Does anyone actually fully support trans people in women's changing rooms and loos?

[bottomsup12]

Just curious really? I see a lot of aggressive stances (Owen Jones eg) pro this on twitter etc. I don't get it.
The only reason I can think of is that it's never actually happened to them and they imagine it will be fine but when it actually happens a few times they might start seeing sense?

For the men who are aggressively pro it I wonder how they would feel is women just started flooding into their changing rooms and bathrooms ?

In Spain, from everything I've been told, they don't really expect to look after you at all on the maternity unit. That's the job of your partner and family. They just monitor you. And partners have a sofa bed to stay overnight.

So is that a sofa bed in each single room?

Or a number of sofa beds in a multi-occupant ward?

Thanks. It’s a shame as I was hoping you could provide an example of the language of “self ID” in action in a context where biological reality is very important. I’m wondering what words women in Spain will use when talking about pregnancy and childbirth?

Trans identified women in female sex-specific spaces - fine. TIMs - no.
Safeguarding matters.

@PP82

Secondly, I don't think women's spaces should exist. All spaces and facilities should be gender neutral.

So you believe it's right that women who have previously women's rape crisis centres and groups to be life saving when it comes to their mental health recovery should actually have to share spaces with men? Not even just trans women, but all men who wish to be there?

You would genuinely tell a fellow survivor of sexual assault and abuse who has found those single sex services to be a life changing, life saving haven, than it is right and fair for those single sex services to be made open to men too?

Just read https://familylifeinspain.com/2014/11/everything-need-know-baby-spain/#:~:text=Of%20course%2C%20if%20no%2Done,in%20the%20months%20to%20come!

It does say that fathers are ‘encouraged’ to stay overnight, but it also says that the system asks for family/extended family to be involved. It also says that mothers have private rooms in private hospitals and will only share with one other mother in a public one, so not the ward system we have in the UK where you don’t sleep at all for the crashing of doors/trollies all night long.

I am going to infer that in practice this means that fathers are unlikely to stay over in a shared room, and if they do family of the other party will also stay over to chaperone the other mother. From the description it seems the purpose is to reduce the burden on staff/costs and has little really to do with the needs of the new mum/her family - after all, only first time fathers can sleep over and/or those with extended family to help with other children they may already have.

Would hate to see the NHS go this way and, frankly, would prefer a system of home birthing being offered instead as then the family is geared up to the baby coming, ILs can be on hand and dad can opo off and get some sleep when he’s not needed. (I did this for my second as my first hospital based experience was awful for both me and DH driving home in a thunder storm after being awake for nearly 48hrs, and I didn’t want my youngest to wake up and find I was gone - instead she woke up to find my bump gone[ish] and a baby brother in a bassinet. 😍)

…but there is no way I would have wanted my husband to [not] sleep over night in hospital or to have had other strange men wondering the ward while I slept, with access to my baby.

I don't have direct experience yet, but as I'm planning to have a baby, and was pregnant last year, I've been talking to lots of people about their experiences and reading up a lot too.

When I was in hospital after my miscarriage the room had an armchair that reclined into a bed. My husband snoozed in it while I was in surgery. That was a gynae ward though, not maternity, and it was a private hospital, but everyone I've spoken to who has had their baby in the local public hospital had their husband's stay overnight.

They are only two bed rooms though (as in for two patients, plus partners) as opposed to four bed being what is more typical in the UK, in my experience.

So, nothing like NHS hospitals in the UK then which was the point I made.

Everyone I know had their partner stay overnight. This is normal and not seen as something that would require other women to be 'chaperoned' Everyone has their partner stay, if they have one, and family are there too to help out because that is just normal here.

Why on earth would anyone need to be 'chaperoned' because a man was staying to take card of his partner and new baby? What an odd notion!

Just a casual look, found a blog.
Woman recently given birth in Spain.
Private insurance, but points out care would be standard for a native.

Own room + privacy = Men can stay.

It doesn't really happen like that in UK.
It's a little bit different 😬

I find it astonishing that you manage to function in society when you are so afraid and suspicious of half the population. These men are wrapped up in new parenthood. They have no interest in you or your baby.

By and large they're not four bed rooms, with walls and a door, they're four to six bed bays in a larger ward.

I'm a pretty butch looking lesbian. I love gender neutral toilets, it means I don't have to deal with the gender conforming types, often men btw near the entrance telling me to go in the men's.
Used to be only in gay bars and clubs I didn't get hassled.
On a side note we have had mixed toilets for ages on the gay scene at least where I go, I am not a big night clubber these days. The men are always freaked out. I think the bar managers like mixed toilets as it stops the activities that lead to complaints and damages.

It's not about them being "interested" in you!
Jesus Christ, how is thinking this juvenile?

I shat myself for 6 hours straight after I gave birth. Because I had a tear I was given industrial (double amounts of laxative. It was a full on horror show. EVERYONE in the ward knew what was happening. Absolutely zero control, poo everywhere, in extreme pain. Dignity gone.

With a bloke in the corner on his phone too?
No fucking thank you.

You would only have to read a thread and listen to women's voices for two minutes to get an idea of why some of these women don't want this.

They are not randomly, paranoidly 'afraid', they have reasons. Usually based on experience.

And no, not all of these men are lovely blokes wrapped up in new parenthood.

Some people know things and experience things that clearly aren't in your ken. They have needs and responses based on those experiences. Fgs stop scolding them for not being you.

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve experienced miscarriage and wish you well in future pregnancies.

The arrogance of your above quoted post demonstrates such a huge lack of empathy towards mothers who have just given birth, however, that I am going to bow out of this thread. I struggle to believe that you have experience of working in a maternity unit in the UK.

If you have some examples of the new language that Spanish women start using to talk about their babies that reflect the country’s move to self ID, I’d love to hear them.

I literally said, in my first post on this topic, that UK maternity wards weren't set up to accommodate men sleeping over. Now you are all racing to point out that Spanish maternity wards are different, like it's some kind of gotcha. That was literally my point.

It's the design of the wards that is the problem in the UK. That's the issue, not the principle. New wards should be designed to accommodate partners staying overnight.

Perhaps as a survivor of CSA I have the right to not want strange men in proximity?

As a safeguarding lead in Scout, Guides, and as a district commissioner for 70+ volunteers and 3000+ young people - many vulnerable - I have a damn sight more understanding of the risks of being exposed to unknown men in a space where I have a right to feel safe?

And yes, were my DH unable to stay with me in hospital but was aware that other men would be in the area, his mum or sister would absolutely stay with me as chaperone as they’d let never leave their grandchild/niece/nephew unmonitored. You’d need an army to stop them parking their butts next to my baby’s crib. And they weren’t CSA victims.

Frankly, I find your blasé attitude to other people’s life experiences, boundaries and the general welfare of children concerning and bewildering.

The arrogance of your above quoted post demonstrates such a huge lack of empathy towards mothers who have just given birth, however, that I am going to bow out of this thread. I struggle to believe that you have experience of working in a maternity unit in the UK.

Add in the complete dismissal of why some new mothers would not even want their own partner or husband there. If the poster did work in maternity in the UK I am relieved they no longer do so.

@PP82

I find it astonishing that you manage to function in society when you are so afraid and suspicious of half the population. These men are wrapped up in new parenthood. They have no interest in you or your baby.

It's not about 'interest'. It's about privacy and dignity.

I had my baby last year. After she arrived and I was in hospital for a few days, I was (despite being over the moon and completely in love with her) frequently half naked, bleeding, crying etc.

I didn't think a man overnight in there would be 'interested' in me (you seem to think the only concern people have is being assaulted when that's not the case) or my baby but I would have felt far more uncomfortable hobbling to the loo bleeding with my gown half open / bloodstained if there was a man there than if there wasn't.

And tbh a normal, decent bloke would completely understand that and not want to risk making women at their most vulnerable moments feel even more vulnerable or uncomfortable.

My lovely elderly Nan would not have felt able to stay in a mixed sex ward in hospital when recovering from a complex hysterectomy which meant that she (like me after birth) was in hospital for longer than anticipated and bleeding, having to have her clothes half on and off for various observations etc, unable to reach the curtain so if a nurse left it open, she was exposed until they returned etc.

Some Muslim women would be hesitant to seek gynae medical attention if they would have to be on a mixed sex ward after a procedure.

You're telling me that you fundamentally disagree with single sex spaces even when they allow users access to healthcare, privacy and dignity they couldn't have in mixed sex spaces?

What a selfish approach.

I am sorry to hear of your miscarriage and I hope that your fertility journey works out for you.

I think if you do go through childbirth and experience the maternity ward in person rather than imagining how you'll feel, you may well feel differently and also feel regretful that you've dismissed women's feelings about this so flippantly and at times sarcastically.

This is the kind of thing that perhaps @PP82 hasn't realised yet.

Childbirth isn't always smooth sailing and neither is recovery.

Until you've been on a ward post birth with any number of upsetting / humiliating (they shouldn't be of course but many feel it), / embarrassing / awkward side effects or after effects, dismissing women's experiences when they have been through them is so supremely arrogant.

Embarrassingly so.

I worked in a very large UK maternity unit for two years.

Empathy was in short supply generally. I hated it.

But male visitors are allowed to be on the maternity ward all day anyway. Or do such humiliating incidents only happen overnight?

And why is such a thing happening in front of a strange man any worse than in front of a strange woman?

I'm calling bullshit on this.

This isn't genuine. It can't be.

whatsitcalledwhen

When people are split into two groups (goodies and baddies), it is important to ignore any feelings of discomfort you have because you don't want to be a baddie.

Goodies: progressive and in favour of the new law.

Baddies: generally right wing, anti immigrant etc. (Though they don't include us in that because we are white. Though as previously stated some of the old folk don't like our presence.)

Note that the baddies are racist too in PP's words. So all of us who want single sex spaces due to dignity and safety can be dismissed as regressive, right wing, anti-immigrant racists. Who cares what they think, right? They are bad people.

Agree. The posts are becoming more ridiculous and less believable as time passes.