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In 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).

You 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.

This 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.

I didn't state the degree. I just mean straight men oppose gay men more than straight women oppose gay women.

Oppose and fear are not synonymous.

In this situation, straight mens' fear is specifically from their insecurity about their own masculinity.

Would you say the same thing about women’s fear of being ogled in an enclosed space while naked?

Ogling for women carries with it the implied risk of rape due to natural differences in physical strength, and women experience rape at a much greater rate than men, so that threat would have higher salience than any equivalent gender-based insecurity.

At a greater reported rate than men, and even if true it doesn’t take away from the fact that men are still very much victims of rape.

So, no, they’re not just worried about it because of “insecurity of their masculinity”.

Ok, so the facts are wrong because you say they are. Got it.

Not everybody is comfortable being naked in front of others generally, and that's okay, but straight men who genuinely fear the possibility of simply being visible to gay men need therapy. The assumption that everybody is just going to be ogling everyone else just doesn't hold up to reality where there's a very long history of people being naked in locker rooms, showers, bath houses, beaches, saunas, etc. while still being polite and respectful of each other. That isn't to say that rude people have never existed, but that is far from the norm and nothing to be fearful of.

I agree, and I didn't mean to imply they fear the sight.

Some gay men pursue straight men and it's obviously wrong.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "pursue". If a person knows that somebody is not attracted to their sex and that person still asks them out or hits on them that's just plain rude. I 100% agree that's wrong. Nobody likes that.

Asking out someone before you know how they feel about you (and the rest of your sex) is perfectly normal and sometimes that's going to result in a gay man asking out a straight man and that's okay too as long as that person backs off after getting a polite decline. I personally think it'd still be weird/rude to do that to a stranger while one or both of you are naked, but it probably does happen in places where people are more comfortable in that setting.

It has taken a turn back in the last couple of years, now in Finland even university students go to sauna in swimsuits.

Why?

AFAIK 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.

It's pretty common in Australia for people to strip and change at beaches in the carparks .. usually with, say, a car door open so they're partially hidden, often with a bit of towel wrap as a nod toward "decency" - but it's accepted that the easiest way to change from wet to dry clothes is via bit of interstitial nudity.

Depends on beaches, the larger big city beaches often have changing rooms, it's more smaller suburban beaches, country and remote (but popular) beaches.

Friends might arrive together, change together as they talk, go to beach, return, change again, leave - lot's of solo people do it - the only thing that'd be odd would be somebody wandering about clearing having a perve.

This is a bad example. Nude mixed gender saunas self select for a specific part of the population, which is not made uncomfortable by being stared at by people sexually attracted to them.

I would never visit auch a place and neither would large part of the population in these European countries. To be honest I find these places disgusting. And yes I am from a part of Europe where they exist.

The idea that just because nude saunas exists, everyone who wants to go swimming has to be subject to those conditions is ridiculous.

I'm not super comfortable with my body, but I occasionally frequent saunas, and in my experience, there is very little "staring" going on in the mainstream ones (obviously, there are saunas intended for orgies, pickups, etc, but that's a very different culture). Typically, just enough eye contact is made to avoid bumping into each other on the way in or out.

Anthropologically, I've heard that cultural acceptance of staring at people is inversely correlated with amount of clothing worn, i.e. in cultures where people habitually live unclothed, it's considered rude to look at others' bodies.

Of course, I'm old and fat, so I have good reasons for not fearing people being sexually attracted to me…

You might want to talk to a psychologist about this. Fine to not want to go to one, of course. But finding them _disgusting_ is weird.

What isn't disgusting about it? It is just some variation of human sexual deviancy, not far removed from swinger clubs.

I don't understand what you imagine to happen in saunas. They are places where you relax yourself or with a couple of friends, you're not there as a showpiece for others nor do you ogle at the fellow saunagoers.

Edit: I saw your other comments, we have no common ground so let's not continue this discussion.

Well, first of all, nothing disgusting about swingers clubs; wouldn’t be my cup of tea personally, but provided they’re consenting adults there’s nothing wrong with it.

But also, like, mixed saunas, generally, aren’t sexual at all. The mere presence of naked people does not imply sex.

German 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.

This 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.

It’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.

> 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.

> 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.

Mixed nude saunas and resorts are normal in the Netherlands. I got used to it after a few hours.

The 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.

I 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.

> 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.

Europe 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.

I 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.

> 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.

It’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.

You 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.

Where did gay men get changed before the new social norms?

Naturally, 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+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.

> 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.

It'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.

> 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.

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