Today's discussion about the news

My daughters are the same sort of age and have spent a lot of time in communal changing facilities for swimming galas. Not all pools and sports centres have cubicles, and even if they do, squeezing into race suits can be a shared task (they are seriously hard to get into) which is best done in a more open space.

But anyway, why should females have to surrender their private spaces to males? Society needs to find a different way to solve whatever issues make some males feel they can only cope with the female rather than male changing rooms. This may involve males making sacrifices, which is likely one of the impediments to common sense breaking out on this issue, as males tend to not like doing this if there's a potential solution that involves females making sacrifices.

"For trans women to potentially adversely affect all women there would need to be a lot more trans people and for all of them to be in it with some kind of ulterior motive."

This is demonstrates one of the problems with this issue. For many females, the mere presence of males in changing rooms / toilets is extremely distressing. Not so much an issue with a well known work colleague perhaps, but a definite issue when the male is not known to the female. There doesn't need to be an ulterior motive. Think of it as if your wife / gf is walking alone at night e.g. heading across a dimly lit car park. Is she likely to be sh*t scared as a matter of course if she hears/sees a guy running up to her, or will she only be scared if there turns out to be an ulterior motive involved?

Not really. I swim in the gym and I’d say most people there with me are getting changed and showering there.

Tbf it’s not like its without its problems - I had a man hit on me as I was drying myself after I’d taken my swimming shorts off 🤷🏻‍♂️

Sure ok, but you still make it sound like there are trans women lurking in most public toilets and changing rooms across the country, whilst also maintaining they are a tiny minority.

To avoid any conflicts Id like to see a move to maybe communal areas for those that are comfortable and provision of cubicles etc for those that want privacy - as RC showed above, plenty of scenarios can occur. I wouldn't want to force a trans woman into a mens changing room.

Withouhout going down rabbit holes, I think most problems that get discussed can be solved quite easily.

Lol. Round it up to half a percent if you like. Do you think they can predict next year's public spending to ±0.5%?

That is a lot of money in absolute terms however you try to spin it.

Don't recall opining on the quantities lurking anywhere. But it's not really a numbers game tbh. It's more a case of "Why should females be forced to give up their rights, to solve someone else's problems, when other solutions exist?"

But if you want to play the "numbers game", at the British Summer Swimming Champs last year, on the first day, there was a trans woman (an accredited volunteer) in the female changing room whilst the female swimmers were attempting to get changed into race suits prior to racing. The trans woman didn't come remotely close to "passing" as a woman, and word quickly got round that there was a bloke in the female changing rooms. The situation was eventually resolved, as the parents and the pool management took an uncompromising view, but until it was, there were circa 200 female swimmers adversely affected (fear, unease or simply having to change their pre-race routine to get changed somewhere else in private) on potentially the most important race day of the season, just because of one male who happened to need a sit down in the female changing room when there were lots of young, athletic females wanting to get changed.

Rick - What legal allowances do you think the trans community currently lack?

Things like legally being able to change your sex -

If you are born a man but want to identify as a women and you get sent to a men's prison, I imagine if you're authentically trans (and not doing it to give you access to women to abuse) it can be quite traumatic to be segregated on the wrong side of the gender, right? We can decide, tough shit, you went to prison, but they're the kind of things.

I think in general, trans people who are fundamentally unhappy with being born the other sex do find it extremely hard when society won't go a long with their gender change. It makes the unhappiness/trauma, whatever you want to call it, much worse.

So they want rules that allow them to be the other gender in instances where gender is segregated.

But if someone is a male predator on females, wouldn't it be easy if they can self-identify as a woman and stroll into women's only spaces?

You can't square that circle.

🙄

We're saying the same stuff tbh Wallace.

Is that allowance not currently there. It just takes a monumental amount of effort.

If I recall correctly, the current NHS guidelines/ process is that you have to live as the opposite gender for 2 years, at which point you can start hormone treatment. Which can mean two years of looking pretty unconventional.

Some muddled thinking here. If the argument is about risk then it is a numbers question and we are being very selective about what risks we are trying to mitigate. If the argument is about whether people feel comfortable with this or that, it's a completely subjective and culturally varying question. There seems to be a fair bit of starting from some people's discomfort and then trying to justify mitigation of that discomfort (which causes discomfort to others) with unquantified risk.

Segregated changing rooms are not a designed solution to a carefully assessed risk. They're a cultural norm. That's not to trivialise those norms Thinking carefully about where trans prisoners are housed is a risk mitigation. It's a different thing.

EU election ;)