Mixed sex changing enables sexual predators to target girls and women

I started using a new leisure centre to swim while pur local one is being refurbished. It has mixed changing room.

First visit was OK but the second time I was there I had two separate incidents of men bothering me in the changing rooms, invading my space and openly leering.

The reality is that even if the majority of men can behave we still should never be put in position where we are made vulnerable and uncomfortable.

The law should make it a requirement for gyms/pools/ leisure centres to have separate spaces.

It is appalling how the well being of women and girls is never a priority...

in terms of design: Private cubicles within a mixed sex space is the worst for rapes, and private designs are the worst for fatalities.

There is a big emphasis on ‘inclusive’ design - which is not defined but generally means mixed sex and private cubicles - but there’s been no risk assessments or equality and impact assessments done on them. The movement promoting them has roots in America, the designs from men with a highly sexualised background, rather than health and safety.

For toilets, the worst accounts from Stonewall and TransActual include shouting, being pushed out of toilets by 2 women and one man exposed himself to another man. This is not nice but not comparable to what has been happening to the medically vulnerable, women and children in toilets.

I feel at some point we are all going to have to trawl through local papers to collect the data ourselves because no one else is.

What happens when council toilets get too bad? They shut them down. What happens when bad things happen in venue toilets? The venues minimise it/keep it quiet. The victims rightly don’t want to publicise their trauma. It means the data I have is only just brushing the surface.

When I looked at the Prevention of Future Deaths report under ‘toilets’, only a couple of the fatalities I know about were on there. This is frustrating knowing there are cases where there may have been a better outcome.

I am in awe of the WRN getting the information for the report. It’s so time consuming and frustrating.

It’s very difficult for a changing rooms not to have gaps at the bottom because of the water and chlorine rotting the partitions and ensuring it’s mopped and draining away. You are always going to get problem with voyeurism. The maximum recommended gap to stop a phone going under the partition is 5mm.

Back to other topics, there are specific webpages where you can view hidden camera footage inside loos and find people to hook up with to use public loos. People travel from miles around (see ‘Smith Street’ toilets in Rochdale). It’s happened for years and still goes on today. These can be toilets in shopping centres etc.

My mother, who stayed in an abusive marriage for decades, who let me grow up in that environment and told herself it was fine, thinks cross dressing men should be allowed in female only spaces because 'it's complicated.' But then she didn't bat an eye when my father took naked photos of me when I was at primary school, so perhaps I shouldn't be that surprised. Some women seem utterly blind to this side of male behaviour.

We've ended up in this position because men wanted it, and it has come as something of a shock to most of us, I think, to realise that despite all the progress that has been made, when it comes down to it, what men want is still considered to be the most important thing and given priority. I do sometimes wonder if it is a reaction to the women's rights movement and just how many men feel, on some level, that women have taken too much and it's not fair, and that we are getting what we deserve. I suspect more feel this way than would openly admit it.

I was reading one of the secret barrister books the other day and in it SB talked about the ease with which men can now access sexual material involving children (predominantly girls) and also connect with other men who have similar interests. The result has been that the number of men accessing this sort of material has gone up. More men are looking at images of underage girls than before. The police have a backlog of phones and laptops that need to be looked at. The point that SB made was that the removal of the socially imposed barriers that were there before has had a massive impact. Make it easy, and more men offend and are able to convince themselves that what they're doing isn't that bad really. We're going to see the same with the spread of mixed sex spaces. There will be more sexual assaults, more rapes, and more cases of voyeurism and indecent exposure. Men who would have been put off before will do it now because it's so easy. Everyone seems to have either forgotten this or be passing the buck on it, again, because men want it. Women who point it out are ostracised and belittled to ensure that no-one listens to them.

Just my anecdotal life experience - at 50 I have definitely aged out of being perved over by random men. Brilliant. My stunning 17 year old on the other hand…it’s like being with a celebrity. Single sex spaces. No debate.

Just any woman. Any woman will know what many men are like, and how they respond to us. We all know it doesn't matter what we look like, what we're wearing, how old we are etc, all of us can be harassed or abused by men.

I totally agree with you otherwise.

Of course its money. Its the most efficient way of maximising the available space, instead of three separate rooms, all of which can be used all the time by anyone.

But not the safest solution

Are you for real?

Local authority outsourced leisure services are doing this I suggest to save money. Mixed changing rooms mean less staff members are required I expect, and no need to have both female and male assistants at all times.

I expect that is the main reason. Not that in any way the consequences should be ignored or minimised.

Local authority outsourcing of leisure services started ironically by a government headed by a woman, Margaret Thatcher.

I’m baffled by the utter naivety of this movement or alternatively they are not naive but misogynistic.

Any woman that has lived in the world as an attractive young woman will know what many men are like.and how they respond to you. It’s incessant, wearing and can be frightening. We need clear unambiguous single sex spaces to protect us from men’s overbearing obsessive sexuality.

This has been understood and accepted for hundreds of years. Nothing has changed to render the separation unnecessary.

The one time I used the Changing Village at our local leisure centre, I realised that they'd put bars over the top of the cubicles. I wonder why they had to do that...?

The changing areas for the gym are single sex. It's only the swimming pool that has the Changing Village set-up.

While I was in the Changing Village, there were repeated calls of "I can seeee you!" It turned out that the caller was a learning disabled adult male. He was probably harmless, but I could see that the calls would alarm some women and girls.

When I first joined the leisure centre, the young man on reception seemed to make a point of emphasising that only the gym changing area and showers were single sex. I suspect that there might have been issues.

While I was there, I was only aware of the incident I mentioned above plus some other young men doing a lot of swearing. (Swearing is clamped down on in the gym areas; the attendants in the swimming pool area didn't seem to be as confident as those in the gym.)

I mention the swearing because there were groups of mothers with young children there at the time.

I came here to start a thread on this and OP beat me. I read it on here: Mixed-gender changing rooms becoming a 'magnet' for sexual predators, according to new report | LBC

It is not news to any normal person with an ounce of basic common sense. If you have males in where women and girls are getting changed, well, DUH! We all know what will happen. It's the reason why we segregate sex.

Such a shame that WRN dont have some sort of section on the home page of their web site to show they have a new report.

If I hadn't seen this thread (as I dont read the Telegraph) would never have known about it.

And had to dig through to find it.

Anyhow, for anyone interested this is the actual report!

https://017ee2dd-4ea6-4d7f-869c-a043485bcc87.filesusr.com/ugd/a86851_84e4785fdf1b4c65afa177a0536de74c.pdf

It's good that the issue is getting some publicity. Many people seem to be in favour of mixed changing areas/toilets, with separate cubicles, with or without gaps, their reasoning being, "There is one at my gym and there has never been a problem." (There probably has, they just haven't told you).

Dunno. What are you doing? Personally I suggest we start by NOT increasing the existing risks by giving men easier access to female changing rooms. What do you think?

One could say that about every single rape in the UK. What's your point? Does one have to have a plan to stop all 70,000 or do you mean there's a minimum below which we needn't concern ourselves? How many is that?

So in that posters view 16 rapes is legitimate collateral damage to make some men feel happy and validated in their delusion that they are women? Got it 🙄🙄🙄🙄

These things are under reported so it's likely a lot more than that

Assuming families want to change together, of course. Not everyone does. And does a teenage girl want to change in the same cubicle as her father or brother?

The Sarah Everard inquiry also said we need to look at designing safer public spaces for women to prevent assaults.

Sometimes when I'm in a public space or situation, I think about how I would design it better to be safer for women (and people who are vulnerable for some reason). I struggle because I really do not like the prevalence of CCTV, but I understand that it can make certain locations safer.

(I know there can't be CCTV in changing rooms and toilets though)

Doubt it.

Given that the Sarah Everard inquiry said that we have no idea about the location of sexual assaults in public places because the police don’t collate data like that, what should we do about it? Dedicate more resources so it’s not up to WRN to do the legwork for what is commonsense.

The Sarah Everard inquiry also said we need to look at designing safer public spaces for women to prevent assaults.
What are the conditions needed for an assault? Privacy? Legitimate accessibility for a man? A woman cornered in a vulnerable situation?

Perhaps look at the components needed for an assault and try and reduce them. Also commonsense.