts, playing mas in Caribbean carnival, nurturing her vibrant orange locs, and wearing red lipstick.