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At the just-finished NCAA swimming championships, Kellie Jay Keen, an English women’s-rights activist, had an altercation with the transgender activist Dawn (formerly Don) Ennis.
Keen is married and has four children. She traveled from England to attend a number of women’s-rights protests and events in the United States this month, including the NCAA swim championship in Atlanta where the biological male, Lia Thomas, was permitted to displace and dominate female athletes.
Ennis (a biological male) was married to a woman and fathered three children. At the age of 49, he split with his wife of 17 years and publicly declared himself to be a woman. Ennis later went back to identifying as a man, then switched again for the third time, and currently presents as a woman.
Keen approached Ennis and introduced herself as the founder of Standing for Women. She asked whether Ennis used women’s spaces.
“I’m a woman,” Ennis said.
“Do you use women’s spaces, private spaces?” Keen asked again.
“I’m a woman,” Ennis said.
“Do you understand that you using women’s private spaces makes women and girls uncomfortable?”
“No one has ever objected to my presence,” Ennis said.
“That’s because they’d be intimidated by you,” Keen said.
“I’m sorry. Do you know who I am?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Keen continued asking Ennis, citing women’s comfort and dignity, not to use female spaces. But Ennis, tiring of her objections, asked Beth Seltzer, the founder of a separate women’s-rights organization Save Women’s Sports, to “call off your dog.”
“I beg your pardon,” Keen said. “As a mother, I am asking you — do not use female spaces. It makes women and girls very uncomfortable.”
“As a mother —” Ennis said.
“How dare you,” Keen said. “You are not a mother.”