When I first read the thread - Would you be comfortable sharing a dressing room with a gay person??, I got the impression that the politically correct answer is “Yes”. I meant to ask this to people who responded in the affirmative there(but the thread got closed) - Would you also not mind sharing a dressing room with the opposite sex? Why or why not?
P.S - Growing up, I haven’t experienced dressing rooms the way they’re set up in the west(communal showers and naked people walking around? You people are animals 
) I would hence be uncomfortable sharing them with all other people.
When I am in my own locker room, everyone presumably has the same thing. Those who are confident walk around naked. Those like me walk with a towel, but I have grown comfortable enough to get dressed right by my locker. I am pretty sure no one is ogling me and I feel comfortable enough to report it.
There are old women. Young girls. Hot young things. Fat people. Skinny people. We all have our own shapes and none of it bothers me. People are polite.
I am not saying it is a rational thought. I just know that I am amongst my own.
I don’t have any compunctions about changing clothes in front of someone in a space societally designated as a changing area and while I’m sympathetic to the concerns of people who are not comfortable in such a situation, I consider it their responsibility to make themselves comfortable.
edit: I mean, I’ve swum at enough lakes where the changing area is on the other side of that bush and everyone just pretends.
To answer the question posed directly - I am OK with sharing a dressing room with a gay person, but not the opposite sex - because my comfort is based on how I feel about the other person, not how the other person might feel about me.
When I’m around a bunch of unclothed dudes there’s no chance of an unwanted physiological reaction.
Precisely. To elaborate just a little, as a straight female, I care quite a bit about how straight men perceive me. I could care less about whether gay females (or males, for that matter) find me attractive or repulsive. But I’ll add that if unisex changing rooms were the societal norm, I’d learn to deal pretty quickly. (And I’m married, after all, so - yeah. I guess I don’t really care about that part.)
And there’s also the fact that, as a female, I feel just a wee bit unsafe taking off my clothes around strange men.
I can’t help but wonder if the question of sharing dressing rooms/showers/bathrooms with the opposite sex is ever asked with any kind of sincerity or genuine naiveté.
Social convention. I’m perfectly comfortable in the presence of women and not at all interested or concerned with their orientation because it has been thus since I was in dance class at four years old. There may very well be gay women who find me appealing, but they are aware that the dressing room isn’t a bar, and I’m quite comfortable in the knowledge that a polite “I’m spoken for” will be sufficient. Ignoring a negative response could result in ostracization or exclusion from a group.
And I expect men will feel the same way, but I assume that the very same social convention speaks to the potential for a violent rebuttal if a polite “no thank you” isn’t accepted. Gay men aren’t going to corner a straight man in a gym shower. The potential for repercussions is too great.
It’s pretty simple. Stranger rape in a public environment is rare enough to be unconcerning. Therefore stranger attention is flattery at best, and minimally invasive inquiry at worst.
It’s just no big deal when the playing field is even.
Meh. You can save your wondering for another thread. I’m genuinely interested in finding out what the basis of the norms as they exist are. And I’m thankful to everybody who’s responded so far - your replies bear out some of the possibilities I’d thought of, and add a couple new ones!
There’s mixed bathrooms in at least two of the universities near me here in the UK- both recently converted or built.
Plus I went to a convention in Germany a couple of years back where the gym on site which had three sets of showers- male, female, and mixed. No, there was nothing ‘going on’ in the mixed ones, it was largely families all showering together, and no-one but the British and US visitors thought it was even worth a comment- most of them just used whichever was emptier. Internationally, it’s not that uncommon- nudity is not always just associated with sex.
Yeah, pretty much this, too.
So to be very clear…
People who are comfortable changing with their own gender have their facilities. People who are comfortable changing with either gender have their facilities.
Nobody is being coerced to change in a gender setting in which they are not comfortable.
Is that correct?
I’ve shared changing space with both women and gay men in amateur theater. Didn’t care either time.
A woman isn’t going to try any creepy shit.
And as the cleavage thread shows, far too many men will and then be pissed off if you call them on it.
This explanation, along with the few others who’ve responded they’d be unsafe with men around, does make me think that if it’s used, men should be allowed the same response to gay men in the same changing rooms as them.
Except of course, to puncture that line of thinking, gay men don’t rape straight men(that I know of), and men are, on average, physically stronger so have less to fear from other men.
Does the fear for safety (or not being exposed to creepy shit) spring purely from, and have legitimacy within, a male-female dynamic? Or is that something that can be extended to the male-male dynamic? Again, I’m not attempting hidden gay-bashing. It’s an interesting idea to explore, and I’d welcome measured responses.
I think there is sufficient evidence that some men do come on to women and act inappropriately in almost any given venue. Putting both in a common change room would only compound that. Hence the existing conventions.
Is there a statistically significant number of cases of gay men coming on to straight men in changing rooms and making straight men feel in some way threatened or uncomfortable?
I’ll accept anecdotally significant numbers of cases.
As far as I know, men aren’t told from a young age that being naked around men makes them at least one of the following:
A. A slut
B. who will burn in hell for sluttery
C. A soon to be rape victim because men cannot control themselves in the presence of the female body and if she gets raped it’s her fault because SLUT.
When all major religions and some state laws forbid men from being naked near another man, the situations might be slighty comparable. Until then, it’s apples and oranges in terms of social conditioning.
If you’re addressing the question to me, I agree that the male-female dynamic definitely has legitimate issues. Male-male? I have no clue, hence I asked. Are gay men significantly different from men aside from just their sexual orientation? i.e are gay men just all better behaved than straight men?(entirely possible) If they’re not, then the possibility of them behaving similarly to straight men exists. If the possibility exists but it’s not happening, it’d be interesting to know why. i.e, if some gay men are as badly behaved as some straight men, but they don’t come onto straight guys, then what factors which translate into men behaving inappropriately with women at almost any given venue do not come into play in men behaving inappropriately with other men? Women being physically weaker is perhaps one, which would not be a factor where men are concerned. It could be a purely statistical thing, with homosexuals being only 10-15% (?) of the population and badly behaved ones likely being proportionately fewer.
ETA: It could be a reporting issue, where men are as hesitant to report being teased/harrassed by men as women reportedly are.
You’re making this too hard. It’s the power dynamic. Most men can still overpower most women. A gay man in a straight world is in the minority, and outside of prison conditions a gay man can expect a gang beating if he pushes it. I’m not going to waltz into the men’s locker room starkers to make a point because I don’t want to be beaten or raped. A gay man isn’t going to come on too strong because he doesn’t want to be beaten to death.