Women’s privacy and dignity

[Mrspenguinsschoolforfreaks]

I’ve just been to my local leisure centre swimming pool and while I was in the changing rooms a woman walked in from the showers, fully naked. I averted my eyes, and she walked quite close past me in a way which to me (and I fully accept I may well have imagined it) felt a bit pointed. I felt vaguely uncomfortable and embarrassed in the same way I would have if a man had walked in naked.

My impression is that the vast majority of people on this forum believe that it is a fundamental breach of women’s privacy and dignity if people with male biology (whether cisgender men or trans women) share changing facilities with women. Yet they do not consider that it undermines a woman’s privacy or dignity to have to get changed in front of other women, or to see other women naked.

I understand that many women have had experiences with men’s exhibitionist or voyeuristic behaviour which makes them specifically uncomfortable being undressed around men, or being around men who are undressed. But I’ve often seen the argument on here that it equally undermines men’s privacy and dignity to have to share changing facilities with women.

So my question is, do you think privacy and dignity are not infringed by having to get changed in front of people of the same sex? If not, why not?

Alas.

Will no one think of the sad, sad men?

Plenty of people think only of the sad sad men.

Roberta Flack wrote a whole ballad about the sad sad men!

Was it called Bring on the Clowns?

Ha. It's actually a lovely song.

Musical interlude.

Young man, there's no need to feel down, I said / Young man, pick yourself off the ground, I said...

Well that was a wild ride. An alleged lawyerly woman is upset about a naked woman in a women's changing room. Their thread suddenly takes fawning comfort from an extreme transactivist with a determination to brand safeguarding as right wing bigotry and to eradicate women's boundaries to privacy and safety from unknown men. Who'd have thought it?

Every woman on here evidently 😄

Thank you wims for so many articulate posts and the rebuttal of an MRA / incel agenda.

Good summary.

i bloody love Roberta flack, thanks for this

Just wandered back in from last night...did I miss any TRA "logic and rationale"?

I see someone got deleted replying to my post, probably for insulting me. Yawn.

wtf.

Just goes to show how mean women on here are. Always banging on about safeguarding and hurting the feelings of me who just want the freedom to live their true selves, naked and joyful in the women's changing rooms. A big bunch of nasty spoilsports.

I wonder whether these people who frame discussing safeguarding needs of female people as 'weaponising' will ever stop and think about what the ramifications are of their attempt to shut down those discussions.

When you see these attempts tie in with dismissal and reframing of sexual violence that women and girls experience, the irrelevant 'but whataboutery' that refocuses discussions away from the needs of female people, the flawed comparisons and logic, it does shine a very bright light on the issue of exactly why the discussions are needed in the first place.

Yes, I’d like to know that too.

The rates of transgender offending us lower because they included female transnen in the data sample

Exactly. And it doesn't specify the type of crime.

This has been pointed out repeatedly to that poster. It is not 'general criminality' that is what sex segregation for single sex spaces are based on, it is risk of sex and violent offences.

But this poster just cycles around and posts the same links and then declares that they have 'provided evidence' when they really have not.

One good point is though, that we really are getting fresh eyes on this thread in the mornings when it trends each day, and so it is always worth our while to post the reasons that this link is not relevant to the discussion about male people accessing female single sex spaces. And the more posters who bring that to light, the better the message gets through.

Really, Tontostitis, every day this poster does an excellent job of educating those reading along.

Also it's the wrong comparison. To assess the risks of transwomen using women's facilities you need to compare their rates of criminality to so called cis women not men.

That said, as well as checks thread title women's privacy and dignity concerns about i.e. changing with biological men, we can't tell if someone in a facility is genuinely trans.

Some men sexually enjoy wearing women's clothes and get off on going into women's facilities and frightening women. There's accounts of men doing this whilst masturbating.

And there's also your standard voyeurs etc.

There is the twist that on this thread the OP is the one sexualising the womans actions and is situationing themselves into the main lead role of the voyeur.

This is such a bizarre twisting of what I said. In case you can’t be bothered to go back and read my posts:

1. I specifically said I didn’t think the woman who walked past me had any sexual motivation. I said that, if anything, I wondered if she was judging me for my prudishness.
2. I speculated as to whether my discomfort might arise from feeling like an ‘unwilling voyeur’. Maybe that was a bad choice of words, but as I indicated in a response to a pp’s question, this might stem from a degree of internalised homophobia, because when I was at school and becoming aware of my same sex attraction, there was a huge amount of suspicion and stigma around homosexuality, and I found communal changing rooms particularly stressful.

So, you're concerned that you may find women arousing when you see them naked, OP, is that the problem? I'm a bit unclear on what the issue is. You don't like communal changing rooms?

do you think privacy and dignity are not infringed by having to get changed in front of people of the same sex? If not, why not?

I'd say it depends. We all have different levels of comfort with nudity, and different requirements to feel our boundaries are being correctly maintained. If you don't like to see naked women, I guess don't use communal changing rooms? On the whole, most women are relatively relaxed about being in a state of undress around other women - more so than they are around males. The reasons for this are probably fairly obvious, no?

I’m sorry, I did read your posts and appreciated that they were factual and made in good faith. I meant to reply to thank you, but delayed because I was considering whether I had anything further to say in response, and then before I got around to it I got distracted by all the unpleasantness from others. You are clearly very committed and passionate about safety in toilets and have put a lot of time and effort into this research, which is admirable. I’m afraid I don’t have time to follow all the links and read the supporting information underpinning your comments, but I have taken on board all of the issues you highlighted and found them very thought provoking

‘I got distracted by all the unpleasantness from others’

If you find facts unpleasant I have no idea how you function as a ‘lawyer’. Presumably you aren’t the kind of lawyer that has to stand up in court and present facts? Women don’t want men in our SSS. This includes, but is not limited to-

Tall men, short men, fat men, thin men, gay men, straight men, bisexual men, men pretending to be women, bald men, hairy men, old men, young men. As a lawyer, I would have thought you would be able to understand the definitions of words.