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?

1. You are the one who added the sexual motivation.

1. You are the one adding in your personal sexual motivations.

Man walked in from the showers, fully naked. I averted my eyes, and he 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 ...

Because his motivation would be ( checks notes ) judging you for your prudishness.

Then a paragraph benchmarking a womens single sex changing room to a mixed sex changing rooms

And benchmarking male exhibitionist or voyeuristic behaviour to project it onto women.

And your question:
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?

So what is the actual work problem you need help solving?

Your disdain for regular posters clear.
I am not buying you are posting here on FWR to help you work out your "homophobia" or any other phobia

@Mrspenguinsschoolforfreaks As a working hypothesis, i am going to assume you posted in good faith, without a hidden agenda. If so, you have been unfortunate and walked into a situation that was not of your making.

All along on this board, and very noticeably since the Supreme Court ruling, various posters have turned up apparently asking innocent questions and making artless observations about things they "just want to discuss", but as the thread wears on it becomes apparent that they are not as naive as they seem and are (yet again) trying to push an agenda of men in women's spaces, often by trying to argue that single sex spaces are impractical, futile, unnecessary etc.

After a surfeit of these kinds of posts, I think that some of the regular posters on here (and frankly I can't blame them) are sick of being led up the garden path and a lot more suspicious than they used to be.

Posting about being embarrassed by women in women's spaces could be seen as a lead in to "so why is a man who identifies as a woman any worse?", hence, the suspicion as to why you were posting, I think.

The poster you were defending already has an extensive history of dingdongs with other posters on multiple threads; they know exactly what to expect when they come here to wind people up, and as they keep coming back, I guess they must enjoy it.

OP I would be the last person to strip naked and walk around a changing room, because I get cold easily so always have a big towel.
If another woman does it I don't care, because we're the same sex. I don't care what her sexual orientation is and it doesn't matter what mine is, because we're the same sex. You could be next to me and it would be fine if you are the same sex.
You are welcome to over-analyse a sense of unease in same sex changing rooms, but that's your issue to resolve. Shower at home if you don't like changing rooms.

Thank you for explaining that and for giving me the benefit of the doubt. I was posting in good faith, though I’m not going to pretend I’m new to this board, or that my views align with those of most people on here - I do feel differently about the inclusion of trans women in women’s single sex spaces and about the merits of unisex spaces. But I don’t pretend to have an answer in terms of how things should be set up in practise to reconcile the needs of all those affected. My encounter at the swimming pool got me thinking about how I feel about privacy and dignity and why it is different from those who firmly believe that privacy and dignity are dependent on single sex spaces.

i don’t think I’ve come across that other poster before. Some of the points they made seemed to me good ones, and I had sympathy with their frustrations with certain other posters, although I could see that the discussion quickly deteriorated into fairly pointless tit for tat on both sides

You agree that men should be allowed into womens single sex spaces making them mixed sex spaces.

Its been shown on this thread that men sex offend in person and by using tec when given access to mixed sex changing areas and that the police themselves recognise this. And yet you dont appear to see any value in WSSS.

Your poster (Howseitgoin) has been very clear across multiple threads about the objective of removing WSSS

The poster has also been abusive across multiple threads falling back on personal abuse when other posters point out the problems with the data offered aa evidence.

Howseitgoin · 09/09/2025 12:13

Keeptoiletssafe · 09/09/2025 11:59
I will tell you exactly and truthfully why I post.
Because of the experiences I have gone through, I was trying to keep toilets safe so fewer people are harmed by not being attended to quickly enough if they collaps.
Etc

I don't respond because my issue isn't with toilet design
[@Keeptoiletssafe has over a number of threads that Howseitgoin has been active on carefully detailed why mixed sex areas are not beneficial to women (or men) ]
rather the
• pros &
• cons
[ guess how many disadvantages this poster has identified about allowing men into WSSS?
Hint :
Isolated instances¹ aren't necessarily considered meaningful statistical data. IE you would need a percentage over a threshhold to be considered relevant.
¹that would be convictions of sex crimes against women by trans IDing males ]
• of trans people
[that would be men and only men as the ideas of safeguarding trans IDing females (TIF) dont exist in this posters ideology]
being unable to use the toilet of
• their gender
[that would be men using the WSSS not women using the MSSS as its awkward to argue that TIFs are safe in the mens toilets when the whole argument is that men are not safe ]
given that
• they
[ meaning men as the TIF would be a women entering the Mens Toilets]
are of a substantially increased risk of abuse by men
[ so male on male violence (but women should be using these same toilets). When asked the poster can not even produce 1 instance in the UK of this male on male violence while dismissing the CSA against two girl in Scotland > "Isolated instances aren't necessarily considered meaningful statistical data. IE you would need a percentage over a threshhold to be considered relevant." ]
& research of public toilets where laws allow
[ so places where males are given free access (removing WSSS) making them mixed sex spaces somehow are not recording problems males in mixed sex spaces (sex offending etc) where the UK crime stats shows there is an ongoing problem in mixed sex spaces]
them shows that they aren't a risk to women.
[ UK crime rates show that men sex offend against women in changing rooms and any other spaces that they can access but when asked to provide evidence that a sub-group of men have a lower risk of VAWaG no evidence is provided nor is evidence provided that there has been any incident of male on male violence in any UK Mens Toilets]

I note you suggest unisex toilets are problematic but with the new UK ruling that kind of puts trans people at an increased risk if they can't even have access to those.

Which point that Howseitgoin made seemed in your opinion to be good ones?

What posts or replies made you sympathetic to Howseitgoins points?

Do you have any examples of the things/ posts you would say created the frustrations with certain other posters?

Having worked for several years as a lifeguard in a leisure centre in London, I am very surprised. Some women do get totally naked in the shower - usually pensioners. But from what I have seen they always wrap themselves up in a towel before leaving the shower.

I have only ever seen this happen in Germany where nobody would bat an eyelid at this.

I read this and I don’t think you realise that your opening post clearly came across as you posting some kind of ‘gotcha’. And your posts since have done nothing to change this perception, with this post reinforcing that perception.

If you intended to ask in good faith, that didn’t come across hence posters responded to that.

I, too, wonder what good points you thought that poster was making, or were you merely responding to their own deeply prejudiced views about women who you say disagree with you? You believed they were ‘frustrated’ by the response of others on this board. Whereas they have been deleted multiple times for being directly abusive to some of the posters who have continued to point out how disconnected and harmful to women and girls their views are.

Did you consider their motivations in all this as well? What kind of person might spend every day on a board trying numerous angles to convince women that male people should have access to female single sex spaces, while becoming abusive to those who reject that male people should be included? I can certainly think of several motivations for doing this that would indicate a person who certainly doesn’t have the best interests for female people in mind.

You say you feel you don’t have the answer to the situation of shared spaces. Why do you think any male person above 8 years old should be accessing provisions for female people?

You have been asked this numerous times in various worded questions. I haven’t seen you answer any of those. Will you start responding to the many questions people asked?

As a lawyer @Mrspenguinsschoolforfreaks , if someone came to you for advice for setting the policy for usage of facilities signed as being female, would you refer that client to the EHRC guidance (assuming as the EHRC has stated) that the interim release with the clarification will state that if a changing room is designated as being female, this means that this must be only for female people (ie biological sex) excluding even male people with a GRC?

Or would you advise them to write their policy to allow a group of male people into female designated changing rooms?

If so, what would the basis of that inclusion. What male people would advise your client to allow into a female changing room? Anyone who made the claim to be female?

Can you articulate why some male people are women? What makes them women?

I did not anticipate that your response to me charactarising you as the whiney, rapey boyfriend would be to doff the cap and run with it (with a mansplainey, orthogonal point about cubicles and a long list of likewise orthogonal articles about insane Americans).
Whether or not every communal changing space in the country could be replaced with equally safe and practical cubicles is irrelevant to how abhorrent it is that you assert that a man’s desire for a woman to undress in a shared space bears the same moral weight as a woman’s desire to not undress in said shared space.

@Mrspenguinsschoolforfreaks I'd like to see this spelt out, too.

Your original response to me:

"Oh baby, I want you to get what you want. I just don't see why I can't get what I want, too."
Male person just wants to live his trueauthenticalityness.
Female person refuses to undress infront of said male person in a communal changing room.
Is this a zero sum game?
It will only take you 53 Sandie Peggie threads' of reading to find out."

My response to you:

"There's this thing called 'cubicles'. Problem solved.
As far as zero sum game goes, private spaces in bathrooms comes at a cost of not only of a culture of increased suspicion & scrutiny of women but harassment of women not considered 'feminine' enough by the transvestigator moral panic police."

Your response back:

"I did not anticipate that your response to me charactarising you as the whiney, rapey boyfriend would be "

Thanks for backing up my point about this forum pal…

'pal'.... very masculine term. I don't know any women that call each other 'pal'. Only men use that term. Strange isn't it how language shows someone's sex.

"Go ahead and spell out what safeguarding measures you think are being 'weaponised' and what those 'unfair' rules are."

There are convictions of:

"Mexican rapists"
"Arab terrorists"
"trans women sex predators"
"Lesbian sex predators"

Should Mexicans & Arabs be banned?
Are lesbians bigger predators than trans women or vice versa? There's no data recorded according to the UK gov so by your 'safe guarding' logic lesbians perhaps too are a 'risk category' or would that be "unfair"?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/violentcrimeratefortransgenderpeoplecomparedwiththegeneralpopulation2013to2023

Interesting mock graph I found that shows the truth of 'hate crimes' in it's jest.

On the subject of cubicles:

Um, male toilets aren't fully self contained. Any one needing to use one would still need to access the shared bathroom space. Given trans people are significantly more at risk in the company of males from violent hate crimes than of women & there's no evidence of increased risk from trans people to women, it's a logical conclusion for them to use the women's bathroom.

there's no evidence of increased risk from trans people to women

Men, mate. Not trans people. Men.

It might be a logical conclusion (putting aside the dubious statistics) if society thought vulnerable men should be classed as women for the purposes of single sex spaces. But that isn’t the case. So it’s not in fact any kind of logical conclusion that this group of men should use women’s spaces.

I don't care what anyone else's 'gender identity ' is - it's as of much relevance to me as what starsign they are.

Women's spaces are for women. Men can use men's spaces or unisex spaces.

Males are the larger, more violent sex.

The fact that some men are more at risk from other men doesn't mean that those men get to put women at greater risk by using women's single sex spaces.

Just leave us the fuck alone.

All sub groups of people have differing offending rates including male bodied men. See young v old, black v white, poor v rich etc.

"Transgender People, Crime and Prisons – Prevalence
While there is a consistent stream of media attention concerning trans people involved in crime, statistics show cisgender people commit crimes more regularly than trans people. The makeup of the England & Wales (E&W) prison population shows this:
The E & W cisgender population is 59.6 million – the cisgender prison population is 87,900 = 0.15% of people in E & W are in prison.
The E & W trans population is 262,000 – the trans prison population is 268 = 0.1% of trans people in E & W are in prison.
From this statistic, we learn that cisgender people commit crimes at a 50% higher rate than trans people.
Evidence from the research conducted by Olga Suhomlinova and Saoirse Caitlin O’Shea using official statistics dating from 2021 revealed that while 0.5% of the population identify as transgender or non-binary, they represented just 0.2% of the prison population.
Transgender People, Crime and Prisons – Trans Women & Trans Men
Another anomaly in the statistics is that while 96% of the cisgender prison population is male and 4% female, the trans prison population is 84% trans women and 16% trans men. The reasons likely include trans men suffering depression, anxiety, discrimination, unemployment issues, and, consequently, poverty. For safety reasons, trans men nearly always elect to be housed in the female estate. Likewise, as long as not convicted of any violent or threatening act against natal females, trans women should be housed according to the safety risk they face.

https://translucent.org.uk/transgender-people-crime-and-prisons/

All “trans women” are “male bodied men”. It’s not possible to change sex.

Men. Men are overwhelmingly more violent than women. And men commit 99% of all sexual assaults.

Depends on what country you live in which also depends whether a moral panic is part of the equation.