Dads using female communal changing room

[Strawberrryfields]

Not sure how I feel about this so looking for opinions and whether I should do anything.

A couple of times recently I’ve been changing my child after swimming and a dad has come in to change his child in the communal female changing room. It’s after lessons so only children changing. There are communal female, communal male and a number of individual cubicles. It gets very busy at peak times so at times you may need to wait for an individual cubicle.

It feels weird to me a grown man being in there and my instinct is that he should use the private cubicles, though he is clearly there with his child helping them get ready. I also understand him not wanting to take his child into the men’s communal changing rooms with random men in there but to me, he is a random man.

Should I say something? Would you? Chances are it’s just a normal dad changing his kid but I don’t feel entirely comfortable with it but not sure if IABU?

Precisely, girls of ALL ages which could include older ones such as pre-teens and teens. At least, if he takes his daughter into the men's they're usually young enough where it won't be a problem.

While I don’t at all disagree that nobody in the women’s changing room should have to put up with a man wandering in, I’m going to try one last time because my previous posts have been pretty much ignored, probably thanks to the ridiculous derailing going on.

Paedophiles don’t limit their interest to pubescent young people. Some are specifically interested in pre-pubescent children. And they don’t limit their interest to the opposite sex. There are homosexual paedophiles, at the risk of stating the obvious. Good grief, gay men fought for decades not to be viewed as a threat to children just by virtue of their sexuality, which had been a strong prejudice previously.

When men take their kids into the men’s, they are exposed to unrelated adult men. When pubescent and teenage boys get changed in the men’s, they are exposed to unrelated adult men, and they have no parent there to protect them in the same way that the notional teenage girl mentioned by you and other posters hasn’t in the women’s.

I find it completely baffling that a poster would on the one hand be concerned about a teenage girl in the women’s if a man goes in (quite rightly), but then say that any children in the men’s would be young enough for it not to be a problem. Er, except the 8+ year old boys in there, the counterparts of the girls you’ve just mentioned.

There absolutely has to be family cubicles, and lots of them, in swimming pools, or imo they are failing in their safeguarding duties. Open communal changing rooms are abhorrent for everyone but especially children, of both sexes. Yes, in the OP, the man is going to have to take his kid into the men’s if there’s nowhere else because the starting point has to be he can’t be in the women’s, but when you think about it, especially in the context of a children’s swimming lesson, it solves very little.

I need an open communal changing room or I can’t go to any space where I am required to change.

unfortunately it is not possible to reduce risk to nothing. But we do our best. And the current split of changing spaces is the best attempt we have at present to balance the various competing rights of all the individuals involved.

absolutely there should be more family changing spaces but solely cubicles are not the answer either.

Let us humour you for a moment. The South African runner Caster Semenya, was allowed to compete in women's athletics, until very recently. Caster had a condition where they were 46 XY, 5-ARD and had internal testes and a prostate. I suppose that you would say that Caster is a woman, when the rest of us would say that Caster is male.

Just to be clear, I do not want to be accused of continuing to derail this thread. As a bloke, I do not see any scenario which excuses a man for being in women's changing rooms, none whatsoever. I would also question the motives of a man who tries to find countless, random reasons as to why they should be in women's changing rooms, particularly when they resort to insinuating that none of us can tell a man from a woman.

I don’t know what you mean by the ‘current split’. It’s not a good split in the OP, where it sounds like there are hardly any family cubicles.

Your talk of not being able to reduce risk to nothing sounds a bit like you think I’m talking about some tiny minority of outliers. I’m talking about the risk to all the children who go in both single sex, open communal areas. Limiting the sex of the adults who can go in, to women on the one hand and men on the other, does very little to reduce the risk to children imo, as I’ve explained.

In relation to your ‘not solely cubicles’, I should perhaps have said it’s abhorrent for open communal spaces to be the main or the only option.

Ot should imo be obligatory to have something similar to my local pool. Quite a few family cubicles and then, in the separate men’s and women’s, lots of cubicles in those 2 so children never have to get changed in front of unrelated adults. And dedicated group changing that groups of children go in, where adults do not enter (apart from teachers who stick their head round the door to shout at them to hurry up!).

That’s maybe possible in modern buildings but many of our local pools are in Victorian buildings with little scope to change the set up. There are the 2 communal rooms then a few cubicles and for the most part it works ok. Lesson times can obviously be an issue but there are easy ways around it and none of them involve a man going in to the ladies changing area

One of the best set ups I've seen was separate male and female changing rooms (with cubicles and a communal area). Plus there were two "Team" changing rooms, which didn't access to the normal changing rooms. During the children's lessons, these were designated as Mother&Child, and Father&Child.

This. My local pool is from the 60s or 70s and there’s no way to reconfigure it without losing changing space.

none of that current configuration makes it ok for a man to go into the ladies or a woman to go into the men’s. Or for anyone to abuse any child regardless of what theses of the individuals is.

im just not convinced that more cubicles is the safe solution you think it is. I’m thinking of a local
leisure pool with this set up where men have been convicted of using phones to record others over and under the gaps.

my pool doesn’t allow phones out and that’s policed quite effectively. And I can’t do behind a locked door so it’s my preference to be in the open space. I’m also disabled and I couldn’t manage in a cubicle space so by me going in the open changing space I’m not using the disabled space and leaving it free for someone with greater need than me.

Being the father of a daughter has some challenges. Apart from changing facilities being too often in the female toilets (resulting in awkward waiting in front of the door and asking random women for help to go in and change DD - who have been usually very understanding and supportive), there is the problem that from a certain age girls don't want to go to male changing rooms or toilets - but are still too young to go alone.

Of course this is awkward - and I have been lucky that so far, mothers have always been understanding. But there is no easy solution.

(Although being the only father on a playground already seems to trigger some women - to the extent that they want to 'protect' the daughter.)

Calling the father "paedo" does not only betray ignorance (why would someone who is paedophile be interested in adult women?) - but also a complete lack of empathy. What do you think the impact will be on the girl if her father is chased out of the changing room by a mob of angry women, who accuse him of rather terrible crimes? And it's not only that: the other children will witness this as well and spread the news.

I completely understand why this makes you uncomfortable, and it would have been more appropriate for the father to find a different solution - but accusing a man of being a paedophile simply because of their very presence might not be the best idea.

FWIW - this was my contribution that resulted in discussions that became derailing. I'm sorry - I should have exercised better self-control.

Yes I said something when this happened to me and my DD (dad was fine about it). There are clear signs up too.

Oh goodness, don’t spoil the endless mansplaining on this thread with some actual old-school common sense.