Having Feelings about Changing Rooms. AITA ?
By Dr. Naomi Wolf
Outspoken
May 15, 2026
There is a section of the social media platform Reddit titled "AITA?" It is an acronym for "Am I the A--le?" It is a place for moral rumination about whether one's own behavior is objectionable, or at fault.
AITA?
I had an experience in a Brooklyn bathhouse yesterday, which elicited a lot of feelings. They are, in many social worlds now, inadmissible feelings. But, as I promised God (and you), I would always tell the truth here, because I didn't die of sepsis in 2023. So I'll share these feelings - and you decide. AITA?
I've been in physical pain for some time. Sadly the pain is getting worse. You know already that I deal with a nerve-related condition: I was born with spina bifida occulta, a condition in which the spine, though not exposed, does not fully fuse around the spinal cord. My seeking ways to not be stricken by this potentially serious condition, has led to what I feel, paradoxically enough, is the great blessing of my education as an amateur, in alternative health and healing treatments. All the weird non-allopathic things I do and take, have, thank God, helped me to defy my former allopathic neurologists' brochure, which explained that I would be in a wheelchair, slowly losing various functions, in a matter of time.
But even the best of alternative practices (all of which I do) and supports and herbs and supplements (all of which I take) can't completely heal a structural problem, or a bad injury, or a structural problem exacerbated by a bad injury.
In the past month, I learned, from new MRIs and X-Rays, and from a new physician whom I trust, that not only do I have pleasure of having spina bifida occulta, but that I also have the bonus defect of bilateral hip dysplasia. You may have heard of this charming condition from its occurrence in overbred dogs. This is a condition in which both hip sockets are abnormally shallow, and thus cannot fully cover and support the top of the femur. Bilateral hip dysplasia in humans can cause instability, limping, pain, and early arthritis.
So - I put this off with alternative treatments for a year, but now there is no way to avoid it; I am scheduled for surgery shortly.
This information, and this experience, have been drains on my sense of self, and they have left me with a welter of difficult emotions. I don't see myself as someone weak or physically fragile. Yet I am limping. I don't see myself as someone to pity. Yet people pity me, as I struggle to get in and out of cabs, or walk up stairs one step at a time, with one active leg. I am lucky to have an amazing husband, who makes unprintable and very reassuring jokes about all of this; though he is nothing but supportive, I for my part don't want him to be married to someone who can't hike, ski, dance, run; someone for whom he needs to wait as we walk. I want him to be married to a superheroine.
It is incredibly humbling and ego-leveling to go from being someone who has always felt strong and well, to being someone in chronic pain, who limps.
As I put it to a good friend, who hadn't seen me for a while, whom I met recently in a bar,
"What's new ? It turns out I'm f-ed up and crippled."
He replied, "I don't think of you that way."
I don't think of myself that way either - but here we are.
Now let me add the really fun part.
I was born with these structural insufficiencies within my very skeleton. I was born half-broken, and unusually breakable.
And at seven, I was raped by an adult man - a male babysitter.
My point here is that, when my own body was seven years old, the entire weight of an adult man - 200 pounds, perhaps, and about six feet in height - bore down on my entire little body; this monstrous heaviness forced my legs open and apart, and pinned them against the bed.
The average seven year old girl is 48 inches long and weighs fifty pounds.
The bulk of the weight and pressure and violence of this 200 pounds, and of his unspeakable destruction of me in that way, centered of course upon my already-fragile pelvis.
My point is that people who think about child abuse, usually don't consider how tiny children are, compared with adults; and about how fragile are their bones, cartilage, tendons and ligaments, and about how easily adults can break or injure them. People tend not to consider that in order to rape a little child, an adult man needs to crack that child's body open, in an act of extreme, ruinous physical violence, as one cracks a walnut.
If people really thought about this, no sexual predator who ever assaulted children, would ever again see the light of day.
My point is that with every exam now, with every new practitioner, with every MRI, with every new intake questionnaire with every new neurologist and orthopedist - before every assisted stretching session, even - I am forced to say the words "I was raped at seven by an adult man." We don't know to what extent I was crippled by the conditions with which I was born, and to what extent the possible injuries to ligaments and cartilage from the assault which I sustained, led to my problems now; but with every exam, I have to fill in the full physiological picture, and I have to remember my assailant.
I am never, ever, ever, ever free of him.
That is the backstory of my visit to a bathhouse.
I was in pain, as I noted, and the bathhouse advertised "CBD Pain Relief Massage."
That sounded wonderful; so I decided to book that treatment and see if it helped. I also looked forward to enjoying the couple of hours of access to the bathhouse that went along with the massage.
I'd been there before. It's a cool place. There are hot tubs, cold plunges, and super-cold plunges; there are lovely saunas - Russian, Swedish and "American" - and there is a steam room. It's a welcoming and affordable place to spend a couple of restorative hours, and I always feel better after I go. It's not a salacious bathhouse, though those certainly exist; in this one, though it is coed in the public spaces, men and women are always dressed in swimsuits; it is relaxing, not socializing or cruising, that is the focus.
The CBD oil massage was wonderful indeed. Afterwards, having showered, I settled into the hot tub. Its warm soaking was exactly what I needed. I felt better immediately.
Soon I was joined by a couple I had noticed; they had been wandering around, deciding what to do first. The pair consisted of a pretty young woman with curly red hair, and her partner, a blonde person who seemed also at first to be a woman. The second person was about six feet tall, with a slim, athletic figure and broad shoulders, and with perhaps a hint of shadow on the upper lip. This person was wearing a cute blue swimsuit, with chic little low-cut Audrey Hepburn-style bra cups, and with a flirty skirted bottom. Indeed, that swimsuit was a more provocative choice than were any of the other fashions worn by the women in the spa; the swimwear look for women there tended to be modest sports bras in dark colors, worn with plain high-waisted black or navy-blue swimsuit bottoms.
The couple, who seemed very pleasant, joined me in the hot tub. We chatted a bit as they climbed in and then settled themselves, one at a time, on the ledge where I also sat.
The woman sat down on the ledge. Then the second person sat down, between us, and thus next to me.
My gut immediately reacted with that prickling sensation you get when something happens to which your body wants you to pay attention, though it is below the level of your conscious awareness. Though my conscious mind couldn't tell the person's gender, "you are a man" was what my body silently said in reaction to the body of the person next to me.
Let me restate here, as I always do when the issue of "trans" people comes up, that I support what are now called "LGBTQ" rights. I passionately do. Luckily, the equal rights under law of people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual, as well as transsexual and transgender, are guaranteed in the US now. I also as a libertarian-leaning person, support the right of anyone to dress however he or she wishes and to have sex with any consenting adult.
I do.
But of course, the right to be free from legal discrimination as a "trans person" has been downgraded, as a matter of pressing social advocacy; and now the issues often put before us, if we do not wish to be "transphobic", are "visibility" and "acceptance", two cultural and non-legal desiderata.
But the "visibility" and "acceptance" of "trans" people are increasingly defined in ways they never have been before in the long history of the struggle for the legal rights of gay, lesbian, transvestite and transsexual people: that is to say, "visibility" and "acceptance" are being redefined as giving male cross-dressers access to all-female spaces.
My point is that this demand that an ill-defined subset newly called "trans people" should have access to women's private spaces - is a recent and I think not organic goal.
In the first century of the struggle for gay men's rights, in Britain and the US, no one in that movement asked for, let alone demanded, access to women's spaces. The movement was primarily focused on securing legal equality for what we now call gay men, and ending laws that criminalized same-sex male relationships.
The gay men's movement was joined by the 1950s with advocacy for lesbian legal rights, including eventually custody rights. Legal equality for both groups was secured in Britain and America by the late 1960s.
With the Stonewall riots of 1969, transvestite and transsexual men became more visible as part of the movement to secure legal rights for people seen as sexual minorities.
It wasn't until quite recently, though, that our current and, to me, disorienting new reality was manufactured, in which a series of quite unrelated sexual identities are collapsed into one portmanteau "movement" - "LGBTQIA+."
Lesbian, gay, bisexual - these are groups, of course, that have traditionally been part of the struggle for the rights of people with same-sex sexual orientations.
But - and I fear being seen as presumptuous in expressing these thoughts - a lot of random other identities are being pushed ahistorically into one "movement".
"Trans" is a neologism. There have always been crossdressing men and women, in every culture. The words that were used to describe them in English were "Transvestites". If they had surgery to alter their genitals and remove their breasts (not "change their sex", which is impossible), they were called "transsexuals."
"Fanny and Stella" - famous British Victorian male-to-female transvestites:
These established terms, "transvestites" and "transsexuals", were inorganically shortened, recently, to the vague term "trans", as if that is a category of humans that objectively exists.
But the thing the word described was defined out of any clear existence even as the term was coined.
Today the term does not mean someone who is a cross-dresser or someone who has had surgery to resemble the opposite sex. "Trans" also departs from the traditional gay and lesbian rights movements in that it does not necessarily refer to someone who feels same-sex attraction.
According to Planned Parenthood's website section "Transgender and Nonbinary Identities" — the first result that comes up in search when a fourteen-year-old asks Google, "What is"Trans?"— a"trans"person can be someone who "feel[s] like"a"masculine female"— that is, what we used to call"a tomboy"— or"a feminine male"— that is, what we used to call"a sensitive guy."
If you simply object to or do not relate to rigid traditional gender roles, you are advised by this website to understand that"you've been struggling with gender":
"If you've been struggling with gender or gender identity and expectations, you're not alone. It may help you to talk to a trusted parent, friend, family member, teacher, or counselor." [...]
"Your gender identity is how you feel inside and how you express those feelings. Clothing, appearance, and behaviors can all be ways to express your gender identity.
"Most people feel that they're either male or female. Some people feel like a masculine female, or a feminine male. Some people feel neither male nor female. These people may choose labels such as"genderqueer,""gender variant,"or"gender fluid."Your feelings about your gender identity begin as early as age 2 or 3.
"Some people's assigned sex and gender identity are pretty much the same, or in line with each other. These people are called cisgender. Other people feel that their assigned sex is of the other gender from their gender identity (i.e., assigned sex is female, but gender identity is male). These people are called transgender or trans. Not all transgenderpeople share the same exact identity."
By this incredibly broad set of recent redefinitions and according to this neologism, William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte's Lucy Snowe in Villette ("had I been a man and strong, I could have challenged that pair on the spot—"), dandy Beau Brummell, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Jo March in Little Women, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Pippi Longstocking, Mr Clean and Mulan — all of whom resist rigid gender roles in some ways or dabble with femininity and masculinity as everyone does — would all today be"trans."
Style icon Beau Brummell:
Tomboy Jo March:
The jewelry-wearing Mr Clean:
Mulan, who briefly puts on men's clothing:
Everyone is"trans."
"Queer" also had a parallel evolution in meaning. The word used to refer codedly to gay men; then it referred to lesbians too. Now it has been redefined to mean anything, including those who are"questioning". As an article on the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus website," LGBTQIA+ MEANING: ACRONYM BREAKDOWN AND DEFINITIONS"puts it,
"Now, the "Q" most commonly refers to "Queer," another reclaimed word. Similarly to "gay", "queer" is an umbrella term that can refer to just about anyone in the community.
"Many people prefer the term"queer"because it feels all-encompassing. Being queer isn't about your gender or sexual identity, it's about both. Queerness is sometimes seen in political movements because it's about operating outside the norms.
'"Q" can also refer to"questioning"- this means someone who is still exploring their gender or sexual identity. You are part of the community, even if you aren't sure what to define yourself as just yet."
Then there is "I". "Intersex" isn't a sexual orientation at all — it is a biological anomaly that affects one baby in 2700. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation. People with this condition can be gay, straight, bisexual, whatever. Yet now these people with birth abnormalities, too, whatever their orientations, are part of this growing collective, that began with a simple mission of securing rights for gay men and lesbians.
As the article puts it:
"Intersex individuals are born with both male and female chromosomes and/or sex characteristics [NW: This is not accurate for many people with this condition, who can be born with a variant on normal male or female hormones and chromosomes but not necessarily"both male and female chromosomes"]. Intersex individuals are not trans, but their identities are often erased and shamed - much like other members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Not all intersex people identify with LGBTQIA+, meaning they may not feel that this community addresses their needs or feelings."
Moving along, we have the "A" for something now called "the ace spectrum". I had to look up the "A". I had known that it stood for "asexual" but had not known about its even newer meanings, including "aromantic". From the SFGMC article:
"Asexual - sometimes shortened to"ace"- people don't feel sexual attraction at all.
Asexual people can still feel romantic attraction, which means they might date, have long-term partners, or even get married. They also might choose to engage in a variety of sexual activities, or only have sex under certain circumstances.
Asexuality is on a spectrum, like all gender or sexual identities within the umbrella of LGBTQIA+. Meaning, again, that there's no"right way"to be ace. Asexuality is about your relationship to sex and sexuality, and it can be fluid or static, just like any other gender or sexual experience."
So a movement predicated on love and desire — a movement that began in order to support and sustain gay men in their romantic and erotic relationships, and then lesbians in their own, is now appropriated for people who feel — no sexual or romantic feelings at all.
Make it make sense.
Finally there is the recently added "identity", "Plus":
"+ PLUS
Last, there's a plus sign at the end of the LGBTQIA+ acronym, meaning anyone who is not listed in the acronym but still identifies as part of the community. These can include:
There are many more gender and sexual identities in the LGBTQIA+ community, since our understanding of ourselves and others is always changing and evolving."
My point is that my lifelong sense of "allyship" with and support for the gay and lesbian communities, and for their noble battle for equal legal rights, has been made linguistically archaic and functionally moot by a series of to-me-bizarre redefinitions and expansions in meanings, that have exploded that historic and important movement into what seems to me to be an absurdly inclusive umbrella term.
The term "LGBTQIA+" now includes a ton of unrelated people with no organic historical connection to the movement for gay men's and lesbian women's rights — all kinds of people who have all kinds of other issues and concerns.
Maybe this explosion in definitions to include a number of unrelated or ill-defined groups of people who are not dealing with same-sex relationships at all, doesn't bother a lot of gay and lesbian people.
But it frustrates me.
Because now the metric of "are you an ally?" is not "do you support legal rights for gay men and lesbians?" but rather: "can this guy in a dress go into your changing room?"
And that was not the point of this 150 year old civil rights movement...at all.
My dilemma, back to my feelings in the hot tub, was that my support for gay men and lesbians having equal legal rights, really had nothing at all to do with how I felt about the man sitting next to me in his bikini, and about the feelings that arose in me as I moved about the bathhouse, in and out of his immediate presence.
As I sat next to him, though I have nothing against cross-dressers, I fought the animal instinct to move a bit further away. This reflex wasn't caused by his cross-dressing; this instinct of mine was provoked by his being a strange human male.
As other people, male and female, entered and left the hot tub, I became aware of the fact that I was, on an animal level, comfortable being seated about four feet away from any strange woman; but that when it came to strange men, including the guy in the cute bikini, my body was strongly inclined to sit about seven feet away.
I don't think I am weird. I think those instincts are hard-wired.
The guy in the bikini kept chatting with me, as a woman would have done, though I was only about four feet away from him; and I was uncomfortable.
I got out of the hot tub and ventured into the steam room. There, a "cis" male — that is to say, a man dressed like a man — who, appropriately, sat about seven feet away from me — also began chatting with me. After I expressed, by my relative nonresponsiveness, a polite lack of interest in continuing the conversation, he equally politely left me alone.
I became aware, as I moved throughout the bathhouse, that civilized men kept courteous distances from strange women; did not move too closely into their spaces; respected their cues to engage further, or not to engage; and I saw that there was an invisible dance going on among the two genders at all times, in which civilized men honored the physical boundaries of women.
I realized that civilized men are continually giving cues that they respect women's physical boundaries, because on an animal level both men and women know that men can be predators against women.
I went into the "Russian" sauna. There were a number of women inside, most of them lying on their backs, on the various levels on which one could rest. The guy in the cute bathing suit was also there, seated upright on a higher level. I lay down on a lower level, also on my back. At a certain point I noticed that the guy had clambered down, and was lying on the same level I was, with his head angled toward my head.
Again, that was a distance that would not have bothered me at all if this had actually been a woman. But I realized that a man would typically not have lain so intimately near a woman he did not know. He would have remained at some distance, or seated upright.
I got up again, and left the sauna; took a few plunges in the cold tubs; and was ready to call it a day. But then I was seized with anxious thoughts. It occurred to me that the guy in the swimsuit would eventually have to get changed.
Obviously I was not going to go to the front desk to ask that the man be kept out of the women's dressing room. I was not going to be that Boomer.
But that left me in a state of anxiety bordering on wretchedness.
I frantically tried to strategize. Was the dressing room area fully open ? Could I change in one of the bathroom stalls ? What about a shower stall ? Did it have frosted or clear glass doors ? I looked furtively at where the man was. Could I time my changing in the dressing room, for when he was still upstairs in the spa area ? I made my way as quickly as I could to the women's dressing room a level below, hoping to be finished changing before he made his way downstairs.
I'd spent 15 minutes trying to figure out logistics so that I could feel safe. Not physically safe — I knew I was likely in no physical danger. But psychologically safe.
At $200 for two hours, that worked out to about $25 worth of worry.
I also noticed that I was angry that I had to spend any of my precious time, set aside for my own healing, and for dealing with my own pain and injury, trying to figure out how to strategize around some new man's preferences, that would override my will.
I noticed, too, that my heart was racing. It was racing the way it races when something reminds me of the crime committed against my body when I was a child.
I made it downstairs, and saw, to my consternation, that the dressing area was indeed fully open. I hobbled, as quickly as I could move, into one of the two shower stalls. It had clear glass doors, though, and it faced the common changing area. If a man entered, anyone showering would be completely exposed.
A darkly comical few minutes ensued in which I tried to get clean while peering alarmedly at everyone who entered the dressing room, trying to ascertain his or her gender through glass doors that were constantly steaming up again.
I rushed to dry myself off in the common area beside my locker, and to dress, still hoping no man would walk in.
But what I felt as I did so was pure rage.
It was the rage of a survivor.
It was rage that after everything I have been through in my life after crossing paths with a man who did not care if I said no, I was once again racing and struggling through my pain, and spending emotional energy, seeking to avoid possible embarrassment and exposure of my self, that I did not want, and to which I did not consent.
I felt that sense of not being able to police my physical boundary. You can say it's trivial. You can say I should be cool with it all.
AITA?
I tell you, being unable to police a boundary of the naked body; feeling violated; is an essential diminution of self, whether it is "just" when forced to share a changing room with a man against your will, or whether it is being subjected to a crime of assault.
The difference is one of degree and not of kind.
The situation, as "cool" and "chill" and "benign" and "inclusive" as it was on the surface, brought my seven-year-old's horror back to me.
The thing is, what had happened to me at that time, when I was a child, is not at all unusual, in the lives of women.
A third of the women entering that changing room - in any changing room — were raped as adults, or were sexually assaulted as children.
A third of the women going along with right-on arrangements, might be just as traumatized as I was.
But we are all being polite about it.
What do I do with all of this ? What do you do?
I want men, however they may dress or "identify",
Out of women's private spaces.
Courteous men, as I say, respect women's physical boundaries, because they understand that some men are predators against women.
I don't want to be polite any more.
I don't want to have to justify my feelings.
I've been through enough.
You guys — men — you can be polite.
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