Young dependent male children in women's only spaces?

No, boys are not more important - they are as important as women and girls and deserve to be protected from sexual abuse. I don't think boys should be unsupervised (i.e. without their mother/other female carer) in female changing rooms, but I do think that they should be allowed in when the only other option is sending them into male changing rooms unaccompanied.

No, my 8 year old is fully capable of swimming and changing herself. She swims with a club 3 times a week, and sometimes her dad takes her.

Yes, the boy should have a parent. But its so normal for boys to be in there, and there are so many, like i said i dont think id notice one without a parent. It would be easy for one to enter with a group of people and not be challenged.

Also, when my 11 year old tells me she doesnt like using the changing room, especially on her own, because of all the boys in there, what do i tell her?

She has to put up with it because boys are more important? She should ignore her instinct telling her somethings not right about a situation?

I wouldn't bat an eyelid if a junior age boy or below was in a female changing room.

I was at the Turner exhibition in Margate when a dad hovered outside whilst his daughter went into the ladies. Another mum (a stranger to him) quickly realised the situation and said she would keep an eye on her.

But surely your 8 year old daughter would be with a parent? And if a 12 year old boy was in there then that should also be with his parent - I'm not saying it's appropriate for 12 year old boys to go in women's toilets or changing rooms alone.

Thing is though Elizabeth, you and your son might be ok.

But older boys becoming the norm in womens changing means it becomes easier for them to gain access- it is n ours, as ive said, and if i saw a 12 year old boy i don't think id even challenge him, id assume he was in there with parents.

So you've got 12 year old boys freely accessing womens changing, and at times there are no adults in there. Then my 8 year old daughter getting changed after swimming is at risk. More risk, in fact, because the space is perceived as "safe".

If that happened, then fair enough, a young boy could go into male changing rooms/toilets. However, if I have any doubts about the safety of the "male space", then there is no way my child would be going in alone. I'd rather offend a changing room full of women who want to walk around naked than risk my son being sexually assaulted.

"One of my good friends was a lifeguard at the local pool when we were both students. He reported that there were certain men who were well known to the staff at the pool - when they appeared a male member of staff would always quite "coincidentally" be sent in to mop the floor of the male changing room or similar"

Fair enough, Lurcio. But then the solution is surely to have a qualified staff member on duty in both changing rooms all the time to keep an eye on things?

Not all of us have a male partner who can take our son swimming.

I'm with Elizabeth on this one. One of my good friends was a lifeguard at the local pool when we were both students. He reported that there were certain men who were well known to the staff at the pool - when they appeared a male member of staff would always quite "coincidentally" be sent in to mop the floor of the male changing room or similar, to protect any vulnerable youngsters in there.

I'm lucky that my local pool has a family changing room (with extra-large cubicles) in addition to the male and female changing rooms, which seems like a good idea. The next nearest one has all-cubicle, mixed changing rooms (with some of the cubicles larger for families). Both of these arrangements seem like the sensible ones, but if they weren't available, I would take my son into the ladies (and use a cubicle).

That's not me being a precious over-protective mummy with no concern for other women's feelings. That's me making a sensible judgement based on the relative risks.

Incidentally, how many public pools in Britain only have communal changing rooms available, with no cubicles? I can think of a local, privately-run open air pool near where I live that's like that, but none of the council leisure centres have that sort of arrangement.

Elizabeth, I agree with you, well said. I have two boys at that strange age 8 and 10, and I speak to them at LENGHT about what to do if they think someone is trying to take a photo of them in a changing room, touch them (or touch themselves) and I will do everything that I can to protect my children. Its my job. For example, I am happy for them to go to the men loo at my local cafe/shop etc but not at larger and busy places like Heathrow airport. we go to a pool with family changing room even if its further away.

Having worked with sex offenders, I can tell you that there's not a cat in hell's chance of me sending my son into male toilets or changing rooms until I think he's old enough. No fucking way. And I don't care how many people that offends.

DS2 has ASD and I was a single parent, so he had to come in to changing rooms with me on the rare occasions I could convince him to go swimming

We only used family changing spaces and, with the greatest respect, tough. He's very vulnerable. If there had been an alternative we'd have used it.

That said, we tended to go during the school day, so it probably wasn't so much of a problem

I know 12 year old boys arent a risk (generally. There are 12 year olds who have sexually assaulted, raped and murdered). But neither are most men.

There is a post pubertal girl with downs syndrome uses the changing rooms. She has no inhibitions and walks around naked. There was a mum there, changing her small girl, while the older boys sat waiting, openly staring at this girl.

No, im not comfortable.

One mum walked her male child, taller than her, through the womens change with her hands over his eyes instructing him not to look, to a toilet cubicle.

This is a womens issue too. Why do women think this behaviour is acceptable? As pp said, because its their sons, and rules dont apply?

There are a lot of fathers take their children to lessons too. The fathers wait outside while the girls get changed alone.

An 11/12 year old can walk himself to school, to his mates house, to the shop, but cant wait on his own in a leisure centre?

I don't have children and rarely use communal changing facilities anyway. I'd be fine with a little boy under eight in theory, but I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with a 10- or 12-year-old. Sure, they aren't a risk, but that's not really the point - it's a women's space and an 11-year-old girl, say, would definitely be uncomfortable, especially if she was unaccompanied.

There are three things that strike me about this. First, that a very few men are the problem and all women and girls take the hit for it.

Second, that some women are prone to special pleading and make things difficult for everyone because they believe that their child, for whatever reason, can't follow the same rules as everyone else's child.

Third, that if more fathers were willing and able to do activities with their sons, it would make life a lot easier for everyone. (Although I do wonder whether there wouldn't be a small number of women who weren't comfortable with their eight-year-old daughters in a men's changing room, even if accompanied by their father.)

I think if society's going to say that boys can't go into female spaces after a certain age, then it ought to be more OK for them to be alone in male spaces after that same age. I've done a bit of youth hostelling with my DS and the YHA told me he wasn't allowed into a women's dorm after age 5, but that he couldn't go into a male dorm until he was 16. I managed to persuade them to let them keep me with me a bit until he was about 8, and last year blagged him into the male one saying he was 16, but there's a big gap in-between when he was too young to be alone, and too old to be with me.

Same with changing rooms really, I think a bunch of boys aged 7 or 8 would probably be asked where their parent was if they were changing alone

I wouldn't be comfortable with 12-year-old boys staring at me either! However, I do think many pools could have better changing facilities and that more 'family bathrooms' could be provided, because its one thing me taking my DSs into the ladies (where everyone has a private stall to pee in), quite another for a dad to take his DD into the men's where there are other men using the urinals. Not appropriate at all IMO.

Small children are welcome in women's spaces. No idea why a twelve year old boy would be in the women's though

*Often there are boys in the womens. I dont mean little boys, i mean up to 12 years if age. They're not always using the facilities either, they're with a younger sibling who is.

Im not comfortable with it. There is a lot of staring.*

It's like this at my local pool too. The women's changing area has about 20 cubicles and one large communal changing room. I wouldn't mind so much if the older boys used the cubicles, but they use the communal room. This means me and DD(8) can't use the communal room anymore; she feels embarrassed getting undressed in front of boys.

I feel uncomfortable getting changed in front of them too. Not afraid, not suggesting that they may be predatory in any way, but uncomfortable.

If they are old enough to stare or snigger when they see naked female flesh then they should not be taken into spaces where women and girls are getting undressed.

I have a son with special needs, plus I had to travel alone with him past the age of 8. There was now way he was going into the men's toilet then. I brought him in with me to the women's loo. Thankfully, each time it happened which wasn't often, there were other women there with their male children. Now he's 14, he is able to go into a toilet on his own, at school only. He is accompanied by his father in service stations now.

TheHoneybadger, I don't think it's a question of boys suddenly turning into sexual predators at 8. Our swimming pool allows children to go swimming unaccompanied at 8 (non-swimmers aren't allowed in the deep end and lifeguards have been known to make people swim a length to prove they can swim) so I guess it's more a question of if you're old enough to go swimming on your own you're old enough to use a changing room on your own and if you're old enough to change on your own you're old enough to use the appropriate changing room.

The only issue that I can see with this is (as I've already said) if you have an older disabled child who needs to be accompanied. I assume that the swimming pool must accommodate this somehow because I sometimes see a dad taking his disabled teenage daughter swimming and I can't imagine he takes her into the mens changing room.

I never go swimming (can't stand it) so I don't know the layout of the changing rooms (beyond the fact that male and female are separate), I just take dd to swimming lessons or watch dd and dh swimming.

This:

I have come across a lot of anti-mother rhetoric amongst feminists (not so much amongst rad fems though) so I suspect that this is part of that. Personally I just think it is another form of misogyny, blaming women for their own oppression and blaming women for male violence when they are just trying to get by in the world.

I was challenged over having my 5 year old DS1 with me in the women's once by a woman who was determined he was over 8. Which he wasn't. As he was 5. But she knew better apparently. He was tall for 5 but might have passed for a very small 8 year old at a stretch, he really didn't look definitely over 8... but by the time he was 7 he looked 9, so if I'd run into the same woman who knows what she would have thought. It was neither my fault nor his he was tall (still is but now actually is 8 and happily goes into the mens).

I have read threads on here MN chat or AIBU where people very heatedly insist that mothers with SN children or any boy children who are not toddlers but need help should queue shivering for a single family changing room rather than take boy children into a mainly cubicled women's changing room because they personally like to wander about naked while they change and don't want to think there might be a boy child beyond babyhood who might look at them.

To me that does read like a de-womanising of mothers. In being responsible for a dependant but no longer very tiny boy child, you loose your right to the woman's space and become less that either a man or a woman. Another woman's right to not have your child about is superior to your and you children's right not to stand about freezing, meekly waiting for a tansitiponal space rather than using available facilities somebody else has deemed you unworthy of. You have a boy child and you lose your rights as a woman without, obviously, gaining the rights men have, you become less than either when responsible for a boy child in a situation where you have to chose a gendered space.

A lot of people - both men and women expect meekness, apologetic attitudes, and a general attempt to take up less space, from mothers responsible for children. Of course this is met by some very pushy mothers who think motherhood and their child is all important, but there is certainly not much middle ground of people being reasonable and accepting that mothers are still women and being responsible for dependant children is still, in reality, part and parcel of the female experience for a large number of women.

i'm not sure how boys are meant to magically turn into a 'problem' at 8? or how they're suddenly safe or comfortable going into a men's toilet if they've never used that space (single mum here).

ds does now go into male toilets where all seems normal - i wouldn't hesitate to take him into the ladies with me though if we were somewhere that felt unsafe for him to go into the men's or for example if it didn't seem safe for him to wait outside alone for me to go to the toilet. think suddenly being desperate for a pee on a train platform with shifty looking bloke hanging around - i'm not leaving my 8 year old son because someone in the ladies room might take issue with a child being in there.

Well statistically Micah, male sex offenders against children vastly outnumber female sex offenders against children. That is why it's easier to send an 8yo girl unaccompanied into the women's compared to sending an 8yo boy into the men's unaccompanied.

My ds is 9 and I will not send him into the men's. I take him wearing his trunks and throw over toweling stuff and he can remove that at the side of the pool. He is autistic and has absolutely no means of defending himself. He isn't savvy at all. I will be doing this for several years.