The end of naked locker rooms(theatlantic.com) |
The end of naked locker rooms(theatlantic.com) |
I think the theme of "how we see ourselves" is the defining theme of our age. Never before have we been bombarded with so much imagery while at the same time being seeing so little of real life.
It was a new experience for me but it also felt 100% natural and by the second night it was totally normal and I didn’t feel modest or anything. There was an unspoken understanding that we’re all there to just relax and recover and help our bodies feel good. Nobody made me feel weird or self conscious, nobody stared, no one made comments or really even said much of anything outside of a few funny jokes that we all laughed at that had nothing to do with the setting.
> due to varying interpretations of terminology and local ordinances, rare instances of mixed bathing still exist at places like Tsurunoyu Onsen where the water is opaque.
I learned the hard way at band camp in high school that such casual nudity among a single-gender was socially unacceptable among my own generation, and after the first day changed my clothes under my towel like everybody else.
I never heard of any problems, though I doubt the University administration would have publicized any problems.
https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/30/embaracadero-naked-lady-st...
But temporary and not publicly funded.
Apparently a Texas school district banned the Virginia flag for the same reason.
Buried in an article about shifts in attitudes towards nudity and porn is the actual cause. As a child of the 70s I've never given nudity in the locker rooms a second thought but now, no thank you. For my daughter? Out of the question.
I'll bring up the third rail. I am, despite all my ultra-liberal blue sensibilities, uncomfortable with individuals with XY chromosomes in my locker room. I can put in a bunch of qualifiers - if they're on hormones, if they're post op, if there's really no physical difference then I'm not concerned but there is no guarantee of course. If I look over at the locker next to me and see a penis, I'm out.
Personally, I think that being in locker rooms has been healthy- it's a good reminder that some day I am going to be super wrinkly if I live that long. It's been an interesting experiment in existing in public spaces.
If you're uncomfortable in those kinds of siutations, I wouldn't tell you what to do, but honestly "getting over" being weirded out by old naked folks is definitely a thing you might find worth while to work out.
One thing that annoys me about this article is the subtle stab at woke / gender identity as a reason for this change. Both Germany and Sweden has a much higher percentage of transgender people compared to the US, and neither have these kinds of locker rooms.
Living in Germany where all-gender nude changing rooms, nude all-gender saunas and nude beaches are very normal and very much not sexualised, it is striking how different the underlying culture is here - Germans find nudity practical and sanitary, and at the same time they very much insist that you wear special bathing shoes.
https://www.washington.edu/ima/locker-rooms-and-pool-nominat...
"The University of Washington’s Intramural Activities Building (IMA) underwent a comprehensive renovation to modernize its locker rooms and swimming pool, untouched since its 1966 construction. Utilizing a progressive design-build process, the project doubled the swimmable area and created one of the nation’s largest gender-inclusive locker facilities. The collaborative effort prioritized equity, accessibility, and universal design principles, resulting in three fully accessible, gender-inclusive locker rooms."Ever considered that folks who maybe aren't so into it were, in fact, traumatized by someone with their exposed body parts?
Having had a high number of uncomfortable experiences in nude-allowed locker rooms, it's nice to know there are spots where I don't need to be subjected to it if I prefer not to.
Don't look then? No one is forcing you to look anywhere else than what you're doing. It always struck me as strange that people seem disgusted/disturbed/annoyed by something yet they're unable to look away and focus on their own business instead.
I walked in on that the first time I ever used a public gym and that shit is seared into my memory--that was enough to turn me off of the locker room for some time and you know what, I don't miss it.
More often than not, pub[l]ic nudity is innocuous, nothing remarkable, but there will always be the outlier that spoils the rest of the bunch by doing weird shit with their genitals, be it drying them where theyre not supposed to be dried (see above), touching themselves in a sexual manner (seen it in a few different locker rooms, and of course the old naked men who are more than friendly to younger, naked men.
I for one say good riddance to the nude locker room. Fuck that shit.
I've been in locker rooms for 40 years, and have seen someone touch themselves in a sexual manner once, across 40 years. I've seen more people masturbating in public streets than in any locker rooms. Pretty crazy how people can go through life with so different experiences.
Even if it's a publicly-funded establishment such as, say, a municipal swimming pool, the conscious choice to enter into such a place versus walking through an open street aren't comparable.
Their victimhood, whatever form it happened to take, is not everyone else's problem such that a shared space has to cater to their problem.
How brutal and uncaring right? I think this kind of argument comes from a position of equating this consideration with wheel chair ramps and navigation aids for the blind, which are good and proper things. But this is not like that.
Anyone can have a psychological problem with literally anything. For everyone that was harmed by sex, someone else was harmed by cars or simple non sex violence or not harmed by anyone at all but they simply have a problem of their own like autism etc. I was beat up and made to feel powerless a couple times as a kid. Therefor gyms should not allow there to be more than one other person around me, no groups of 3 or more, way too threatening. And no one else can be larger or stronger than me. Obviously absurd. But I was actually at other people's mercy and totally powerless while other people violated my body.
But ok let's grant that sex is somehow a special problem that is worth giving special treatment even if we can't give everyone else with all the other infinite problems the same consideration, ... wait that is pretty hard to grant even just for the sake of argument just so we can move on to the next argument. It doesn't hold water and won't go away... F all the people with any other problem that just doesn't happen to stem from sex and move on ... because we're good considerate people?
Anyway the next and more important question is, ever considered that that trauma only happened in the first place because of a society that treats this topic in such a warped way? Instead of a frank, adult, conscious, lack-of-all-charge way?
No, this is just not a valid argument. And it's not from not caring about the victim. It's that it doesn't even help the victim or have anything to do with them or what happened to them or the process of dealing with it after.
"I can't control my reaction to someone else's body because trauma." has an awful lot in common with "I can't control my reaction to someone else's body because male biology."
This trauma argument is the same as dudes that claim breastfeeding is vulgar and intolerable because they just can't be expected to control themselves in the presense of an uncovered breast.
And of course, this is also not just a preference. It's an attempt to justify something by having a stronger argument than a mere preference, namely a trauma.
But let's just pretend you didn't try to wield trauma as a club. It's bad faith argument forgiveness day.
No few people have a "preference" that babies should not exist on planes or in restaurants because they don't like the sound of them crying or their smells.
All the men of whole countries have a preference that women just shouldn't exist anywhere out in public.
And of course the breastfeeding already mentioned.
I would call all of those invalid but hey I'm just a "cowboy".