Mixed changing room - is this considered ok these days?

OP. You are not alone. You should write to the centre and let them know. If may be a different story if the doors and cubicle walls were floor to ceiling but these are very clearly not.

We have ‘cubicles’ like OP describes at one our local pools - covering the average person from knee to shoulder height only. However, these are in single sex changing rooms. I would never use them in a mixed sex space.

@Scirocco - have a look at the 'sex matters' charity as they will probably have a template letter for you.

@Rosesanddaisies1 you do you. Luckily, you don't get to decide how other women feel about mixed sexual facilities. I am somewhat intrigued by what you mean by 'it's far more inclusive' when the op is literally about someone self excluding. Can you articulate what you actually mean by 'more inclusive.' ?

There is a small gap at the bottom but you'd have to make a conscious effort to look under.

just enough for a phone…

At our local pool it's one big area with cubicles of varying sizes but the walls/doors go right up to the ceiling. There is a small gap at the bottom but you'd have to make a conscious effort to look under. They also have some completely enclosed individual shower/change rooms for those who prefer that. I prefer it to another pool in the area where it's strictly segregated as my DS is 8 but young for his age and wouldn't cope with changing alone in the men's.

Remember you are 18 times more likely to be assaulted in a mixed sex changing room than a single sex one. And that doesn’t include phone voyeurs.

A friend never learnt to swim with school as the first week the boys stood on the benches to leer at the girls over the top of the cubicles so she feigned sickness to never go back. She never learnt to swim because she was not protected by the provision of single sex facilities.

The absence of single sex facilities are not inclusive, they discriminate against women and girls.

Good plan. Sorry, I didn't get all the way through before I posted.

I'd be inclined to say sonething to the centre op.

I think about 5 years ago under the 'be kind' hashtag, buildings changed to mixed sex believing that included everyone.

But they didn't think it through very well, because many women prefer single sex, AND mixed sex has since been proven to be less safe for women.

Women are now making noise, the more the merrier, to bring back female only change, alongside mixed if that keeps everyone happy.

The more noise we make, the sooner this will happen.

Yes, it's SO inclusive of flashers and paedophiles. But exclusionary towards Muslim and other religious women and men, rape survivors, and people who don't want to be filmed when undressing at a swimming pool.

They're not OK OP. Predators love them. Self centred adults with no concerns about safeguarding women and children seem to be pretty keen on them.

After all, inclusive means including the very people who should be kept away from women and children when undressing. 😑

How many people feel excluded by this inclusivity, though? It's impossible to count absences. Also, the OP says the cubicles were not private, but had spaces at top and bottom - very easy for someone to take photos from the top or the bottom. The whole place sounds a safeguarding nightmare.

I think the main issue is that privacy was a bit thin and the men were using phones, which is not allowed because of safeguarding issues e.g. taking photos when people are not aware of it. OP would have been within her rights to report that at the very least.

It happens because we women put up with it. Leisure centres would provide adequate privacy if they started losing visitors in high numbers.

The pool/gym I belong to has single sex changing rooms, and explicitly say no males over 7 in the female changing room. There is also a family changing room with separate showers, cublicles etc (some dads bring toddlers to swimming lessons). I haven't been to the council leisure center for some while but it still seems to have single sex changing rooms. Might go one day to find out, but I don't think the arrangement you saw is general.
Just to add, the other day when I came in to the changing room a female member of staff alerted me to the fact a man was changing a shower head - she was obviously chaperoning him for his benefit and ours.

I agree you should write to them.
Until people start calling this shit out it will just keep on snowballing.

I don't think in the least weird to ask for single sex changing rooms in addition to a mixed family area. If there were a good argument against doing so then I imagine people would be able to make it without having to resort to patronising comments.

You should write to them to feed back why you feel the services are absolutely not inclusive, as you feel the need to self exclude due to the lack of safety and dignity. Mixed sex changing rooms with fully closed cubicles are one thing; no wonder you felt exposed in the set up you describe.

Are you incapable of reading the thread to work out why it's a problem and that single sex spaces in addition would reduce some of these issues?

Mixed-sex "changing villages" are not compatible with current technological developments, i.e. everyone having camera-phones.

Most of our local pools are ancient, with separate male and female areas, but one of them has a mixed-sex changing village. That was fine when I first went there, because no-one had a phone more advanced than a Nokia 3210. Now everyone and his dog can spy under partitions with smartphones that would have seemed implausibly advanced in a James Bond film in the 90s.

I don't go there any more.

It's absolutely fine to take male toddlers in the women's single sex changing. This has always been the way - boys until about 8ish (? Don't have boys myself) go in with their Mums and the reasons are the same as why we want single sex spaces in the first place - it's safer for women and children (and privacy, dignity, ability to access services and participate in public life etc)

There are more assaults and perving in unisex. By men.

It also means that men and women of certain religious groups that require single sex spaces can't use that pool. It's Islamophobic for a start, hardly inclusive.

I hope you told the receptionist that the unisex changing had excluded you on your way out!

There's a 'changing village ' at our local pool which is for all, but you get decent privacy in the cubicles where doors are a good size and there are also single sex loos to hand if you don't fancy the trek to the separate male and female changing areas. I will say that the staff are very good at enforcing the absolutely no phones out rule and there always seem to be staff about at busy kid times.

There's no doubt it's much higher risk for kids in mixed changing areas so I assume that's why they staff heavily. Don't know what cutbacks will do to that though going forward.

I think maybe it is. In the last 10-15 years new pools here (I’m in Ireland) have been designed very open plan with cubicles and showers open to the pool. Sometimes they do have separate female and male rooms separate to this.

i think the open plan space works well and feels safer as it’s more visible to the staff.

This has been the norm at council run facilities since forever - I remember it from the 70s. Private gyms and pools usually have segregated locker rooms, bus these tend to be communal rather than cubicles which a lot of people who maybe didn’t grow up doing sport also have issues with.

For this very reason I no longer go swimming, or to the gym, or anywhere else which has mixed sex changing/showering facilities and I certainly wouldn't want to take my grand daughters to such a place. What about Muslim/Jewish women and girls, who cannot use mixed sex facilities, what about women and girls who have suffered sexual assault at the hands of men/boys, what about women and girls who simply want some privacy and not to see men and boys lurking about with phones in their hands, however dressed or undressed they may be. But, oh yes, how wonderfully inclusive.