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?

Fucking hell. And if a man wants or needs to change their baby's nappy?

Only the largest of facilities has multiple changing options.

A feeding room is for feeding your baby. Bottle or breastfed. If it weee called a breastfeeding room then fair enough. But a feeding room can’t exclude bottle fed babies.

Bottle feeding doesn’t involving getting your boobs out does it though. That’s what the ‘only’ applies to here I think. Unreal you are more concerned about whether someone thinks breast feeding is preferable to bottle feeding than men barging in to changing rooms and places where women are exposed.

No, that was not my intention, that is you deliberately putting a spin on it.

The 'parent' room (as the Mothers Rooms are now being rebadged as) is for breastfeeding women. Women should not be forced to get their tits out in public, or in the cold, simply because a man has no respect for boundaries and cannot find a quiet spot in a library or somewhere. There is absolutely no justification for a male to use the facility (I do make an exception for changing a nappy if he has no where else to go, but wait outside until the mother has finished breastfeeding if there is a woman in there). Womens rights, dignity and safety absolutely 100% must come FIRST. I am sorry you think a bottle-feeding male has the same rights as a breastfeeding woman to be in that area. They absolutely do not.

Is it just me that finds the idea of a combined feeding room and changing room a bit 🤮
Adults wouldn’t eat in a toilet. so, why would you want to sit in a room full of dirty nappies, contaminated surfaces and feed a baby. Especially if there is someone next to you in the middle of changing the baby and wiping down dirty bottoms etc. hardly hygienic.

what really pisses me off is shops etc thinking this is acceptable.

a nursing room should be just that, women only, a few chairs - or even one chair. BUT better still make an area within the shop/restaurant that is discreet and shielded from onlookers but still part of the normal area and put up a nice sign saying the area is preferential space for nursing mums

then put baby changing facilities in both single sexed toilets as there should be, not just womens.

so, in that sense I don’t know why you were even nursing your child in there. I’d certainly feel much safer being in public than in a small room with no lock and men wandering in. Go somewhere where it’s appropriate for you and babe to eat. Learn to feed without having to expose yourself in a way you find uncomfortable or just say to yourself “fuck them” and get on with it. Or ask a shop or whatever for a chair in a quiet corner to nurse in an emergency. I did that a few times and found women staff are usually very helpful when faced when squalling baby.

Why would anyone who is bottle feeding want to go to a feeding room @Overthebow?

Well if you would hate the idea of him making other mothers uncomfortable, why was he there? Those rooms exist for women who are NOT comfortable feeding in public. Women from some communities are culturally prohibited from breast feeding in front of men.

It doesn’t matter how ‘supportive’ your boyfriend proudly tells himself he is, if he genuinely WAS supportive he would have respected other mothers enough not to enter that space.

Those of you saying that men are entitled to be in feeding rooms because their parent rooms remind me of a depressing thread a few years ago. Whereby in an antenatal clinic a heavily pregnant OP had to stand for 20 minutes because all chairs were occupied and some by men.

Technically those chairs are for anyone to sit on. But the decent thing would be to be respectful of the people who need them most. Same goes for a feeding room. There is never a need for a man to be in there although technically we can be. I just think there are some seriously inconsiderate and selfish people and sadly some of them have kids.

If you’re in a busy shopping centre where the options are cafes where you have to buy something or a busy bench with no table and no other places where you can sit down in calm with proper surfaces to sort the bottles out ready for a feed then a feeding room is the most logical place to go and feed your baby. Where else would you suggest?

See my post I’ve done just now. Men can go in if they want but a decent man wouldn’t even if it is a ‘parents’ room (it’s not)

I think if a man was actively engaged in changing or feeding a baby in one of these rooms then far fewer women would feel uncomfortable (though I accept some still would). But in the ops scenario, or the one on P1 where a poster said her husband was there for "support" then I don't think there's really any need. There's a massive difference between actually doing a feed or change and just sitting there on a phone while the mum does the task
Agreed, though I'd imagine the men who are hands on and do their fair share of child care are probably also then men who would not want to make a breastfeeding mother feel uncomfortable, so wouldn't hang around in a feeding room sitting on their phones.

If I'm remembering correctly the parent rooms DH and I used had side areas for women to nurse and the bottle station was against the other wall, so it was totally possible for a parent (male or female) to prep a bottle/feed a baby without a man chilling close to a nursing mother.

@Blackandwhites

Agreed. What if the man had taken a baby out to the shops, the baby needed fed, and he had formula to do so. He ought to be allowed in the baby feeding area, no?

You're being far too literal. It's obvious that there's a room dedicated to baby feeding to provide a private space for breastfeeding.

A man (or woman) feeding a baby with a bottle no more needs a special room to do that than he does if he stops for a takeaway coffee. He finds one of the many benches and feeds the baby there!

As an aside - my youngest is 6 so it’s been ages since I BF in public and I think I used a feeding room once with his older sister maybe 10 years ago, and then decided to just feed whoever I liked. I’m pretty sure it was a M&S room and really lovely with a lockable door and chair and it wasn’t a room to change nappies in.

where the fuck thinks it’s acceptable to feed a child their lunch behind a curtain Whilst nappies are being changed a few feet away? That is grim and totally unacceptable. I wouldn’t eat my sandwich behind a curtain in a baby changing room, I wouldn’t expect a baby to tolerate it either

Men feed and change babies in feeding rooms.

A man on a seat outside the changing room giving his opinion on his girlfriend's outfit is perfectly acceptable

Do you want woman only buses and workplaces ?

Women from some communities are culturally prohibited from breast feeding in front of men.

This is a very good point! It means we are excluding women from certain ethnicities and religions from participating in society, all because of male entitlement. But do these men (and their enablers) stop and think of that angle? Of course not.

I'd absolutely love women only buses and trains.

A man feeding formula. Needs a space where he can sit , put the bags down and feed and change his baby of course a feeding rooms is for him too.

There are special boards for this?

Women are half of the human population. We are not a special interest group. Our fundamental rights are not a specialist interest for a specialist board.

The destruction of women as a definable sex based category, as a group of people free from sex based stereotypes, covers all aspects of women’s rights, from sex based equality in terms of work and opportunity, women’s representation in public life, education, health, research, public policy making, sport, protection from sexual violence, recovery and from sexual violence, dignity, safeguarding, relationships and boundaries, and more. So that’s why it keeps ‘popping up’ outside ‘specialist boards’.

Part of the reason, imo, this whole mess happened is because women are not seen as quite as equal as men, and so are rights, and their importance to us, were never really understood, never really seen as important, and so easy to remove. And then to be told we need to be sidelined in our discussion of this.

It's a bottle! It's should already have been made up there is nothing to do with it, and these feeding rooms generally don't have anywhere to even rest on a flat surface, apart from the fold out changing tray, so you want to prepare a bottle on the surface babies bums are changed on? So that point doesn't wash.

Fucking hell, this place.
Of course a man shouldn't have been in a female changing room. There is no argument about that surely.

And a breastfeeding woman needs to use the space more than a bloke on his phone. A decent man would have left as soon as a woman came in to use the room.

I don't see the issue. Shut the curtains or just get on with feeding. Personally, I've never bothered with feeding rooms and just got on with it in a cafe or wherever. Women need to grow a pair and stop playing the victim card all the time. I guarantee most men are more embarrassed than you are when they inadvertently catch a glimpse of your skin.