Transwoman in the changing room at school pool

[PoolFloat]

My mum goes to aqua aerobics classes at a sports club in a private school. Recently, a transwoman has joined the class. My mum was told that they use a different changing room to the one next to the pool but today they came out of the pool and put their swimming hat into a locker before returning to the pool to join the class (there is adult free swim beforehand).

The club has a safeguarding policy which states they will: prioritise the safety and well-being of children and adults at risk

I'm not sure if my mum is considered at risk? She is 88 and nearly all the women in the class are in their 70s and 80s.

The changing room has a communal area with only four cubicles so most women get changed in the communal area. Now they are reluctant to do so.

My mum has asked me to help her draft a letter from the women in the class saying how uncomfortable they are that this person is in their changing room but doesn't know how to word it.

Can anyone help please?

Anyone can have an opinion. Opinions are cheap. Opinions can be harmful.

Just saying that you are ‘entitled to your opinion’ is a bit of an easy way of avoiding a debate. And avoidance of trying to solve a problem, which this thread is about.

In case any TRA have forgotten.

An older woman who is trying to keep herself fit, healthy and social by going swimming, is feeling distressed over her privacy and dignity boundaries being eroded with a male in her female changing rooms.

Anyone anti-helping this woman? Should she just be ignored? No amount of ‘just my opinion’ obscures that you are happy to ignore her needs in this instance.

These folk have mums surely? Since there seem to be a reasonable large number of older male borns discovering their inner sportswoman, don’t they think ‘hang on, I don’t want my mammy freaked out by a naked penis in the changing room’?

self centred or what?

Also in changing rooms of public facilities I don’t think it’s reasonable to exclude post op people

And I know you know that's transphobic af. You do know we cannot police that. So we are left with any man at any time of his choosing can enter previously women only spaces.

This whole thing goes around in bloody circles.

Where the hell is bunbury when one needs her

Absolutely he is, and the 95%of women who for reasons of dignity, privacy, religion and the rest are allowed to have the opinion that men can never be women and womens spaces must be left alone to remain women only spaces.

Thanks everyone for the help. I've drafted a letter for my mum. She also found the EHRC guidance herself so that's been really useful. It's so helpful to be able to quote that - without that it would have been much harder.

I took your advice and kept it very simple @SolasAnla - just said that it was perfectly legal for them to exclude this person as a proportionate means to achieving a legitimate aim - the safety, privacy and dignity of their female members.

Good luck, I hope it gets the right response.

What is the point of segregating anything at all by gender?

There's no point in segregating anything by the absolute work of fiction social construct called gender.
Segregating things by sex however provides a boundary when vulnerability may manifest especially in the form of nudity. It is also for being able to measure things which affect a sex class, or provide services that affect the sex classes differently.

Segregate by birth sign then. Those pesky Aquarians…

I agree with both Blister and kittenkong. I just can't understand the logic of grouping people by gender. It seems to me that the only two logical positions are unisex, or separate by sex. Female and open seems reasonable, too, I suppose. But I can't for the life of me see any point in segregating by gender.

It doesn't happen anyway, don't see any separate facilities for 'genderfuck' and 'genderqueer' people, do you? Yet surely they are a completely separate gender?

The trend is just throw formerly women's facilities open to all those wonderful and exciting new 'genders', predictably.

@Noonecaresifyounamechange

Give over. The OP’s mum knows this is a trans woman because she is male bodied. The vast majority of women wouldn’t want a man / trans woman with a male body in their changing room.

Women have a right to feel safe. Having a male body around when you are changing would make many women feel either unsafe and uncomfortable.

Yay for you telling an 80 year old woman how she should feel in a changing room. Or any woman or girl.

Just explain it very factually OP. It may well be the woman in question couldn’t use the changing area she’s normally allocated, but in which case the gym needs to find her somewhere else

If you get to 80 and can’t correctly sex a person, well… but seriously? Trying to gaslight a great granny into believing that she is wrong for identifying what has been sexed as male since humans first roamed the earth - and is ‘in fact’ a woman? That’s just rotten. Have a word with yourself.

And some people may have very strong opinions about the importance of single sex spaces because of the trans people that they know.

This.

Among the other good reasons not to segregate by gender is the several hundred different ones that exist and the rate of appearance of new ones.

We could group them together, but how? Does cakegenger go with exogender?

I’m fast approaching pissedoffwiththisutterhogwashgender.

I had a bit of a longer conversation with my mum today. This is honestly not drip feeding but our conversations have been very fractured as, like I said, she's a carer for my dad who is cognitively fine but is dying, so we're talking in another room but are frequently interrupted.

Layout of the changing room from the pool end is:
1 loo
3 showers
Widens out slightly into changing area:
Two benches in middle, on one wall two sinks, hair dryer, swimsuit spinner thing, opposite wall another bench with hooks
Then lockers on that same wall
Opposite are the 4 changing cubicles.

So yes, this person got out of the pool between an adult swim session and an aqua aerobics class specifically to walk past the main changing area purely to put their hat in a locker. There is no reason for him to have done that.

Also, when she saw him in a towel in the changing room a few weeks' ago, he got out of the pool, walked past the showers, through the changing area to the cubicles, removed his swimsuit in a cubicle, and came back through the changing area wrapped in a towel to go to the showers. After the shower, he walked through the changing area again in a towel.

No one fucking does that. If you're going to take a shower, you grab your towel and you take your suit off in the shower.

Now I think he's totally getting off on this.

There are 22 women in my mum's class apparently. So many that they are allowed to use the men's pool changing rooms in the mornings as they are all women. So there are some women using the men's changing rooms. This person chooses to use the women's ones.

I am angrier and angrier. How dare he intimidate a load of old women. Fucking creep.

This is basically exactly how I feel most of the time and I have similar experiences with men.

I'm now concerned with how one arbitrates what is a trans woman and what is "trans enough". I fear it hurts both parties and causes women and trans women a lot of pain and anxiety. Because there exists a dichotomy that cannot be reconciled and satisfy both groups when it comes to the question of single sex spaces specifically.

In every other aspect of life, trans women should be validated, treated with dignity and recognised.

The way I'm begrudgingly starting to see it is that single sex spaces not actually being single sex hurts both parties because:

• For some women the potential for a single sex space not to actually be single sex is distressing enough.
• Allowing shared spaces on a case by case basis creates a necessity to arbitrate who is trans/passing/feminised enough to be in those spaces without other women being uncomfortable and complaining. Especially in settings like SA trauma support groups. This must be a hurtful and undignified process from trans women
• I have no doubt in the world that the vast majority of trans women pose no threat to women whatsoever. But if you allow anyone who identifies as a woman to enter single sex spaces, this can be abused. I know this is obvious but I think it is a sentiment here so often conflated with genuine transphobia that its message is lessened. It's a genuine and perplexing issue. Even one woman attacked in a supposedly safe, male free place by a man identifying as a woman is one too many.

The only solution to truly award both parties the dignity and safety they BOTH more than deserve is to normalise safe and accessible individual spaces when it comes to things like toilets and changing rooms. When it comes to women only settings, I think the only way that is truly fair is to make genuinely single sex spaces, which to be fair I think most places enforce already as it is considered a legitimate reason to segregate based on sex.

It's a really upsetting issue because I do NOT see trans women themselves as a threat, at all. I recognise their vulnerability and how it is akin to my own. But, as above, since the risk can't be adequately removed or policed, what other option does that realistically leave? I'm not prepared though to join a chorus of voices saying trans women should use male facilities. They would not be safe there.

If Stonewall had thrown their considerable weight behind gender neutral spaces for trans people in addition to existing single sex spaces, and pushed for transpeople to be accepted & respected as trans but not as having actually become the opposite sex, instead of steamrollering over women’s rights, that would have been a hell of a lot more use.

Absolutely.
And I can bet that 100% of woman would have been behind this and even helped.
But Stonewall and the TRAs have scored a spectacular own-goal with their whole agenda of TWAW.
If they had said TWATW from the start, recognised that we are very different with different needs, then there would literally be no problem.
TW are NOT women.
And because we are being forced, coerced and intimidated into pretending that they are, it's natural that there was always going to be a push back.
I am willing to be that there are swathes of "old school" trans people who are ashamed of the TRA movement and want no part of it, and I'm positive that it has made their lives much much worse instead of better.

No-one denies the existence of trans persons.
No-one wishes them ill will.
But pretending that TW are the same as women gets nobody anywhere.
Pretending that it doesn't throw up a whole load of issues such as safeguarding and fairness gets nobody anywhere.

Pretending that it doesn't open up myriad loopholes in the law gets nobody anywhere.

@Dreamwhisper I like your post, this is how I started off... Oh I'm fine with a TW in the changing room...but oh, wait, not everyone else is...and these concerns are from actual women, and it's their single-sex space.

It doesn't take much logic to work out that edging out a female's concerns is no good for women in general, including yourself.

It's a shame that some posters on this thread take an arrogant view that just because they are ok, so should all others be, and if they are not, screw 'em.

I couldn't speak about the safety of male changing rooms. Surely it's discomfort? This is why third 'open' spaces should be campaigned for.

Perfectly put @BoredofthisCrap7 "No-one denies the existence of trans persons.
No-one wishes them ill will.
But pretending that TW are the same as women gets nobody anywhere.
Pretending that it doesn't throw up a whole load of issues such as safeguarding and fairness gets nobody anywhere."

Pretending there is no difference is actively harmful.

TW and TM have different medical needs, if a transman attends hospital with a painful leg the doctor NEEDS to know that he is biologically female and taking testosterone as he is more likely to suffer with osteoporosis and be susceptible to a broken bone. If he has stomach or pelvic pain it could be as a result of vaginal atrophy which can cause infection/sepsis.

TW have a risk of prostate cancer which obviously wouldn't be considered if they were treated as biological women.

We need for census stats to be accurate and based on biology so that issues that start in childhood can be addressed. We need to know crime statistics by biological sex because crime patterns for male and females are very different and so are judicial decisions.

It goes on and on.

@Dreamwhisper Thank you, genuinely, good and brave post, following your previous position.

We really did all start where you did, but have been in it longer, that's all.

@Dreamwhisper

Even one woman attacked in a supposedly safe, male free place by a man identifying as a woman is one too many.

I really respect and appreciate you taking on board what other posters have said and seeing this core issue and that it's not one that comes from a place of bigotry.

Thank you for listening to people. I genuinely mean that.

For anyone new to these boards, some useful resources for information about predatory males are Women are Human and This Never happens. Not sure I am allowed to link here as certain people would rather we didn’t know about them