Sounds like a heck of trainwreck. Which thread is that?
I’m happy to use unisex changing rooms, facilities, or nude baths in places where it’s customary and there is a respectful culture around it. I’m very comfortable nude, as long as no one makes me uncomfortable by acting inappropriately.
As a woman, I have never felt unsafe with, been threatened by, or had to deal with unwanted or inappropriate sexual (not talking about regular, polite flirting) advances from any lesbian or bisexual woman. And I have met quite a few. I have experienced all of the above, in spades, from straight men. So if my local gym suddenly decided to switch to communal changing - no effin’ way.
This sums it up for me. Bluntly, perpetrators of sexual assault are statistically much more likely to be male. I care less about potential judgment than I do about potential threat. It’s sad that this is the world we live in, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it, and I’m not going to compromise my safety for idealism; and if I don’t know you, then there are rather severe limits to how much I’ll trust you.
That said, I’ve worked in theatre for years, and have changed (down to skivvies, anyway, not nude) in front of men on any number of occasions. A few of 'em were straight, anyway. 
Of course, these were all people I knew, as well as a context where everyone understood that the costume changing backstage was about logistics, not sex or attraction or an invitation for… anything at all, and you just don’t have time or space to be shy and still get the job done. The one person – a straight man – who abused that trust was cut out of my life as soon as the show was over.
Yep.
Recently back from an event with no gender-specific bathrooms at all. You get used to it.
I’ll also just point out that historically, it’s been more common for straight men to physically assault gay men if a flirtation/come-on/sexual situation is perceived to have occurred, than the other way around.
n/m
It’s simple for me. I don’t want to share a dressing room with anyone.
It just struck me that as many locker rooms, showers, and barracks I’ve been in over the years since becoming an adult, probably more gay guys have seen me naked than women.
I can understand the naked/not-naked feelings academically but I just cannot relate to why anyone should deep down really give a damn if they see others unclothed nor why one would care if they are seen unclothed. Were I asking the question would I have be sincere or naive? What caused Adam and Eve to feel a need for a fig leaf? I could memorize the answer and recite the answer given in the book but I don’t understand it.
In my dorm in college there was a vote at the beginning of the year on the bathroom status as the dorms had all been built as single sex so there was only one bathroom per floor. The only people with any reservations of same sex bathrooms were due to religious reasons. Nearly all bathrooms were voted co-ed, and there was never a concern about them voiced in my four years there due to two factors: 1. an educated and respectful environment and 2. if anything would have happened (even an unwelcome look), that person would have been ostracized/demonized/reprimanded/shamed as we knew everyone and it wasn’t a large community.
In looking through a lot of the responses and especially Kaio and Mr. Excellent, I think the commonality with the comfortable ones are that you know the people in the room and that others are often uncomfortable due to the stranger aspect. So I think the primary reason most people would have a problem is the fact that they don’t know the people.
As long as people keep their mouths shut about my body and are careful about where they gaze, I wouldn’t have a problem undressing around the opposite sex or gay people.
I don’t care if people check me out. I just don’t want to hear about it if they do. And in my experience, men have a harder time with this than women.
In retrospect, I have probably been sharing locker rooms with gay guys for over 40 years. I guess I’m just used to it. never once had an issue of any kind. Sharing with random women would feel a bit different, but I would imagine I’d be comfortable after a few times.
(bolding added) I’d like to address this specifically, although I think others have also covered it.
Full disclosure - I am a gay man who has been in any number of locker rooms over the course of nearly maybe 55 years since the first one I can remember. I don’t much like people looking at me naked, but since I am old and flabby they pretty much don’t. Here are my points:
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Statistically, men are far more likely to initiate sexual assault than women. However, I like to think that this is still a fairly small minority of men (straight or otherwise).
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I don’t suppose gay men overall have better character than straight men. However, the incidence of one male raping another male seems vanishingly small outside of prison* (barring date rape or other drugs or alcohol). In my life I have had one (rather small and young) man tell me that he was raped by another (larger) man in a bathroom that he was cruising in; I’m not sure I believed him, although I don’t know of any reason why he would have made it up or embroidered the truth. This seems to me a very unusual circumstance, and it happened (in a stall) when no-one else was around.
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As others have said, the risks attached to any sexual activity in a shared locker room environment for a gay male to do anything other than very discreetly looking are very high. Best case is that the other party will complain to the management and you will be permanently 86’d. Worst case is you will be abused verbally and/or physically.
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Regarding your earlier point, also made by the OP in the earlier thread, that a straight male should be able to make himself comfortable by being able to not share a locker room with gay people, is to ask you how you would be able to tell? The straight man should not have to suffer any actual unwanted contact or behavior. But a locker room is a public space (within defined limits) and no-one has the right to expect that level of privacy (i.e. not to be seen).
I think all these are valid points why locker rooms segregated by gender are the cultural norm, while locker rooms segregated by sexual orientation are not only not the norm, but are both unnecessary and impractical.
*I have no experience of prison, but I suppose the opportunities for one-on-one rape are greater there. I also suppose that, like the military, this has more to do with power and control than with sexual orientation.
Roddy
I’m not comfortable sharing a dressing room with women because they might point and laugh. Also, if they prematurely see me naked before I have a chance to get them drunk, there’s no way I’d be able to get anywhere with them
It would take at least a generation for men in our society to understand that it isn’t their right to have or comment on any woman he sees. Street harassment and Nice Guy-ism show it’s positively epidemic in our culture. But if that expectation was changed I’d have no problems changing with men. I’ve done it plenty with men I knew wouldn’t act like assholes, and it never bothered me.
So, it doesn’t bug me as long as the men behave. Which I can’t trust currently, as far as the general population goes, but I’m hopeful attitudes are changing! Sincerely, I would love it if my granddaughters only knew about unisex bathrooms and showers.
Getting a woman drunk for the purposes of sex, ESPECIALLY if you know or suspect she wouldn’t have sex with you sober, is rape. I assume you were joking, not casually admitting that you commit felonies, but it’s this type of laissez-faire attitude about rape and women’s safety that makes women wary of sharing a locker with men. Also, just being wary of men in general.
In other words, your joke isn’t funny.
I am gay and would prefer not to change in front of anyone I didn’t know. I either change in the shower or just do it quick.
I’m not concerned about my effect on them. I’m concerned about their effect on me. That’s not an issue with men, gay or straight.
Though I have very contradictory personal views on public and private nudity, as I get older I’m starting to think this hangup we have about others catching sight of our own dangly bits is absurd.
I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but that is because I have an inflated and entirely unwarranted positive body image, and I know not to be a jerk.
In current American society, I do not believe co-ed facilities would work, because far to many current American men do not know how to not be a jerk.
I have travelled enough in my life to have been exposed (heh) to many different levels of concern for public nudity, and I honestly believe that American neo-Victorianism is stupid and dangerous.