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?

Honestly I'm just worn out by whole thing. I'm now getting quite a lot of crap on a WhatsApp group, because apparently "this is the world we live in"

It’s only the world we live in because most people are too cowardly or too conditioned to stand up for their daughter’s right to a penis-free changing room.

I can totally imagine how depressing and exhausting it’s been for you @BelfastDadof3 but you did the right thing even if your whatsapp group are trying to coerce you into believing otherwise.

Do you want the transwomen banned from the female changing rooms? Do you want all people with penis’ to change in the male changing rooms?

Like that is still such an unreasonable thing to want . Yes, that is what I want, for males to be in the male changing room. How have you got to a position where you think that's wrong/unreasonable?

Do you want the transwomen banned from the female changing rooms? Do you want all people with penis’ to change in the male changing rooms?

Erm, ideally yes, because they're men. You have been brainwashed.

Yes, obviously. Why is this even a question?

Do you want the transwomen banned from the female changing rooms? Do you want all people with penis’ to change in the male changing rooms?

Yes.
How else do you preserve the dignity of both sexes?
Anything else makes a mockery of single sex,
Mums and dads get stressed at the thought of their 8 year old opposite sexed children going into changing rooms alone. Particularly mums with boys. What's the point if 'feelings' mean men can access the ladies.

Isla Bryson how can anyone be sure any trans isn't another Isla Bryson?

I honestly thought people in that position (trans) would be super discrete and they'd be the ones to use the disabled cubicle. My daughter says it has a shower and a toilet.

There is a reason these men are not discreet. As a man I am sure you can work out what that reason is.

@CalMeKate

I haven’t said a women can have a penis, I have said a transwomen can have a penis.

🔺🔺🔺🔺🔺 And there it is:

• women do not have a penis

WOMEN DO NOT HAVE A PENIS WOMEN CANNOT HAVE A PENIS

—transwomen can have a penis.
TRANSWOMEN HAVE HAD A PENIS

THEREFORE WOMEN CANNOT BE TRANSWOMEN
AND TRANSWOMEN CANNOT BE WOMEN.

See “Kate”, you knew reality all along!

You've got to love how their logic falls apart so quickly.

Just pointing out though that on page 4, 09.36 on 12/8/2023 CalmeKate wrote:

"We are living in a world where genitals does not reflect on identified sex. Women have penis’ and men have vulvas and vaginas."

I would quite like to know how we should interpret this statement now that Kate has said:

" I haven’t said a women can have a penis, I have said a transwomen can have a penis."

I am at a loss really as to how else that statement can be interpreted. It has been pointed out a few times now and not once acknowledged by CalmeKate that they have been caught out in a lie.

They also don't seem to have any evidence to back up their claims:

"The behaviour is what is important. If the behaviour feels wrong it probably is. The fact the transwomen has breast implants implies to me that this isn’t a man pretending but someone who was born male and now identifies as female."

and

Statistically men are far more dangerous to women and girls that transwomen are.

and

"However MEN far outweigh the balance of predatory risk"

There have been other falsehoods and inconsistencies, I suspect that some posters really don't have quite the grasp on this issue that they confidently believed they had .

It's really simple, isn't it?

A female who transitions becomes a transman.

A male who transitions becomes a transwomen

A female cannot become a transwomen; transwomen are male.

We were saying this years ago.

Much arguing on the rights and wrongs here, but is there any update @BelfastDadof3?

The update is at 12/08/2023 14:28.

Thanks Binturongs, I did do 'see all' but somehow missed that one .

@CalMeKate If you truly work in safeguarding, then I find your post astounding. I know a lot of traumatised women and girls, traumatised by male violence. Having to share a changing room with someone who exposes themselves to them would at best result in a panic attack and at worst in a psychogenic seizure for some of them. Why do you prioritise the needs of transwomen over the needs of traumatised women and girls?

You say 9 out of 10 girls are sexually abused by someone they know. That leaves 10% who are abused by strangers. I was flashed about 20-30 times as a girl (by different men), every time by a stranger. None of those incidences were reported to the police by the adults in my life. My guess is that most women and girls are flashed by strangers. Indecent exposure, as you will know, is a form of sexual abuse.

Sorry, I meant to say: Why do you prioritise the WISHES of transwomen over the needs of traumatised women and children? Exposing yourself to vulnerable women and girls is clearly not a need.

CalMeKate · 12/08/2023 13:57

Trans rights are now a standard within our society

Nobody has said otherwise.

The salient fact here is that there are conflicting rights at play, in this and similar situations.

It's is firmly legal for organisations to exclude transw from female spaces, as is the case with Bannatyne's gyms. In this particular case, the transw has transgressed the law and the regulations of the gym.

It's a perfectly valid thing to say that transw are not women; in fact, it's legally protected (as tested in a court case) and entirely uncontroversial. The person has no legal and less moral right to have been in that space.

The girls should never have been in the situation, where they were exposed to the person's penis, still less, having to hide themselves in what should have been a private and dignified space. Why should the many suffer, to pander to the desires of a few?

so preparing children how to navigate this world we live in is far safer including transpeople than excluding them from your narrative.

Excluding them from their narrative? What does that even mean? In one of your earlier posts, you said that you have a way with words and communication. What that communicates to me is that you've learned some phrases by rote.

Fortunately, the wind is changing and it's becoming less likely that "women with penises" will be able to display their naked bodies in front of women and girls, in women only spaces.

For the record, no woman has, or ever will have a penis. It's a biological impossibility; only men have penises, even if they are misguided enough to believe themselves women - or worse.

Boiledbeetle · 12/08/2023 22:10

WOMEN/FEMALE/XX ONLY SPACES MEAN NO MEN/MALE/XY AT ALL NOT EVEN THE ONES WHO REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO BE IN THERE.

I'd say most especially the ones who really, really, really want to be in there.

Yep . Most definitely!

There’s a difference between wanting and needing something.

1. The trans woman wants to be in the female changing room as that is the room that matches the TW’s gender identity.
2. The poster Calmekate wants to be kind.
3. The girls need a safe space to get changed, a place away from males.

If we go with what the girls need, then the TW might feel sad and excluded. If we go with what the TW wants, then the girls will no longer have a safe space. Not necessarily because this particular TW is a predator (although the lack of discretion around nudity is a major red flag), but because if you say it’s ok for males with a female gender identity to share a changing room with women and girls, then you open the door to all men, including predators and perverts. Any bloke can say they’re a woman and bingo, they’re in, because who’d dare to challenge them?

I hate upsetting people but protecting the safety of those girls is far more important than not hurting a TW’s feelings. A third, gender-neutral space is the answer if TW feel unsafe in the men’s room. And let’s educate men to accept TW and feminine-presenting males in their spaces without prejudice.

I think all these BeKinders like Calmekate are basically prioritising male ‘wants’ over female needs.

The OP has done a fantastic job in raising this with the gym because it’s absolutely wrong for adult males to be getting naked around little girls. What a crazy world we live in that some people think this scenario is acceptable.

Yes cauldron.

The very act of lowering children’s boundaries by telling them that it is ‘normal’ for a male adult to be naked in a female single sex space is an act of opening the door for that child to be abused. There is a word for these actions.

While those doing the lowering of boundaries are not the same as those perpetrating sexual abuse, they started the action. If you know what I mean. They laid the foundations that allowed the abuse to happen.

I am sure parents who believe that telling their children what to look out for like the list CalmeKate provided will feel wonderful and inclusive. But that list is pure danger in what it excludes. It excludes those male abusers who don’t need to do any of the things on the list right then and there. It excludes the danger of normalising the behaviour of seeing that male in that space over time. It denies that some abusers play a longer term game than immediate gain. (Forgetting that seeing male external genitalia when they haven’t given consent is abuse)

Or it means that these children now expect to see naked male genitalia and so when one day that is an erect penis, will they even understand? Will they react? Or will it too be normal?

And by then it is too late. The abuse has happened! Because that male individual should never have been in that space to allow that ‘just one time’ to have happened.

And supposedly a person ‘working with’ safeguarding will be well aware of how abuse is perpetrated, yet denies the risk they are allowing.

They are complicit.

@CorruptedCauldron
@Helleofabore
You have both made very good points.

Nobody should be dropping their boundaries over single sex spaces. They really shouldn't.

"so preparing children how to navigate this world we live in is far safer including transpeople than excluding them from your narrative."

For anyone still reading this thread, particularly those who have agreed with kate's plea here, this statement is missing a great deal of information that sinner and others have discussed that shows this statement to be out of touch in a quickly moving issue.

The UK population, indeed many of the 'western world' countries, have polled to be very clear. Male individuals with penises should not be allowed in female single sex spaces. I am very happy to link up a couple of polls where this has been a very clear result. That many in the population feel they have been tricked into believing that male people with trans identities don't have penises. Because if the question is asked just as 'should transwomen be allowed in female spaces' the answer is still majority no, but change that to include the phrase, 'with penises' and it is a very strong 'no.

And this sentiment is growing and growing fast.

So, no. I don't believe that the future is certain that male individuals will be allowed into female communal changing rooms. I think a very ideological fool might believe that that future is fait accompli.

I think that over time that those males will not be allowed into any existing communal changing room. And so, all people following Kate's line of thinking will be achieving, is creating a generation of children who are even more vulnerable to abuse. Because they now have to wait for a male to do something that is on that ridiculous list to feel confident that they are being abused.

And by then, they have been sexually abused. And probably have a whole series of abuse that they failed to recognise. I am sure that Kate has recommendations for any child who has been sexually abused that will then include Wadhwa's type of instruction too... 'women and girls should reframe their trauma to allow male individuals who say they are women to be in positions of female single sex only care provisions for traumatised women and girls.'

There is NO end in the way that this plays out now that some people have allowed it.

The end result? A girl could end up with a long series of unrecognised sexual abuse before an event that she feels confident to call sexual abuse, and then that girl could then be treated in a rape crisis centre or by medical staff who are also male but ..... normalised eh ... they are just another 'female'.

However, ideological people who seem to have no fucking idea what women and girls are actually asking for because they only ever listen to the 'right side of history', cannot see how this plays out. Because they also believe that 'this will never happen'. Like fuck it won't. It already is.

But ... hey.... all in the name of kindness and tolerance. And a fucked up twisted perception that to exclude a male from a female single sex space is 'denying a person's existence'. That is what ideologically believing in mantras delivers. An adult in a safeguarding position that cannot recognise abusive situations.

An adult who actually doesn't understand that saying 'no' in certain circumstances to a trans person is not denying their rights or their existence. Despite the propaganda slogans that say differently.

The majority of the population does not support this. It will become less and less acceptable as the years go on. Already the population's rejection of this is being called 'the growth of transphobia'. The reality is, when you define transphobia to mean anything that denies a trans person access to their wants (not needs as discussed) the word has lost any meaning at all.

I think lots of people have a live and let live mentality, ie don't really care what other people inc trans do UNTIL it affects them.

Wear what they want, be called she, but they'll draw the line at getting undress in the same room.

As posters on this board already know, these individuals don't want a third space, they don't just want to have somewhere safe from the mens's spaces (though I've yet to see any evidence a TW has ever been harmed in a male changing room or toilet). As Anne helpfully demonstrated for us recently:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4855926-entitled-male-refused-access-to-female-changing-area-despite-wearing-skirt

The unisex changing room isn't good enough, they specifically want the women's space, with women in.

I wonder if kate will be back to tell us again how TW belong in women's changing rooms with unaccompanied girls, and that the girls having to decamp to the disabled cubicle is a great solution if for some reason they don't want to encounter a penis?

I would be appalled if I found myself in the situation these children were. Its a pornified nightmare, a naked, shaved man with breast implants in a female changing room.

I just cannot get to grips with the plummeting levels of morality with people like calmekate telling me this is society now.

Its a hideous pornified abusive sort of society if that's what it is. And if you are so immoral that you lecture parents to force their children to tolerate this I just don't know what to think. I don't want to deal with these men and we've got politicians like Neale Harvie demanding that we do.

There's some disgusting immorality out there. They have lost their minds.