YMCA: voyeurism and denial

March 11, 2015

On March 8, 2014, I went to the YMCA, where I have paid full price for a membership since last year. During all the months that I have been a member at that YMCA, I have never worked out there without being harassed at least once.

On March 8th, I was told by the person at the front desk that I would not be allowed in the building until I had first spoken to someone in management because "someone" had approached the management with an "issue" about me.

There is no question that there were cameras at least in the women's locker room.  Since the YMCA has obviously decided to lie about the cameras to try to avoid the multimillion dollar lawsuits which it deserves to have brought against it, the cameras might even still be there.  Since I publicly exposed the YMCA's crimes by writing and talking about them at this blog and at YouTube, I'm sure that the YMCA would have taken any excuse to make me leave.

I stayed at that YMCA even after I knew there had been cameras there because I needed a place to work out and because the locker rooms were closed for a while after I wrote about my concerns that there were cameras there and I hoped that meant that the corporate office was getting the cameras out.  I did not take another shower there after the conglomerate began publicizing code stories that made me realize that the YMCA had videotaped me.  I also thought that, since the conglomerate's treatment of me had resulted not only in homeless people and psychiatric patients being the victims of voyeurism in places that were trying to videotape me but that YMCA members, whom society presumably doesn't consider worthless and evil human beings, were also illegally videotaped and the knowledge of all of this hadn't stopped the conglomerate's promotion of voyeurism, I might have a better chance of not being videotaped in the YMCA where the cameras might have been removed than I would in another gym.

For the rest of their lives, people who were or are members of that YMCA can wonder how many hours of video were filmed of them in the locker rooms.  They can wonder if video of them will show up on pornography websites, particularly the websites that advertise having voyeuristic videos and that seem to have no concern that law enforcement will stop them.  

For the next several years, parents of children who attend that YMCA can wonder if videos of their children are being passed around among pedophiles, and whether some of those pedophiles might decide to join that gym to able to be near the children whom they have seen. 

Copyright L. Kochman, March 11, 2015 @ 1:05 p.m./edited March 19, 2015 @ 11:43 a.m./addition to title @ 11:48 a.m.