your favorite female space

[LadyJaneGreyspen]

I live in japan. i would say has its own issues about many things but, what i do love about it is the female only spaces.
onsen.
You get butt naked and sit in very big often very beautiful baths the size of swimming pools and chat to your friends.
The sauna is naked too. you can take a towel if you want though!
There is no way a penis owner would be allowed anywhere near these spaces unless they are under 5.

Sounds really soppy, but it's talking to my DM in her kitchen. She's in her 80s, I'm in my 60s and in my teens we fought like cat and dog. Vicious, it was.

Over the years both of us have changed, have become better people, and I love her company. During my time in rehab, my pregnancies and the crises, from a very seriously ill DC to a dying husband, she has been my rock, and my reassurance. She totally supported my choices. She admires me and I admire her. We're so lucky.

Ahh that is lovely.

I love the fact at my gym changing rooms all the women wander around naked chatting and getting dressed after a shower. There's a lot of women over 60 and a great variety of body shapes and sizes so it's a good reminder really that the perfect body shows in all media is actually really rare. I think this is important for women to see to stop them obsessing about how their body doesn't comply with this supposed ideal.

I absolutely loved the large female bathroom in my halls at uni. We would all congregate there before going out/when we came back from nights out/with hangovers/when something crap happened to someone.

Women were in a minority in our uni college (and also on my course) and it was a breath of fresh air to use that space uninterrupted by men boys.

I learnt so much about womanhood in that room. I learnt about my body, about relationships, about friendships and sisterhood and I found out I was pregnant with my first DC in there surrounded by women I am still friends with to this day.

Busyboysmum, I know what you mean. And now I'm older I realize how lovely I was once and how wrong it is for young women to fear judgement. We should be kinder to ourselves. As well as each other.

Anywhere that doesn't have any men in it

All women swim/sauna sessions.

I attended my first by accident and I was swimming when I suddenly noticed the change. It's weird but women are really good at judging space and boundaries. When you swim in lanes they alter their speeds and don't try to steam roller past you - which I find really stressful.

Also, the sauna session is fab. It's much more chilled and talkative plus there is not that tension that you get with men eyeing you up (even when they're not oggling there is always that tension.)

Harrogate Turkish Baths on women only nights - a while ago now

Also a craft group I attend that's all women - such a delight to be making things in female only company

A social group with a specific common interest. It includes women of all ages and backgrounds. A male present would subtly change the dynamic.

OK this probably doesn't count, but I'm just comparing a couple of jobs where, because life is sexist, you get mostly female receptionists.

So I was on an all-female team (including supervisors and managers all females, I think recruitment must have had a bias or no males are interested in applying for front-of-house at this company) and I really enjoyed the job, funny, vivacious colleagues, great friendships made, a real sense of belonging and support.

I also worked front-of-house in another company in a mixed sex team, very similar set up in pretty much all other ways but there's something about men that they just need to dominate. On training days even when at the same level as you they try to 'impress' you all the time which involves telling you you're wrong and putting people down.

I think women actually thrive in all-female teams, and while the all-female receptionists company were possibly breaking equality laws by not hiring men, they must have known what they were doing because it was a great team.

As said above, I recently realised how great it is to work with an almost all female staff, certainly all managers are female. (Teaching) we had a male deputy for a couple of years and we all found his style difficult sadly down to they types of traits that men often have in the with place. Nice guy but it's definitely better since he's gone. Trying so hard not to be stereotypical here but in some ways working with colleagues who all have a level of imposter syndrome means we all seem to work better together. (He had the opposite and it became clear limited knowledge of many things that we really needed him to understand.)

*work place not with place.

Thinking back, proabably high school. When peoole hear I went to a girls' school the first thing they usually say is 'I bet it was really bitchy'. In fact it was the opposite. We never worried about make-up, shaving or any body image stuff, we were just our goofy selves.

I'm loving these posts. I want to go to a women's sauna now. I hope this thread takes off like the vagina facts one.

I love female only things. There's something about female company, especially other mothers as I have a young child, that is just more fulfilling.
We used to enjoy The Sanctuary spa in Covent Gdn. It was so calm - it was women only but has gone now

Yes Ounce I went to a girls' school
We were the goths/geeks. My school was very feminist (this was during the Thatcher years).

And in real life I don't know any men who begrudge women female-only things just like I couldn't care less if men want to have something all male

Black hairdressers/ nail bars. There are men there too, but the overwhelming vibe is female.
I love Hampstead Women’s pond and I also work at a ‘Women’s Space’ I’m the one responsible for kicking out any men 💪🏼😂

I would say at the all girls school I attended. It wasn’t until I went to university that I realised what a gift it had been. The hostility and domination of men in university tutorials and lectures came as a massive shock, as did the casual groping and dismissing of women. I enjoyed being able to be myself for those seven years.

DD is at an all girls school too and thriving. She is gifted at maths and science and the school are brilliant at bringing in role models, the last one was a skype call with a female volcanologist on the edge of an active volcano. I watch her self-confidence and ambition grow everyday.

Also as a SAHM I have a lot of immersion and interaction in female only spaces, most days the only male I speak to will be DH, all my other interactions are with women.

my favourite female space has to be my own home. just me and my teenage daughter. It's clam and relaxing - after leaving a marital home that was stressful and unhappy. I had the same thing with my mum as a teenager and I find the whole female household thing the perfect environment.

That said, I love working with men - I find it naturally works for me. I find other women difficult to work with sometimes.

The breastfeeding support group that kept me going when everything seemed to be turning to shit around me. Still got lots of ‘breastfriends’ 6 years on, and lots of the babies are in the same primary school class.

Hampstead Heath Women's Pond. The first time I went, I felt a weight lift from me that I didn't even know was there.

My favourite place closed! It was Newcastle Turkish Baths and when I first saw a topless woman in there my jaw was on the floor because I didn't think it would be allowed. Then I plucked up the courage to remove my top and the sense of constriction that goes with the size of bikini that you have to get a Bravissimmo disappeared. It was the only public place I felt safe, not constantly vigilant, and completely free from the male gaze.

Someone upthread talked about a weight lifting that you don't know is there, and that's a decent analogy. It's a stress, anxiety, sense of being watched, feeling of being hunted that disappears when you are sure that males cannot enter. I tend to to be anxious in mixed spaces but that goes completely in female spaces.

School. It wasn't perfect but I thrived in that all-female space. College was a rude shock with the domineering overentitled interrupting men but I think I'd been built up by my school years. It didn't occur to me to defer to men in any way because I knew I was clever and worth listening to. It's a myth that all-girls schools produce a load of neurotic types awkward around men, it's actually the opposite.

pachyderm

Same here.

My all-girl secondary school was a haven compared to a mixed primary school where I was beaten up and sexually harassed and assaulted, all by boys. Even most of the body-shaming I got at secondary school was boys from other schools mocking my hairy legs. Most of the girls recognised my right to decide whether to shave.

Learning in an environment free of sexual harassment and objectification, without boys talking over us in class discussions and generally occupying and dominating everything, was brilliant. Only when I left school and went to uni did I see just how much space, time, and attention men will take up in a learning environment.

YY to the previous poster who said that her single-sex school spared her from being taught to defer to men. I credit my ability to hold my own in a male-dominated workforce to never learning to yield to an interrupting man.