Soviet Weirdness

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Clarissa

October 26, 2015

When I was in the last two grades of high school, we didn’t have separate changing rooms for boys and girls for PT. The weird thing is that when we were 11-12, we did have separate rooms. But when we arrived at ages 16-17, separate changing rooms were no longer necessary. None of the adults found anything strange in the situation. Poor boys suffered terribly while the girls made sure the suffering was as intense as possible.

This was right after the collapse of the USSR but all the Soviet structures were still in place. (They mostly are even now, although I have no idea if the changing room situation is any different.)

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6 responses to “Soviet Weirdness”

Dreidel

October 26, 2015

The Soviets were obviously several decades ahead of their time. Now all a student has to do to get into the changing room/restroom of his/her choice is to claim that his/her gender is whatever he/she perceives it to be.

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1. Clarissa
  
  October 26, 2015
  
  That’s a very original way of seeing it. 🙂 🙂 🙂
  
  Who could have thought that the Soviets were simply trying to make things easier for the trans people.
  
  Thank you, I will not be able to stop laughing for the next 20 minutes. :-))))))))))))
  
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sternococktail

October 26, 2015

It’s a luck it wasn’t so in my school. At 16 – changing – and showering? – with the girls would have given me a stroke from high blood pressure or something,,,

But I’ve got the impression, that in the Swedish army of later years, with women allowed to sign in, both sexes share everything. The thought would be, that if it isn’t working for you in the peacetime, it won’t during a war. If you can’t stand see others naked, you can’t stand see dead or wounded people. And if you are not brave enough to show yourself naked, you won’t be brave enough to risk your life in combat situations.

But of course, our army is now very, very small. The politicians gambled on that Putin would keep on being a nice guy…

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1. Clarissa
  
  October 26, 2015
  
  We didn’t have any showers. It never occurred to anybody that people needed to wash themselves after physical training.
  
  As I said, weird.
  
  As for the Swedes, don’t they have a tradition of shared sauna-like activities where men and women are naked together? I know the Finnish people do.
  
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2. Dreidel
  
  October 26, 2015
  
  Correct me if I’m wrong, but has Sweden actually fought in a war since 1814? It would be interesting to see if the theory would improve combat proficiency.
  
  When I was a hospital intern many years ago, the doctors (all men then) and the nurses (all women then) saw a lot of blood and gore as part of their duties, but it never occurred to the prudish hospital administration to have us take showers and go to the bathroom together.
  
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Katrine

October 27, 2015

The Danish army is doing experiments with having recruits bathe and sleep in mixed gender facilities at the moment. Recruits have to sign up for it I think, so they aren’t forced to do it.
A lot of Danes also view nakedness as natural and “un”-sexual. This might be a factor in the currently good results with the experiment.
I think there is also a huge difference between teenagers and adults having to go naked in front of each other, the teenagers are far worse of.

Article in Danish about the experiment:
http://www.bt.dk/danmark/nye-tider-nu-sover-og-bader-kvindelige-og-mandlige-soldater-sammen

Also for Dreidel and Sternococktail the article mentions Norway as a country where the military is mixed gender everything, apparently more women choose to stay in the military as a result.

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