Gym /. Swimming changing issue

[BelfastDadof3]

I'll start first and say I'm sorry for intruding on a safe space for women.
Am a single dad (widow but not recent) with three kids 2 girls 11 +13 and a 9yr old boy.

Also I'd say kids are bright and confident, very excepting as I've tried to bring them up to accept all body shapes and not point / shame.

I go to the gym three times a week, do my workout and the kids have a supervised kids swim lesson (just the three of them) and I meet them after for a swim and play.

There isn't family changing, but I don't think it's applicable as my girls are old enough.

So having a muffin after the swim my 9yr old boy asked me.
"dad, why do most of the men walk about naked in the changing room?Willie's out. Is it not normal to have a towel around you untill you get your pants on."

So I said some people were just very free, but I think it's a bit over the top. Bit of a discussion about respecting others space etc and then my boy said" it's also odd that some shave all their body hair off, even the old fat men, it's weird looking"

Normal ish conversation.

Then he asked the girls what happens in the changing rooms. They were a bit horrified and said that most women and girls had big towels and kept private. Because - their words " girls arnt horrible like boys"

Then the eldest daughter said "a room full of men drying their bits would be duscusting. When the [transwoman - edited by MNHQ] is in the changing room we use the disabled cubicle. There's lots of room and we don't have to see him dry his bits. And (jokingly) his man bum and huge boobs do not look nice."

So really I don't know how to approach this.
I presumed that if a man transfered to a trans woman he would have female genitals. Maybe I'm niave.

It's a really nice gym and pool - Bannatynes - a treat for the kids..
Is this the same everywhere?
If I raise it with the manager am I being transphobic to suggest no penises in the female changing?

@CalMeKate people can identify as whatever they want. The facts are that every human being is either male or female and no human has ever changed sex. We use the objective, immutable fact of people’s sex as the basis for policy and law because that is a better basis than people’s subjective, unverifiable and changeable feelings about themselves.

No-one is born with a gender. Do you mean sex? The conflation of sex and gender has (often purposely) muddied the waters. Sex is a biological fact, gender is a social construct. I don’t give a damn about gender. I was brought up by enlightened parents who went to great lengths to undo the sexist rubbish and silly stereotypes pushed at girls and women.

Now, I do believe in dysphoria, and I believe that for a tiny percentage of sufferers, surgery might be necessary. However, that surgery is for the emotional comfort of the individual. It doesn’t change their sex.

If you’re talking about gender identity ideology, then that’s just a depressing return of regressive stereotypes. Again, clothes, hairstyles, etc, don’t change anyone’s sex. In fact, thinking of younger people, I find it tragic that there are girls wanting to opt out of being a woman because they don’t fulfil silly, outdated stereotypes. I also think boys and men can wear dresses and make up if they want to. No problem with that at all. But, again, that doesn’t change their sex, does it?

We separate changing rooms by sex not by hairstyles, occupations, clothes, or hobby preferences.

i'm not sure this is true is it? transwomen who are transitioning or have transitioned are not the same as men who enjoy cross dressing or have a sexual fetish ....this is very like how gay men were historically treated ,with the presumption that they are all predatory or paedophiles.

Thats why I said we know that not all trans people are like that.

However, the true ‘quiet ones’ are not the ones in women’s spaces. They are living their lives quietly trying not to upset people and using the spaces for their sex (perfectly safely).

There are others (including some quiet ones) who are managing to be quite high profile about their predatory nature and sexual motivations for using women’s spaces.

We can’t tell what a persons internally experienced motivation for being in a women’s space but bearing in mind that many women want a same sex space and all decent men know and respect that, we can make our own judgement on that.

no of course we dont have to come from a place of fear.... but i would hope that a transwoman who is wanting to live as a women understands both that fear of male sexual assault, and that historically male entitlement and wants often trump a woman's, is what drives issues & conflicts around transpeople (and transwomen in particular). Its not a case of calling yourself a transwoman and then expecting that your rights rank higher than that of a woman (ie. carrying on living as a man).

People can identify however they like, it doesn’t make it true. It’s hardly rocket surgery, what can’t you understand? Men are men, women are women, sex is binary, women don’t have penises, men don’t have vaginas. Nothing radical or controversial there.

What did I just read?
It's OK for OPs teenage girls to be exposed to clearly male penis attached to flashing clearly male stranger because at some point in an unknown future which may never happen, the penis owner may look like a super model?

😂😂😂

As we’re at the point where the language has been shredded, it’s time to go back to first principles.

The printed OED states Gender as “the state of being male or female” and Stereotype as “an oversimplified idea of the typical characteristics of a person or thing”.

It goes right back to the Stanisland Question, doesn't it?

@CalMeKate Do you believe that male-sexed people should have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with teenage girls?

Okay, so now we're relying on "hope" are we?

So men can be quiet and disgusted "living as women" whatever that is and women can just "hope"?

Is that how we apply single sex exceptions?

"Hope" that men using womens changing rooms are all "quiet" and "disgusted?"

We just get "hope".

It’s quite amazing isn’t it. In the olden days (like the 1990s or 2000s), if a man flashed at a woman in the M&S changing rooms, or filmed a girl changing in H&M or , or peeked under the door in the swimming pool changing rooms and it was found that some loophole in their policy had allowed this to happen (because which organisation would write a policy that explicitly facilitated that??) - there would be uproar, apologies and an instant policy update to prevent it ever happening again.

Now these things are happening all the time, the stores stand by their policy letting any male into whichever space he fancies and women and girls just have to suck it up.

All thanks to the lies about the law as helpfully parroted by Kate, originated from Stonewall.

Define "gender".

Put your children first. Always.

Doesn't matter if it's this or how modern the world is or a new partner in your life. Your children come first. Always.

When swimming pools went from male and female provision to mixed sex “changing villages” (presumably to help dads taking their daughters swimming?) the rules of changing rooms changed. So you can’t shower naked, you have to be clothed or in a swimsuit and you have to change in a cubicle.

Now, I’m fully aware of the risk to women and kids in these spaces and so not like them. But I get single men, or SAHDs or just involved dads need to be around their daughters. And I don’t want a derail about mixed sex communal changing rooms. (And again, I don’t like them.)

But as soon as they came in the rules made it clear nudity was not acceptable or tolerated. No one said “hey, girls have to get used to this brave new world of cocks. The world is changing.”

So why is one penis unacceptable but another penis something girls and women need to adapt to?

"Ideally the trans movement could put pressure on companies to provide them safe spaces".

Well yes. Women have been saying this for years. But there are reasons why certain men don't want 3rd spaces and find being in women's spaces preferable.

The transwomen was getting changed and the girls made themselves feel as safe and comfortable as possible with the situation.. you can’t ask for a better scenario!

Never growing up have I had to make myself safe and comfortable in my own fucking changing room.

You advocate for a men's rights movement. No one has the right to give away another's consent here. It just makes me so angry reading this.

Besides, the transwoman is not very convincing if they still have a penis and like flashing it around! If they wanted to become a woman and integrate surely they would be changing under a towel to make sure nobody could see they were intact??! So the flashing must have another motive.

i dont think we are ever going to agree as i dont think i'm as black and white in my thinking but i respect the position that you are coming from.

A young girl seeing a stranger's penis in a female changing room is very, very, black and white.

I know for a fact that people with anorexia can identify as having a different body shape from the one they actually have. It's a mental illness and it is dangerous, potentially fatal unless they can be persuaded otherwise.

Gender is not an actual real thing, so as such pretty much anything can be imagined about it. The imagination will not make the unreal thing real. Mammals, including humans, cannot change sex.

and i certainly haven't defended that ! please read back posts rather than just respond to 1 without reading the chain of discussion.

Well done OP. not enough men are speaking up about this. Your girls are lucky that you did

Gender appears to mean something along the lines of which set of sex stereotypes you feel you should be measured against. That was the best we could come up with discussing it on FB with some genderists I know in real life. So not which body type you have, or which stereotypes you actually match or not, but which you want to be judged against.

So challenge I'd put down to gender advocates on here is - can you come up with a better description? Or if not, why is that a concept that you'd want to sort changing rooms by? Whereas bodies are a physical reality and women and girls in reality do not want to see the physical reality of strangers' junk.

The OP's daughters had an 'icky feeling' when they saw this man getting changed, and moved to a cubicle to protect themselves.

A 'safeguarding expert' says they should ignore this 'icky feeling' because it's just normal behaviour for this man to be getting changed in front of them.

How does the safeguarding expert (who doesn't understand the EA 2010) explain how those girls ARE supposed to trust their gut instinct, when they want to condition them into ignoring that gut instinct? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Yup I've read back and I understand you are saying there is a set of "naice" transwomen who will understand after they realise women don't always want to share spaces with them.
It's the finding the right set of transwomen for women to interact with I object to. There shouldn't be a conversation. Women shouldn't have to justify their space. Women shouldn't need to be afraid to require dignity.
It's pretty black and white when you have to justify a boundary or build one as these girls did. The naice person is actually in a position of power over all women. It is infuriating.

@BelfastDadof3 thank you, thank you, for speaking up to protect your daughters. I know this is madness and you are probably thinking you're in a parallel universe. Please can you let this thread stand as all documentation of these events helps in the fight for women's and girls' rights. I hope your girls are doing ok.