To ask what single sex spaces mean to you?

[Thisisouting]

Why are single sex spaces important to you as a female?

It's means little to me

But part of being a grown up is realising this means alot to many women and respect eating that fact

Probably not so much these days, but a couple of times at school when I didn't have my PE kit and had to do the lesson in underwear it would have been better if the lessons were 'single sex spaces'

Very important to me. As many posters have said, privacy, dignity, safety.

To be honest they mean little to me. I'd prefer single cubicles for changing, open plan to the pool. A second choice would be single sex changing rooms with cubicles inside. DV shelters, prisons etc really need to be single sex though. I'm assuming this is about trans and transwomen access to female spaces. Trans women who 'pass' probably have no trouble with this and would be unnoticed in female toilets and wouldn't make anybody uncomfortable. Problem is, so few trans women do pass, it's sad for them but they do just look like men.

They mean a lot to me simply because I know they mean a lot to the safety and privacy of others as well.

I'm a abuse survivor and I hate them.
I think they set up the image of men as sexual predators and I don't think they are the way forward.
I think that unisex cubicled changing rooms, toilets, and shared family areas where men are openly seen as just a valid to be changing children for swimming or doing nappies is crucial in breaking down the divide between men and women.

Realising the difference between people on MN who fear men and feel so insecure they want segregation and fear 'the march of the trans agenda' etc vs real life where no one cares and they don't live in fear and they don't see men as rapists waiting to pounce and live happier lives for it.

Having been leered at in the emergency pregnancy monitoring ward by someone's male partner and also followed around the communal changing area of the public swimming pool by a male stranger, female only space means to me I am free to NOT BE HARASSED by males. I do not take unwanted male attention as flattering. It is abusive and demeaning and on a practical level can hinder me going about my daily life.

I wish there were female only train carriages and buses too

Realising the difference between people on MN who fear men and feel so insecure they want segregation and fear 'the march of the trans agenda' etc vs real life where no one cares and they don't live in fear and they don't see men as rapists waiting to pounce and live happier lives for it.

What's difficult about anonymous internet forums such as MN is that I read everyone's opinions as though they are all just as valid as each other but in real life (I, an insecure man-fearer, live there) there is no way I'd take these uninformed stupid opinions seriously, from people clearly lacking in any empathy or critical thinking skills.

"I wish there were female only train carriages and buses too"

This is the kind of person I imagine when thinking about what single spaces mean to me.

When I see certain posters responses, blatantly ignoring the real and reasonable concerns of women who appreciate the various sex segregated spaces in public places I am forced to conclude that these certain posters are WOMAN haters! Obviously they're not anywhere near as bad as Manhaters but it's something to think about.

Well, Clarky, I can't count the number of times I've been made to feel uncomfortable by men on public transport (I developed early, really early which perhaps didn't help). After I was assaulted in my mid-teens it only felt worse. I was hardly unique.

I wouldn't prefer female carriages and buses as they'd just be a target, they're also just unrealistic to maintain. I just don't use public transport, ever if I can help it. But why are you eye-rolling at other women who say they'd hypothetically prefer more spaces of their own? Would you do that to men who want to get away from men, as Curry asks above?

Why are women especially so nasty about this stuff? Is it the equivalent of the "cool wives" club? I mean, to put it in context, we're tolerant about a lot of justified fears.

Bitten horrifically by a dog?

You poor thing. How horrible, of course you're uncomfortable and want them kept on leads and out of certain areas so that you can live a fairly calm and peaceful life. Dogs are lovely but some do bite when they're angry or hungry or scared, or playful. There's no predicting it sometimes, and no knowing which at a quick glance which ones are completely safe. Of course you've got scars.

Raped by a man?

NOT ALL MEN YOU COWARDLY BITCH! I am SO MUCH cooler than you and I don't have any problems myself so GET OVER yourself you attention-seeker.

We aren't all paranoid, man fearing isolationists.

I got a lot of comments/ looks/ unwanted attention as a young women even though I didn't dress provocatively or go to particularly dodgy places - I tend to smile though - and over time it really can get hard to ignore. You realise that some conversation is not benign chit chat - some men want something from you. It just raises your sense of not being a normal human going about your business, somehow things become sexualised when they shouldn't be. Add to that the general feel of a place and it isn't difficult to become generally uneasy.

Where I live now is very friendly and feels very safe in all sorts of respects and I have found men in general men are less sexist eg hardware shops or buying tyres (and I don't do anything that requires changing clothes etc) but having lived in a variety of places, there can be very differences in men's attitude and treatment of women (and people's treatment of each other in general of course).

Some cities and urban areas or even rural areas, are very unfriendly and can have a general air of hostility - of course you (thank goodness) aren't going to get raped everywhere you go, but if you get nasty/ slimy comments from men, youths and gangs, builders, van drivers etc just going about your business in public, in the daytime, and there is frequent knife and drug crime, rapes, muggings, drunkeness, domestic violence, and overt prostitution, well, what woman wouldn't feel uneasy and value anywhere that felt safe.

Safety and dignity. I have always been able to opt for single sex spaces. When I have been vulnerable- maternity, counselling, it was important to me that the people around me had similar experiences or could have similar experiences to me, I did not feel I had to work hard to be understood because when you are vulnerable and in need it is often difficult to articulate what you want. I have teenage daughters and worry that although I have brought them up to always stay with their female friends when out at night and go to the toilet in pairs, using toilets which are not single sex will increase the likelihood of them being harmed (statistics of male on female violence- do not have figures to hand). Women would be less likely to use DV refuges if not single sex. When working in healthcare with women who had experienced sexual abuse it was taken for granted that intimate exams if really necessary would be done by females.

Safety.
I will never feel safe if men are allowed. In female change rooms and toilets. I don't think that all men are rapists but the ones that are have a lot of victims.
If trans people are not safe sharing bathrooms with men why would women be, or does our safety not count because we are female.

A year ago they meant refuges, toilets, changing rooms etc

Now they mean an excuse to trans-bash and men hate.

or what notoneofyou said.

Its fucking shit to have had (far too many) unpleasant and inappropriate sexual and sexist experiences and then be told you are the one who isn't tolerant. I should have said fuck off.

Maybe having experienced male violence makes me more wary so no I would not use toilets that were not single sex and I would not use a gym where I could not shower or dress in a single sex changing room. This would make my life outside my home more difficult.

So what do you think's changed skaro?

Is it that random women everywhere have become horrifically cruel and malicious overnight?

Or could it perhaps be a reaction to a new hardcore set of lobbyists who occasionally border on troll-like reasoning and provocation tactics, and even attack and exclude long-term transpeople like Curry?

doobree I agree with your analysis of different places. I spent my late teens and early twenties in London, and although I was a lesbian and never "dressed up" there probably wasn't a day go by when I didn't receive some sort of unwanted male attention. Going out running was particularly bad, and buses as someone mentioned before. Now living in a small town I ask my DD and she says there's not much harassment, I guess because people know people and there's always a risk you might tell their mum!

@notoneofyou

I agree with Skarossinkplunger and I'll tell you why I think these things have changed.

I'm likely a little older than many users here and have seen feminism achieve some great things and think I played a teeny-tiny part simply through my job(s) and not being cowed when sexism and misogyny were real issues. However, I think feminism has won and we don't need looking after and protecting or to live in fear. We are free to chose careers and, if we want, can do well in any field; we're liklier to out-earn and out perform men until our 30s. As feminism has won and it's moved from feminism being a wonderful and needed movement to something women no longer want to be associated with and is even used as an insult. As women are deserting feminism, the ones left are the more hardcore and radical who, by their very nature, want more radical things imposing and are evermore outraged by men having anything to do with their lives. MRA is an insult. Mentioning failing education for boys or male MH issues is met with 'but what about the women' type responses. The thread recently about a grandfather "invading" a bathroom to help his wife change their GC's nappy surprised even me and I've been on MN for a good few years. I'm all for ending any form of injustice but getting het up about non-issues does no one any good.

So, no, women haven't become cruel and malicious. It's just that the vast, vast majority don't believe that we're all victims. We believe that we've won and can enjoy the spoils of women who really did fight for our rights in the past. Those who look for micro-agressions, trigger warnings, toxic masculinity and 'the patriarcy' are giving the rest of us a bad name and we like to distance ourselves from it.

FWIW, this reply isn't supposed to sound rude or aggressive or patronising; just explaining my standpoint and my guess as to the reasons that feminism is being deserted by both sexes.

... You think feminism has "won"?

I mean, really?

I'll have to have a think about how to respond because I'm so that anyone would assume that.

(also not meant to be rude or patronising, honestly)

Clarky - you see, I'm older too and I don't buy that explanation. I haven't "lived my life in fear", because I made a conscious decision not to - but it was a conscious decision taken in knowledge of the facts. I didn't say to myself "male violence isn't a thing", I said "male violence exists, but I have a choice whether I let it hamper my life or I try to pretend it isn't there". So I walked around late at night, went out and generally did things. But I did so in the knowledge that 90% of violent crime and 98% of sexual crime is committed by men. I have lost count of the number of friends who have been raped. It happens, it really happens, it hasn't gone away, the world hasn't become a nicer place.

And as for feminism's work being done - well, my equal pay case is still going through the courts right now in 2017, there are parts of this country where abortion is still illegal, 38 US states still allow child marriage, "no didn't mean no" in Germany until they changed the law as recently as last summer, this country still has primogeniture for the inheritance of titles which allow the recipient to sit in the House of Lords (primogeniture laws which will, interestingly, be the one exception to the proposed legislation on self-identification for trans people - now there's an interesting sex-segregated space, I think). We have it a lot better than countries like Afghanistan or Iran or Somalia, but feminism still has work to do even here.

No I don't think that women have become malicious overnight, I think that the single
sex space agenda is now being pushed by radicals who are either transphobic or of the "all men are rapists" ilk to create hysteria and mindless sheep are jumping on the bandwagon.