http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2016/05/gender-neutral-restrooms.html
I mentioned about privacy issues related to restrooms
But what about locker rooms?
Whether it's for PE or at the YMCA, people need to change clothes and shower after exercise time!
But again, the privacy issue makes locker rooms very uncomfortable places!
This is especially true for middle & high schools, when the students are going through changes they still are struggling to understand, and when their peers respond to differences with a negative sense of humor!
In my case, I started growing body hairs early in life!
For others, it's the opposite, they start puberty late!
All this gets revealed in locker rooms where your peers act like jerks and tell their friends "hey you know that guy is super-hairy" or "that guy got no fuzz"
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Even worse was back in middle school (in my case, Kawananakoa Middle School) where the PE teacher Mr Andrade required every student to shower, and only open shower stalls were available!
I just got made fun out of for having body hairs, but other students got it worse! I actually witnessed another student get peed on by another student! Yes, I actually saw that!
I also heard that in another PE class, a student was pressured to "jagg off" and rumors went out about that situation. Being that I had an unrelated conflict with that student, when I heard the rumors, I made fun of that student, and THAT is one of my biggest regrets in my life!
The regret is so bad, that I spent years trying to find him on social media just to apologize to him! No luck in my search!
[2021 UPDATE: I finally found that person on Facebook and I apologized to him. He said he forgave me. I blogged about the issue at https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2021/08/on-apologies-more.html]-----------
In high school (McKinley High School), we weren't required to take showers! Thank goodness, I just put on a lot of deodorant!
But I was accused of "looking" when all I was looking at was my locker! The student (whose name was Sai Feng) was a wannabe gangsta who liked to prank people and he thought it was a good idea to yell out "Ewww Pablo, stop looking or I'll bang your head into the locker"
THAT MEANT WAR! I was so angry that I didn't care that he was a few inches taller or that his homies outnumbered mine! I called him out to a fight, and he walked away! I then yelled "Wannabe Gangsta" out loud!
By the way, his friends didn't get involved! I was cool with some of his other friends, so they didn't harm me!
[well: except his one friend who I fought with a few year earlier! That same person lost an eye in a fight a few years later (hint, hint)]
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It is experiences like these that I believe that school locker rooms should have private stalls with doors so that students can have privacy when changing and showering! And less false accusations of "looking" by wannabe gangster pranksters!
Of course, there should still be supervision that people don't invade stalls when other students are in them! Plus, maybe time limits!
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PS: check out this post from 2006 titled "Body Hair" about my experiences having excessive body hair
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2006/02/body-hair-this-is-from-advice-column.html
