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.
At the NCAA swim finals Kellie Jay Keen takes on transgender activist who lived nearly 50 years as a man, fathered three children, and now says “I’m a mother.” pic.twitter.com/7vPadNbW2g
— Madeleine Kearns (@madeleinekearns) March 21, 2022
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, who sells T-shirts as part of her organization Standing for Women, was wearing a T-shirt made with the words “I’m not a vet but I know what a dog is,” a reference to her earlier viral altercation with the transgender activist, Schuyler Bailar.
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.”
A man who was walking by stopped to watch the debate unfold. I later found out that he was the father of a female athlete who had been displaced in an event with the biological male, Lia Thomas.
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.”