[GuyIncognito]

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Should a coach let guy and girl wrestlers or football players shower together? They may not have grown up showering with members of the opposite gender, but they do touch each other's sensitive areas on a daily basis. The discomfort that any of them might feel while showering in the other's presence is entirely a product of social taboos as well.

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Off topic, but are there actually female wrestlers, or football players?

As for your question, I suppose ideally it wouldn't be an issue. But as things are now, no, separate showers are certainly preferable.


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Yes, there are a significant number of girls who play high school football or wrestle, so it's not an imaginary scenario.

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Several posters have made the comparison to male/female showers and restrooms, but there's a huge, obvious difference: pretty much everyone of both sexes prefers the segregation. Tell a woman who's just joined a gym that the rules forbid her from showering with men and vice versa, and her response will be, "Thank God for that!"

On the other hand, tell a gay guy that he's not welcome in the men's shower, and he'll complain that it's absurd, discriminatory, ignorant, etc. -- and a lot of straight guys would agree with him. (Then he'll sue you and win, by the way.)


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OK.

But if 3% of the straight men at school or at the gym want to be allowed to shower with the women and claim that they feel that the segregation of showers portrays men as slobbering, lust-ridden animals, is that illegal discrimination? Certainly not.

We don't separate male and female showers because we want to stereotype men (or women, for that matter) as slobbering, lust-ridden animals. We do it because men and women are ... well ... human, and prone to weakness and temptation.

Now everyone says that gay men, because of present societal circumstances, have been socially conditioned to a higher standard of behavior. Hence there's nothing to worry about. Perhaps that's true, but I don't see why it's "unreasonable" for people not to want to make that assumption.

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Male/female segregation is somewhat inefficient, but otherwise causes no harm or ill feelings. Gay/straight segregation would be extremely offensive to tens of millions of Americans, and would bring about all the harm which that scenario typically entails. Do you see the difference?

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Yes, which is why nobody in this thread has ever recommended a forced segregation of showers along straight/gay lines.

The difference here is not one of managing sexual temptation. The differences are that (1) gays are a distinct minority in society, and that (2) society has a long, sordid history of being hostile to this minority, so that any forced attempt to separate shower facilities would naturally be linked to that history.

Clearly the ideal solution would be to have private shower facilities in every locker room. Absent that, people just deal with it on their own. High school kids nowadays are much more aware of the existence of gay people than they were a couple of decades ago. A lot of them simply shower at home after practice instead of using the communal shower facilities at school, and I don't think that's immature at all.