Feeling like I don’t want to use our local swimming pool

[Sunisshining3228]

Hello
I’m a lurker here. Just wanted to share something here.
I went swimming this morning at the pool in the area that we moved to not long ago. Haven’t swum for exercise for a while but used to love it when I was growing up and used to compete etc.
It was a unisex changing rooms. There were cubicles and lockers which meant a bit of privacy but the showers were two rows facing each other. Men were making good use of the showers, one older guy was giving himself a thorough soaping down but I didn’t notice any women lingering to use it. I felt pretty uncomfortable even pausing to rinse the chlorine off because it was not private. Not saying the men were out of order or anything but they were looking and I don’t want to feel looked at by a man when using a shower.
I had to go to work afterwards so needed to use the shower and wash my hair. I felt bad but told myself it was v early In the morning and I asked if I could use the disabled cubicle which has a shower. The pool attendant agreed but I felt bad for using it, I don’t have a disability.
I can kind of see why they designed the changing room this way as it would help mixed sex families and transgender people I guess, but it’s not great for women and adolescent girls. I used to train at a swimming club into my teens and was self conscious, I would have been really put off if our shower area was unisex. It has made me quite reluctant for my daughter to go in for swimming classes/clubs with a changing room like that as well to be honest.
Even drying my hair afterwards and putting on make up, opposite there was a guy drying his hair, probably innocuously looking around at the same time but it just made me want to hurry and get out of there.
I don’t know if I’ll complain cos we just moved here and this seems to be how it is here but I’ll probably re-think swimming again.
It feels like changing rooms have not been designed with women in mind unless we used the disabled cubicle.
Does that mean that being a woman who is uncomfortable about being looked at by men is a disability now?

I wouldn't like that.

We have family changing rooms, which are needed for when parents have children of a different sex or different sex siblings. We also have male and female though. I suppose you could leave your swimsuit on while you shower.

I don't want blokes anywhere near where I'm changing or showering.

kenandbarbie that’s what we had where I used to live too. Don’t want to seem precious but even without taking my swimsuit off it was uncomfortable. Facing men showering opposite while lifting arms up to wash hair or rinse body, I was just not comfortable.
In theory it should be fine but it just was not for me.

My local baths (Caledonian Road Pools lslington, ) are exactly the same, l just don’t go there anymore. Last time l showered next to a bloke with his hand in his pants washing his bits. I was furious, humiliated and embarrassed. I spoke to the people on reception and they just shrugged and admitted that everyone complains about it , both men and women.
It’s infuriating isn’t it, we deserve privacy.

My 5 local pools all have this (bar the ones in schools that sometimes open to the public out of hours). It means I only go swimming when I can go home and shower afterwards. It is especially annoying because chlorine forms a chemical bond with the skin and requires proper washing off, not just a cursory rinse. But am I going to stand there using my hands to wash soap all over my body in front of males? Hmmm. This is even before you think of how much of your skin is covered by your swimming costume and is not going to be properly rid of the chlorine.

I don‘t mind the mixed changing room with cubicles at our pool, however, I very much appreciate that the showers are sex segregated. (Having a son, I can see that this might be helpful as an additional option, but no sex segregated showers at all sounds weird. Never seen that and I have come across a number of public pools. Heck I‘m even fine with using the mixed Sauna, towel only. But showers? Nah.)

It sounds awful....

But now I think about it all the swimming locally have communal showers (even before family changing) I doubt anyone is looking at you as much as you think.

Could you find out if there are women-only sessions? It would be worth trying different times, you may have just got the resident super-soaper. I've been using the nearest pool for ten years and only ever seen the sudsy trunks-rummager once.

Ours has a mixture of open/shared showers plus some cubicles. It works ok, really, but prefer a proper shower at home. I have trained at a pool with the set up you describe, though, and I wasn't keen. Tbh most of my swimming is outdoors so I generally get changed under a huge coat behind my car, and if there are men in the group they're people I know well (plus, too busy freezing their whatsits off for anything else). You get used to being lake-whiffy and washing at home!

Most public swimming pools have communal showers, never really had an issue with it.

Our local one did this, I won't go there anymore. It was ok a few times in the summer when it was so hot it was kind of a pleasure to wear my wet swimsuit home under a dress, but no longer. The last time I went, women were changing in the ladies toilets off the main reception because the changing rooms had multiple naked men wandering around and no women at all, you couldn't get to the cubicles in the back without walking past them. And then we were told off for coming into the reception dripping with water.

I'm sure the management are happily telling all and sundry that there have been no issues at all since they went to unisex changing rooms. That's because they're not actually unisex, just monosex - male.

Ours is like this but has some showers in cubicles. It has plenty of cubicles and works very well.

(We live in an area where the population is 45% Asian as well, so I can't understand why the leisure centre has taken that step.)

Fairly standard for public swimming pools tbh. I know the three I have worked in all had this set up and we’re built this way in the 70s and 80s so it’s not a new thing at all.

You must, must, must write formal letters of complaint. Informal complaints to reception aren't going to go anywhere and are easily ignored.
If they can't change newly built unisex changing rooms immediately they can at least adopt a zero tolerance policy to men wandering around naked there aka flashing.

A friend lives in a city where they've installed this anti-drowning system in her local swimming pool but it's not been made live yet. Effectively, there are underwater cameras that monitor swimmers.

www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/cameras-at-pool-spark-concern-189780/

Her local pool has women-only sessions that are popular with women of particular cultures - and they've negotiated with the pool that the only lifeguards and attendants present during those sessions are female. Curtains are drawn round the pool during the women-only sessions to ensure that no outside eyes can see the women.

As yet - there have been no guarantees about the sex of whoever will monitor the underwater cameras (think offsite CCTV system with a direct link to alert people on site to the fact an algorithm is warning that someone might be drowning).

For reasons that are, as yet, unclear, recordings will be retained for 7 days - with no information as to who has access to them.

It's a cost-saving measure (tho' I'm not too sure of the evidence-base for this or the system). Without guarantees around the sex of the person who might view the monitors or recordings, there's a set of women whose activities in public spaces will be limited even further. I don't know what they'd do with a set-up like the one OP describes.

I hate this too. I feel like I’m on show when I’m lathering myself up and rinsing off, especially when it come to washing hair and legs. It makes me feel so uncomfortable.

I wish council run gyms would go back to sex segregated changing, with a third space (large cubicles) for family changing.

I'm not so keen either after reading this in the paper recently:

www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/yorkshire-man-jailed-for-filming-teen-girls-as-they-got-undressed-in-changing-rooms-and-bathrooms-1-9451644

Our local pool is like this. The changing rooms are called a changing village. Some cubicles are family ones, some for two people, some for single. Some have showers inside. No way of knowing from the outset which are which. Only learning by opening doors lets you know.

When I take dc it’s children swim lessons, but the public swim is before. I’ve seen all sorts, and it annoys me that we have to put up with men undesssing and only separated by a cubicle wall.

I can see for families it’s good, but I think some should be female only spaces.

I use showers at the pool for a rinse and wash property when I get home, I've never seen anyone wash their genitals they are too public.

Ours has a row of 5 showers along the wall and another 5 with cubicles.
It's the same setup as center parcs etc which I've never seen anyone complain.
I've never had a proper shower in a pool, just wash my hair and hope the suds was any chlorine away.

@xiaoxiong this area has a big Asian Muslim population too! No women only sessions either

Washing is a very intimate activity, isn't it? Think about the artists who painted women (usually) bathing - it's not the fact that they are nude that makes you feel like you are interrupting, it's because washing is personal

When we go on holiday to caravan parks the swimming pool always has this arrangement. Surely it's the same as being in or round the pool with your cossie on? I wash my hair and then my body with my cossie on, quick swish round my bum, no one sees anything surely?

My local pool is like this. There are women-only sessions, that are very popular and about 80% Asian, but even these have male staff on duty and they don’t throw men out of the communal changing rooms. There is also a lot of resistance from men when they are told to leave the pool- lots of heel dragging, trying to get individual women to say they don’t mind them staying... The last time I went I arrived about 20 minutes before the start of the women’s session, and there was a group of around 15 men just standing around the edge of the pool chatting. They quite clearly didn’t have any reason to be there other than to try and intimidate staff and female customers.