Scotland's Gyms and Pools

They deleted a huge number of the comments on Janice Turner's article yesterday.
I wish I had C&P it earlier.
I wanted to send it to a couple of people who couldn't access it.
The comments are always so informative and thought provoking.

The Times and Sunday Times pride themselves on presenting both sides, so you will read woke articles. The comments tell the Times what it's readers think. Only an absolute plonker of a publisher would decide they wanted to get rid of their core readers.

The Times already knows what happens to MSM who disregard they're readers - they watch the Guardian with interest

I wonder how quickly the comments will be deleted.

Also interesting to see in the comments the repeated points that other specific needs would benefit from equal input, focus and support: I'd be interested in an assessment of how functionally disabled friendly the changing facilities are, and the many adaptations that would support neurodiverse users for example. And how friendly and accommodating to women of faiths and cultures that lead to specific needs around bodily privacy and sex segregation? How trauma informed?

The answer really is for additional and wider choice of spaces in all changing facilities to better fit the valued needs of all users.

I hate changing rooms - no, I don’t feel brilliant changing my flabby area next to beautiful 20 somethings with amazing bodies. So bloody what?

But I’m a grown up and get on with it.

I am on a gratitude roll this morning so I would like to thank the academics at Edinburgh University for doing this work and The Times for reporting on it.

MORE PLEASE

Every little helps.

I agree, Igneo. I initially thought - what a ridiculously unquestioning article - and then I decided that it was actually a passive-aggressive master stroke to finish the piece with the non-binary academics complaining that the toilets in their venue were likely to have impacted the quality of their discussions.

The comments are much better than the article. I'm reminded that women have been excluded from participating in sports because of no toilets/single sex changing rooms/social expectations/restrictive clothing. I take sport and fitness for granted in a way that wasn't available to my grandmother, great grandmother etc.

Snap AlsoNotAGirl!

Thank you for posting OP. I keep thinking I want to start buying the Times and then they go all Woke. Or is it only Woke on Sundays?

It looks like Saturday may be the day to get it, for Janice Turner’s excellent writing.

I'm struggling to visualise/understand wearing "loose clothing" in the swimming pool. What sort of clothing would that be? How voluminous and what sort of material? A baggy T shirt clings to the body when wet. More yards of material would seriously impede swimming and could even entangle other swimmers.

The comments are a much better read than the article!

The comments under that article are better than the article

Gyms can install a separate 3rd space changing room for transgender clients, which would allow their participation without excluding the women who want to use the gym.
Women should not sacrifice their privacy, safety, dignity and right to single sex spaces in order to appease a tiny minority. Allowing all men free access to female changing rooms on demand, as long as they claim to identify as women, is a flashers’ and voyeurs charter. And which teenage boy wouldn’t claim to be trans, if it gets him in to see naked women?

It has been rumoured the Sunday Times was going for the ‘woke’ market. Looks like it’s true. The comments are sane thank goodness. Thanks for the share OP.

Well - I also hate looking in mirrors because of the pressures of being a woman and not having an absolutely perfect body. Nobody seems to care about that though.

How much time was spent on discussing the concerns that women might have about having transwomen in changing rooms. I have yet to hear a woman say that they would feel fine about it so long as the transwoman was wearing lipstick.

Jesus wept.