To be annoyed that my gym only has open mixed sex showers

My council leisure center has no open showers. You can close the doors to all shower areas. How much does it cost to buy a door? I think it is shameful to cut cost like this. It is hugely discouraging for some people. Unless there is also a separate shower area that op is not aware off. Then it is OK.

Experiment on a non work day. Go swimming, wash your hair, run a soapy hand under your armpits. Assume the water and soap running down your body will swoosh past your undercarriage on its way to the floor.
Dry, dress and get on with your day. You’ll find out if there’s actually a problem.

On the contrary, the council-run gym I go to has the pool changing village and it's a bit of a walk through public areas to get to the separate sex changing rooms near to the sports hall. The gym (which I use) is upstairs and has separate sex changing rooms with showers, so thst would be an even longer walk in your wet cossie.

How many? You have statistics for it, I assume?

Me too. It’s not ‘the norm’. I’m a swim teacher and competitive swimmer, so I’ve been in hundreds of pools in the UK. They’re mostly (about 70%) single sex ime.

Your daughter was a victim of a crime, so everything must change?

Um. Why can’t you walk in a wet swimming costume?!?

People did, and do, “bat an eyelid” about mixed sex changing areas.

There’ve been far too many (one would be too many, but it’s not isolated) incidents of cameras / phones going under doors or over cubicle tops. Most council changing cubicles have metal bars at head height precisely because perverts were peaking over, before they were in place. There’ve been reported attempts to pull kids into cubicles too.

The majority of people don’t complain because they’re well aware it’ll get shrugged off, like it has been when complaints have been made in the past.

Unisex facilities mean that the operator (council or private) can provide fewer showers and loos and can have staff of either sex cleaning them. It’s a cost saving for them. They don’t give a shiny shit about safety unless it has a direct financial impact on them, or legislation enforces it.

Me too, all over uk and never encountered

the op won’t say the gym because then we will prove it!

Your pits are presumably easily accessible in a swimming costume. Your bits, just reach under the fabric. I get that it’s not necessarily the ideal set up for you, but it’s got to be better than slogging back home.

Really surprised to hear this is the norm. I've lived in three places where the local council run pool has separate male and female changing rooms/showers.

Fuming is ott, but it’s perfectly fine, and I’d think standard for both sexes, to want to be able to shower properly. You can communicate this to them, then find another pool, it’s your choice ti do that.

Oh don’t be daft op

you don’t need to walk through reception to get to the the ladies changing rooms

go on, enlighten us, which local council gym is this?

Same at my local leisure centre, has been for the two decades I’ve lived here. Not sure why people have an issue with it all of a sudden.

It's definitely not always been the case. I have frequented several pools in my time and most have had showers within a single sex changing room - often open, not necessarily in cubicles, but you could shower naked if you wanted to. Our local pool now though is as OP describes.

However after being in a pool and having the chance to rinse off and wash my hair, I would consider myself clean enough to go to work.

I have ? but I'm 67 and didn't encounter this "changing village" thing until I changed gyms and found their pool had this set up.

Previously, all pools I went to had entirely separate women's and men's changing rooms. And we know these still exist because we've had any number of threads on Mumsnet about mothers taking their male children into the women's changing room at the pool.

My 12yr old daughter had a man put a phone under her door in a mixed sex changing room..

Women need separate places for safety

Unless OP is a wheelchair user/disabled, why would you advise OP looks for an accessible changing room?

Look around for a family change room or a room for wheelchairs.

Somewhere in the complex there will be a single doored shower.

All the council run pools near me have open showers and then additional showers in private cubicles.

Ours is mixed changing and mixed open showers but does have a couple of ‘cubicles’ for showers. They just have a curtain across though so I wouldn’t be stripping off! I’d just shower properly at home, wash my hair if I needed to or else I would just rinse off and shower when I got back. I don’t really enjoy having showers in public places anyway, regardless of cubicles or single sex changing.

You should be clean before you enter the pool, so a rinse shower and a hairwash is all you should need. Personally I have never experienced a council pool that didn’t have open showers and a changing village.

I’d say that’s pretty standard. Showering with your costume on is an option. That what most people do where I swim.

Exactly

and I reckon the OP’s one will also have it