Virgin active have complied with the Supreme Court ruling.

[GargoylesofBeelzebub]

I link to Owen jones' meltdown for your pleasure.

x.com/owenjonesjourno/status/1956305558627135686?s=46&t=AjtjSItRj-kgZwRzL-pdyQ

🤣

Yep.

But joking aside - the reason places like gyms have communal changing rooms is because individual single-use changing rooms and showers for everyone take up too much space and aren't economically viable. I think a lot of people would be a bit miffed if trans people get the luxury of an individual changing cubicle to save them from the indignity of sharing a changing space with members of their own sex, while us boring old ordinary folk have to cope with communal rooms, exposing our rolls of fat and surgery scars and other things we'd rather keep private. Presumably though the individual change spaces will be open to anyone who says they need them. I wonder what demand will be like?

The gym I went to quite recently when I was trying to recover a bit of fitness after an injury, which didn't seem to be more expensive than any other gyms in the area, had three advantages.

One, it was close to where I live
Two, it was open twenty-four hours a day
Three, it had only individual changing rooms, each with a shower in it. You changed, you put your clothes into a locker before going into the gym proper, and you pinned the locker-key to your tracksuit or whatever you chose to wear to work out in.

I never had to queue to use a changing room, though I did sometimes have to go and use one of the three at the top of the stairs near the rowing machines, static bicycles and treadmills instead of the ones near the lockers downstairs and all the fancier equipment. Admittedly I tended to use it after nine at night, because that was more convenient for me, and it may have been more crowded during the day. But it can be done: that gym is still there, still operating the same model, so they must find it profitable enough to be worth doing.

Oh ffs just have a trans of a NB changing room then people can just pick whichever. It’s not hard!

But lots of gyms (often those attached to pools) do have changing villages with individual cubicles. There are 8 gyms run by my council, 5 of them (the new and refurbished ones) have changing villages with individual cubicles, 1 has both that and separate male/female, only 2 have just male/female. I know people dislike them but they're becoming more and more common and tbh there are advantages for other groups as well -parents taking opposite sex children, etc.

All also have disabled facilities although I don't think that should automatically be the first alternative and sometimes the disabled changing room is inside the male/female.

Only specifying to clarify that even if every single gym follows what it seems the new echr guidance it's not as though that means that every trans person in the UK won't be able to visit a gym ever again, as OJ is catastrophising.

They can join a gym that has alternative/unisex facilities

They can campaign for all new gyms built to have unisex facilities (like women had to when there weren't any loos for them, like disabled people had to, etc.)

They can just change before going to the gym -I literally never see anyone use the showers etc in my gym (pure gym) anyway.