Mixed sex changing rooms in a Brighton secondary school - part 3 - we're really cooking now

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Hello friends.

I'll let the press do the talking...

https://www.gbnews.com/news/trans-school-court-changing-rooms

Thank you for this update.

Good news for return to school in September. I’m sure you will be there ‘inspiring’ them to comply.😄

we did mixed sex basketball in the last years of high school and it worked pretty well. This was everybody all together. The best players were all boys (there was a gang of them that had a scratch game every week at lunchtime and were all pretty decent) then some of the girls who could really shoot due to netball, then the rest of us who just milled around not having a huge impact on the game! I was in the last group (am male) and honestly didn't hate it. It was a nice way to low key socialise with the girls without yanno having to actually make chit chat which I've always been terrible at, even without the general angst and terror of being a teenage boy!

@BezMills Mixed Sex sport done properly can be enjoyable. I do wonder how some of the girls felt though.

I know as a sporty teenage girl I didn't find e.g. mixed sex hockey or ultimate frisbee at university great. I had to deal with some sexual harassment and it wasn't nice to not be as 'good' at sport as I usually was, coming from a single sex school. I also felt like some of the boys were holding back and it wasn't a proper sporting competition, more just for fun. I definitely preferred single sex sport.

Me too. Given our horribly short games skirts and equally nasty games knickers, I would not have been happy with mixed sports at school.

I hear you! Yes I'm quite sure some of the more sporty girls who would be top players in field hockey or netball or basketball found it a bit annoying to get played off the court by the top boys or overlooked by the boys they were actually better than (not sure what would be worse)!

I was not good at any of the sports that we did at school, so the experience of being accomplished (or even enjoying) any sport during school years is not one which I had (in common with many women I went to school with) . The closest I came might be mixed-sex basketball as mentioned above!

Turns out there are a few sports I do enjoy (not that I have any particular talent), just none of the ones that came up in the course my bog standard Scottish secondary education!

I think the impact of menstruation in turning school PE into a horrific nightmare cannot be underestimated either. Some women and girls have unpredictable, extremely heavy fast onset periods. For those girls, knowing they're in a single sex PE environment is probably important for their mental health, wellbeing and attendance.

My opinion is that mixed sex sports in school should be opt-in only. There should ALWAYS be a single sex option too.

And being forced to play hockey when almost bent double with cramps and being scolded for not trying. Thanks, Miss Evans, you utter cow. Did you not remember your youth?

This thread has inspired me to just dust off my trusty Roberts biology textbook from my teaching days. I remember scoffing as I purposefully read a passage to the pupils. Here it is:
’a small amount of blood passes out of the vagina’….. ‘There may be slight pain during the period itself’. I raised my eyebrows at both of those. I think even back then I said women should write these chapters.

Whereas it should have said 'but also you may hemorrhage like an eviscerated pig and want to disembowel yourself with a rusty spoon to stop the pain'

We had to wear very short shorts for PE at my school and the boys would look for evidence of a sanitary towel in those tight short shorts and point and laugh. It was disgusting behaviour. And who the fuck thought tight short shorts were appropriate wear for young teen girls? I know they’re fashionable now, but not every teenage girl is a lithe young thing.

I'm so glad mine was single sex. There was a boys school on the same site, so you got socialising at lunch time and joint afterschool clubs, e.g. drama, orchestra, where you were there by choice and interest, not being forced.

Yes. I think the girls would haved loved that. The boys were all very quiet already - I didn’t want to alienate them even further. It was always nice to see the girls feel more comfortable in these lessons.

Hard agree. PE was miserable enough without having to do it in front of some of the boys in my year.

When sports bodies spend £££££s on research into why more girls don't take part on sports, I often wonder why they don't simply draw on their own experience - and I can only surmise that they were the girls and boys of yesterday who were absolute bastards in PE at school.

Or "You may turn a light shade of green and pass out, causing your grumpy teenage brother to rush into the kitchen yelling 'I think Sarah's dead or dying or something!' and be startled to find that he'd somehow missed that happening most months for two years."

Plus point there is that even grumpy teenage brothers turn out to love you really.

Yep, they were the ones with A or B cup busts and light periods. Bastards.

That probably only applies to the girls.

I once sat in a room with a load of people convened by sport England to discuss this very point. One of the really senior people asked if we could address the elephant in the room. Oh great I thought, we are going to get on to the issue of how shit PE is in school for girls. No, she just said it is dreadful that girls might want to exercise to make themselves look more attractive for boys.....

I saw read and went off on one and it wasn't appreciated!

I never had to deal with periods but PE what’s the most humiliating embarrassing and sadistic part of my time at secondary school and the very worst part of an already damaging five years at school.

weirdly the same school my daughter goes to.

It has stuck with me for life and will never leave me

Tbf, I was that girl - but I still hated PE! I dared to be small, quiet and studious, and the PE teachers didn't tend to like us very much. They preferred the confident, tall, popular (sometimes verging on bullying) ones and usually put those girls in charge of picking the teams. The outcome of that was predictable.

I seem to recall a 'This Girl Can' report which even mentioned privacy in changing rooms as a barrier to girls taking up sport.
It's outrageous that these bodies get so much funding to promote female participation yet still promote the inclusion of men

(Some - many) men get uncomfortable and even angry when told in any way that women (due to their lived experience) fear ridicule, harassment, assault or rape at the hands of men or, when reminded that because of this they deserve and want single sex spaces free of the ( even well meaning non- pervy) male gaze.

Why? Well aside from the cohort of pervs and incels, there’s the group of men who can’t abide their wishes and convenience not coming first every time, with no regard to anyone else. Then we have the largest group which is the unthinking, uncaring and the clueless. The last group can sometimes be reached if you give them the male prison thought experiment.

They’re asked to imagine how comfortable they’d feel cooped up with a guy unquestionably stronger and much more brutish than them - they don’t know any harm of this particular guy but the guy belongs to a prison gang that is known for carrying out all the rape and assaults.

I had a conversation with my husband once where I mentioned that one in 3 (or 4?) women had been sexually assaulted at least once in their lives. He countered with “men get attacked too” (I know, I was surprised he went there too, but anyway). When I retorted “yes, by other men,” he literally stopped short. Women know that men are potentially dangerous, whether they will become so or not. Men just…don’t see it? Don’t ever have to think about it? At any rate, it doesn’t seem to register.

I find the fact that adult men have 160% the punch power of women quite a useful statistic in this kind of chat (also had with my DH). How he'd feel walking home late at night after pub closing with a load of men with 160% his punch power some of whom might be drunk / looking for confrontation.

They just need to stop and think about it for a bit. Yes, they get attacked by other men (statistically speaking) but it's (statistically speaking) a much fairer fight with a greater chance of getting away and / or fighting the attacker off. Men are also faster runners (statistically speaking).

Being a women is a bit like being a man walking home with a load of other blokes all of whom except the one man have knives, who are all much stronger and faster. It's that kind of power differential.

I like the male prison thought experiment too.

I was in a gym class yesterday and the PT accidentally touched a woman's bum as he was reaching for something and he leapt back and said something about we should look at his wedding ring, he's very happily married and we shouldn't worry, we were safe with him. As if the only reason men rape and abuse women was because they aren't happily married? Genuinely hadn't occurred to him to think otherwise.

When my DD was having driving lessons aged 17, the older male instructor made a point right at the start of telling her he wanted her to be comfortable and he would be staying on his side of the car at all times unless it was an emergency. Obviously it should go without saying, but I think she really appreciated it as she'd heard some stories.