Well, consider the alternative. As a parent, would you be comfortable leaving your toddler age boy outside of the locker room, unattended, while you’re inside changing?
Granted, this is at the Y, and you would expect some semblance of security/responsibility among the staff, especially when it comes to children, but who knows?
I see this at Bally’s a lot. They have classes for kids in Tae Kwon Do and you can often here the boys talking about the women they see. They appear to be about 7 or 8 and in my opinion if a boy can comment on a women’s breast size and a bunch of other things, even if they’re just imitating TV or Movies or the Internet, they are too old at that point.
You mean if they are merely mimicking, then they are too old to see the breasts, or too old to be taught age-appropriate behavior regarding what they observe about people’s bodies?
I mean when the child realizes that naked women having meaning then they are probalby too old. I doubt an eight year old really has sexual feelings toward seeing a naked woman, well at least most eight year old boys wouldn’t. But they still pick it up from life.
And if an eight year old boy can make suggestive comments about a woman’s breasts even if he doens’t understand the meaning behind it and is just mimicking what he hears on TV or movies, he’s too old.
So there is going to be some test at the front desk every kid has to take once a month to see if cognitively they are capable of mimicking suggestive comments?
I’d think anything above toddler age would be inappropriate, frankly. Heck, the gym I used to go to had separate changing rooms for men over and under 18 (two for women, as well). I don’t think that necessarily has to happen, but it was good: I imagine it would have been a little awkward to shower next to an 8-year old boy, much less an 8-year old girl.
But nakedness doesn’t have a sexual meaning in and of itself.
The 8 year olds making suggestive comments are going to grow up warped, not because they’ve seen nude adult women at a young age, but because no-one is telling them that:
a) nudity doesn’t mean anything sexual
b) it is never appropriate to comment on the appearance of strangers
c) women are not objects where worth is determined by breast size or “hotness”
d) not everything people say on TV is cool
Taking those boys out of the locker room doesn’t change any of those issues.
The real issue in my mind is: why seperate the sexes in the first place? It can’t be merely to avoid having folks look with lust (or its opposite) at each other, we all know gays and lesbians exist - yet they go into the change room with the other men and women nonetheless. We do not accept that gays can be barred from the changeroom because they make straight folks anxious, because they may be lusting after them (or disgusted by them!).
To my mind, the reasonable explaination is to avoid the anxiety created by a reasonable fear of sexual harrassment, which (as a very general generality) is in our society mostly something women have to fear from adult men.
If that is the case, there is no particular concern raised by having young children in the change room with a parent. They aren’t going to harrass anyone. Having the parent there provides that they will not themselves be harrassed. What, exactly, is the concern?
Oh I think you’ll find some people would try and make that argument - I’ve had it on this very messageboard.
I suppose so; but I think that many shuddering at the thought of little boys seeing them in the buff would be outraged by the notion that gays or lesbians should be screened out. And so far at least, it is not socially acceptable (in Canada at least - can’t speak for other jurisdictions) to do it.
The family locker room at our community center is really insufficient for its needs. So when my son was smaller, I would take him into the ladies locker room - leaving the very small and overcrowded family locker room to the people who needed it. (It was often being used by group homes or other group care situations - twenty people at a time in a room meant to hold three smallish families. At some age we used the family locker room because it was no longer appropriate for him to be in the ladies locker room - around four? maybe as late as five? But the period was short given the inadequacy of the family locker room and we then sent him into the men’s locker room with “see you on the other side.”
Also, we once ran into a pair of teens/young adults in the family locker room who seemed convinced it was a “making family room.” - “Private” stalls with showers big enough for mom and three kids - or two young adults. That discouraged its use for quite a while.
Point being, don’t assume that because a family locker room is in existence, that its is a preferable solution
I think some of you may be misunderstanding - I don’t give a tiny little rat’s ass how your kid grows up. I am only concerned with people I don’t want looking at me looking at me, and I don’t want eight or nine year old boys looking at me naked. It’s not a sexuality issue; it’s a privacy issue.
Malthus, you’re a Canadian, but you’re a male Canadian. It’s possible that you don’t know what it’s like to be a female Canadian. You’re also wrong; our culture (at least in Western Canada - I don’t know where you are) is to not have older boys in the women’s changing room. Somewhere between 3-5 is the cutoff - there is definitely a grey area there on the exact age. If a kid is ogling all the “tits and bushes,” chances are pretty good he’s too old to go in there.
If he later reaches an age where he can behave himself and not “ogle the tits and bushes”, can he go back? 
Now you’re just being cheeky.
No seriously. What about girls that ogle? What about gay women who are their but not ogling? If men could behave themselves and not ogle, since that seems to be the sticking point, would that be OK?
There seem to be some men and women alike who can manage to be together topless or nude on various beaches around the world without staring or ogling or pointing or giggling or whatever. This is well known.
Why not locker rooms if they can behave?
Yeah, it seems to me that we see guys as inherently horndogs, no matter how old they are. I just don’t see the big deal about being seen by a little boy. Guys don’t seem to care about little girls staring at them. Is this the male gaze rearing its ugly head?
If they were staring, then yeah I would feel slightly uncomfortable. But I think the number of times this would happen would be pretty low in both male and female childrens cases, especially since it is not socially acceptable in general to bring your children into an adult locker room, the people who are likely to do it are those that have children that are not likely to stare in the first place.
Toronto; and while I’m male, I do know some women - namely my wife and mother - who have been known to take my four year old son to the pool; so the issue is not unknown to me.
Clearly, when the kid is old enough to go into the locker room by himself and get changed, it’s not really an issue. Until then, it is, and I can assure you that they can - and do - have 4 year olds in the woman’s locker room where alternatives are unavailable; I know that for a fact.
To the extent that you say that the cut-off age is something like 5, I tend to agree; older than that and they can typically go to the lockers by themselves (and typically would want to). However, a 3 to 5 year old is not a “toddler” and so I must respectfully disagree with the initial statement that in Canadian culture children older than “toddlers” cannot go to the opposite sex change room. Perhaps that is the case in Calgary; that I cannot say.
I used to go to a lot of pools in the area for swim meets and I’ve noticed that places have very different rules (more like suggestions) on this. I’ve seen signs that place the cut off from at 5, 6 and 7 years old. That means that at least one place allows 7 year olds to be in opposite sex locker rooms, which seems a bit old to me. In any case, the question is whether the child is able to take care of his or her self in a public locker room and 5 or even 6 is a little young for that.
I’ve seen plenty of young girls in the men’s locker room, some older than 5 certainly. I avoid walking around nekked whenever there are young kids. They all stare anyway and I bet it is just as traumatic for a boy to see me nekked as it is for a girl. Just the other day I had to say something to a boy of about 10 who just kept staring at my penis in the shower … and no, it is not an exceptional penis.
The flip side of the boys using the men’s locker room is that, on more than one occasion, I’ve seen concerned Mom’s come into the men’s locker room looking for their slow moving child. Some weird shit goes on in locker rooms but nothing compares to a distraught Mom rampaging around, yelling at her kid, as a dozen men try to cover up. The last time I hid in the shower until she came in there for a look, then I just gave up and offended her with my nekkedness. I would calculate that about 5% of my visits to the local rec center involves a Mom standing at the door of the locker room yelling at her male child. If taking boys into the women’s locker room solves this problem then I’m all for it.
Also, in relation to this - what case can you make for anyone to ‘give a rat’s ass’ about your right not to have folks you don’t like look at you? Lots of straight people hate with the force of a thousand suns the notion of gay folks looking at them in the locker room - yet as a society we basically tell them to put up with it.
To my mind, the best case would be that of safety. A five year old isn’t really much of a risk in that way, to others. They might be at risk from others, however.