Men in women’s spaces

[BrightSaturn]

Just using this to rant really…

2 times in the past month I have encountered men in women only spaces.

1. I went to a feeding room to breastfeed my daughter in a shopping centre. I walked in and there were two young women in there changing their babies and one of their boyfriends just taking up one of the only chairs just sitting there, sitting using his phone. It’s a small room with 3 chairs in. I didn’t know what to do so I thought I’ll just sit down and get ready slowly and hopefully they’ll leave. I have fed in public but this was a small room so I felt vulnerable and like he shouldn’t be there and I didn’t want to lift my top up whilst he was sitting basically opposite me so I eventually asked if he could leave the room, they looked annoyed but thankfully he did go, after she looked at him and said “it’s up to you”…
2. I went into a changing room in a shop the other day with my mum, imagine a big room with seats in the middle and curtained dividers all round the outside. My mum was only trying on cardigans so really she just needed a mirror but in the middle on a seat was a boy about 17/18 years old. His girlfriend was trying on clothes. I couldn’t believe it! It wasn’t even doors on the changing rooms, just curtains. Why he thought this was acceptable I have no idea. Again I felt vulnerable and this time I didn’t have the confidence to ask him to leave. If my mum had been actually changing I would have probably found a shop assistant but still it’s not fair that we have to ask them to leave, he should not have been there in the first place!

aibu to think women’s spaces are being invaded more and more? How can we stop this from happening?

@IAmWomanHearMeRoar1 we've already had this argument and you have been proven that this was not a big thing in the UK.

Some of us have been women in that position and still don’t see the deal when it comes to family rooms, despite being fully in favour of there being safe female spaces.

Private, women only spaces intended solely for breastfeeding are not the same as family rooms. The former is for women only, the latter is for anyone who needs the space to care for an infant. It is up to individual businesses which they choose to provide. It’s not complicated.

@disneydreaming101 Except no such thing happened. In deed, and in fact, other posters on here have backed me up. I was proven correct. Maybe you should re-read the thread and see the amount of people who said they were there, and they remember it.

Not true. A number of us have evidenced that women in the 80s and 90s onwards campaigned for both breastfeeding in public to be allowed and for specific spaces - most of which have now been amended to allow men to access. We were there.

@IAmWomanHearMeRoar1 except it was as people only said there were small areas in specific shops. Not general areas in shopping centres. The small areas in shops were not overtaken we are talking about the main areas in shopping centres

Nobody needs to loiter like a spare part in a feeding or changing room. It's a functional space, not a family gathering zone. So I'd think it was irritating and presumptuous to fill up and use the space for people who need it.

But pretending that lesbians and hetrosexual men are similar is nonsense, which I expect you know but you're asking the question to be disingenuous. It's a silly trick, really.

Again - the reasons for wanting childcare to be shared between men and women are good reasons. Just a shame that women's specific needs re breastfeeding are dumped in pursuit of this

Only you made up that rule Disney. The rest of us were discussing a range of areas.

Re-read the thread. These people also said shopping centres.

Also as I said previously, what does it matter if it's a shopping centre, an airport, a fairground, a train station. These breastfeeding place for WOMEN existed.

"Well when I worked in retail in the late 90s they absolutely were known as mother and baby rooms. They are all family rooms now. I was really familiar with the room because I worked in a children’s clothes shop and the mothers who shopped there were so delighted about it. Why do you think everyone is making this up???"

Same here. 90's, Canada. They were called Mother's Rooms. Another room was for changing, so any parent. The creep of "inclusion" which is really exclusion has brought about the relabelling as Parent rooms or Feeding rooms. But they were originally developed for the privacy of a breastfeeding mother. Why were women not asked when they were relabelled? Why didn't Trying have to lobby for a "parent" space? I know! I know! Because Mothers are just women, they can shove over can't they?

Thank you! But I'll bet you'll be told 'that doesn't count' because it's Canada, and not the UK. Like as if womens rights begins and ends in the UK.

Canada exists, and there are mothers there. Therefore it counts :)

DS (18) was at college and mentioned that on more that one occasion the female cleaner would just walk straight into the men's toilets and start wiping things down and sweeping while men were mid pee at the urinals. He actually stopped using the toilets in that building because he felt so uncomfortable about it. It seems there are also issues with women in men's spaces when they don't need to be in there 😳

In what way do you think this is in any way comparable to what is being discussed? Young women are f’d with mothers like you equating a female cleaner in a toilet to a breastfeeding mother. Completely ridiculous comparison

Your post is incredibly lesbophobia but I will answer, I would rather be naked in a room full of lesbians than expose my breasts in the presence of a single man I don't know.
During my life I will have met countless lesbians, some I will know about because they are friends and others I won't know are lesbians because they are strangers to me but not one has ever made me feel sexually objectified or threatened. I can't say the same for men, even gay men. You are projecting male behaviour onto women.

Not dramatic
You said you hope he comes across a woman wanting a few minutes of privacy to feed and starts yelling at her, telling her where to shove it
The least offensive ending to that phrase is 'arse', but I've heard many worse, nearly always pertaining to female body parts
That woman would already be feeding, aka breast out, babe in arms
You'd be happy to be on the receiving end of that? Honestly?
You'd be happy to have a bloke swear at you/your sister/best friend in those circumstances?
I don't believe you
For what it's worth, if nobody was using the feeding space and your baby genuinely, honestly would refuse her milk anywhere else, I would have no issue with it
I'm a parent, believe me, we've all had our difficulties one way or another
But to feel absolute entitlement over a private space, and in my local shopping centre, it is for breastfeeding, and suggesting that women that feel vulnerable/uncomfortable around men should just suck it up, is, in my humble opinion, selfish beyond all belief

What a lot of people seem to be missing here is that yet another women's space is being eroded in favour of men.
That's the principle of the matter.
So far women have had their private spaces removed by ..
Unisex changing rooms.
Unisex toilets.
Now this.
Have men had their spaces removed in favour of women? No!
IF there needs to be inclusiveness then there should be three spaces provided....one for women only, one for men only and one for everyone who isn't bothered.
Whether it's a changing room, a toilet or a feeding room, they're all spaces where fundamentally you're going to find women who have some part of their private parts exposed, whether it's their bum or their boobs.
That is the issue which needs addressing, not whether men should be in there, but the rights of the females privacy and dignity.

Further up thread someone said feeding space and a breastfeeding space. Surely no one disagrees with this?
So why are all arguing on here and not putting together something to petition the large shopping centres to do this?

Again with the words in my mouth. If my husband should come across some of the people on this thread shouting at him and threatening photos on the Internet, I would hope he would stand up for himself and his requirement to feed our DD in a parent and family or feeding room. That is not the same.

The ability to twist on this thread really is something else.

I've honestly had it with MN today. I'm waving goodbye to this thread now because it's like trying to play chess with a pidgeon.

FWIW, I don't, and have no reason to, oppose a female only breastfeeding space, but not at the expense of the ability of anyone feeding a child that is hungry. And if it's one or the other, then it has to be family friendly first and foremost in my opinion. Separate sex changing rooms are different and should remain so.

If a man can't give a child a bottle anywhere else but a womans space, then something is very wrong there. There is no excuse for a male being in a womans space. None whatsoever.

And if I, as a rape victim, and going have someone's pig of a husband shout, swear and abuse me just because I rightly say he shouldn't be there, then I WILL photograph the maggot. Not only because there is always another choice for him apart from the womans space, but because no decent man would ever swear at a woman half her size with a baby in her arms, breastfeeding. Any man who does that to a woman - rape victim or not, is an absolute maggot and has no business being out among society. Womens safety must always, Always, Always come first, and a mans need to use a womans space - last. The woman will always have the right to challenge a man in a womans space, he, has NO RIGHT to tell a woman in her own space to fuck off. And he WILL, pay the price if any pig ever does that to me, or to any woman I care about. It's really that simple. You don't swear at or abuse women in a womens space, especially when you have no right to be there in the first place.

It was a nice try but I think this thread is easy past the point of positivity now

Way past*

That someone would even suggest they hope their husband abuses and swears at a woman while she has a babe in arms, is disgusting. I genuinely don't believe an actual woman suggest that. No woman would ever even conceive of such an idea, let alone type it out and press send on here. Even the most virulent of TRAs would never even think something so horrible, let alone say it. We're being invested with men/incels I believe.

Isn't this in response to you photographing a man for being in the parents room and telling him to leave? If that happened to my own husband I wouldn't want him to unleash a torrent of abuse but I think I would want him to assert his right to be there!
Your whole argument hinges on the idea that parents rooms are original breastfeeding rooms which have been COLONISED which you won't be able to convince anybody here of because you have no source for it. This is all very "old man yells at cloud"

I think women are exhausted of having to make petitions for something we did and achieved decades ago, and having to it all over again because what we achieved was taken away from us. It's exhausting. And it will just be taken from us again. We petition, achieve, get our rights, but they're then taken away again. It's a never-ending battle, a cycle that repeats and repeats. It's demoralising and exhausting having to start all over again each and every time what our elder feminists achieve is removed. Time and time again. Like groundhog day. Or a treadmill that never ever ends.