Mixed sex changing enables sexual predators to target girls and women

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

The Telegraph reporting what we all know. That the police data on mixed sex changing shows "at least 16 rapes, 80 sexual assaults and 65 acts of voyeurism were committed in sports centres in 2023, equating to three offences a week"

That's just the incidents in sports centres so presumably doesn't include all the stores, workplaces etc where women have mixed sex changing imposed on them.

Well done the Women's Rights Network for collating this. Worth noting that 10 police forces refused to supply data. Wonder why that might be?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/09/sexual-predators-target-girls-mixed-changing-rooms-wrn-uk/

archive link:

https://archive.ph/uHFKs

I came here to start a thread on this and OP beat me. I read it on here: Mixed-gender changing rooms becoming a 'magnet' for sexual predators, according to new report | LBC

It is not news to any normal person with an ounce of basic common sense. If you have males in where women and girls are getting changed, well, DUH! We all know what will happen. It's the reason why we segregate sex.

The one time I used the Changing Village at our local leisure centre, I realised that they'd put bars over the top of the cubicles. I wonder why they had to do that...?

The changing areas for the gym are single sex. It's only the swimming pool that has the Changing Village set-up.

While I was in the Changing Village, there were repeated calls of "I can seeee you!" It turned out that the caller was a learning disabled adult male. He was probably harmless, but I could see that the calls would alarm some women and girls.

When I first joined the leisure centre, the young man on reception seemed to make a point of emphasising that only the gym changing area and showers were single sex. I suspect that there might have been issues.

While I was there, I was only aware of the incident I mentioned above plus some other young men doing a lot of swearing. (Swearing is clamped down on in the gym areas; the attendants in the swimming pool area didn't seem to be as confident as those in the gym.)

I mention the swearing because there were groups of mothers with young children there at the time.

I’m baffled by the utter naivety of this movement or alternatively they are not naive but misogynistic.

Any woman that has lived in the world as an attractive young woman will know what many men are like.and how they respond to you. It’s incessant, wearing and can be frightening. We need clear unambiguous single sex spaces to protect us from men’s overbearing obsessive sexuality.

This has been understood and accepted for hundreds of years. Nothing has changed to render the separation unnecessary.

What's changed is that those with predatory values (safeguarding is right wing, single sex spaces are fundamentalist / regressive) have been given a platform in society and been able to intimidate organisations out of seeing safeguarding as essential.
Until this government starts ignoring these powerful groups / individuals and releases the EHRC guidance, prioritises safeguarding and VAWG, this won't change.

Local authority outsourced leisure services are doing this I suggest to save money. Mixed changing rooms mean less staff members are required I expect, and no need to have both female and male assistants at all times.

I expect that is the main reason. Not that in any way the consequences should be ignored or minimised.

Local authority outsourcing of leisure services started ironically by a government headed by a woman, Margaret Thatcher.

Are you for real?

Of course its money. Its the most efficient way of maximising the available space, instead of three separate rooms, all of which can be used all the time by anyone.

But not the safest solution

Just any woman. Any woman will know what many men are like, and how they respond to us. We all know it doesn't matter what we look like, what we're wearing, how old we are etc, all of us can be harassed or abused by men.

I totally agree with you otherwise.

Just my anecdotal life experience - at 50 I have definitely aged out of being perved over by random men. Brilliant. My stunning 17 year old on the other hand…it’s like being with a celebrity. Single sex spaces. No debate.

There's no doubt finance is involved. But all this has been facilitated by the anti women / anti safeguarding organisations insisting that single sex spaces were exclusionary. Way back, (maybe 2015 ish?) I recall Swim England (or whatever it was called then) issuing instructions that males must be give access to women's changing rooms. They openly promoted removing single sex changing in favour of changing villages citing "Inclusion"

They pressured from the top so if anyone asked why single sex spaces were being removed and cited safety, privacy and dignity, back came the "be kind, it's inclusion" mantras.

This was a social change, openly engineered by a tiny but immensely powerful group that allowed no dissent and created an intimidatory, bullying culture that silenced debate.

We've ended up in this position because men wanted it, and it has come as something of a shock to most of us, I think, to realise that despite all the progress that has been made, when it comes down to it, what men want is still considered to be the most important thing and given priority. I do sometimes wonder if it is a reaction to the women's rights movement and just how many men feel, on some level, that women have taken too much and it's not fair, and that we are getting what we deserve. I suspect more feel this way than would openly admit it.

I was reading one of the secret barrister books the other day and in it SB talked about the ease with which men can now access sexual material involving children (predominantly girls) and also connect with other men who have similar interests. The result has been that the number of men accessing this sort of material has gone up. More men are looking at images of underage girls than before. The police have a backlog of phones and laptops that need to be looked at. The point that SB made was that the removal of the socially imposed barriers that were there before has had a massive impact. Make it easy, and more men offend and are able to convince themselves that what they're doing isn't that bad really. We're going to see the same with the spread of mixed sex spaces. There will be more sexual assaults, more rapes, and more cases of voyeurism and indecent exposure. Men who would have been put off before will do it now because it's so easy. Everyone seems to have either forgotten this or be passing the buck on it, again, because men want it. Women who point it out are ostracised and belittled to ensure that no-one listens to them.

My mother, who stayed in an abusive marriage for decades, who let me grow up in that environment and told herself it was fine, thinks cross dressing men should be allowed in female only spaces because 'it's complicated.' But then she didn't bat an eye when my father took naked photos of me when I was at primary school, so perhaps I shouldn't be that surprised. Some women seem utterly blind to this side of male behaviour.

in terms of design: Private cubicles within a mixed sex space is the worst for rapes, and private designs are the worst for fatalities.

There is a big emphasis on ‘inclusive’ design - which is not defined but generally means mixed sex and private cubicles - but there’s been no risk assessments or equality and impact assessments done on them. The movement promoting them has roots in America, the designs from men with a highly sexualised background, rather than health and safety.

For toilets, the worst accounts from Stonewall and TransActual include shouting, being pushed out of toilets by 2 women and one man exposed himself to another man. This is not nice but not comparable to what has been happening to the medically vulnerable, women and children in toilets.

I feel at some point we are all going to have to trawl through local papers to collect the data ourselves because no one else is.

What happens when council toilets get too bad? They shut them down. What happens when bad things happen in venue toilets? The venues minimise it/keep it quiet. The victims rightly don’t want to publicise their trauma. It means the data I have is only just brushing the surface.

When I looked at the Prevention of Future Deaths report under ‘toilets’, only a couple of the fatalities I know about were on there. This is frustrating knowing there are cases where there may have been a better outcome.

I am in awe of the WRN getting the information for the report. It’s so time consuming and frustrating.

It’s very difficult for a changing rooms not to have gaps at the bottom because of the water and chlorine rotting the partitions and ensuring it’s mopped and draining away. You are always going to get problem with voyeurism. The maximum recommended gap to stop a phone going under the partition is 5mm.

Back to other topics, there are specific webpages where you can view hidden camera footage inside loos and find people to hook up with to use public loos. People travel from miles around (see ‘Smith Street’ toilets in Rochdale). It’s happened for years and still goes on today. These can be toilets in shopping centres etc.

I started using a new leisure centre to swim while pur local one is being refurbished. It has mixed changing room.

First visit was OK but the second time I was there I had two separate incidents of men bothering me in the changing rooms, invading my space and openly leering.

The reality is that even if the majority of men can behave we still should never be put in position where we are made vulnerable and uncomfortable.

The law should make it a requirement for gyms/pools/ leisure centres to have separate spaces.

It is appalling how the well being of women and girls is never a priority...