Man in women’s changing rooms (NOT trans)

[DelisButAlsoCrime]

I genuinely don’t know if I am being unreasonable here or not.

I went swimming with DS today, and arriving at the same time of us was a mini bus with 8 adults - 7 men, one woman. It was fairly obvious that most of the males were disabled, not quite as severe as Down’s Syndrome but similar. The woman and one of the men were caring for them. All but one of the men went with the male carer to the men’s changing room, but the female and one of the men went, just ahead of me, into the female dressing room. The woman actually held the door open for me but I kind of did a double take and held back. I thought about going to reception and asking them but decided not to. When I went in they had gone into one of the private cubicles. However, they did come out before I was ready and the man came around the corner and was looking quite obviously into the open changing spaces.

AIBU to be uncomfortable with this? I don’t know if there is a disabled changing room at my gym because this would be the obvious answer if he needed to be specifically with the female carer.

@Trying20

Mumsnet is "the rest of the world".

She meant WOMEN are the rest of the world.

This.

Women campaigned long and hard for single sex women only spaces. And that hard and difficult work is something that TRAs now want to stand on the shoulders of for their benefit.

If they put the same time and effort into prioritising campaigning for third spaces, they could have made huge strides already.

Is it a gay thing? It's a gay thing, isn't it? Bloody knew it.

What the fuck?

Are you just imagining different words to those that other people are saying

Absolutely bizarre. You must be on a wind up.

Oh and FYI some of us are lesbians or bi.

Suggestions of homophobia when nothing anywhere close to it has happened are idiotic.

Was genuinely starting to get concerned that I was some kind of alien.

You are not an alien you are a man. The thing you are failing or refusing to understand is that being able to distinguish between men and women is essentially a survival skill for women. You may be at greater risk of male violence but you are likely to be more equally matched in terms of size, strength and speed than the average women. We have to develop an early warning system so we can take evasive action before direct confrontation becomes inevitable. We can tell the sexes apart and we recognise subtle but threatening behaviour, we develop appeasement skills to de-escalate aggressive male behaviour because we have to.

Any man with an ounce of empathy would be appalled at the things we have to do to stay safe and yet here you are dismissing the words of multiple women because it doesn't suit whatever agenda it is you are pushing. Why aren't you ashamed about not taking women seriously?

Men in mens changing rooms
Women in woman's changing rooms
Same facilities need to be in both

We ‘just know’ tens of thousands of things correctly. We don’t need independent verification to tell a cat from a dog, a baby from an adult, a car from a bike - or a man from a woman.

Again, I’m not interested in you, but in the lurkers. This man wants you to believe that you cannot tell a man from a woman. Do you think that’s true? If not, what do you think his motives are so pretending that it is? Why is he spending so much energy, trying to convince women that they can’t tell a man when they see one?

@Trying20 can you never tell the difference between men and women without them stripping naked? If so I suggest you book an appointment at Specsavers because if you are looking at a picture of Jason Momoa and thinking we'll that might be a woman or looking at a picture of Halle Berry and thinking hmm could be a bloke than you probably need an up to date eye test. The vast majority of people can correctly judge the sex (not gender) of the vast majority of people on sight based on a combination of a number factors - not lipstick and heels but face shape (jaw line, brow ridges etc), waist to hip ratio, hand/foot size, muscle size/shape, pelvic angle etc etc there are load are elements that may not be obvious on their own but when put together allow us to distinguish between men and women.

@Trying20

I was trying (clearly unsuccessfully) to lighten the mood a bit with a joke.

Again though, this just shows you don't get the importance of this topic.

Discussion about this isn't a place for humour.

On this thread, sexual assault victims have been openly mocked and called attention seekers.

People who find being in a vulnerable position (changing room, toilet) with someone with a male body uncomfortable, triggering and for some frightening.

This isn't funny to us. The conversion isn't a place for humour.

This is serious to us.

"Oh not in my area, but it's not our problem to fix."
To be strictly fair, @Trying20 what is actually said is that men who believe they have a right to access women's spaces are not women's problem to solve.
If these men are not safe in men's spaces, then men are the problem, not the women who won't budge over and make room for them.

How do / did you approach potential partners? You're presumably not interested in women; how do you ensure you don't accidentally find yourself with a woman instead of a man if you can't tell the difference until their clothes are off?
The potential for awkwardness seems almost overwhelming.

@Trying20

I know not everyone has to fight every cause, but sometimes, and as I identified earlier in this thread - it's like they can't win. If there's no third space where do they go?

Do you know how hard women had to fight for single sex public toilets? See below. Men crashed into model toilets on purpose in protest at the idea.

So women fought long and hard against a system that was against them, who wanted them at home and not in public where they had access to facilities.

Why did women have to fight so hard against what men want, but you think trans women for example shouldn't campaign for third spaces?

Why should male bodied people stand on the backs of women to many women's detriment, making many women uncomfortable and frightened in the process and also means Muslim women for example cannot use public single sex facilities anymore?

If a necessary service isn't available to a group of people and there isn't a compromise that doesn't negatively affect other people, that group of people need to campaign for change.

Info on the fight women faced:

In Victorian Britain, most public toilets were designed for men. Of course, this affected women’s ability to leave the home, as women who wished to travel had to plan their route to include areas where they could relieve themselves. Thus, women never travelled much further than where family and friends resided. This is often called the ‘urinary leash’, as women could only go so far as their bladders would allow them.
This lack of access to toilets impeded women’s access to public spaces as there were no women’s toilets in the work place or anywhere else in public. This led to the formation of the Ladies Sanitary Association, organised shortly after the creation of the first public flushing toilet. The Association campaigned from the 1850s onwards, through lectures and the distribution of pamphlets on the subject. They succeeded somewhat, as a few women’s toilets opened in Britain.
Then a second group emerged called the Union of Women’s Liberal and Radical Associations, which campaigned for working class women to have public toilets in Camden. In 1898 the members wrote to The Vestry in Camden for toilet access for women in the already existing men’s toilets. However, the plans for a women’s toilet were set back by several years as men opposed the women’s toilets being situated next to the men’s.
In some cases, plans for women’s toilets were deliberately sabotaged. When a model of a women’s toilet was set up on the pavement in Camden High Street, hansom cabs (driven by men) deliberately drove into the model toilet to demonstrate that it was situated in a most inconvenient position!

I mean... I don't want to be too open about my thoughts on Jason Momoa but do we definitely know he's a man. Is there pictures? If so, where? Asking for... research purposes.

Again, jokes on a thread like this are distasteful and a really bad call.

What about the pride badges did people have an issue with?

I'd say the majority of mumsnet users are women. This issue affects every women whether they like to admit it or not. Some women claim to be find with men in their spaces but the majority aren't. And we're actually becoming less tolerant of it because of the stories of assault in these spaces in the media.

The women's. You think we can't recognise women either, however they "present"?

Tell you what, Mate, try having unwanted, threatening, often aggressive, sexual contact multiple times a day, from people who are much stronger and more violent than you, from the age of 10 (often younger) and see how fucking funny you find it.

I think my concern is though - across Mumsnet generally - there's a sort of... I don't know how to phrase it really, "distaste", "discomfort" about another group of people that are also seriously discriminated against and in a very difficult situation socially.

Sorry I don't think you've read nearly enough if that's what you think is going on.

Transwoman are male, they could not be transwomen if they were not.

Human beings fall into one of only two reproductive sex classes, there are physical differences between the sexes and the roles we play in human reproduction. Our sex tells nobody anything about us as individuals, only that we produce sperm or ova. A small number of people may not because of some kind of pathology, they are the exceptions which prove the rule.

Violent, sexually violent and other criminal activity is overwhelmingly perpetrated by males. Women are victims of criminal actions at a disproportionate rate compared to their own propensity to commit violent or criminal acts.

Therefore males are a greater threat to the safety of women than other women.
Male free spaces and services acknowledge this risk. Gender identity or expression does not alter the rate of male criminality.

Women do not care about gender identity because it is irrelevant in calculating risk. We are interested in sex because that is relevant. We are seeking to protect women rather than discriminate against another group.

Please stop prioritising men in a conversation about womens safety.

A female to male transition... I wouldn't have a problem with them in female spaces as they are female. They don't have the propensity for violence like men do.

I'd wager that women who have made the decision to transition to 'male' would be wary of using the men's spaces as they have lived experience of what it is like to be a woman.

Maybe she is this particular man's primary carer

if so, she needs to follow him to the change room for his sex. The men’s facility.