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?

Then again if you approve of someone using the adapted facilitates who doesn't need them, then actually you are a way bigger part of the problem of discrimination against disabilities than I am a part of the problem of male violence....

I did not minimize the problems of people with disabilities. You minimized the 'insecurities' of women which are well founded and grounded in male pattern violence, which you choose to ignore. It is really not a novel discovery that a minority of males can perpetrate male violence so unchecked as they do, because a majority minimizes their violence and they threat they pose, which makes said majority complicit.
Try wiggling out of that one all you want, you've shown your face. Case closed.

Not being comfortable in a mixed sex changing room isn’t at all irrational, btw:

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

All the swimming pools I've used (except for the ones in hotels) have communal changing villages and no shower cubicles, with the showers just open to the poolside. I'd never really thought about it because I've fortunately never seen men acting inappropriately. There are very strict rules about swimsuits being worn, and I've never seen anyone doing any creepy hands down the speedos washing routines. And because there are no benches or mirrors etc, there is nowhere to go except into a cubicle, so thankfully no wandering around naked.

But I am very much in favour of there being separate female changing and showers as well. It's only through reading threads such as this that I have realised how many women's activities are curtailed by these communal arrangements, and it's entirely due to the inappropriate behaviour of some men.

Yeah your right I did. Because millions of men women and children use a unisex changing room without incident and without a second thought everyday.

On the other the adapted facilitates are there because disabled people cannot shower in a regular space with risk without risk injury. They may require assistance and that really isnt always dignified.

And chances are there are only one.

Now if you are so insecure by a man standing in the shower you choose to shower at home, that's just yourself you are putting out. I have no problem with that your call. Shower in a disabled shower and you are preventing access to the one shower that individual can use. You become part if a far bigger problem than unisex changing rooms.

If you become so involved with the "suppression of women" that you ignore and perpetuate the treatment of a whole far more disadvantaged section of society. I have a big problem with that.

This is a section if society that often don't even have usable toileting facilities in place and that are in fact having to campaign , fund and then campaign for their maintenance. Perhaps follow the incrediable changing places campaign to realise the extent of the issue.

No it's not ok to use disabled facilities however justifiable your insecurity is

GreenEggs - I get the entirely reasonable point you are making about disabled access to disabled facilities, but you sound an awful lot like Rapey Riley hectoring potentially traumatised women to hurry up and get over their (legitimate) fears about mixed sex facilities.

I have a sense someone will be along with an apposite Bunbury quote shortly.

Green's logic of the master is as old as humanity. Silently accept putting someone into an impossible position, and then complain about the choices they make.

deepwatersolo
How's that any different to what the OP has done by using the disabled facilities

How's that any different to what the OP has done by using the disabled facilities

You make no sense. There is a reason WHY OP felt forced to use the disabled facilities (without acutally wanting to). If you are unable to grasp why that is, it is luckily not my problem.

I have never been to a pool where there have been communal showers or changing facilities and I'm 47! I'm a member of two different borough pools in London, both of which have men's, women's and family changing rooms.

I would absolutely hate showering in front of men. Hate it. And DH would hate it too - showering in front of women I mean - and girls! How is that appropriate?

it's a bit off using the accessible changing room though isn't it?

Ok, you don't like unisex changing rooms, so don't go to that pool, use one that has sex segregated changing rooms, shower at home, but not being comfortable with the facilities available doesn't give you permission to use the faciluties for people with a disability.

What if someone had needed to use it while the OP was in there?

There's no getting away from how vile it is to call a woman who doesn't wish to shower in view of the opposite sex 'insecure'. Your concern for disabled people would ring more true if you weren't simultaneously putting forward rankly misogynistic views.

There's no getting away from how vile it is to restrict access to a disabled shower when you have no need of it. Concern for women is all very well but but not when it perpetuates disablitist views.

There's no getting away from how vile it is to restrict access to a disabled shower when you have no need of it.

She did have need of a space without penises, though - and people who do not perpetuate male violence by ignoring it understand that - and there was no other.

But probably it is my fault for posting in feminist chat.

It would probably be more appropriate to post my complaint in the disablism chat section... wait a minute that doesnt even exist. The SN section is full of people working out how they just get through the day (like "how do I change my SN child on the public loo floor?" Or "someone's in the disabled loo and we actually can't wait, which gender toilet do I as a woman take my teen SN son into without causing a riot, whilst respecting the other users and so I can wipe his bum in a bit of privacy?")

Different worlds.

Accessible changing rooms aren't meant for that though are they?

Plus she knew what the facilities were like because she had been there previously with her family, so if you need a place free from penises why would you go somewhere that only has unisex facilities?

This is the thinking that means that people park in blue badge spaces or let prams take up wheelchair spaces on buses. They think they are more justified, more deserving than the people that they were intended for.

What's done is done. I just hope that now the OP is fulky aware of the set up that she re considers and doesn't decide that, having got away with it once, that she'll do it from now on.

Plus she knew what the facilities were like because she had been there previously with her family, so if you need a place free from penises why would you go somewhere that only has unisex facilities?

Maybe they're all like that though? The last time I was in a public pool that had separate male and female changing was in the 1980s when I was at primary school. There are none within travelling distance of me that have separate changing facilities.

I just worry that we could get into the territory of 'women, stay at home if you don't like it'.

Although I do agree that lack of facilities for disabled people is a huge problem.

I would not have been keen on this as a younger person but now I have kids I am just glad of the increased space and accessibility of these areas. It also means that lifeguards of both sexes create a train of kids after a lesson and can walk them into the showers to the parents which I think is better than loads of parents lurking around the pool with poorly covered outdoor shoes. Also, I do see a lot of people with various visible disabilities and who knows how many invisible conditions, and this system is best for them.

The toilets however are disgusting at all the local pools whenever you go, not even locks on all the doors and that would only take about thirty minutes to fix for gawds sake but that's another story!

Surely we can have facilities for people with disabilities and facilities in which women feel safe? (Ie no penis allowed).

Telling women, who may well have suffererd sexual assault or male violence, to get a grip, is just awful.

I just worry that we could get into the territory of 'women, stay at home if you don't like it'.

Well, on this thread we are already firmly in that territory, aren't we?

I just worry that we could get into the territory of 'women, stay at home if you don't like it'.

So to prevent that let's make it so that all people with a disability stay at home instead?

If you don't like the set up then you need to campaign to change it don't you? Disabled facilities were fought for by people with disabilities for the use of people with disabilities.

deepwater how do you know that no one needed to use that changing room?

Is it ok for someone to use the accessible toilet if no one else is waiting?

Why is it ok to trample over the rights of an even more disadvantaged group of people because you think that your rights aren't being met?

Nobody is going to stay at home because they have to wait 2 minutes for the shower.

Hello @greeneggshamandchips
I agree it is wrong to use the disabled toilet. I also feel strongly that this is a facility for disabled people. I did not enjoy using a shower area with hoist, shower chair etc so I could just have some privacy, I felt wrong about that.
Therefore I will not be using the changing rooms again but I wanted to raise it here in feminism chat to see if other women had had the same difficulties with mixed sex changing rooms.
Respectfully it sounds like you don’t have personal experience of male violence or harassment. Please don’t minimise this by calling it an insecurity for women that have experienced it.