Bath Leisure Centre, naked men in ‘changing village’

[MrsSnippyPants]

Can anyone local confirm what the changing facilities are for swimming?
twitter.com/jeanhatchet/status/1082908745682829312?s=21

Marmelised - you've probably followed verboten accounts and as such been put on a blocklist.

I find it baffling that there was no consideration given to having female only spaces that a) have female only showers and b) don't require walking through an area with naked men in to access the pool. Perhaps it's the demographic of the area, I'd thought a primary consideration would be the inevitable exclusion of Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women of such arrangements, but clearly it wasn't a concern.

I struggle to believe that there were naked men just stood in the middle of the changing room, there is generally no designated space to do this so it would be awkward to say the least.

Or is the tweeter concerned that behind a locked door a man might be undressed.

And if for some strange reason there are, then management need to deal with it because it really isn't the norm in mixed changing villages.

I struggle to believe that there were naked men just stood in the middle of the changing room

They were walking from the shower to a cubicle.

Ok, it still needs to be a management issue then because there is no need for that to occur. It just doesn't occur (or at least never seems to) at the swimming pools I use. And as I said previously all the ones we use have communal changing villages.

What I find so odd is that every man I meet agrees that some men are perverts and predators, and yet those in charge of public services deny it. Why?

It's quite hard to make public policy / law that directly discriminates against any group, whether that's men / women / immigrants / people with blue fingernails. (Indirect discrimination, intentionally or unintentionally, is rather different). I've only ever seen FPFW do the number crunching regarding the % of transwomen prisoners who are sex offenders, for example, and that is only recently

I've used a unisex changing village for seven years now and actually prefer it, because we now have individual locking showers. I personally don't want to get changed or showered outside of a locking cubicle. I've never seen a naked person or anyone using a phone .

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

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3353054-andrew-gilligan-in-the-times-sex-pests-target-unisex-change-rooms

I actually used this leisure centre on holiday just a few weeks ago. Thankfully no problems with naked men that time!
I found it much, much better than pre refurb when it was single sex changing as it meant my DH could swim with my DD and help her change afterwards (while I was looking after DD2). There used to be single-sex and family changing, but the family changing was so small there was a huge queue to use it while the single sex areas were pretty empty.
Personally I like 'changing villages' for this reason as DD is 8 - too young to be in womens changing by herself but starting to get too old to be in the mens.

I've recently started using a gym/swimming pool with a changing village set up.
I find it a bit of a pain - you have to move from the shower to the locker and then cubicle to get changed. So, do you just wrap a towel around you to make your way to the cubicle or do you put your sweaty gym clothes back on? Or do you take a robe? Feel a bit vulnerable in just a towel.

I've changed in places that are all cubicle but unisex and it's fine, the only places I know with open changing (single sex though) and private clubs/hotels.

Are these unisex ones in the UK?

Yes. It is both older centres and newer ones.

Grrrrr. And yuk.

But then as I’m a bit wrinkly and flabby these days... they brought it on themselves!

I remember my local swimming pool as a child in the seventies being like this. Come out of pool, straight into shared shower area and rows of changing cubicles, female one way and male the other with family change in the middle.
Only everyone had the decency and decorum to keep their swimsuits on when showering...

Were the cubicles poolside so no nudie shenanigans possible?

The man/men should have been removed by management, no one walks around naked in a changing village you just don’t. I suffer one on a weekly basis with dc and everyone keeps their suits on. The cubicles go down to the floor and have bars over the top to stop anyone standing on the seat and looking over. Not sure what the answer is to having the bars used to balance a phone on, if the roof was made opaque every cubicle would have to have its own light.

You wouldn’t need bloody floor to ceiling walls if it was single sex.

Floralcup I get dried and dressed in the shower cubicle. There's a dry bit near the door and a little bench to put your dry clothes on or sit down to dry your feet. I have noticed some people moving from the shower to the cubicle wrapped in a towel, couldn't be bothered to do that myself.

There has been an update.

In correspondence with the complainant, the management said that there were some singles sex changing facilities. So she returned to the Leisure Centre today and got directions. You had to walk through the mixed sex area (where the naked men had been sauntering around yesterday). She found the door.

There was a notice on the door. it said that between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday, members of the public would need to use the communal area because the single sex rooms were reserved for schoolchildren.

There was a man reading the same notice and looking for a more private changing facility. He said that he felt very uncomfortable in the shared space and needed an alternative to mixed sex provision, too.

In two of the centres I use (one new the other an old building) the 'dry side' changing rooms are single sex, but then communal changing areas. The poolside I guess most people shower in their costumes.

I don't know about the other two as I have never looked for them.

Lordprof single sex usually means changing in the open which I hate, I’m sure a lot of women and probably men do so too. I can’t face changing fully in front of anyone outside of my family. I also like being able to be near my ds (11) while he changes rather than him being off in a communal men’s bit. I think the pool in the tweet needs to clear up whether nudity is ok in the mixed sex bit or not. The answer will be no; problem solved - or at least you’d feel able to challenge or report said man as you’d know it wasn’t allowed. Completely inappropriate.

Every council run pool I’ve been to in the last ten odd years has had a changing village, so they probably seem more normal to me because of that.

Not the pools I’ve been to in central London!