Apparently there has only been one single complaint to English Councils about single sex spaces in 2025

Oh dear. What is it about the end of exams that brings out the baby edgelords so confident in their “logic” and so incapable of realising just how ignorant and lacking in life experience they are. Still, the attempts at shaming women are nothing if not unintentionally hilarious.

DH was a SAHD and can sympathise with the weird liminal space fathers can inhabit. He would comment that when he took DD to playgrounds he would get one of 2 reactions. Either excessive approval for managing basic parenting tasks or “pervert”. At the rare toddler and parent group he attended he would find himself, because his profession is medical adjacent, being included in some conversations that made him uncomfortable. He made a LOT of tea in those meetings just to avoid it. In the end he discovered that a lot of pubs have play equipment in their gardens. That, apparently, is where many of the fathers hang out.

Baby clinics where I am weren’t about chat, they were basically a walk in clinic with the HV to have your baby checked and raise concerns. Anyone responsible for a baby could take their baby along - including fathers, grandparents, foster carers. Once you had spoken with the HV and had your baby weighed you left. Sometimes there was a wait, sometimes not.

However it would be proportional and legitimate to have mother and baby groups where only women could attend. Women in many immigrant communities may not be able to attend mixed sex groups and not understand how to access help, and women often experience domestic abuse for the first time in pregnancy. Mother and baby groups run by HV are a public health intervention and must be run in a way that is most effective. For similar reasons I know HV and social work run teen mothers groups and young dads groups.

"I dont think a transwoman using the cubicle next to me in the tesco impacts me at all

And the two young girls assaulted by Katie Dolatowski?

Oh dear

They were called mum and baby groups when I was young, and they were for new mums and their babies/young children

Not all women breastfeed i'm afraid, but all people who give birth are women

Now mum and baby groups are 'inclusive' for men to join.

Similar to mumsnet - where I have to speak to men who spend their time on a website originally aimed at women - but has now been made more 'inclusive'

I dont think a transwoman using the cubicle next to me in the tesco impacts me at all - men in places where women should be able to relax, does impact me.

I'll leave it there as i dont need men 💐 telling me how i should feel about toilets, when theyre only too happy to join mumsnet and join new mothers at groups which used to be just for women.

I don’t know how many people fall ill and rush to enter a baby clinic but I do know ill people rush to the toilet. There are so many things that go on in the toilet space and provision needs to be kept as a single sex environment as much as possible, for health and safety. Again, it’s such a vulnerable space it’s got its own section in the Sexual Offences Act.

The two spaces are not comparable.

There were two recent absolutely horrendous cases of male nursery workers abusing babies. It wasn’t in a baby clinic.

It doesn't matter kwikfitt, if toilets don't worry or concern you. You are not the arbiter of which single sex spaces are more important; there is no sliding-scale to them. All single sex spaces that are designated for women are equally important.
You cannot consent for other women or give their rights away.
Privacy, dignity and safety.

And of course TW can use the mens' spaces because they are men.
And will almost certainly be fine

Maybe the other 19,000 complaints accidentally fell behind a table and were never found again, like so many of the responses to the original Hampstead Ponds consultation?

Apologies for not reading the thread, but it’s almost bedtime….

my youngest is 19
’clinic’ As it was called was never ever a woman only space, and never once did I think it was. You went to talk about your baby. What do you really think a man is going to do. Honestly? This really isn’t healthy

do you genuinely think men shouldn’t take their babies to get weighed??
this is absolutely ridiculous

I never saw either the baby weighing clinic or toddler groups as women's spaces in all honesty. Both of them were about the children. Either their health, or to get them out of the house. Of course I chatted to other parents, one of my closest friends is a mum I met at toddler group nearly 20 years ago.

But they weren't women's spaces.

The breastfeeding support group OTOH was.

From protecting women to shaming them for disagreeing with you

🤷‍♀️

I mean both!

Spaces for mums to talk about motherhood have gone and now its inclusive for everyone

But to give a more extreme example in relation to some more extreme examples re toilets, I talked about the experience of birth

And tbh, at mum and baby/toddler groups, women talk about women's things - only they cant get too into depth due to the men being there, which is just something thats been lost for us

Thats a womens space that concerns me more really, than public toilets

By "mum and baby" groups I thought you meant parent and baby/toddler groups. You know, the kind with toys and snacks.

Turns out you meant the baby clinic run by HVs. At least that's what they were when mine were small!

What if a mum doesnt breastfeed?

When i took dc to be weighed, to discuss birth and see the nurses etc, there were men there

I cant see that as any less an erosion on a womans space than someone who externally appears to be a woman using the loo in tesco 🤷‍♀️

I'm not pissed off, Im comparing you saying mum and baby groups (which are put on by the council, its where babies are weighed, where new parents come and talk) are not to be safe spaces so that men can get involved

To complaints about toilets

Only one of those affects women more and it isnt toilets 🤷‍♀️

Transwomen dressed as women cant go and use a men's toilet.

Yes they can and they are required to do just that by law, or use a mixed-sex/universal toilet (not the accessible toilet unless they are genuinely disabled).

This is not what they want, but that's tough. It's the law.

Quite. This person on Twitter keeps posting about going in the men’s and has never had a problem. Plus there are so many men on Twitter so concerned for the safety of transwomen, I’m sure they’re be at least one around to sort out any bother.
nitter.net/rocknroller2019/status/2057511898225008828?

Just looking at this from a safety point of view on spaces.

I went to lots of toddler group. There was a dad or two that came along. The groups were in big halls.

Toilets are vulnerable spaces as they are not as many people about. Sightlines are obscured.

Edit: apologies I quoted the wrong post of yours. I meant to quote your post discussing a toilet space and a toddler group space that’s further down the post history at 08.10

Transwomen dressed as women cant go and use a men's toilet.

Of course they can, men in interesting outfits use the mens without issue. Men on stag dos in manikinis, nurses outfits etc etc. Most men won’t bat an eyelid.

If any man is worried about other blokes talking the mick out of his outfit, he can just do what women are very used to doing all our lives and modify his outfit. I suggest jeans and a jumper - then he can be dressed like a woman (that’s my outfit every day) AND no one will will be any the wiser.

Flight fight and fear reaction. It is well know the majority of women have the flight reaction: you leave the situation. That is because you learn early on from experience that to keep yourself safe you get yourself out of the situation.

So yes you leave and not report the crime. Most women don't report a rape so why do you think women would report voyeurism?

I can't relate to this forced teaming take

My breastfeeding group was obviosuly for mums and babies only

Our local toddler and parent groups were for everyone with a toddler. In my local groups there were mums, dads, adult siblings, childminders and lots of grandmothers. No way would I have been able to have a in depth conversation about, say, my reconstructed perineum during a session. It's a noisy, messy and dynamic environment and completely different to the breastfeeding groups with babies.

Even if the complaints to unitary authorities are small in number, that does not include stores without single sex changing spaces, other local authorities and public bodies, privately run sports/leisure centres and no doubt other places where single sex changing facilities (and indeed third spaces) should be provided.