No gym for me

[Orchidoptic]

Phoned up Dudley gyms as had sudden urge to get fit without a long contract.
“Yes, yes, the changing areas are sex separated”
“can men who say they are women use the female changing areas”
“its discriminatory not to allow this” “even if the Equality Act says it is acceptable to separate in changing areas”
“its discriminatory not to allow them in”
“even though they probably still have penises”
“its discriminatory not to allow this”
“what about discriminating against women and girls?”
“...”

That should read “falsely claim to be TW”.

Trans people are completely ordinary. They are not rapists

Exactly. So a proportion of the male ones will be predators, just like all the other males.

no one is interested in perving on you in the changing rooms.

Wasn't it Korea where the women were marching for better laws to prosecute men who sneaked in cameras into changing rooms and toilets? Where this was epidemic? No one interested, right? Then why was that happening?

And what will happen when men have unlimited access to shared changing rooms and toilets and it is even easier to creep camera's in? More selfies posted online? Which btw women hardly ever do?

Entertaining when someone just totally ignores any mention of Karen White, JY who specifically asks about how to approach girls about helping them with tampon insertion, that American man that recently assaulted someone in a women’s washroom and said “how do you know I am not a woman”, the recent assault of a 10-year old, the fact that the majority of imprisoned trans women have a history of sexual assault against women (and many trans only after being imprisoned) but yeah “my trans friends are all lovely so it doesn’t happen”.

My brother isn’t a rapist either but we don’t change in front of each other. Ditto my male friends. It’s not just about safety, it’s about privacy, dignity and comfort. Which women are entitled to.

When I or any other female I know talks about genitals the word "waving" has never ever been used. Therefore it suggests to me anyone using the word "waving" is more used to male genitalia that can in fact wave around, therefore I would assume that person to have a male body.

How about I also just leave this here.

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

Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.

What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms

Of 134 complaints over 2017-2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas.*

scotsheather

Small pools usually close to the public if a school is in for safeguarding reasons. In the circumstances that would avoid any situation JamB4cream highlighted, even if it was kept single sex tbh.

Nope...the gym I saw this in has male& female changing rooms for both gym, pool & classes so even if they had closed the pool (which i dont think they have) adult gym and class users are still changing with school swimming. As far as I can see there are NO boundaries to stop an adult male identifying truthfully or maliciously as a female and changing with primary girls.

I'm sure this situation isn't unique and will be happening up and down the country. I can't see that TRA have any solutions to keeping malicious males out of female spaces other than "I doesn't happen, It won't happen, shut up women, #nodebate"

But yes, “it will never happen”. Except for you know, it already does.

JamB4cream I was guessing it wasn't practical in this case to close the whole place for the school visits and this is a very strong argument against, more than myself going swimming which is unisex 'village' setup. Its actually bad enough school groups are sharing said spaces with unknown adults.

Trans people are completely ordinary. They are not rapists

Exactly. So a proportion of the male ones will be predators, just like all the other males

Which is why I suspect many (if not most of us) would be happy to change in a space with a transman. We aren’t trans exclusionary, we don’t ‘hate‘ transpeople. TERF is a red herring. It’s just that there’s a really, really easy way to segregate the population into broad categories:

‘generally taller, stronger, and statistically greater chance at a population level that they will sexually assault‘

and

‘generally smaller, weaker, statistically very unlikely to commit a sexual assault, legally not possible for these people to rape‘

Tell me why it makes complete sense to alter the definitions to allow the first group free, unsupervised access to the second group.

Yawn, another TRA trying to tell women the proper course of action. Dont worry it will never happen. Sorry mate, we've seen your tactics many times over.

verbeena Veronica - sterling job of ignoring replies and pushing your " stop panicking about rape women" line. 🙄

Xeno, my first and immediate reaction to the idea of being near a transman is curiosity and sympathy (I wouldn't expect them to satisfy the first, obvs). Not a hint of fear at all.

You are off the chart sexist, so that's really calling the kettle black. And I would say exactly the same to a man or anyone - no one is interested in perving on you in the changing rooms. That's not the real world.

Probably not. I still don't want to have a naked penis near me when I am in a changing room. And I am very concerned about men perving on young girls. I have two granddaughters.

If you truly thing "this doesn't happen" then please google those words. Go on, I dare you.

And then google "kiwi farms" and "Jessica Yaniv." Go on, I dare you.

no one is interested in perving on you in the changing rooms

My brother isn’t a rapist either but we don’t change in front of each other. Ditto my male friends. It’s not just about safety, it’s about privacy, dignity and comfort. Which women are entitled to.

Exactly. Any decent man, including my many lovely male friends, would be highly embarrassed at sharing a changing room with me or other women. That's what decency is.

Let's go a bit deeper into this. WHY are women put into this position, that they are forced into the defensive, that they have to fight to retain their spaces?
Why do transwomen even want to enter those spaces? Why aren't they happy with the offer of third spaces, open to all?

Answer:
Because it's not validating them as women. And that's what they crave. Validation, by us. And we're not giving it. Because we know they aren't women.

But a man insists that he needs to enter women's spaces to earn validation, we all know that something is seriously wrong. By this very insistence he is instantly proving the necessity for segregation.

He lacks the very sensitivity, the third sense as to what it appropriate and what not. It is nothing more than male bullying. A power game.

I don't want to share intimate spaces with male bodied people because I value my own privacy and dignity. I don't want my child sharing these spaces with male bodied people because every safeguarding policy ever (and a whole load of common sense) suggests that's a terrible idea for a whole load of reasons. Predominantly safety for the child but also safety for adults too. There are also many women who for personal, cultural and religious reasons cannot share these spaces with male bodied people and their exclusion quite simply is not an acceptable consequence of broadening definitions of the word 'woman'.

I'm tired of defending this most basic right. We have single sex spaces for very good reason.

As for the idea that most transwomen pass as female, that's utter nonsense. Sorry. You're kidding yourself on if you believe otherwise. Cosmetic surgery doesn't remove the basic cues that we're hard-wired to recognise.

"But a man insists that he needs to enter women's spaces to earn validation, we all know that something is seriously wrong. By this very insistence he is instantly proving the necessity for segregation.

He lacks the very sensitivity, the third sense as to what it appropriate and what not. It is nothing more than male bullying. A power game."

Exactly. And while we're being forced (often aggressively) to accept erosion of boundaries that we feel are important, we're also being told that those who aggressively try to force us to submit to erosion of those boundaries are apparently no threat to us at all. Everything about this activism stinks of threat and females have a lifetime of experience in recognising and risk assessing threats. We do it every single fucking day.

We are entitled to feel safe from time to time (because we know that time to time is the best we can unfortunately hope for), especially when we're in vulnerable positions, and those spaces provide it.

@VeronicaDinner

If you believe that "no one is interested in perching" in changing rooms, as yourself why have we historically had sex segregated spaces.

What you arguing for is the complete destruction for women only spaces. Not just gym changing rooms, but hospital wards, prison cells, women's shelters. This means that women and girls can be accessed by abusive and predatory men when they are most vulnerable and incapacitated.

Self id means that any male can access women's spaces with NO gender recognition certificate, no surgery, not even a lick of lippy is required.

Do you believe that a male teacher in a girls school should be able to strip naked in front of pupils? Then what is the difference between this and what is happening in gyms, and swimming pools throughout the country.

Do you honestly believe that we should get rid of all sex segregated spaces and allow men completely free access to all women and children.

I don't understand.
I thought it was established by a court case some time ago (mentioned on mumsnet) that the comparator for discrimination for transgender status was the group you were transitioning from. Hence a trans woman should no be treated worse than another Male. The focus therefore should be keeping them safe in Male spaces.
If this is true then how is such a misinterpretation being allowed to spread with no legal challenge?

Thats a good question. The law is being ignored or misinterpreted, and its left to women who are brave enough to risk their jobs and friendships to do something about that.

Trans people should take note; this is how easily your rights will be disposed of when you have stopped being useful.