Can I ask if you be happy with mixed sexed changing rooms

[Hopenothate]

Just that really not loos but changing rooms
Gyms swimming pools
Keep in mind many changing rooms have no cubicles or if they do they simply have curtains like this images.app.goo.gl/H6pdSPuXJiUqjs817

I though I was fine even in favour of changing villages - have DS as well a DDs- till I encountered a really badly designed one huge gaps everywhere.

Regulars were using male/female toilets to change in - turns out there was a well known issue with voyeurism incidents. All the kids hated that place and asked not use that pool again.

I wouldn’t use a changing room with no cubicles that was mixed sex and I’m not keen on curtains.

I had an incident pre my own kids with someone’s “cute” child playing with the curtains and opening mine so I ended up in my bra in front of entire shop – I will if I really need to use changing room have a look ones away down corridors I might use though prefer a lockable door – though these days on-line shopping is just as easy.

Floor to ceiling with solid lockable door? No issue with it at all

That was previous experience of changing villages - they also tended to be visible to pool staff.

Then encounter one with huge gaps between the walls, low partitions and really high doors.

So I think design and layout plays a huge role in how good they are and how safe they feel.

The trouble is, it rarely seems to be floor-to-ceiling cubicle walls, especially in public facilities. That's more expensive to put up and has some logistical issues, e.g. in sports centres where the ceiling is very high or open drainage culverts (is that the word?) run along the floor.

A man was prosecuted in my area recently for installing hidden cameras in his female employees' and female customers' bathroom. Other incidents of him stalking and covertly filming young girls changing (in cubicles) at the local swimming pool were also taken into account. It's amazing how commonplace these stories are. They certainly don't make headlines, sometimes even in local papers.

When I was younger, I would've thought it was terribly prudish and uptight to insist on adequately separated spaces. Let's all celebrate our bodies and be cool! Now I realise that male voyeurism, and inappropriate or exhibitionist behaviour, is not a little one-off issue or something trivial because, hey, nobody really got hurt. I can't imagine DH or any of my male friends/family ever getting a kick out of this behaviour, but I've been on the receiving end of it sufficient times to understand that it's not the rarity some people seem to believe.

The option of adequately separated spaces can never eradicate the problem (as the toilet camera examples show), but it can limit opportunities and gives everyone the sense that we're taking the problem of women's privacy and dignity and protection seriously instead of laughing it off as just a few pervy blokes and peeping toms.

No, I wouldn't.

I used a mix sex changing facility yesterday when I went swimming for the first time at the pool now local to me since moving. It had unisex cubicles for changing in, unisex toilets, an open showering area and then unisex showers inside cubicles. The cubicles had doors, they weren’t floor to ceiling. My previous pool had single sex communal changing facilities.

I can understand why it might be uncomfortable for some of either sex to utilise unisex facilities but I do feel that with the normalisation of them, there is not much to worry about.

I was taken aback for a second when i entered but honestly everyone was just minding their own business, getting changed and going about their lives. So I did the same and will have no problem using it again in the future.

No

In all of my local pools it is communal changing areas, locked cubicles, single sex toilets and showers facilities vary. They don't bother me,

In places like gyms and swimming pools, if they had actually locable cubicles for changing in, not actual communal changes areas, then it doesn't bother me. I'm used to going swimming with the kids and using family communal areas so as long as we have somewhere private to actually change it's fine with me.

In somewhere like a shop, I don't really have a problem with mixed changing rooms, but would prefer locable doors. I'd feel a lot less comfortable with a curtain. I totally understand people not being comfortable with that at all tho. If it was somewhere were I was going to be showering and properly naked as well (as opposed to just quickly trying something on), I would not be happy with curtain changing as it doesn't feel in any way secure

Here a brave sensible 12-year-old girl explains her position with regards to changing at school alongside fellow male pupils.

Being a mere female of course her words have no resonance and the school board votes against her

In the case of floor to ceiling cubicles with lockable doors, no problem. But I don't consider those mixed sex so much as what they really are, which is individual private changing rooms.

Geniunely mixed sex open changing rooms, cubicles that have gaps or curtains or don't lock, then absolutely no way. I wouldn't feel safe and I'd feel deeply uncomfortable.