the value of women-only spaces to survivors

I am nearly 60 years of age, a mother and grandmother.

I was sexually abused as young girl by my stepfather, raped as a teen by a friend, and my children's father was a controlling and coercive alcoholic - experiences shared by many women.

My ability to socialise, meet other women, participate in the community is dependent on access to spaces that are for women only. The possibility of encountering males in these spaces discourages me from attending events, joining a gym or being anywhere that means I may need to use spaces that have traditionally been single sex.

I am fearful of finding myself in an enclosed space with any male-bodied person I do not know - physically intimidated and all too aware of the harms that can be done.

My world, already narrowed by my age and health, has shrunk ever so much more with the lack of women-only provision of changing rooms and toilets and the erosion of my sex-based rights as a woman to privacy and dignity within these spaces.

#unitedkingdom #survivors #trauma #maleviolence #safety #security #SingleSexSpaces

24-hour fitness (gym)

I am an avid weight lifter, and the gym is my place of worship.

There is now a man who enters the woman's locker room (24 Hour Fitness, Arvada, CO) on a regular basis. I can make assumptions about this man, but I am no longer legally entitled to ask him to leave for my privacy despite my lack of consent to his presence where I remove my clothes.

This is state law. He enters regardless of how many women are using the facility or how we feel about being violated while we are naked by a person who is clearly a man.

#unitedstates #gym #24hour #safety #privacy #lockerrooms #changingrooms #SingleSexSpaces

the 'urinary leash' re-emerges for women who have suffered male violence

When I was about 11, I was seriously sexually assaulted by a man who pushed me into a phone box where I could not escape from him. When he let me out, I ran to the nearby railway station, where I hid in the women's toilets. He followed me and stood menacingly in front of the door, but other women chased him away. Since then I have suffered from intense stress and claustrophobia if I have to be in a confined space with men.

As Covid-19 is rampant in Britain, most people have had very little social life in the past year. I had a rare pub lunch with my husband last summer, during which I noticed that a person sitting nearby was a man dressed as a woman. I recently found out that our local council allows men to use women's facilities if the men claim to be transgender. My stomach knotted and I did not dare use the women's toilets in case he walked in. Instead I cut short our outing.

My future will be like that of women in the 19th century, before public toilets were available: they could not leave their homes for longer than they could go without urinating.

#unitedkingdom #england #bathrooms #sexualassault #trauma #safety