AIBU to take my son into the female changing room?

I'd have made a shocked face and said, "But what if a disabled person needs to use the toilet while you're in there?"

You feel your answer is adequate, based on your narrative.
As for repeating ourselves, perhaps that's because there are still people trying to justify taking males into female spaces, and we keep having to tell them that isn't acceptable.
Yes, disabled provision is not adequate, we agree on that.
No, disabled males (or any males) or their female carers are not 'pushed into women's spaces' - they have no right to be there.
It isn't up to women to let males into their spaces so someone doesn't 'go home dripping wet', no matter how many times you try to put that onus on women.
You can also choose to ignore my comments if they are bothering you so much.

This is where a big bit of the problem is.

Women with babies are not disabled.

But they won’t put themselves out to walk a short distance to a suitable toilet with baby change so they block the disabled.

We were at the museum last week, a woman with a baby was asking me where the baby change was and I explained it was down the corridor - huge room for her.

She said “oh no, it’s alright I’ll just use the disabled (2m away), I’ve got a mat”

So entitled.

My answer is adequate.

Do you always parrot on endlessly expressing the same point of view that everyone has heard and preventing the conversation from developing to one where solutions are found.

I don’t find you barking out the same sentence repeatedly helpful to anyone.

We know that males shouldn’t be in female spaces.

We know that disabled people do not have adequate provision and are often pushed into women’s spaces because of this.

What do we do and how do we meet everyone’s needs??

Without sending a disabled child home soaking wet or pushing them to accept circumstances that would be harmful to their health.

In this particular situation there was no choice. The boy would have been less safe on his own outside than a girl inside the room. Also was there even a girl inside the room?

Heresapickle
I agree with you.
It seems short sighted though because you would they're losing a section of custom (families with hands on dads, families with older children of opposite sex to the parent bringing them, women from religious and cultural backgrounds that require single sex spaces, women who would self-exclude from mixed sex spaces, adults with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities and so on)

For example when our DC were younger if we went somewhere as a family and found the baby changing wasn't available to men then that meant we'd not go back and DH, who was part time, definitely wouldn't go. We don't go places that don't have appropriate changing facilities for the people going because the solutions to poor facilities usually mean telling women and girls to budge up or telling disabled people to budge up and that's not ok.
We take our money to other places, but what's sad is that there's obviously enough people who have the budge up mentality that places don't feel they need to provide decent facilities.

The adults with this mentality have gained it from somewhere and it's not enough to say "society" teaches people to sideline groups/certain groups to budge up/other groups to feel entitled. "Society teaches" is the cumulative effect of individuals over time. So I won't teach DC that girls don't get privacy if boys want their space and I won't teach them that disabled or accessible facilities are there to use as and when non-disabled people find it convenient to. Hopefully when they're adults they'll be adults who respect single sex and accessible spaces.

I’m probably going to get flamed for this, but oh well, I’ll cope.

Are we pretending that sexually inappropriate behaviour isn’t a risk in autistic teens? So much so that all the autism support organisations don’t advise parents on how to handle this, for the protection of their children not only from predators, but as they get older, from criminal charges?
How does denying this help a child on the spectrum who needs extra help to understand appropriate behaviour?

As I said earlier, even if parents don’t care about the impact on girls, it beggars belief that they wouldn’t try to protect their sons from the consequences of poor boundaries.

Being honest doesn't inherently mean being unkind though - again, people have mostly been honest in pointing out why her actions were inappropriate, and many have also agreed that more definitely needs to be done with regards to inclusion in general.

Some folk tried to derail it into a trans/anti trans thread, but the majority realised what they were trying to do.

The thing with AIBU is that questions will get honest answers.

PS The 32 pages are made up with some incredibly long posts, with mpre spacing than average, some repetitiveness, and also some long posts being quoted (to address all the points).

I think a lot of that is that men are more likely to become violent and abusive when they are upset. Women likely won’t. So it feels safer to have some women pissed off with you than a group of men.

Id hazard a guess that one of the reasons mumsnet is so staunchly and vocally opposed to men in womens spaces is because it is a safe space for people to express these views - it’s online and mostly women. A lot of women on here would probably think twice before challenging a male in a female space in real life because frankly, it could be dangerous.

“Just honest” is a bit like “I just say it like it is”, it in no way means you aren’t being unkind. I think you underestimate how difficult and upsetting parenting a disabled child can be. 32 pages of it! Just awful.

@sollenwir @LolaSmiles yeah, I don’t think the people making the decisions have a clue, and I also don’t think that they care- they just want to meet their legal obligations in the cheapest way possible. This is a new build place too (as in the last 15 years, not something from the 60s/70/s).

Luckily there is an m&s in a different part of town so even though it’s a 10 minute walk and a pain with lifts etc we can go there for the loo… (and then usually have to queue for an age or have agro because the ladies their isn’t big enough to get a pram in comfortably so a lot of mums use the accessible toilets).

The point is that in both male and female changing rooms there will be males and females getting changed who don't want someone of the opposite sex in there.

Yet the default is 'if in doubt don't upset the men'

Do you always call people dense when you don't have an adequate answer?

Because there will be males getting changed in there that do not want a woman in their space.

Nobody has been unkind to OP though, just honest.

This- and I think what often gets forgotten is that the boys may well not like it either. My NT 6 year old nephew has been complaining about going into the female toilets with his mum since before he turned 6 (we let him go in the men’s where we think it is safe… he did once get trapped because he is so small for his age he couldn’t open the door to get out!)

I, personally, have no problem with people seeing me change @JustKeepSwimmingAlong ds wouldn’t have bothered me at all,

but my niece who is 10 today would be mortified. She is an early developer and the only one in her class with breasts etc (so she tells me anyway). My sister had to go and complain to school last Christmas because they forced the class to get changed for the disco together and when she asked to use somewhere private she was told off. She is anxious about the Christmas disco this year still.

Next time post on the SN board @JustKeepSwimmingAlong people will help you think of ways round the obstacles and nobody will make you feel shit about it. There are many many very kind and helpful people in the world. They tend to be quieter so they don’t stand out but they are there. Just keep swimming.

Heresapickle
Poorly designed facilities are awful.

We've definitely complained to some places for it when DC were younger.

Sometimes I find myself curious about the levels of representation and voice that goes into designing facilities.

For example poorly designed "accessible" facilities that aren't accessible to the people who need them, poor provision of unisex family facilities in venues that are likely to require a lot of family facilities, sexist decisions about parenting roles such as putting the only baby changing facilities in the women's.

Then when things are designed poorly, there seems to be two (unacceptable) "solutions":

• make the women's facilities unisex because of either issues with male pattern behaviour and no family facilities
• send anyone with an issue with the existing male/female facilities into the disabled facilities

I could be way off the mark but I suspect the people round the table are likely to not be in groups most affected by terrible planning and poor facilities.

@Heresapickle I often wonder if those adding/creating accessible toilets etc actually know what accessible means.

In your example I would also say that taking your son into the accessible toilet cubicle in the female facilities is the best option for you all, with things as they stand.

However, you/he/your wife shouldn't even be faced with this choice though, as we already said, there needs to be unisex individual accessible cubicles alongside other facilities.

Also, anyone who begrudges you having a non-disabled person in the changing cubicle with you really needs to spend some time working on their compassion for other people!

Please remember that by the time your son reaches the end of primary school, lots of girls in his class will be well into puberty, likely some with their periods. The last thing they'd want to see is a boy from their school in their changing room!

Older boys need to stay out of the female changing rooms. 8 is the cut off and I even think that is too late. Girls and women deserve privacy and that overrides your need for convenience. Don't do it again.

That doesn't answer why you specifically tagged me and nobody else.

The thing is, a line has to be drawn somewhere. Otherwise you might as well let me bring my 19 year old autistic son in with me. It's easier for me after all. (I'd never do that).

I didn't have any boys till #4 and #5 child, so I can't really remember when it became an issue. I think family change rooms may have come in at my swimming centre right about the time I might have had to think about it, so we all just piled in there and got changed together. I found it better to have them all contained while I changed the baby from swimming clothes and helped the toddlers. I could also get changed much faster because I felt less self conscious.

Obviously I had to do the standard thing when they got to the age when they wanted to use the boy toilets. Their emerging sense of maleness was important to me to support but I found a way to do it without going into female spaces and keeping them safe at the same time. I think that was about age 7 or 8. Can't remember exactly.

I wouldn't have had an issue with OP in the instance she described, maybe would have assumed he was younger than he looked, but she does have to think of a new approach because he's getting to that age where it's not going to be okay any longer.

As it happens with my son no one would notice because he has waist length hair, wears gender neutral clothes, carries a handbag and often has makeup on- he is NOT trans before anyone brings that up- we are a gender critical household, he is a boy who at the moment enjoys looking like this. So, everyone would think he is a girl anyway.

But that isn’t the point really- he is disabled and should be able to access an appropriate space, and women shouldn’t have biological males in their space.