6 ms·
The end of naked locker rooms
- constantcrying 11mo ago[flagged]
- mrtesthah 11mo agoEurope has no problem with mixed gender nudity in many similar situations, especially communal bathing. For example, nude beaches, saunas, the century-old German FKK movement, etc. Don’t project your own hangups onto the rest of the world.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 11mo agoI think you're misunderstanding what he is saying. I believe he is saying other people have projected their hangups ("top down enforcement in new social norms") which has caused casual nudity cease to function. And you're saying in Europe people haven't projected sexuality onto nudity, therefore it still works. So you guys are saying the same thing.
- soperj 11mo ago> As soon as there are homosexuals or people who want to be perceived as the opposite gender involved, the social contract which made casual nudity work ceased to function. > I would not want to be nude in a changing room with homosexual men or women. I don't think they are.
- TimorousBestie 11mo agoIt’s funny: unless they very rarely go to a public changing room, they likely have disrobed in front of a non-straight person. Likely several times, and presumably without incident. The baseline prevalence of queerness in the world is simply not that low.
- constantcrying 11mo agoYou are taking a small part of the German population and arguing because this small population is comfortable in such a situation everyone has to be forced into these situations. This is obviously a terrible argument. No, most Germans find this disgusting and would never want to participate in this. Most Germans want to change in segregated rooms. >Don’t project your own hangups onto the rest of the world. You are projecting the sexual hangups of some Germans on to the rest of the world.
- microtherion 11mo agoIn many European countries, it's not at all controversial to have nude mixed-gender saunas (and concerns about homosexuals recede once it's possible to be ogled heterosexually in such spaces).
- dezgeg 11mo agoIt has taken a turn back in the last couple of years, now in Finland even university students go to sauna in swimsuits.
- nxor 11mo agoWhy?
- omnimus 11mo agoAFAIK Finland always had more separated sauna culture. They have so many saunas that you specifically pick when you want to go to mixed sauna. In Germany or parts of eastern europe saunas are popular but there are not that many of them so they end up mixed gender. Also everybody is going to saunas in Finland where as in Germany its much more thing for "fans" or "experienced" sauna goers that maybe accept it as part of the whole thing.
- nxor 11mo agoYou need to understand that straight women don't fear gay women the way straight men fear gay men. Additionally, concerns might recede for men, but I wouldn't think for women. Straight men ogle them more than gay women ogle them. Very different situation.
- n4r9 11mo agoThis is highly cultural. And I'd be surprised if, in the US, men "fear" gay men the way you're making out. But as OP clearly stated, there are countries where mixed sex naked saunas/spas are a thing and ogling or other kinds of harassment are not a big issue.
- perfmode 11mo agoMixed nude saunas and resorts are normal in the Netherlands. I got used to it after a few hours.
- TimorousBestie 11mo ago> As soon as there are homosexuals or people who want to be perceived as the opposite gender involved, the social contract which made casual nudity work ceased to function. Doesn’t make sense. The Weimar republic is an obvious counterexample.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mjmsmith 11mo agoWhere did gay men get changed before the new social norms?
- mystraline 11mo agoNaturally, they were all straight! /sarcasm Remember, it was illegal to be gay in a lot of western countries. So, 'dont ask, dont tell' was the safe and legal norm. So it wasn't ever a concern to even be discussed. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=fpas&q=A+map+of+the+years+when+homosexuality+was+legalized+in+European+countries+&ia=images&iax=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fa-map-of-the-years-when-homosexuality-was-legalized-in-v0-tjmtrpgmpuib1.jpg%3Fs%3D63c92f7a16ed04f200a8d5a523cfc850a2e971e5 https://duckduckgo.com/?t=fpas&q=A+map+of+the+years+when+hom... Is a reddit-cached map of years when homosexuality was legalized for Europe. Had to use this link cause the reddit /r/europe mods censored it.
- sonofhans 11mo agoThis is such a modern, Puritanical take on nudity. Casual nudity exists everywhere in the world except where it is explicitly repressed. The relationship between sex and nudity is strengthened by prohibitions against nudity.
- mcphage 11mo ago> As soon as there are homosexuals or people who want to be perceived as the opposite gender involved They've always been here, they've always been involved.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Balinares 11mo agoGerman saunas are nude and all-genders and no one minds. So please kindly don't blame the prudes' harmfulness on queers. We can handle our and each other's naked bodies fine, thank you.
- constantcrying 11mo ago[flagged]
- embedding-shape 11mo agoWhy would you say this when you clearly have no experience yourself about it? Why lie so brazenly about things you clearly don't know?
- constantcrying 11mo agoI am a German. I know more about the sexual norms in my country than you. FKK is something which is always associated with the boomer generation, which got their sexual norms from the American hippie culture. The whole thing is part of the "Sexboomer" phenomenon, which most of the younger generation see as extremely disgusting and creepy behavior. If you find younger people there (young meaning younger than 60) they are almost always lower class people, who like to indulge in these sexual fantasies, because they have nothing else going on in their life. If you are part of the Bürgertum, roughly "middle-class", and under 40, you want nothing to do with this. Attending is something you would keep secret and admitting it would be extremely shameful and you would get ridiculed for it. Please stop telling me what the sexual norms in my country are. In so many replies have I seen lies about this, which totally disregard how sexuality is viewed and lived out.
- embedding-shape 11mo agoWhat nationality you have really doesn't matter much when you don't seem to leave your house to actually be in society and see how other people around you act and feel. I'm not sure why you're sitting on so much inwards frustration and anger, but I'm guessing getting out and talking with other people (not through a screen) could help you a lot to get better at this.
- zapzupnz 11mo ago> Nobody wants to change in a locker where they might be stared at as objects of sexual interest. I would not want to be nude in a changing room with homosexual men or women. That sounds like a you problem. Plenty of people around the world getting in the nuddy just fine, not thinking about such thing, not nearly as repressed as your post or tone.
- neuralRiot 11mo agoI think sexuality is a too complex issue to get a consensus in a handful of posts, but to me no amount of regulation, if you want, can modify personal perception, you can take places where burkas are law as an example. If you feel sexualized (we all are at some point) in a locker room you will do so in any space with extrangers. This I believe is a result of the loss of social interaction of our times.
- xg15 11mo agoThe Stonewall riots were in 1969. At the latest since then, queer movements as political and cultural forces are a thing. If locker room prudeness was an effect of that, it had a lag of half a century.
- guywithahat 11mo agoIt's really frustrating. So many women are getting abused in dorms now and nobody can talk about it; a friend of mine complained that a man was hanging out in the women's bathroom for hours on end on friday/saturday nights and the RA threatened to write her up. Rape/abuse rates are around 300x higher (depending on the numbers you use) for trans/non-binary people than women yet nobody cares, and just trying to do high-quality research on the subject can get tenured professors fired. It's frustrating because it's this enormous problem and we can't even have good research on the topic done, let alone address the crime numbers which have come out we can all see.
- autoexec 11mo ago> So many women are getting abused in dorms now and nobody can talk about it; I don't believe that there's a widespread issue of people stopping other people from talking about people being abused. You're doing it right now and nobody stopped you. Other examples of it successfully happening abound. > a friend of mine complained that a man was hanging out in the women's bathroom for hours on end on friday/saturday nights and the RA threatened to write her up. This is not an example of somebody who was prevented from talking about being abused. I'm honestly not sure what to make of it. If the place had segregated bathrooms why were men in there at all? Literally anyone regularly hanging around in a shared bathroom for hours on end is a bit rude, but it's hard to understand why an RA would have threatened to write up your friend. Write her up for what exactly? > Rape/abuse rates are around 300x higher (depending on the numbers you use) for trans/non-binary people than women yet nobody cares Ignoring the fact that many trans/non-binary people are also women, I don't believe that nobody cares. Don't you? I also know that research is still being done on the subject. Schools can be weird though, so I'd be interested in examples of tenured professors who were fired for trying to research the subject if you have any.
- okayjustonemore 11mo agoIt’s just so wildly vainglorious and egocentric to think that you WILL be the object of sexual interest of other people in any given situation. Besides, if this is how you think about yourself and the world around you, then you really have nothing to worry about on the “people finding you attractive in any way” front.
- embedding-shape 11mo ago> I would not want to be nude in a changing room with homosexual men or women. The worst part for you is that whenever you are in public, anyone can look at you with sexual interest at any moment, because humans are humans. It might be a better idea to focus on what makes you so uncomfortable with this nudity and sex thing, instead on focusing on what other people are doing as you cannot control their thoughts and feelings.
- loughnane 11mo ago> Today, the only naked bodies that many Americans will likely ever see are their own, a partner’s, or those on a screen. Gone are our unvarnished points of physical comparison—the ordinary, unposed figures of other people. In their place, we’re left with the curated ideals of social-media posts, AI-generated advertising, and pornography. The loss may seem trivial, but it also may change how people see themselves. 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.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- andtheboat 11mo agohttps://i.imgur.com/YuVmKkE.png https://i.imgur.com/YuVmKkE.png
- pinewurst 11mo agohttps://archive.ph/Hu1qP https://archive.ph/Hu1qP
- pirates 11mo agoI stayed at a ryokan in Japan recently, and of course the baths and pools are 100% nude, and people strip down naked in the changing rooms to enter them. Men and women separate at all times. 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.
- Rendello 11mo agoInterestingly, onsen were traditionally mixed sex until relatively recently (Meiji Restoration). As of now, mixed bathing is banned [1], though hidden in the Wikipedia notes is this: > 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. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onsen#Mixed_bathing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onsen#Mixed_bathing
- iancmceachern 11mo agoOne can have a similar experience at the Wii spa in LA. It's great, and there is even food on the top floor!
- garyfirestorm 11mo agoAs a foreign national living in US. It amazes me that public urination could land you in jail (specifically indecent exposure) however being naked in a locker room is supposed to be considered normal.
- baal80spam 11mo agoHow is this even comparable?
- guywithahat 11mo agoThey both involve nudity in front of the opposite sex (and by extension, children of the opposite sex). I really don't want nudity to become something that's normalized in more places then it needs to be
- throwawaypqpqp 11mo agoI (male child) was breastfed (female mother). Still haven’t recovered from that.
- BobaFloutist 11mo agoI think the problem with public urination is more that you're pissing on the street than that you're naked. The nudity is, at most, a side concern.
- garyfirestorm 11mo agoIn both cases other people saw you naked. That’s the point of comparison.
- add-sub-mul-div 11mo agoOne space is public and one is private. One space is optional/avoidable and one isn't. How could this be easier to understand?
- garyfirestorm 11mo ago
- patja 11mo agoAnyone know which Seattle gym the author visited with an all-gender locker room?
- canucker2016 11mo agoThe article mentions "university gym" - a quick web search with the name of the largest university in Seattle, University of Washington, reveals: https://www.washington.edu/ima/locker-rooms-and-pool-nomination/ 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."
- patja 11mo agoThanks that rings a bell. I remember reading complaints about how the change reduced the overall shower capacity and led to longer shower waits during peak hours.
- pmdulaney 11mo agoIt is, I think, indicative of a broader trend. When you drive past the National Cemetery on Wilshire Blvd in Westwood, there is a large statue of a naked woman (personifying victory or the glory to be accorded the fallen?). I believe it was placed there shortly after World War I. I can't imagine a similar statue would be erected today.
- aidenn0 11mo agoCGP Grey did a video on US State flags and added a mosaic to the Virginia flag, making a comment about demonetization. It, having the Seal of Virginia on it, contains a personifcation of virtue with a single breast exposed. Apparently a Texas school district banned the Virginia flag for the same reason.
- jerlam 11mo agoSan Francisco just put up a nude woman statue this year: https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/30/embaracadero-naked-lady-statue-extension-march-2026/ https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/30/embaracadero-naked-lady-st... But temporary and not publicly funded.
- canucker2016 11mo agoDecades ago, University of Toronto had floors in the frosh dorms which were unisex, including the washrooms/showers. I don't recall any big protests over this - people just got used to it. I never heard of any problems, though I doubt the University administration would have publicized any problems.
- marbro 11mo agoAt my state college in the 80's, most dorms and showers were unisex but I never saw anyone naked outside my dorm room.
- burnt-resistor 11mo agoStanford's Toyon hall had coed bathrooms and showers 20 years ago. I don't know if it still does.
- sp527 11mo agoMaybe most men don't want to see other men naked? Does this have to be any more complicated than that? It always struck me as really weird tbh.
- foogazi 11mo agoYes, pass on seeing or being seen
- embedding-shape 11mo ago> Maybe most men don't want to see other men naked? 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.
- rc5150 11mo agoTell that to old Joe Dangly-sac using the hand air dryer to blow the water off his old sagging balls. 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.
- embedding-shape 11mo agoSometimes I wonder how people walk through life so shielded from anything. You've seen another man naked for the first and only time, and it's "seared into my memory"? 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.
- burnt-resistor 11mo agoUpending convention for one identity category while reinforcing body-shaming is privileging selective discrimination and inconsistent. Oops! Perhaps not forcing or shaming/guilt-tripping people into hiding themselves in changing stalls would be the moral thing to do and those who are offended can close their eyes or look elsewhere. I'd be cool if those stalls were entirely optional. I'm ambivalent about gendering or ungendering changing/shower rooms and WC's, but the user group of the space have to agree on a convention, hopefully one that doesn't double-down on another form of social bullshit while only addressing (no half-pun intended) one dimension.
- aidenn0 11mo agoNaked locker rooms were well on the decline (at least for youth) in the '90s. I attended a martial arts gym with adults and kids, where men would regularly walk out of the shower naked and change all while holding conversations with each other. 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.
- bublyboi 11mo agoIn Seattle I believe this is being done to make it less controversial about which locker room trans people use… there’s one.
- pploug 11mo ago> the prevailing trends in locker-room design is privacy, a way to make “a diverse user base” feel comfortable. 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.
- scarecrowbob 11mo agoFor the last year and a half I've been living off grid in rural Colorado. I have a membership in the community rec center (which is very nice) and town service (also very nice) so I can use their gym, but mostly to use the shower and hot tub. 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.
- nineplay 11mo ago> Compounding these issues is the omnipresence of cameras and social media, which has made privacy more precarious. 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.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]