Gym changing rooms - hypothetical question

[chocolatesaltyballs22]

So you're getting changed in the ladies changing room at the gym (no private cubicles, all open plan) and a woman walks in with an older teen boy. Would you point out to them that this is the ladies changing room? Or would you just ignore them and get changed.

The problem is some girls will have a “boys” haircut and wear “boys” clothes and not have boobs. Heck some women would meet that category, inc some of my friends in their 40s.

That isn't really the problem. Some girls have always had short haircuts etc etc.

The problem is that the social contract for males to NOT enter female changing areas has been broken by 'self id' so now we as women can no longer trust that a boyish looking person in the female change is just gender non conforming rather than actually being male.

I'd be raging too, if a teenage boy came in. Not appropriate!!!

I was answering what the OP was saying about why she thought it was a boy.

I do totally agree with you that the whole trans issue makes it difficult to know. which is why in one of my first answers I said that the whole trans issue makes it hard to speak up, I’m less bothered about upsetting a biological man than I am about upsetting a gender non conforming girl.

20 years ago you’d just have assumed it was a “boyish” girl. And who suffers in this? Potentially gender non conforming biological girls as well as women who are unsure and feel on edge.

It honestly never occurred to me that it might be a girl. Or I wouldn't have said anything. I was a bit like wtf, are none of these other 50 something women who are getting changed not in the slightest bit bothered that there's a boy in here? Surely I can't be the only one who was uncomfortable. Also they were in there for bloody AGES just stood there chatting like they had all the time in the world. So there was no avoiding having to get changed in front of him.

That’s right.

What’s that got to do with a teenage lesbian?

I think you did the right thing to ask there and then, OP.

😱

I don't understand this about short hair meaning that you must be male. When I was a girl and later a teenager (so 50s, 60s) most women and girls had short hair, some very short e.g. what is called a 'pixie' cut. By the time I was 21 a lot of men had very, very long hair, just like the women of the same age. In the 80s from a photo of us, you would not be able to tell my younger brother and me apart (could have done Sebastian and Viola/Claudio) because we had identical curling hair. Short hair /long hair has nothing to do with sex and for most of history, men have had longish and then very long hair.

I absolutely would have said something - and I wouldn't have taken off my towel until i waited to see if said grandchild was physically male of female (and I don't give a toss who this would offend) either.

My sister has short hair in the 1960s. She was forever telling people that she was a little girl and not a boy.

I would have used a cubicle as I would have felt a bit uncomfortable but I’m not really sure why as I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be looking at me

My gym doesn’t allow under 16s in the members changing rooms (just the swimming ones with cubicles) so that mostly solves the issue of random ‘children’ of the oposite sex.

Used to be a nightmare at my old gym. Anyone over 8 was supposed to use the gender appropriate changing room (yes, it was gender - DH was the manager, there was a whole thing from Virgin Active head office) but yummy mummies were adamant that their ‘little’ boys needed help 🙄

If they phrase it like that - using 'gender' instead of 'sex' - then it's utterly meaningless.

Most trans people will firmly believe that they were born with the 'gender' that they now identify as - whatever they perceive gender to mean - and many will assert that they were just originally wrongly 'assigned' based on external anatomy.

With all of the widespread 'transwomen are women' ideology, you've no idea whether the older woman was notifying you that her grandchild was indeed a biological female - who maybe looked/presented ambiguously - or whether it was indeed a boy who is of the belief that he is now a girl and his gran is 'affirming' that belief by referring to him as her 'granddaughter'.

I once had a DAD walk into a girls' changing room to change his 3 year old daughter. I was the only one to raise my voice. Felt a bit like you did - didn't it bother ANYONE - that this make was sitting looking at teenage girls getting changed in an open plan room? He came back the following week 'to dry her hair at the hair dryer' - I was furious! He called me crazy! Thankfully this time another woman yelled louder than him "you are crazy". Took it up with the school and the swim school and noticed went up to stick to the adult gender rather than the child's + the 8year rule.

It was mental to have to shout at a grown man to leave a woman's changing room; I feel totally protective and furious for the young girls put in a vulnerable position by these idiots!