Mixed changing room - is this considered ok these days?

[Scirocco]

Today I took my toddler swimming. Or rather, tried to.

We walked in to a giant changing area, with rows of cubicles with partial height walls and doors (gaps above and below them, doors low enough that you could see the heads of people changing). No single sex changing option. Men walking around mid-change (a towel round a waist, for example). The aisle in between the cubicles had quite a few people (all men or boys) standing looking at their phones.

Maybe it's me, maybe I'm just being prudish, but it felt really inappropriate and unsafe, with an absence of privacy.

When I asked the receptionist if there was single-sex changing available, I was told no, because it's more inclusive this way...

Is this the normal now?

(We went to the park instead.)

All this ‘You can shower at home’ stuff makes me seethe. If I swim in a pool and then don’t wash myself thoroughly in a private showrer within say ten minutes, I get thrush.

MEN can manage with a quick public rinse off then a proper shower 30-40 mins mater at home. Women often can’t because swimming pool water gets up inside us and we’d like to wash it out quickly, in private, thanks.

Any why should women and girls be inconveniences and shoved out of single sex spaces?

My local swimming pool is like this. The showers are mixed too. I don’t use it for that reason. I joined a private gym instead.

It's a complicated issue, certainly, and I don't want to over-simplify it. However, I do think a lot of GC feminists are suddenly using the "BUT MUSLIMS!" argument to try and advance their cause without properly understanding the people they're suddenly claiming to champion, and the issues they really face.

We're not championing Islam (or Judaism, or other religions the strictest forms of which restrict women's clothing and where they can go). We're trying to open up the world for these women. At the most basic level, they need exercise and a way to get out of the house without a man. We're not pretending to care about the women who are in this position, so please don't dismiss our concerns on their behalf about mixed-sex only facilities.

I'll admit it's been a while since I used local authority pools, but when I did, the changing rooms served all the pools - so a woman might be hoping to attend a women-only swim, but still have to change/shower in the mixed sex changing room if there isn't a single-sex option.

And finally, no - wall-to-wall fully enclosed cubicles are not the answer. A regular poster often raises the issue of safety - a pool user could collapse inside a locked cubicle and no-one might realise anything is wrong until too late.

It’s not really practical for non drivers to go home in a dressing gown to shower tho. I’m not getting on a bus like that!

As non driver we threw on clothes walked or bused back then showered - it was a complete none issue in all the locations we've lived in even when we were some distance away.

There often wasn't space under showers at busy times like after swim lesson anyway and as PP says sometime you want to avoid others in mixed showers anyway.

Getting dressed under a towel used to be normal on beaches and in open plan female changing room at my local swimming pool in childhood - it is a workable option. Ideally though choice - male, female and family sized changing facilities for some reason though this doesn't seem to be the modern option most locations go for.

No.

I could go into detail why this is an absurd idea, but why should I?

Access to showers and adequate changing facilities is part of the bloody expensive! fee structure at swimming pools, and they should be useable for women.

It's not about the odds of it happening it's the impact it would have. The world isn't going to end if a picture of my boobs ends up on a porn site (tho I don't have that body anymore) but our world would end if someone took DS.

It's all relative I really ain't bothered about pictures or even revenge porn, I worry about DS. I also include picture of DS, AI/editing means an innocent picture can be made into anything anyway.

Our local pool where I grew up in the 70s/ 80s had a mixed changing village with decent high doors but separate male/ female showers and toilets on the way to the pool. It was fine for me, but I have since realised why other women might hate it and why that set up isn't ideal (plus smartphones didn't exist back then).

Now is been refurbished with horrible mixed showers on the poolside right outside the glass door of the sauna (about 10 feet away). Men sitting inside stare at women showering (possibly not out of ill intent but it made me uncomfortable nonetheless). I need to shower or the chlorine makes me itchy. It's put me off going there tbh.

Being a victim of voyeurism is actually pretty awful, life changing even. Please don’t minimise what you don’t understand.

Thank you @TheClogLady . Awful to see such minimising of voyeurism. Another person telling women to stop making a fuss about nothing.

If women have to shower at home, then we're entitled to a partial refund. We should refuse to pay the same as men for facilities we're expected not to use.

All the times I've gone swimming regularly, it's because it was part of a weekly or daily routine, and I was at the pool before I went on to somewhere else immediately afterwards. This is pretty standard. Lots of women have a swim before work, for example.

I don't get what fear of murder/kidnap has to do with single sex changing areas.

Little boys have always been allowed in the women's with their mums. I don't think anyone that wants single sex spaces wants little boys banished to the gents?

I had hoped that people (especially women) had begun to understand that non-contact sexual offenders cause significant trauma to their victims but apparently I was overly optimistic on that front!

Little boys have always been allowed in the women's with their mums. I don't think anyone that wants single sex spaces wants little boys banished to the gents?

You'd think.

I remember fist encountering issue with 3 year old Ds in to toilets in shopping center with just me on day out with me and his two sisters - all young and had a woman go apeshit at me - because how dare I bring a male into toilet her teen daughter would be using. I wasn't sending a just barley toilet trained boy in gents in shopping centre by himself and she refused to see why it was a problem.

I thought it odd as I thought above - but spoke to some single friends who encountered similar with young boys from other women - DH said it was an obvious concern when he took DDs out with just him.

It's why many parents prefer mixed sex changing - because it removes worries about encountering situations where you have to send them into public places without you at ages you deem to young - means you don't have to deal with people not wanting even young kids of opposite sex in with you or having different cut off age to you or judging child age widely off mark.

That seems unreasonable! Maybe she was having a bad day?

All the leisure centres round here have signs up saying kids older than 8 have to use the appropriate changing room - which of course also makes it clear that kids under 8 are allowed to accompany a parent of the opposite sex.

I never had anyone raise an eyebrow taking DS into ladies loos and changing areas.

<edit - my quote fell off, this was to sleepyscientist)

You might not mind, but my friend's 15 year old daughter might.
Not some random porn site but spread around school.

Nothing will trump a child being kidnapped/murdered but the risk of that is so much lower than many women/children being traumatised by being photographed/filmed in a changing room.

Well quite! SleepyScientist might not be bothered but what if the victim were SS’s son?

Which is why male/female and family change (for parents accompanying their opposite sex children) is safer for all.

Voyeurism Is overwhelmingly a male crime, perverts shouldn’t be given access to women OR children.

This article predates the widespread availability of cheap spy cam equipment, it’s worse now (hence the need for ‘upskirting’ to be made a specific crime): https://womanmeanssomething.com/the-voyeurism-epidemic/

Our pool has a changing village. Doors are not floor to ceiling - gaps above and below. If you stood on the bench you could easily view the person in the next cubicle. Interestingly, above the bench they have installed bars affixed to the top of the cubicle - so you can't stand on the bench. They know what the problem is and the risk changing villages have. I wonder why there is the trend to do this when the risks are so obvious that they have tried to mitigate them.

She's already said she doesn't mind people taking illicit pictures of her son while he's undressed.

It's all relative I really ain't bothered about pictures or even revenge porn, I worry about DS. I also include picture of DS, AI/editing means an innocent picture can be made into anything anyway.

Crikey, poor kid!

I thought I might have misread that.

Quite a big safeguarding concern I would have thought.

Thank you to all those who have mentioned the floor to ceiling cubicles put medically vulnerable people at risk. This includes anyone having a stroke, heart attack, seizure or hypo. It also provides an opportunity for sex and drug use by it not being so private. At least one rape happens inside a British school premises each day so where there’s an opportunity it will happen.

However the more mundane reason swimming pools cubicles have gaps in the bottom will be because of cleaning. Chlorination water is a corrosive and will build up and eat away at the partition. You need the floor to be washed by mops (with stronger chlorine solution) and water to run away because the floor will be unhygienic (hairs, plasters, tissues, wee) and the gaps allow ventilation to dry.

It amazes me that the government consultation on public toilets acknowledges there will be a problem in mixed sex toilets by saying their design has to be fully enclosed. However by saying this could be a preferred design in single sex toilets in the future means there will be a lot more tragic medical incidents and assaults that could have been prevented by visibility.

Where I worked before was a fancy building which had parts open to the public. The loos were on the basement - a small, dimly lit corridor of single cubicles. The police were always chasing out druggies and people sleeping (and worse) in these.

sometimes I’d be in the basement setting up events or looking for things and it was bloody creepy at that end of the building.

It's always the people you least expect who make posts dismissing the significance of non-contact sexual offences.*

*Sarcasm.