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?

It is indefensible.

Of course it is. 't was a woman who did it (once, after asking for permission) after all.

Please stop fighting with each other and focus on the real problem here, which is something you have IN COMMON and should be united over.

Denigrating women is more fun, though. Apparently.

but this thread is about how women feel being forced to change and shower in mixed sex facilities. And on this thread allowing the conversation to be derailed is minimising that issue.

I have nothing in common with the scaremongering over unisex facilities or the advocating of the use of accessible facilities in completely inappropriate circumstances.

And that would have been a different conversation.

It was the conversation of this thread, before someone felt the need to hijack it, in order to have a go at OP for her 'insecurity'.

but this thread is about how women feel being forced to change and shower in mixed sex facilities.

It was about that until the OP had mentioned using the accessible facilities (proper one complete with hoist etc) because she wanted "privacy".

Then it becomes something very different

She may have only done it once, yes. It hasn't only happened once. It hapoens many many times a day. People park in blue badge spaces " just while they pop to the cash point" or nip into the disabled toilet " just quickly". It isn't a one off.

And no one actually had the right to give her permission to use the space not intended for her.

As the PP said, there should be adequate spaces for all. But while there isn't it is not ok to use a space meant for someone else because yours is inadequate.

That goes across the board. It's a bit rich to insist that trans women can't appropriate women's spaces whilst then saying it's ok for women to use spaces meant for those with a disability isn't it?

Green then off you trot.

I have nothing in common with the scaremongering over unisex facilities

That you think women are hysterical and 'insecure' for wanting sex segregated spaces, because NAMALT, is already well understood.

Wow.

And leave disabilism unchallenged???

It was about that until the OP had mentioned using the accessible facilities

OP mentioned that in her first post, which started the thread, joker.

Do you think it's a joke caring for someone with a disability or having a disability yourself?

Do you think it helps our lives having the meagre adaptations taken over by able bodied people and then be told to "trot on" if you dare to challenge it?

The one time that I hope the DM picks this thread up.

I get OP absolutely.

A lot of the debate seems to cetre around safety. Not much is around how women feel, and our right to set boundaries.

Yet so many advertising images etc involve women with perfect bodies. Which surely leaves a lot of us uncomfortable with our own. Plus age, social conditioning, religious background, shyness around puberty etc. Not very long ago there used to be real drives to get girls and older women swimming, and if people were to think for more than a moment they would recognise that feeling comfortable is crucial. But they have decided not to think, or seemingly, that women do not have a right to set their own boundaries.

Our local leisure centre has an women's changing room, with lockers and just a couple of cubicles. About five years ago a couple of ladies in Burkas brought their adolescent (aged about 12-14) in with them. The boys eyes were out on stalks and it was very uncomfortable. I suggested politely to the women that they were too old, to be told that I had no right to object as the British had no morals - they watched East Enders. On the way out the receptionist gave me a shrug, as if to say her bosses would not back her if she did anything. I cancelled my membership, but am lucky enough to afford an expensive private gym. I assume others simply gave up swimming.

I would feel equally uncomfortable if a woman with a penis were in the same changing room. Op and I have every right to decide what makes us uncomfortable. And great if a disabled person complains about her using the disability changing facility. The more complaints the better. We need to avoid a set up with has women and girls withdrawing from sport rather than complaining.

This leisure centre is in the borough which had the highest child obesity rate in the country. Local schools tend not to have their own their own sports facilities, indeed some have no outdoor space at all, so there is a continual throughput of school groups, at lot with ethnic minority students from conservative backgrounds. Self ID, or a failure to enforce single-sex, will be a disaster for local residents. (Though I suspect the leisure centre operator won't mind as they make the real money from selling leisure memberships to local office workers.)

Do you think it's a joke caring for someone with a disability or having a disability yourself?

No, I think it is a joke to pretend that the thread took an unexpected turn when OP happened to say something unexpected, when in reality all the info was already there from the beginning and oneself hijacked the thread.

Which would be obvious if one took the time and effort to grasp what was written.

Spammer reported

I really do envy people whose biggest block from sport is feeling insecure in the changing room....

Which would be obvious if one took the time and effort to grasp what was written.

I raised it before the OP mentioned the hoist. I was amazed it hasn't really already been addressed. But suppose it it is feminist chat...

I really do envy people whose biggest block from sport is feeling insecure in the changing room....

Look, we already know that it was misogyny that motivated you to engage in this thread. No need to demonstrate it over and over again.

I really do envy people whose biggest block from sport is feeling insecure in the changing room....

Are you suggesting that women should not be allowed to set their own boundaries? Or boundaries for their daughters?

Who then decides when women are allowed to say they feel uncomfortable? Men?

FWIW my DD used to swim at that pool at least a couple of times a week, usually, as a teenager, going on her own with friends. (And indeed went on to volunteer at swimming sessions for local disabled people.) I would have been very unhappy for her and her friends to share a smallish room with adult "women with penises". Yes it would have been a barrier to sport in an area with very few affordable and accessible sports facilities.

How is it misogyny to call out someone using the disabled changing rooms when they shouldn't?

It's wrong.

Provision of single sex facilities is a different argument to an able bodied person feeling entitled to use a changing room for disabled people.

If the OP wanted a discussion about unisex changing rooms why include the part about using the disabled changing room at all?

Maybe question their motivation for mentioning it?

I agree with River, this discussion about whether or not the OP should have used the disabled facilities is a red herring. This should be about having enough resources to go round, not about whether men (49.2% of the population) should displace women (50.8% of the population) to fight for resources without displacing disabled people (15% of the population, and a quarter of a million need access to more accessible toilets than the standard disabled facilities according to Changing Places).

This is about having enough resource to go round, which there currently is as long as we recognise that keeping disabled, women's and men's facilities separate and protected is key. If anyone can walk in and use disabled facilities, they become for anyone, able bodied or disabled, because disabled people will be unable to access those facilities. If men are able to walk around naked in changing rooms they become male spaces because many women will feel unable to access those changing rooms. Men displace women, able bodied people displace disabled people.

I really do envy people whose biggest block from sport is feeling insecure in the changing room....

= misogyny

I agree with River, this discussion about whether or not the OP should have used the disabled facilities is a red herring.

Of course it is.