A mark of social innovation
Montreal gets a new city pool. And guess what!
New Montreal City Pool Will Have Just One Changing Room & It Will Be Gender Neutral
There will only be one changeroom, and it will be for everyone.
Well, no it won’t be for everyone, because of the people who don’t want to change in front of people of the opposite sex.
- The City of Montreal has announced new plans for the forthcoming Rosemont Aquatic Complex.
- Most notabl[e] is the decision to opt for one, universal change room instead of two, gendered change rooms.
- The hope is that the decision will increase accessibility and optimize space.
Why would the decision increase accessibility? What are they thinking? What people are kept out of municipal swimming pools by “gendered” change rooms?
Most notable, perhaps, is the city’s decision to opt for only one, universal change room, instead of the traditional dual changerooms that serve males and females, respectively.
According to TVA Nouvelles, this decision was, in part, championed by Nathalie Goulet, head of social inclusion for the executive committee of the City of Montreal.
Ahhh, social inclusion – social inclusion via forcing people to take their clothes off in the presence of people of the opposite sex. People who don’t want to do that are excluded, but I guess they don’t matter?
For Goulet, this decision is a mark of social innovation and a move toward social gains that she feels significantly outweigh the financial investments required.
Yes, it’s innovation, but how does that make it a good thing? What social gains is she expecting? What about the people who won’t want to use that pool, or won’t want to let their children use that pool, especially if their children are girls?
Apparently, the president of The Association of Aquatic Managers of Quebec, Lucie Roy, is also on board. Roy feels the decision promotes accessibility, optimizes space and still manages to preserve privacy.
I’m still not getting the “promotes accessibility” part (because they’re still not explaining it, just saying it). Female and male changing rooms are accessible – there’s nothing about being for one sex or the other that makes a changing room inaccessible. Or are they thinking this meets a need of “non-binary” people? But even if you think “non-binary” people have a real need for all-genders changing rooms, which I don’t, it’s still bizarre to put their needs ahead of the surely far more people who don’t want to take their pants off in public.
The universal change rooms will consist of:
- 18 closed stalls that include a shower and a changing section
- 6 closed stalls without a shower
- 12 washroom stalls, which can serve as changerooms
- 3 open showers with soap
- 2 showers on the pool deck
- several lockers, both full and half size
- a storage room for school and other groups
The problem jumps out, doesn’t it – those three open showers. No thank you! Also how closed are the closed stalls? All the way closed? Or open enough so that those fun guys who like to sneak their phones under or over the partition can get their dirty movies? It makes a difference.
Patrons will be required to remain clothed unless in a closed change room, shower or bathroom stall. The open showers with soap are noted as “no nudity,” on the city’s website.
How lovely, and who’s going to monitor and enforce the rule in the three open showers?
I suspect the open showers are for people showering with bathing suits on, as many people do, and are often required to do before entering a pool.
They think this is progress?? Talk about putting the cart before the horse. If you want to live in a world where males aren’t a threat to females in vulnerable spaces, first you fix misogyny, and THEN you relax the safeguarding rules around women’s safe spaces apart from men. These people genuinely seem to believe that if you just pretend sex doesn’t exist, sexual assaults by males against females will magically cease to occur.
Well, if they don’t want to do this, they must be TERFs, so, no, they don’t matter. They are supposed to die in a grease fire.
I would not have let my young son change in such a setting, let alone a young daughter. It sounds like apparently it is all ages, too, so, yeah, parents aren’t going to let their daughters change in a room with men, even if there are closed stalls. I mean, if they’re like the stalls in public restrooms, no protection except from the most easily dissuaded men.
This sounds like the normal family change rooms in most of the rest of Montreal’s city pools, except it won’t be ridiculously undersized for Saturday morning swim lessons, when 40 families are trying to change in a family change room a third of the size of the sex-specific ones. Not that big of a deal to me as long as it is implemented properly.
How does one even take a shower while clothed? This is insanity.
I never take my swimsuit off at the open showers at the pool. I either rinse off an wash my hair with my suit on or shower in a closed shower. Open showers are definitely not for me. Nor do they seem to be for most people my age, in my experience. Showering in swimsuits and changing in stalls was always normal for girls my age.
This describes a bigger family change room like the ones already at rec centres here.
It doesn’t matter if the stall is completely enclosed if it’s generally accessible. There have been numerous examples of men putting recording devices into mixed-sex changing rooms.
Many pools have open showers on or near the pool deck, visible to people near the pool. Many beaches have open showers near the beach. These are all intended for people to use on the way to or from the area. When I used to manage a summer camp pool, there was a shower at the pool area entrance, and all the kids had to rinse themselves off when entering the area, pool rules. In all these cases, people shower in their swimsuits. Open showers are completely unremarkable.
I would be concerned about whether the various stalls had gaps around the doors, floor, or ceiling, or in the walls, and whether the door locks were easily compromised, or particularly whether the larger room is monitored. And, as #7 notes, even if the stalls are well sealed, boys can hide cameras while in the stall and wait for girls to use it.
As an older fellow, the evolution of locker rooms has been interesting to watch. When I was younger, all the men’s locker rooms had those group shower rooms with shower heads along the wall, and the sauna / steam room were inside the men’s locker rooms, so dudes would just stroll around in the nude. That’s not so common anymore. It does crack me up how differently fellows act in a locker room, depending on their age. Old dudes stroll around with it all hanging out and young dudes change from towel to pants like it’s a magic trick.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/minor_differences2/7.png
Part of the difference illustrated above may be that, once upon a time, men and boys were _required_ to swim in the nude at the YMCA and at their school swim lessons. Swimsuits were made of wool, and the fibers clogged the weak pool filters. So all the Y pools in the country were nude-dude only until they started admitting women in the sixties. They even lifted weights in the nude. So really old dudes tend to have a different relationship with the changing room, the showers, and places in between. History of the ancients. Look it up.
Anyway, another way to look at the “universal changing room” at the Montreal pool is that there is no group changing room anymore. That’s consistent with social trends, as laid out above.
Any nudity will happen only in closed cabins or stalls. There will be showers outside of those private spaces, but in those showers people will be required to keep their suits on. In this way, it will be _more_ private, rather than _less_ private, than previous male-group and female-group locker rooms (especially the ones I grew up with).
This is not the first universal locker room in Montreal – the Levesque has the first – and they list some advantages.
-Accessibility for all citizens
-Permits families to be together with the same rights
-Facilitates access by schools, daycares, and day camps
-Accessibility by mobility-impaired persons
-Facilitates surveillance of the place and maximizes security of the users
-Facilitates the employment and intervention at any time by male or female employees
-Optimizes utilization of the space
This powerpoint presentation has some images of what the cabins will look like and do look like at the Levesque:
http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/ARROND_RPP_FR/MEDIA/DOCUMENTS/2018-03-27%20PR%C9SENTATION%20COMPLEXE%20AQUATIQUE%20DE%20ROSEMONT.PDF
After Rosemont, Montreal is going to build universal changing room at all future pool rehabs.
http://mi.lapresse.ca/screens/ca5264cc-1e1a-4ffb-ba77-2a88c405377a__7C___0.html
The universal locker room is also something that’s getting to college campuses in the US. Berkeley just opened theirs in 2018.
All these places do mention being nice to the trans, but I don’t think that’s the only folks it’s better for. It was only a couple years ago I had to change my daughter for her swim classes. Most pools have no place I can do that comfortably. One YMCA got remodeled to have the following locker rooms:
-One boys’ locker room, no men over 17
-One men’s locker room, no boys under 18
-One girls’ locker room, no women over 17
-One women’s locker room, no girls over 18
-One (ONE!) tiny room in which families can shower and change. And if there’s a swim class, just forget it. Have your kid change into her suit at home, and then wear it home wet with a towel robe. Which can suck in the winter.
For me, the universal locker room would have been better.
Sackbut, Papito, that’s all well and good, but I think that fails to take into consideration one part of the equation – girls and women will be hesitant to walk into locker rooms, even fully clothed, with male people in them. Not all girls. Not all women. But enough.
A lot of us…a lot…have severe anxiety and PTSD in relationship to being in the company of men in places where we are vulnerable, even if behind a door. I have trouble with those bathrooms at airports that have the opening without a door. I have trouble changing in my own office, with the door locked, even knowing that no one in my building has a key (and yes, it is necessary to do that, because I do field work with my students, and must change into my field clothes somewhere). I personally could not swim in a public swimming pool, except for ones in somewhat nicer motels where there is almost no use of the pool. When other people come in, if they are male, I leave. So it wouldn’t affect me, because I’m not going to be there anyway. But there are women who are not quite as severe in their anxiety as I am, that can use the pool, but will not be able to use the changing room.
It isn’t about being easier for parents – that would be easy to accomplish. It isn’t about being easier for trans – that could be accomplished with trans-friendly private changing rooms. It is not about being easier for men. The problem is about women and girls who might find it difficult to accept such a setting because of their vulnerability, even if the changing rooms have full doors in the stalls.
Women are once again having to suck it up. Anxiety? Pshaw. Just emotional, hysterical women. Oh, you’ve been sexually abused? Don’t you think it’s time to get over it and move on? Sucks to be you, but so what?
iknlast, I sympathize with your anxiety. I don’t suffer from anxiety, but my son does. Changing in an open room with other boys is something that is difficult for him enough to avoid it. For him, having a room where the locker room (where clothes are stored) is separate from individual changing rooms (where clothes are removed) would go a long way toward reducing anxiety. I am not female, nor is he, but I have heard some girls and women also do not like to change in the presence of others, regardless of sex.
You’ve said that you could not swim in a public swimming pool. So the question of which configuration of locker and changing rooms a public swimming pool has seems somewhat irrelevant to you. I swim in a public swimming pool three times a week, and my daughter swims in a public swimming pool twice a week. My son hasn’t been to a pool in years, probably in part because he doesn’t like to get changed in front of other males. Given the choice of a pool with only two locker rooms, male and female, versus a pool with a universal locker room, I believe my daughter would be safer and more comfortable in a universal locker room. Also, I could go in and tell her to hurry up when she’s caught up chatting with her little friends and I have to go home and cook dinner.
Again, I think it’s erroneous to call the whole facility a “changing room.” It is forbidden to remove your clothes outside of the private changing booths. It’s a locker room, and I expect the presence of all types of people in the more public space where clothes are stored in the lockers will reduce the bad behavior that sometimes goes on in sex- and age-segregated locker rooms and increase safety for everybody.
Papito, you may not have intended this, but that last comment has the feel of mansplaining.
You admit you are not a woman, but then appear to be telling me what is best for women…or at least your daughter. I fail to see how any woman or girl would be safer in a universal locker room. You night be able to make a case that they would not be less safe, but safer seems a stretch to me.
And my anxiety that keeps me from using such a public setting is not irrelevant, because a lot of women have anxiety from being abused, and without a designated locker room for women only, they may be able to swim in a place they might have been able to swim otherwise, if perhaps their anxiety was slightly less prohibitive than mine. In those cases, it may not matter whether the stalls are closed or not; the mere proximity of men to an area where they are naked or partially naked may be too much for them, and prevent them from using the facility.