AIBU to take my son into the female changing room?

Sometimes it does though I would say either the male or female space could have been made available to this family and the able of either sex could have waited. Inclusion always has a cost. It’s not about tolerating it’s about embracing, that’s the critical difference between integration and inclusion. In the uk we try to be inclusive, we want our disabled community to be part of the community. To do that sometimes we have to be inconvenienced. I would have liked that young girl to have waited for the less able. I’m glad she could ask, and I don’t think OP should use the female changing room as she did but I do think she should have carried on.

It's ok as a woman to feel uncomfortable?

His intentions, or those of any older boys, teen or grown man having nothing to do with it. He is a male. He is excluded from female only spaces. Regardless of size, development, interest in females or otherwise. A nine year old is not a little kid. He goes into the men’s and if he can’t then he needs to wait for the family change and, again, if he can’t wait then they need to speak to staff to get priority access or use the disabled toilets.

It isn’t just about adult woman. Remember being 9/10 years old? If you were naked in an groups change and a 9/10 year old boy from you class walked in, how would you feel? It is despicable behaviour to expect young girls to be naked in front of their peers, and to expect adult women to be comfortably changing in front of young boys. It is also pretty despicable to expect the boys themselves to be happy being naked in front of women and girls. They deserve dignity too.

@Heresapickle quite. I’m thinking of my teen daughter in this scenario as she is blind and also has autism and ADHD.

It's a little boy not a grown man why are people on this thread acting as if he's a pervert 🤦🏻‍♀️

Nothing wrong with this tbh they're kids and sending them into the men's room alone would be VERY dangerous don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
I remember going swimming with my dad and changing in the men's till I was about 10

What about disabled women? We have to budge up for able bodied women and every other bugger.

Women don't have to budge up for anybody.

No, we shouldn’t. I’ll fight tooth and nail alongside them to ensure they are provided with facilities to fit their needs, and that includes facilities which can be used when their helper is the opposite sex. But I will never “budge up” from a female only space when they want to bring males in. No.

Budging up doesn't involve allowing males in female only spaces.

A is actually choosing that females and their rights don't matter, and isn't acceptable - you don't get to 'choose' to ignore that it's a female space.
That leaves you with B, and potentially other options.

@TomeTome
Im not the arumchair expert. My 12 year old is autistic. I have mentioned this on other threads. I’m not sitting here with no personal experience of having to do this stuff. But I didn’t feel it relevant to say because it doesn’t matter if I’ve managed to do this myself or if I haven’t. The solution is never to use female only spaces. Never.

Time to get rid of outmoded group changing rooms. My local pool only has individual cubicles and parent and child rooms, which seems ideal to me.

It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m relaxed about being seen naked, unless it’s someone perving, but you have to consider those who feel differently.

Everyone should budge up for disabled people, but this isn’t a good solution for OP and her family or the other users.

No I think that as your child grows older you hit situations and obstacles that take you by surprise and sometimes you do something and then think “that didn’t feel like a good solution”. The reality of living this as apprised to the armchair experts is very different. Honestly it’s a bit like listening to parenting advice from a well meaning but childless friend.

I'd imagine that the posters who aren't fine the boy also wouldn't be fine with the man in there.
This. I wasn't fine with the man going in on that thread either.

Single sex spaces are single sex spaces. It's not the job of women and girls to budge up because of poor planning by parents and/or inadequate facilities for other groups.

But anyway changing rooms are even more invasive than toilets because they aren't in cubicles, you literally take all your clothes off in front of strangers.
Also this.

Speaking generally, people wonder why some teenage boys don't respect girls boundaries, but then their solution through juniors and early secondary is to teach their sons that finding suitable changing isn't important because he can come in the women's and the girls budge up.

I agree with you and this is my main issue with people who say that trans people should use disabled spaces. All that does is shift the negative impact of the problem to disabled people rather than women.

Have you raised the lack of accessible changing with your local pool?

@TomeTome

Jesus. Seriously. She takes her kid every week, and you think it simply isn’t an option to have spoken to staff about accessible changing to ensure she can have priory? You think every week, she just suddenly remembers they have swimming lessons, has no idea what she will encounter when she arrives and all the staff will be totally different and she can’t possibly have the arrangement in place? No, I guess not. Being proactive would just never work. Best to just tell women to shuffle off to the toilets if they want privacy because the female only leave is actually for females plus OP’s precious son.

@TomeTome

See my other posts above. The OP’s only complaint was that she didn’t want to stand around dripping wet. That was all. She didn’t WANT to. She hasn’t said anything about her kid’s extra needs meaning he cannot wait. She simply didn’t want to.

And, as said, if you cannot wait then you speak to staff to have priory access to the accessible changing. You do not invade the female only space. This wasn’t her first time at the place. She knows how it works and knows it is busy. Nothing has stopped her discussing her son’s extra needs with staff to ensure that, each week, he can hop out first and have priory access or simply be taken to the front of the line.

But, as said, this wasn’t about being unable to wait. The OP just didn’t want to.

If her son was at risk of a meltdown, then you go to staff and tell them you need access to the accessible change as you have a child with a disability and they cannot wait. You do not walk into the female only space.. This has never been an option if my son was stressed. It’s rather like saying “if your 6 week old is crying ask it to be a bit quieter”. It just isn’t how things work.

She hasn’t specifically- I was just making the point that disabled women and mothers of disabled sons also have rights- so the overall attitude that we should just not go to places, or otherwise be negatively impacted for the benefit of able bodied women is unhelpful.

I don’t like going home wet (and it isn’t great for my wheelchair), my son also doesn’t like it but we suck it up because there isn’t an alternative that doesn’t put a male in a female spece- and as a feminist I’m not prepared to do that to other women and female children.

If everyone here talking about women’s rights and how women in my position shouldn’t use female changing spaces also noticed that women like me are being screwed over and mentioned it to staff (or even just adjusted their thinking to include disabled women and mothers of disabled sons) then we might all end up better off.

I'd imagine that the posters who aren't fine the boy also wouldn't be fine with the man in there.

But anyway changing rooms are even more invasive than toilets because they aren't in cubicles, you literally take all your clothes off in front of strangers.

At busy times, you have to wait. He just has to wait.. I think maybe you don’t understand this lads disability at all. Waiting may be akin to asking a severely arthritic individual to walk. The reason people get things like passes to go to the front of queues at airports etc isn’t just a nice to have, it’s that they can’t do it.