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.

Well there we have it.
Women should leave womens facilities when men enter because its the women's fault at feeling uncomfortable.

Ffs and we wonder why violence against women is so high and excepted.

I think the gym ought to have been aware and said something to you. For example like when a male cleaner is in attendance. They should have known and said a man was in the ladies for X reason and are you comfortable sharing nor would you prefer to wait. If there is a genuine need, such as a hoist and the one in the gents being broken then its easy to explain the problem and solution. Whether you think that's reasonable and he ought to have been turned away instead of using the one in the ladies is another matter. But they should know, warn you and offer a resolution.

Using @ in every post is unnecessary when I'm on the thread.

You clearly have no understanding of risk assessment. You keep saying the numbers are tiny but you have not addressed consequence/outcome. If an action is deemed to have a low probability but catastrophic consequence then it's usually considered best practice to avoid/prevent that action altogether. If you cannot adequately mitigate against high likelihood or catastrophic outcome then you need to find a lower risk strategy. Given that my questions related to consequence which is an essential element of risk assessment I'm not sure how you concluded they had no value. I can see how you might find them inconvenient but that is not the same thing.

A tiny minority of aggressive activists may have cowed many into compliance with allowing men into women's spaces for the time being but as soon as businesses and organisations start getting sued (and they will) for not providing the safest facilities possible then things will start to change. Single sex spaces are lawful, failure to provide them at the expense of users safety will leave businesses without a leg to stand on and when a few have been sued insurance companies will start refusing to cover the liability of mixed sex facilities.

Yes but not at the expense of women.

Everyone equally should feel safe. Everyone equally should not make others feel unsafe.

The female carer should have got changed and walked through to poolside. The male carer could then send out the changed disabled people as and when they're ready to meet her OR ask half of his group to wait with her and the other half to get changed, then swap the groups.

There was no need to make any women feel uncomfortable.

I was sexually assaulted as a 14 year old by a man with downs syndrome. It wasn't his fault, but that doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic to deal with.

You are right that this is an issue with the gym. Men and women have a right to single sex changing facilities, but disabled people also have a right to appropriate facilities and that includes cater support. If the gym only has disabled facilities within the single sex changing rooms that is a problem, because just as women have a right not to have a man use their single sex changing rooms, the disabled man has the right to access an accessible changing room with his carer, regardless of the carer’s sex. The men using the men’s changing room also have the right to single sex facilities so having the disabled man and his carer use the disabled facilities in the mens area (assuming they exist) isn’t a workable solution.

I think it is worth complaining to the gym about the situation, not because I think the disabled man or his carer did anything wrong in the circumstances considering they have a right to an accessible changing room, but because I think the gym clearly aren’t providing adequate facilities. It is certainly not an unusual situation to have a disabled person supported by a carer of a different sex so this is likely to be an issue which could come up again.

And men are the reason for the violence against other men.

Trans women aren’t women.

People with penises should not be in women’s safe spaces.

I’m out. I can’t be bothered to argue with people like you.

Data to prove that assertion please.

I think you’ll find that it is just as low, in those other situations. The problem is that you bandying around a term you don’t understand.

statistical significance is a methodology for assessing the likelihood of a specified hypothesis being true within a known and discrete data set. You can’t use it for risk assessment of complex, real-life scenarios. As you would know, if you actually understand statistics or risk.

Correct. It’s really as simple as that.

Similar to ciao?....🤨

It didn’t feel laughable or insignificant when it happened to me, but thanks for letting me know it was.

For all of those saying the carers should have swapped, it might not be that simple. I teach in a school for children with special needs and some of our children have specific care needs which means only staff trained in particular medical or behaviour interventions are able to work with them. The man may have had a condition such as epilepsy which required him to be supported by a person trained in administering his rescue meds and this woman may have been the only carer with that level of training. The risk assessments at my school do not allow us to put untrained staff with students who have specific training outlined in their care plans even just for 5 minutes so could potentially be in a situation like this where it wasn’t possible to swap the staff around.

The man has a right to accessible changing facilities and support from a carer and the onus is on the gym to ensure these facilities exist. It is an oversight from the gym to only place accessible changing facilities within the single sex changing rooms because it is not uncommon for disabled people to be supported by a carer of another sex. Some disabled people require 2 or more carers to support at a time and at times they could have the support of both a man and a woman which could make the situation even more complicated. The gym do need to sort this issue out because sex and disability are both protected characteristics meaning both have an equal right to suitable changing facilities.

There will be a reason for this, hardly the same as a random man coming in and just deciding to change in there

But it is exactly Like a random man coming in and just deciding to change in there.

A man was in the womens changing room. That is not ok.

Why didn't the female carer go into the male
Changing rooms?

Surely all those people saying it's ok for the man to be in the womens changing room then the opposite is also ok. So therefore it would be perfectly acceptable for the female carer to go into the male changing rooms.

But she may not feel comfortable doing that

It does highlight the fact that there should probably be spaces available for mixed sex changing areas for carers. This would also help parents of disabled children who are too old to be allowed in the opposite sex changing room.

If the rule was that trans women were not allowed in, and if you are correct that TW are no threat, then this wouldn’t be needed, would it? They’d stay out.