Mixed changing room - is this considered ok these days?

I dont know - but I bet you many still around so take your business there, simples.

In France, which is notoriously intolerant of Islam and constantly cited by trans activists everywhere as a country in which single sex spaces do not exist (they do, but not often in public sports facilities), there have been various controversies involving women wishing to wear burkinis (which are sold in Decathlon) in order to swim.

So that alone proves that there are some Muslim women who would like to be able to swim in public within the rules of their religion.

I haven't rtft but this is total bollocks, you clearly aren't Muslim.

The way people practice religion varies widely by person. And that's without considering Muslim women who go swimming wearing fully covered attire like the 'burkini' etc in mixed sex pools but still wouldn't want to get fully undressed afterwards in a cubicle next to a man with gaps around the doors.

Yes! But getting harder to find due to cost cutting exercise.

This isn’t privacy.

Many places with single sex changing room - if you are concerned , just go to those

If I as a 5ft 8 woman can see the heads of the people in the cubicle then it's reasonable to say that a 6ft 3 man would be able to see completely over the cubicle.

No matter what your personal comfort level is, my personal comfort level does not include getting naked in full view of men I don't know. It sure as hell doesn't include having my 9yo daughter naked in full view of men I don't know. Or women I don't know for that matter, I am not comfortable with public nudity at all, and it is completely reasonable that I should be able to choose to not be naked in front of strangers.

I bloody hate changing villages. Also if a women feels she would prefer a single sex changing space its perfectly acceptable, it doesn't need justifying and actually should be standard.

It's fucking obvious why any woman want would single sex facilities. Anyone with their faux what's wrong with mixed facilities is frankly a nob probably both metaphorically and literally

@TheClogLady why?

Yes!

Why didn't you just use a cubicle? Does it matter if your head is showing?

Wow !

It’s cheaper at the end of the day and I suspect that’s all the companies who run them care about.

That’s the ones who DO go. Plenty of people - for many reasons - won’t go.

My Muslim family wouldn’t - not especially for religious reasons. My (almost) blind sister wouldn’t feel safe changing with male voices around her, I don’t want to be naked around strangers (let alone men).

When I was looking for a new gym I dismissed the ones who couldn’t guarantee single SEX changing rooms.

Why the hell should I be told that I must use facilities alongside men when I don’t feel comfortable (or safe - my old gym was 24hrs with skeleton staff and a keypad entry system)? Because why - ‘inclusivity’? Please explain how this makes the world a better place (and for whom?).

The trouble is, you wouldn't know if it causes issues because you won't see the women who self-exclude from mixed-sex only changing rooms for whatever reason.

Also it's not Muslim women specifically, it's women whose religious beliefs prevent them from being in the company of strange men - which can be women of several different faiths. (I know you're using "shorthand", I just wanted to say that for lurkers.)

every swimming pool has mixed sex changing round here, I just assumed everywhere does now. Also in a high Muslim area and this doesn’t seem to cause an issue for muslim women as they all have doors obviously.

@sleepyscientist
Men and boys are 98% of convicted sex offenders. So it's not "regardless of gender" (by which I assume you mean sex).

You have weighed up the statistically low risk of your child being kidnapped/abducted Vs the higher risk of you or your child being victims of sex offences. You have decided that you prefer to take the risk of sexual offences being committed against you and your child. Do you think it is fair to remove the choice of women who have decided the other way?

Have you thought about getting your DH to take your DS swimming or into the male changing room?

@TheClogLady @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision

It's about being realistic and aware of what actually goes on in the world. Sex crimes are not unique to males so your single sex spaces are not the golden answer in any terms anyway. Look at the ever rising knife crime rate, drug dealing or even county lines that is what you need to worry about.

Sending DS into a locked space away from me at age 8 as some are suggesting is a risk that he maybe exposed to something much worse than a picture, that's the reality of the world we live in. That's what you need to worry about, that's what you need to safeguard against, technology is ever changing we have the insta360 which DS uses to upload video's to YouTube.

It's not much bigger than the size of my hand and because it is black it is easily to lose sometimes multiple times a day.

Someone could use that it for anything you're imagining regardless of gender, which leaves you with two choices, teach kids that anything online is for life and is insignificant so you can protect against the actual big risks or worry about the small things whilst missing the bigger picture.

I know where I stand I will protect him against the actual physical threats to his future if that means a small increase in the risk of some unsavoury pictures being taken so be it. We don't have a perfect world where you can remove both risk's so it's a case of picking one and as a mum with a son that's mixed gender spaces so he can be supervised.

Luckily we live rurally, our local pool is very much family change so he grabs the cubicle next to us. The majority of toilets are single cubicles but we have only just started at age 10 allowing him in the males alone if we are directly outside and it's an area we trust. I wouldn't allow it in say a shopping centre in a city he still goes with a parent in those cases as you don't know what someone is up to on the other side a door, DH was offered drugs in a restaurant toilet not long ago.

It's always the people you least expect who make posts dismissing the significance of non-contact sexual offences.*

*Sarcasm.

Where I worked before was a fancy building which had parts open to the public. The loos were on the basement - a small, dimly lit corridor of single cubicles. The police were always chasing out druggies and people sleeping (and worse) in these.

sometimes I’d be in the basement setting up events or looking for things and it was bloody creepy at that end of the building.

Thank you to all those who have mentioned the floor to ceiling cubicles put medically vulnerable people at risk. This includes anyone having a stroke, heart attack, seizure or hypo. It also provides an opportunity for sex and drug use by it not being so private. At least one rape happens inside a British school premises each day so where there’s an opportunity it will happen.

However the more mundane reason swimming pools cubicles have gaps in the bottom will be because of cleaning. Chlorination water is a corrosive and will build up and eat away at the partition. You need the floor to be washed by mops (with stronger chlorine solution) and water to run away because the floor will be unhygienic (hairs, plasters, tissues, wee) and the gaps allow ventilation to dry.

It amazes me that the government consultation on public toilets acknowledges there will be a problem in mixed sex toilets by saying their design has to be fully enclosed. However by saying this could be a preferred design in single sex toilets in the future means there will be a lot more tragic medical incidents and assaults that could have been prevented by visibility.

I thought I might have misread that.

Quite a big safeguarding concern I would have thought.

Crikey, poor kid!

She's already said she doesn't mind people taking illicit pictures of her son while he's undressed.

It's all relative I really ain't bothered about pictures or even revenge porn, I worry about DS. I also include picture of DS, AI/editing means an innocent picture can be made into anything anyway.

Our pool has a changing village. Doors are not floor to ceiling - gaps above and below. If you stood on the bench you could easily view the person in the next cubicle. Interestingly, above the bench they have installed bars affixed to the top of the cubicle - so you can't stand on the bench. They know what the problem is and the risk changing villages have. I wonder why there is the trend to do this when the risks are so obvious that they have tried to mitigate them.