Young dependent male children in women's only spaces?

DrSeuss, I'm not really sure what you're saying. It's OK to place one child at a low risk of a serious, life-changing incident, to save the feelings of others who are at an even lower risk of a similar incident happening in their changing room?

Try taking gender out of it all together. In my job, I deal with some people who pose a low-medium risk of committing serious offences (rape, murder). I also deal with a lot of people who pose a high-very high risk of acquisitive offending (burglary, shoplifting). Which group of offenders do you think sometimes keep me awake at night?

"What are the other men in the changing room doing while this offender is taking photographs, flashing, intimidating and exploiting the boy?

Is it so hard to believe that there might be times when no-one else is in there?"

Well, yes, actually, in my experience of swimming pools!

Elendon, thanks for that pointless contribution.

Honey we are talking about changing rooms in public swimming pools. Crowded rooms , not lone flashers.

And naked human bodies are not disgusting.

And that your child doesn't stare doesn't mean girls his age or a bit older aren't unconfortable. There's an extremely low increased risk of a serious incident in the men's changing room for an unaccompanied boy; there's a considerable risk of less serious incidents ie girls being made uncomfortable, boys they know teasing them at school later etc the other way around.

risks get weighed by people all the time, a frequent but less serious risk against a rare but serious. No one would get on a plane if humans didn't do that!

What should the uncomfortable girls do?

What are the other men in the changing room doing while this offender is taking photographs, flashing, intimidating and exploiting the boy?

Is it so hard to believe that there might be times when no-one else is in there?

Our pool was just refurbished - from a changing village to separate male and female communal rooms. It's a real problem.

DH takes the girls (4 and 7) in the male changing room for their swimming lessons. But next year older girl will need to change in the female one. Which is a crowded, pushy, buggy-filled, noisy space full of mums shoving others out the way to get their little darling changed and out to the next activity. She would rather not swim than cope with this by herself.

What are the other men in the changing room doing while this offender is taking photographs, flashing, intimidating and exploiting the boy?

Drseuss

Perhaps they feel they are being mentally undressed?

Exactly honey, by "sexual abuse" I am not just talking about a boy being raped, which some posters seem to be unable (or unwilling) to believe could happen. I'm talking intimidation, exploitation, taking photographs, etc.

Honey, not personally.

I take your point but a changing room has a very high chance of not being just one man and one unrelated child, surely?

"Why should teenage girls have to share a school room with teenage boys if they are not happy with that?"

Eh? Because they aren't taking their clothes off!!

drseuss do you not remembered being stared at by the creepy man, or flashed at etc as a child? there are other horrible and frightening things that can happen to children than being raped or molested. i remember plenty.

and you know what attitudes like that are maybe a part of what makes masculinity what it is - that you can't have your mum or go with your mum and you SHOULD be a man and go in the man's space on your own now reeks of creating fucked up masculinity.

Why should 9 year old girls have to share a changing room with him if they aren't comfortable with that?

Why should teenage girls have to share a school room with teenage boys if they are not happy with that?

Most leisure centres now have communal changing rooms. Where I live the male changing room is supervised by a member of staff, yet there will be times when a vulnerable male child will have to go into a woman only changing room.

Personally, I don't like strangers, whether male or female, adult or child, seeing my naked body.

Elizabeth is it likely that the child and the predator are the only ones in the changing room at that point? And the predator knows a parent will be knocking on the door or sending in a staff member soon, or that another man could come in!

incidentally my 8yo son doesn't want to look at the naked body of you or your daughter. he is a normal 8yo who is likely to be disgusted by the idea. things is he'd be disgusted by the idea of seeing naked men walking around too and having to cope with that alone in a strange place full of strangers would be totally too much for him even aside from arguments about risk.

maybe other children are different, maybe children who have fathers are different, who knows. i only have the one child to go by and he has never lived with a man. he is not disabled in any way he is just a unique individual and they mature at different rates, are able to cope with emotional or physical or organisational skills/scenarios at different rates etc.

this idea that you can say at 8 years old a child can and SHOULD do x, y and z is totally opposite to what people would normally say where we all remind each other children are individual and do things in their own time.

it's this 'as soon as they're 8 they should be out in the cold and tough shit if they can't cope with it' attitude that stuns me. oh and if they're not then stay home till they are.

*Bertrand" having worked within child protection for many, many years I can tell you that I have heard just too many stories about young children being exposed to risk when entering male only facilities (particularly toilets but not exclusively).

That's why my ds will continue to use female toilets until he is old enough for me and dh to have certain conversations with him about risk and personal safety. It also why my dh chooses to use family changing cubicles when swimming with our dd aged 5.

I do not have statistics at my fingertips. Maybe I am.risk adverse because of what I've heard from survivors over the years.

*"The risk of being assaulted in the men's changing room may be small, but it's a lot higher than the risk of it happening in the women's changing room."

Really? I think it's about the same, actually. About zero.*

You're incredibly naive.

So dispise all your extensive specialist knowledge, even you have never come across a case of a boy being sexually assaulted in a swimming pool changing room. Thank you- that's what I was asking.

"we're talking about pre-pubescent children. the idea they can't get changed in the same room with adults present is tragic."

Not all 9 year old girls are pre pubescent.

And not a bloody tragic as the paranoid assumption that a 9 year old boy is at risk of sexual assault in the changing room of a swimming pool.........

What's your cut off age, then, honey? Given a few girls start their periods at 8 or 9 and many are in bras by 10?

do you know of cases where an 8 year old boy has been sexually assaulted in the changing room of a swimming pool?

No. I won't, and can't, go into specific details of cases, who the victims were and what age they were. I know how sex offenders' minds work because I have interviewed them, worked with them and read pages and pages of CPS evidence about what they have done. They will take opportunities where they find them, and an unaccompanied child, naked in a changing room, is an opportunity.

Cote, the odds of a person winning the lottery each week are calculable and, depending on numbers of tickets sold etc, are almost certainly above 50 %. I don't get your analogy?

we're talking about pre-pubescent children. the idea they can't get changed in the same room with adults present is tragic.