To ask what single sex spaces mean to you?

[Thisisouting]

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

Grow up BritBat

It means being able to feel safe when I am in a vulnerable situation i.e. knickers down using the toilet, exposing my body when getting changed.

I am also a sexual abuse survivor. I have also had to put up with countless acts of sexual harassment, intimidation and sexual violence. Funnily enough, not a single one has been carried out by a female. So while not all men are sexual predators, in my experience and those of countless women, instigators of sexual abuse, sexual violence and sexual harassment are always men.

Not especially important to me to have a women-only space in public places so long as I can have privacy if I want it. Would rather have a nice unisex loo with a lock on the door and its own basin than a cubicle in the ladies anyday. Same with swimming pool changing.
But it is important sometimes to have single sex social spaces, eg breastfeeding mums group, boys choir.

ink I agree with you.

Prisons as single (adult) sex makes sense to me.
All the other places folk have listed, not so much.

'I am wearing a dress. I do not want to get changed in front of a man/biological male/human with a penis'

This is fine when a man says it and must be strictly adhered to/pandered to. Not fine when I say it. When I say it, it can be happily ignored so the menz aren't upset.

Gender is a social construct. Male/female are biology.

Biologically female - I am happy to share changing rooms etc.

Biologically male - no. In fact, fuck off out of my female only space.

I would refuse to use changing room etc if there was a man in it.

If I 'identified' as superman and tried to jump off buildings because I could fly, I'd be rightly assessed as mentally ill and treated appropriately.

However, it is profoundly unfair that I should get to enjoy this safety while men (the men who aren't violent or harrassing) don't. Everyone deserves to be safe. So while I personally enjoy the privilege of using segregated spaces, I think they are wrong.

So you admit you want women to be subjected to male violence, just so that things are "equal"?
I mean, you know mixed spaces don't make men safer, do they? The only thing that would make men safe would be to separate them from each other.

Put them in single cells in prison, for example. Which is not done as it is considered inhuman. What solution do you propose? Should female prisoners be forced to share cells with males to provide company to the males? Should innocent women be foced to keep company to rapists and murderers, seeing as there's only very few female criminals compared to the high number of male criminals?

Think about it.

But I have to say, it takes some chuzpe to actually admit that this is what you want, that women should suffer so men are not disadvantaged.

Most transactivists are much less honest about that.

Single sex spaces means to me as a female that I'm free from violence from some men. Unfortunately, some men are bad and violent and this means that all men are tainted.

It's a horrible facet of life.

I'm ho-hum about shared lavatory spaces - except that in my experience, men can be dirty pigs in the lavatory & leave the set up, wee & skidmarks everywhere.

Where I want female-only spaces is in debates, parliament, public life etc. I just want men to STFU sometimes and listen. And for women to have women-only spaces to caucus, discuss, learn, without men interrupting, mansplaining or talking over the top.

The Green Party tried to do this, when they noticed at their Annual Conference a few years ago that mostly men spoke. So they reserved a debate for "non-men." Fuck that.

They should have had everyone in the hall to listen but told the men to shut up.

I don't disagree with lavatories & changing areas being sex-segregrated. But I think the women-only refuge spaces for getting together, talking & discussing are just as important.

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

I was involved in the women's movement from the late 70s and I am still aghast that anyone could think that feminism has done its job!!!!!

Why do you think women's earning capacity changes in their 30s? Because we haven't made the root & branch fundamental (ie RADICAL)changes needed to shift the orghanisation of society and work and education and health from a male life cycle to one that acknowledges that women have the babies .

He is what single sex spaces DO NOT mean to me:
A girly/lady space for people who like girly/lady things.

They are safe spaces for people who want to avoid both "minor" microagressions, and also actual violence

For example, I swim a lot! in the lanes men spread themselves out at the ends if they take a break, and women make them selves small and unobtrusive and stand in the very corner if they take a break. Women swim around the men. I don't think either even realise they're doing it I only notice because I swim a LOT and have done for years.

A man who grew up in a mans world who identifies as a woman wouldn't know not to do that in a woman's space - it's an unconscious thing, and we'ld be shrinking into corners and getting out of the way as usual, being the ones to step aside, not being the ones with the widest firmest stance. Which is why we need womens spaces, not just for dramatic reasons, but also to get away from the sort of micro misogyny that we're so used to we don't even notice when we share space!

Brilliantly put TinselTwins

@WeyHay

Yes, women out earn and out perform men until they decide to have children. Then they make a choice to have children. They push a babies out of their vaginas. Until a penis can do the same thing followed by a man lactating, it will be who need to make the decision to either work as hard as a man and do as well or take a career break and have their career suffer for it.

If you make an informed decision to take time off work, you can't then blame society for those who didn't take time off doing better than you. I spend quite a bit of my day telling children that they have to deal with the consequences of their decisions ...

ClarkyMcClarkason can you specify what my vagina or my DHs penis has to do with the fact that if I get a call to work from childcare saying my child needs collecting, my boss assumes I'm leaving… but if my DH gets a call to work from childcare saying our child needs collecting, his employer (and his previous one) assume that he will call me! or ask "can't your wife do it?" etc.

Or what our respective genetalia have to do with childcare/clubs always calling me first if kids need collecting, even though we list DHs number first as it's easier to answer your mobile at his job and it's also easier for him to leave his work than it is for me to leave mine..

… all these little things erode womens career progression and it has nothing to do with biology!

I like separate sex toilets because can you imagine going on a first date and then having to use the loo at the same time. That is when you want to use the mirror check bogeys in your nose/ food in your teeth or call a mate/ have an anxiety related shit. None of these are really possible if date is stood waiting his turn outside the cubicle!

Possibly the most petty superficial reason ever, i know.

Toilets and the womens institute. I don't attend the latter.

Although I haven't had the horrible experiences of some on here.

Nothing, other than privacy (bathrooms)

@Spikeyball I think your experience is really important here:

Single sex ( and no alternative- which still happens more often than people think) is restrictive when I have my disabled older son with me

I think this is why, in addition to single sex spaces, we really need unisex spaces. Not instead of, in addition to. I'm female, I know what it's like to find yourself in a horrible unisex toilet with creepy men hanging about (in Barcelona) so I think single sex is massively important. But extra unisex spaces would make life so much easier for people like you and your son. My friend's 14 year old son is severely autistic and non-verbal and she struggles with this. And I have no interest in making people who identify as trans or non-binary feel uncomfortable.

And I have no interest in making people who identify as trans or non-binary feel uncomfortable.

You have been odd sort of human to actually want to make someone feel uncomfortable.

And yes the third option is my choice too. For all the reasons you stated.

Unfortunately asking for a third option is transphobic. Because transactivists don't want an option for themselves, they want the female toilets. Expressly. Because they are women.

Otherwise we could wrap this whole thing up in half an hour.

I like it beepbeep

Shallow but true

That's a very heteronormative perspective @BeepBeepMOVE

agent

I agree

Male, female and sex neutral

I reckon the sex neutral would be packed

Heteronormative

Hark at serf with her big words

Not important, and toilets and gym showers are the only ones I use. In the past as single mother of DS, concerns having to send him to another space alone.

Not a clue what that means serf but I'll take the wink as a positive