Why do leisure centres no longer provide single-sex changing rooms? Women’s Rights Network on the case…

[GreenEyedFeminist]

What is it with leisure centres? Why can’t they give us single-sex changing rooms? This WRN X thread lists some of the cases from this year - I bet there are more. I get why families want to share a changing rooms but surely they could design changing rooms that give women and children a bit of privacy and SAFETY as well as a few cubicles for families. 🤷🏻‍♀️

x.com/womensrightsnet/status/2038709414786453891?s=61&t=HeTVV02FVbA_mwnXH0ymWg

Because that is, by far, the only way to implement FsWS without being sued from either side, at least in non-work context.

Welcome to your new reality, get comfy with unisex bathrooms😘

Primarily it's due to cost, its cheaper to have 1 huge mixed sex changing village than 2 single sex changing facilities plus family facilities and disabled facilities.
Then theres the fact that they can claim to be fully inclusive of trans people and families and because of the ingrained misogyny of the system around these planning decisions and sports England who said its best practice, nobody considered the harms to women and children.
Then we come back to money again. As more and more mixed sex facilities were put in the tsunami of voyeurism and sexual assaults on women and children that was inevitable has started and is getting to a point where nobody can deny that these facilities are dangerous for women and children. The cost of sports England changing their advice and for leisure centres to return to the old system and the risk of being sued by women who were assaulted or filmed in these mixed sex facilities (admitting that they screwed up is an admission of liability) a head in the sand approach to the harms to women (therrs that misogyny again) is deemed best and cheapest

Most leisure centers I've been in, in years all have communal changing areas. Its not a recent thing.

I am very much in favour of single sex spaces but leisure centres have been like this for years - decades. I've always assumed they are like it as they get families as customers and its definitely easier with one or even two parents and children of both sexes and maybe a couple of friends as well, to do all the changing and lockers in a big shared space. Especially when children are slightly too old to go in with a parent of the opposite sex but you'd worry about them completely on their own.

Never going to happen.
By law you cannot have mixed sex "bathrooms" (assuming you mean toilets). All you can have is single use, inclosed rooms with floor to ceiling walls and doors and with a sink inside, individual unisex toilets.
Nice try thought.
Oh and its also only a matter of time before leisure centres are sued for sex discrimination and/or facilitating the sexual abuse and harassment of women by not providing single sex facilities for them, which will be successful whereas any discrimination claims from men who want to use the women's but are told no will fail because the law says they must use the men's or an individual facility not the women's. This btw is why now both virgin gym and pure gym have just changed policies to not allowing any men however they identify into the women's.
Welcome to the new world order women are taking our stuff back and have the law onside to make companies and councils give us back our rights, safety and dignity even when they don't want to.

Edited for auto correct fail

And yet that's the opposite of high court findings, but ah well, keep living your transphobic dreams <3. Hopefully one day you will find meaning past hate and bigotry, something else to fulfil you.

Which 'high court findings’ are you referring to? Evidence please.

Or are you just talking bollocks again to try and muddy the waters?
Not going to work here mate.

Most leisure centres are for families, particularly the swimming pool, so mixed sex changing villages do seem most practical. Especially as we aren’t a country that gets naked in public, like some of the Scandinavian countries. They have single sex family changing in my experience.

Gyms which are not for families have single sex changing rooms, and all toilets are single sex.

It’s a shame pervy men have ruined a nice thing, yet again. I had to use a lot of petrol station toilets when I was district nursing, and on top of everything else I had to worry about checking the room for cameras on top of all the actual worries of the day. It grinds you down.

If you're talking about the good law projects recent case against the ehrc interim guidance you are very much mistaken as the case was thrown out in its entirety, the claims that the GLP made after they lost the case have been proven to be completely false. You can read the judgement yourself and see that the high crt deemed the guidance correct with the law. Oh even if the high crt disagreed with the SC its irrelevant as the supreme court is a higher authority than the high crt. But again nice try

Our local pool has a fairly sensible layout. There are lockable ‘group’ rooms round the edges of the central ‘village’, but this is itself divided into three rows - women’s, men’s and mixed sex.

I guess much if it is to do with the target market. Easier for families. Funnily enough all of the ones I’ve used have had toilets marked for men and women (plus a Unisex one) so I guess somewhere along the line they understand that a level of privacy is needed - so the idea of EVERYTHING being unisex as a result of the SC ruling is rubbish. I went to Centreparcs a couple of years back and the spa had separate men’s and women’s changing areas. 2 different set ups for 2 different needs.

It’s not a recent thing, but it’s not without its problems.
way back in the mists of time there was a leisure centre in Romford called the Dolphin-early 80s. It was built with communal changing facilities with gaps at the tops and bottom of the walls. Even as a pre-teen I knew these were problematic as groups of boys would jump over the walls while girls were getting changed. I think this is where I first heard the word rape, from our parents. Couples no longer had to avoid the No Heavy Petting rule as they had a locked room with a seat. It was dangerous and unsanitary. I’d have thought that planners would have learnt their lessons but maybe the institutional knowledge doesn’t go back that far.

Ah the jeering, derisive and dehumanising manner of a man who is gleeful about compelling non consenting women to undress in front of him.

Can't think why women aren't rushing to obey. Baffling.

Did I hear toilet talk?!

Changing room partitions have gaps from floor-to-door and floor-to-partition because of drainage and chlorine (rotting them) and ventilation to prevent mildew etc. The space above the doors and partitions is for ventilation and economics - many leisure centres have tall ceilings with mechanical ventilations so no prospect of raising the partitions up to the ceiling. There’s no way of getting rid of the gaps without causing problems with cleaning, drainage and ventilation.

Of course, the advantages of having door gaps are that when people collapse they can be attended to quicker eg. Cardiac issues after swimming. It also helps to prevent misuse in toilets and all sexual activity is illegal in a toilet used by the public.

With toilet cubicles, only single sex toilets leading on to a single sex area can have door gaps. That has been confirmed by the Health and Safety Executive. I can prove these designs are safer and more hygienic in toilet provision.

Back to changing rooms….

And you think that this is convincing people to support male inclusion in female single sex provisions?

All I see when I see this post is a misogynistic determination that if female people don't consent they get what they deserve. I am sure that you thought about this before posting though, so I can only assume that it is deliberate and you want women to know that this is what they deserve for saying 'no'.

It is really clear, isn't it.

And once you see it, you never unsee it.

Converting all the single sex toilet cubicles to fully enclosed rooms with sinks is never going to happen. These are single sex designs.

The only other way is to change the Health and Safety legislation, Building Regulations and British Standards and revise parts of the Sexual Offences Act. But that requires arguing against health and safety.

I love how you keep thinking that anyone cares to win you over :D. The unearned ego is akin to the ever famous "silent majority" that never materialized

Quite Helles. Shut up, know your place and get your knickers off.

If someone really did not wish to be seen as an abusive man with no place anywhere near women's spaces, it would be a good start to not behave like it. Particularly to behave like it quite so overtly and loudly. But that isn't the wish at all.

Women have single sex spaces by law. At this stage men enjoying themselves in control and abuse fantasies is pretty pointless.

Do you understand that your post evokes images of people carrying bats with the progress flag?

The 'silent majority' of where? The silent majority of people who disagree that male people should be included in any way in a female single sex provision? The ones who keep coming up consistently in polling around the world saying that male people with transgender identities should be included in female sports, prisons, toilets, changing rooms etc?

They materialised. Are they the ones you refer to? If not, please clarify who you refer to.

You mean the no longer quite so silent but ever growing majority that shows up in every survey about single sex spaces.
You seem to have a picarious grip on reality @AidaP may I suggest that you look at the actual facts around this subject before you make an even bigger fool of yourself

The man who has been tweeting a stream of vile tweets about 12 year old girls being poked and prodded in the genitalia is another version of this.

Miller has upped his output to include these references. It really is vile and it is based on spreading misinformation. But ultimately, it is the same. 'Look at what you have done!' When the reality is... actually... no... the IOC committee who allowed themselves to be convinced by a philosophical discussion about 'rights' are fully responsible for this mess.

And yet in all new leisure centres, the dry-side changing rooms are single sex 🤷🏼‍♀️

Plymouth Life Centre has a central mixed village with single sex areas and dry sides. This still happened. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c14kk126jp6o

It's just horrible.
Well done that brave girl for reporting him.
Why make it easier for these men?

Plymouth Crown Court heard how Benjamin Lilly recorded girls aged between 12 and 15 while working at Plymouth Life Centre.
Lilly, of Chaucer Way, Plymouth, admitted seven charges of voyeurism as well as counts of attempting to cause a child to engage in sexual activity, making moving images and category C child sex images.