Mixed sex changing, Swim England

[Davros]

Discussion on Woman’s Hour right now.

Definitely but that's something else I'm not supposed to say these days!

Yes. It's the breaking of the social taboo that men were not allowed in women's spaces that is so damaging.

It used to be the case that a man in a women's toilet or changing room could be ejected - everyone would know he didn't belong there and was almost certainly up to no good.

Now we can't do that. Any man in a women's space can say he's a woman, and we aren't allowed to question it (women who do so have sometimes been ejected themselves).

We don't know who is simply a poor innocent TW who "just wants to pee", and who is up to no good - whether it be a TW who gets a sexual thrill from being in a women's toilet listening to us pee, or a normal heterosexual man who gets a sexual thrill from watching us undress in a women's changing room. Or worse still, who wants to rape one of us.

It's why that photo of Eddie Izzard queuing in the Ladies at St Pancras station made me so angry. He wouldn't have been a threat to any of the women there - it's a busy toilet and he is instantly recognisable, so even if he did have malign intentions towards a woman there he wouldn't have got away with it. The danger he posed was different - that he was helping to normalise men going into women's toilets, and there wasn't a thing the women could do about it.

He clearly doesn't see any problem, because he thinks he personally is no danger to women (and I have no reason to believe that he is). He doesn't understand the wider danger he's helping to enable by going into women's toilets.

And another one is "how would you police it/if men want to assault women they will do it anyway".

My response to that is always is, "if burglars want to burgle your house they will do it anyway, so why bother to lock your doors and windows when you go out?"

if it can't be policed, or "men" can't be kept out, then why are the women's changing rooms/toilets any safer for the MCWs who are supposedly being protected from male violence?

Precisely!

@Zita60 this is exactly the issue. Once it's considered normal for those 'innocent TW' to use the ladies, it lowers everyone's guard about males in female spaces.

And people like Eddie Izzard don't get it precisely because they are male. They can never understand why this is a problem as they have never really had to understand the threat and the situations that women face from a very young age. He may be no threat but if we can't eject him, we also can't eject the next bloke that comes along who could very well be dangerous.

This policy has been shown to be defective for a long time, see 'Peeping Tom' fears over unisex changing in leisure centre revamp - The Leamington Observer] It was endorsed by the Amateur Swimming Association. The Association's Chair who resigned in 2015 also ushered in the change in policy at the Hampstead open air pools so that there are mixed, men only and another mixed pool now because men who say they are women are allowed into the ladies'.

Swim England have completely changed their tack on this. That should be applauded surely?

I listened to this yesterday. Was very disappointed to hear the reporter at pains to state that it was v difficult to prove a link between mixed sex changing and instances of voyeurism. I found myself yelling at the radio - well what else could it be caused by?!

I wonder what the difference is in a woman's experience between being humiliated in a state of undress in front of a man who says he's a voyeur, and a man who says he's a woman?

They both want to use her body, why on earth would she stand around listening carefully to a man explain what he'd like her to think before she decides how she feels about it? Women's realities and experiences aren't predicated on what a man tells them. Women don't wander about the world going 'gosh, where's a bloke to tell me what I think and feel, I can't know until one turns up'. And mostly they don't care how the bloke feels or what he thinks he defines himself, or what he might or might not do, they just don't want him there at all.

Have a third space, the women happy to be male resources can all have a lovely time seeing souls in there with whichever men want to make use of them, and the women's single sex space can be a space where men leave women the fuck alone.

And any whingeing about that demonstrates that the bodies of consenting women won't do.

I used to think that but after years of this nonsense I’ve no patience with fully functioning intelligent adults who nodded along saying “yes of course men can be women if they say so”

they only changed tack because they were forced into it, it wasn’t of their own volition

And even the people who want third spaces are worried about the other people in the third spaces because it relies on hoping everyone else around you has the same intentions.

Good on this discussion being posted on YouTube because it really shows the safeguarding flaw in ‘gender neutral bathrooms’:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JUwe-eL4ryk

I am not ‘conservative’, I just want everyone to be as safe as possible. This isn’t the way forward.

Tbh I'm starting to think it's a stage that we've worked through here and know won't work, but society/establishment now need to tread that path and find it out for themselves.

The problem needs to be moved out of women's hands and women's single sex spaces: the solution cannot be to use them.

The obvious next step is to offer non-sex based provision for those unhappy to use their sex based spaces, and to work out from there how to deal with the issues in those spaces for those people. Whether it's single cubicle provision or whatever. I've really lost interest in thinking about that, I've got enough to do fighting for women needing single sex spaces and that has to be a problem solved by those who created it.

It would get the women determined to claim they're delighted to undress in front of unknown men out of the hair of women who want the right to consent, and it would make clearer what the real issues are. And those real issues are a very mixed bunch, and would need multiple strategies, there won't be one quick issue.

No. The solution is to have public and school toilets and changing rooms that are male or female.

Mixed sex aren’t as safe. There’s more assaults and more problems in them. Many of the problems stem from the fact mixed sex spaces are designed so that the cubicles are completely private because of voyeurism. This means when people are at their most vulnerable (having a medical emergency or being assaulted) they are more at risk as they are not able to be seen or heard from the outside. There’s a stroke every 5 mins on average in the UK, the same for heart attacks.

Obviously there will be situations (small cafes etc) that will only have one toilet in a room. We need as few of these as possible.

’Gender neutral’ spaces will always be a problem for women. Women and girls have been forced into disabled toilets and train carriage toilets. We need as few of them as possible, not more, for everyone’s sake.

As for schools, in the last school specification they added a completely private toilet ‘identified as gender neutral’ on each secondary school floor. Why pronounce it as identifying as gender neutral when there’s always been, and still is, one called a unisex toilet located at the entrance?

I have yet to see any equality impact assessment on this change to school buildings. However, there is plenty of information out there which says the mixed sex toilet cubicles/rooms are used for sex, vaping and using drugs and they end up being the most ‘disgusting’.

This is the sort of thing I want to say but frequently don't!
I think "P" or "V" on doors would "solve" any "problem". The garden shears idea is good but if put into practice wouldn't give the recipient ANYWHERE to pee!
(Mind you, I suppose they wouldn't be able to, so who cares?!!)

Forced into it by whom? And how? They listened to athletes and members and acted. As have BC, UCI, FINA, WR, WA etc.

Jean Hatchet has written about this in the Critic

https://thecritic.co.uk/gender-ideology-is-making-gyms-less-safe/

This probably would fit better on the relatively recently Virgin Active thread but I couldn't find it. Letting any bloke who wants to into the a room where women and girls may be naked apparently leads from a policy from UK Active.

Well done Duncan Bannatyne.

Excellent, clear article from Jean, thank you for sharing it.

Letting men identify into women's spaces isn't just making gyms less safe, it's rendering gyms unusuable for the women without the luxury to be able to tolerate a man using them and enjoing himself undressing with them for whatever agenda may be going on in his inner life at the time.

Like the actual lesbians have been bumped out of the 'LGBT community', the women who won't and can't consent are being bumped out of society.

So that men can express themselves and be happy.

The condition of women using facilities in society is now being willing to provide their undressed body for the use of any bloke who wants to claim it.

The thing which isn't said enough is that the majority of TW have intact male bodies and remain sexually attracted to women. These are men in every sense that matters when we assess risk to women. We need to be highlighting this more loudly imo.

Just not that simple many other issues of safeguarding,
complex area with confusing legal issues across different laws!

But sadly, it wouldn’t. Because those male people declare that their neo vaginas are vaginas. So even those post surgical male people will demand to use the female single sex spaces.

And there would be some male people who would find the ‘garden shears’ an attraction. After all, they want each other to remove their body parts remember. It was right there in that manifesto they published. This would be considered a badge of honour to some people.

*besides, all male people excluded means even the ones with surgery. Because them having their penis and testicles removed doesn’t make them any more acceptable in female single sex spaces.

Well it was an idea!
How about "Birth Vs only" on one.
Tbh I don't care who goes in the P door! OK I know I should but...

I know, and overall I know that it's a serious problem.
But, in answer to your comment, I SERIOUSLY wouldn't mind removing the p parts from men. After that, I think I'd ALLOW them in the V door just to comment on them...
(OK I know some women won't see my comments as worthy or amusing, but well sorry...)

This is why, whatever the issues, it needs to be women's single sex spaces with mixed sex gender neutral additional options (men are going to have to sort themselves out about what they want, women have enough to do).

It has to start from a space provided for women only, that men are required and enforced to respect regardless of their problems and beliefs. The issue is the 'no'. Once there's a women's single sex AND a mixed sex option the only reason for a man to walk into the single sex is to break that boundary and remove accessibility and territory for women for his own reasons. And once we're back to clear labels and the knowledge that a man doing this will be arrested, most of the issues for women who need single sex spaces are resolved. This involves clear messaging that men are welcome to identify however they like BUT this does not make them women and there are spaces that are for women only. And however sad they are about this, that's how it is.

Then we can work out what those mixed sex spaces need to look like and if they work and all the rest of it, that's a separate problem. But society need to realise that it's about pissing on women's territory, excluding some women altogether, and a sense of quite aggressive and sometimes openly sexual/coercive desires towards using non consenting women, not sad feels and 'just wanting to pee'.