I (cis male) use
(1) public bathroom stalls; I also use
(2) group changing rooms and showers at gyms, gymnasiums and public swimming pools.
For me it would be much, much more disconcerting to encounter someone with female primary and secondary sexual characteristics in (2) context than in (1) context, because in (2) context we both are naked, and it seems obvious to me that that also would be the case the other way round.
From what I read about public trans policy in the US, “apparent man in women’s bathroom” seems to loom large, but I don’t seem to read about an “apparent man in women’s sports locker room/shower” issue. Why would that be?
Although this answer sounds flippant, it is not meant to be. I don’t think that the kind of American that gets worked up about this kind of thing is all that familiar with gyms. Sit in a Walmart parking lot some time and ask yourself how many gym rats you see going in.
I’m just taking a guess , but I suspect it’s related to the fact that the last time I used a public restroom was yesterday and the last time I used a group changing room was over 40 years ago in high school and I have never used a group shower.Even the high school pool locker room had individual showers.
I’m sure I’m not representative, but nearly every woman who isn’t homebound will use public restrooms fairly regular!y -but not nearly every woman goes to a gym, or uses public pools of the type that have showers.
An example I can give you is when my hobby club had someone who was transitioning from man to woman and would be using the facilities at our camping spot. This person explained that they would be getting up to take a shower at 4 A.M. to avoid the masses in our group shower room and would try to avoid using the bathroom as well, sticking to the porta-potties if necessary.
I put out a notice of explanation to the women who would be affected and asked for feedback please. Almost all the women called me to say they had no problem with this person using the restroom and were grateful by the person’s thoughtfulness. Since the toilets had stall doors, said some of them, no problem. Some husbands called me to object, but their wives had okayed it. They knew “Sal” was not going to be an issue. And so Sal wasn’t.
When it all came out, some guys were mega upset. The women weren’t.
I (a woman) don’t get what all the upset is about. A person who is transitioning has a lot going on at the time they do so, and are often counseled to avoid relationships during this time if they aren’t already in a committed relationship. Do I care if there is a guy in the stall next to me? Not unless he’s trying to bother me or someone else. I’m voiding, flushing, and leaving. That’s what I expect him to do as well.
I suspect that this is a lot of it. Most adult Americans use public restrooms fairly frequently; unless one is a member of a gym, one may not ever go into a locker room. Googling gives me a couple of different numbers from different sources, but all of them point to somewhere around 15-20% of Americans have a gym/health club membership (or simply “go to a gym”).
And, of those, some have a membership but rarely, if ever, go, while others may never use the locker room – I know several women who regularly go to a gym, but they don’t use the locker rooms, preferring to wait until they get home to shower in privacy.
Do US gyms allow people to not change but exercise in street clothes? That sounds a bit icky to be, considering all the places where the seat of the pants of my street clothes has been. Also, do these people then sweat all over public transport seats or their car’s seat?
More likely would be stalls with three walls and a curtain, but that’s just my best guess. When I was in junior high, the showers in the boys’ locker room had no dividers, but nobody ever used them - this was the mid-'90s when the thought was “undressing in front of other guys means you’re gay”, and that was the worst possible thing you could be.
I don’t know what the showers looked like in high school, because I took JROTC classes instead of PE.
It’s possible that people come to the gym with exercise clothing on, beneath baggy clothes like sweats and then take off the excess at the gym. And doubtless may be driving a vehicle instead of using public transport.
I’ve lived the majority of my adult life in cities, so I’ve often walked to the gym or taken public transit, and I’ve often gone other places nearby, in my gym clothes, before or after working out. It’s really not a big deal. I guess there are people who work out a lot more intensely than I do, but surely you realize not everyone is drenched in sweat at the end of their workout? I feel pretty good about myself if I get in 30-60 minutes on the elliptical, maybe 10 minutes on the rowing machine, a few reps on various weight machines, and some stretches. All of this still leaves me drier and smelling better than many who just traversed Wal-Mart’s parking lot on a hot day.
My general avoidance of locker rooms has nothing to do with trans folks and everything to do with a) not wanting to carry a bag with towel/toiletry kit/change of clothes, b) not wanting to pick up warts and things from communal changing/showering spaces, and c) not seeing the problem with my approach.
Anyway, I think for a lot of transphobes, the fear is less that there’ll be a penis on display in a women’s space, and more that there will be stealth penises. If everyone’s naked, you can be assured of when you’re “safe.” But when everyone’s going into a stall before pulling down their pants, you could be having a totally normal conversation at the sink with someone who looks and sounds like a woman, but has a secret dick in her pants. And then what?!?
First - the majority of women in the US do not use communal shower rooms, either people they aren’t members of a gym (only about 1 in 6 are), or if they are they don’t use the gym locker/shower rooms, or their gym has private changing stalls so if even if they do use the locker room they never see anyone naked nor are they themselves seen as naked.
Pretty much everyone uses the toilet, though. (In fact, toilet stalls are often used as private changing rooms)
Personal experience: In summer weather I show up at the gym in my workout clothes so no need to change. I live very close, so I choose to clean up/shower at home. (I’m also not doing mega-intense workouts). In winter I do use the locker room, but never actually strip down naked, the underwear stays on. Again, showering I do at home. I have been there when women have used the shower facilities, but have never seen anyone naked as the showers are private stalls with doors, off down a short mini-hallway. No one is standing in front of the actual lockers naked at any time that I’ve seen (although maybe it does happen). In the US women tend to avoid getting naked in public, even in a same-sex environment involving changing clothes like a locker room. I have seen women use the toilet stalls to change into workout clothes so you don’t even seen those folks in their underwear.
Second, there is this:
It’s been my experience that it’s the MEN (meaning cis men identifying as men if you want to get specific in today’s terminology) who get freaked out by trans women in the women’s locker room. I’ve long wondered if that’s some primitive fear that some strange man is going to get “their” women.
This forum had a poll of users way, way back in 2005 - here it is: Cis Women- Do you have an issue with trans women who've not had SRS in the women's room? (regrettably, the actual poll seems to have evaporate but the results are discussed in the thread) - where you see the same thing play out. By and large we cis women didn’t have an issue with it and the men were the ones most … let’s say worried.
I disagree with the OP in one way – I do think people talk about trans using women’s changing rooms and showers. It is usually in the context of a jerkish high school boy just pretending one day to be trans, and the school giving him instant access to go watch the girls get changed. (BS, in other words)
But I agree in another way, that the fixation on bathrooms is weird. Bathrooms are pretty safe places, because they are public places (in the sense that anyone could walk in at any time, so a would-be assaulter would be taking a huge risk) and, frankly, most people are turned off by the smell of human excreta.
And with individual cubicles, it’s really not a big deal to have unisex toilets, and they are increasingly a thing in many western countries.
Yes, there was a changing room/shower combo. If I remember correctly there was a door ( like a toilet stall door, not floor to ceiling) from the locker room into the changing room and a shower curtain between the changing room and shower.
The thing that I find weird is that (so far) hardly anyone is making a big deal about lesbians in women’s restrooms/locker-rooms and ditto gay men in the men’s. Although I suspect that this will become an issue if the phobics get more in charge.
As others have already replied, my friends (and me, for that matter, back when I went to the Y) wore workout clothes to the gym, so there weren’t any “street clothes.” In my experience, my gym didn’t care about clothes so much as street shoes, particularly on the treadmills, so I had my running shoes in a bag, and would change into those when I got inside the gym.
And, yeah, so, you get your car seat a bit sweaty with your own sweat. For some people, that’s a reasonable tradeoff, versus the privacy and hygiene issues. If one were really concerned about getting your car seat sweaty, one could always bring a towel to sit on during the drive home.
Wish I could have done that. My high school required four years of PE (everybody) and two years of JROTC (guys only, with an optional third year if the colonel and the sergeant major approved).
Don’t remember how it was in junior high, but the shower space in high school was bigger than my bedroom, with ten or twelve (I think) showerheads and no dividers* – and a shower before changing back into regular clothes was mandatory. The locker room was the traditional large room with rows of lockers, and changing was done in full view of everyone. A shower before swimming was also mandatory, and boys did their swimming in the nude. (The girls, it seems, were given ugly green swimsuits when they were in the pool area.)
This was in the late '60s and early '70s.
* Think of the shower scene in Porky’s, or the one at the beginning of the Sissy Spacek Carrie.
Ours were the same in the late 70s, but some girls took showers. We were all required to if our gym class was using the pool. A shower before we got in to remove makeup and moisturizer, and a shower afterwards with our suits on or off to rinse the chlorine from the suits. Because swimsuits don’t last long when they are soaking in chlorine.