Burnley Grammar School

Question for Nathan who posted the Communal Shower website, which by the way I do not agree has any fetish content having looked through it. That angle is only in the eye of the beholder in my opinion. If you want to see something like that within it then you are going to find it, it seems to me.

The part about persuading people to shower communally has a point, how for example do you persuade a large amount within a class to shower communally, maybe Nathan could answer that himself?

Another question for Nathan, just how many communal showers do you actually supervise yourself each day as a PE teacher, or each week on average? Maybe it's not as many as we think if you share it out between other teachers?

If it's anything like my days in school then rather a lot of PE lessons, mainly the ones we did outside, had two PE teachers with us but only one would bother to be in our changing room keeping an eye on us as we sorted ourselves, showered and dressed.

My view of school showers was that I just tolerated them and went with how things were, but wasn't enthusiastic about going in them so often after PE, and it really was after every single PE lesson without fail.

As an only child I had never seen another boy without clothes until I went to secondary school when I was twelve and suddenly I was confronted with a lot at the same time. I do remember being absolutely fascinated by the sight of some people I knew well suddenly fully undressed before me and noticing everybody around me and how they looked while naked and some of the differences.

We were certainly not all the same, and unlike what the chap from the army said on the You Tube clip, yes people do wonder what others look like in communal showers or naked changing situations so that was a bit of a fib in my opinion. When communal nudity is mandated as a requirement in somewhere like school you get to see not just the physical body but the actual body language of those who are the confident ones and those who are not rather starkly.

Forgot to mention -Speedo's seem to be back in fashion. Nearly all the guys were wearing them. They look great on good bodies, less so otherwise. They are also practical, as you only have to carry a small amount of wet cloth around.
I did not like them when they were introduced in PE in the early 60s but have worn them throughout adulthood. My PE teacher was right again.

Communal showers are GREAT!!! Just been in one at the local leisure centre. Umpteen complete strangers stark naked together. Very sociable - got chatting with some other guys I've never met before. I don't do that at a bus stop, fully clad.
But somehow they work. Yes, there was a bit of tension - but that was mainly about whether I would get in and whatever the elaborate rubrik was over lockers etc. Once I was standing there naked in the changing room, I was amazed just how relaxed I was. It felt so supportive, even though I am well past my prime.
I've seen so many sports centres ruined by the installation of what I believe is termed "village changing" - changing cubicles, shower cubicles, lockers. Most people I know just want to change, shower (prior to swimming), get their kit on and go, without the extra effort of going in and out of cubicles. Then reverse the procedure at the end. And ideally have showers which are part of the changing room, so as you can keep your eye on your stuff.
We certainly do not want desk bound (our home bound, because of COVID) idiots, who never see the inside of a leisure centre from one year's end to the next telling us that everyone wants village changing.
One pool I use regularly made one shower position into a cubicle. Of course, it is hardly ever used.
When my nearest pool was going to adopt "village changing" from large single-sex changing rooms, we put up a protest. Yes, some village changing is needed and most definitely must be provided, But they went for a large village changing area and two tiny same sex changing rooms. The village changing is hardly used and the single sex changing rooms are crowded. I believe that fewer people use the leisure centre now.
I can't explain why communal showering is such a pleasure. Yes, we see each others willies. And some wonderful manscaping! However, I do believe that the main reason is hormonal - the generation of endorphins, the reward and pleasure hormone. It is also generated during exercise and - this really surprised me - by corporal punishment. I always wondered why, after an often hellish gym period, I felt wonderful.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging people to try communal showers. If they don't like it, well and good. That must be respected. But I am glad that we had to take communal showers at school.
Best wishes to the "Communal Showers Association" - I wish we had something over here to prevent the few leisure centres we have left being ruined by "woke-ism".

Nathan, Can you not see the fetishistic nature of that site?. Take for example the opening comment in the section on "persauding" others to use communal showers (I gave a link to it in my original response). Unless he is taking the gypsies, what prompted Sam T to write that he felt he needed "to communal shower now". Another couldn't wait for `'more content".

Why try to encourage others to indulge in what is generally seen as a private and personal activity?. Why should it concern a man of 66 (the final comment in the section) that his "brethren" (?) join him in his ablutions?.

Charles - Chaos followed you said but excruciatingly you didn't elaborate further just what that meant. That's just one of those things that you are bound never to forget isn't it. Some people are so unbelievably selfish and lacking a clear line not to cross. I was at school with a boy with autism who would do some highly inappropriate things like helping himself without asking to other people's food at the dining table. I've never forgotten that.

Sharing the bathroom with your siblings seems alright to me even at fourteen. Did you mean the bath? That's common in large families isn't it.

Circa 1965-71.

Gym teachers really do leave an impression on you don't they. Take one of mine for example, he was keen to let us know his views on everything and one of them was that "shirts are for cissies" and he would never tolerate anyone wearing one in what he called 'his' gym at school. But he wasn't a hypocrite like some teachers get called out on, he actually did take many of our gym classes stripped off to the waist like we were. Nobody else at our school did that.

When we had other teachers they were very different and we would sometimes actually wear a vest. We were never allowed to wear an actual t-shirt even with these teachers though, it always had to be a vest, a simple plain white vest with nothing on it at all.

When I looked at the clip that was left here a few days ago of the army induction and the physical training that they do, there was one thing that I noticed and it was that recruits could come to the gym training in a variety of kits and that there was no actual uniform noticeable which you might think there would be in the army. So that means that school was stricter than the army for PE because we always had to turn out uniformly the same as each other to gym without any significant variations and I think many schools were like that.

I'm not surprised that a lot of people found school showering to be the big deal with PE for them. We had a fool in our class who never stopped clowning around and was always a disruptor. He once got to the shower first and decided to urinate across the floor of the thing before any of the rest of us had been able to use it. The teacher had not seen this and came in the door moments after he did it. Obviously nobody wished to then use the shower and so we told our PE teacher that this person had taken a wee in the shower all over the place. The reaction to this was amazing, the perpetrator received no rebuke at all and all the rest of us were told it didn't matter and that we still had to step in there because it would probably be good for our feet. Chaos followed.

I never minded school showers and found them easy enough to deal with because I wasn't bothered by my nakedness or being seen like it, perhaps because I'd grown up in a large family with five brothers and a sister and privacy was a luxury that I never really had at home. I was still sharing the bathroom with some of my younger brothers when I was 14 years old out of simple practical necessity, not choice.

I have placed the content on here in good faith. If you feel there is anything about the content that I left from the Communal Shower Association that delegitimises it in any way then can you please specify the precise areas that have caused you the problem that you claim. Thanks.

Interesting read on the communal shower association website. There's a site for everything it seems.

James asked what was it about the 70s & 80s. Going to school myself in those days and hearing my own parents, especially my father often talking about his own days at school in the drab and austere 50s as he memorably used to describe it made me feel grateful I was growing up in the 80s when things were so different as it then felt compared to my parents. He would tell me stories of getting regular classroom beatings and made it sound quite fearful at times.

I still think I'd rather have gone to school in the 80s rather than the 50s but like William said, he has thought about things after a while and so do I now kind of revise my opinion in parts about my own decade defined era in school which suddenly looks more in tune with the 50s than now. I've always thought of everything that came after 1970 as being more enlightened and modern compared to before then.

Geoff - you are, of course, absolutely right though I think Jason knew there would be the one dissident voice. Indeed - the comment had already been made though not published!

Tanya, That's an ineresting question. Nowadays if a boy of 15, with practically nothing on, were held down by other boys of the same age and his genitals daubed with shoe polish it would count as peer on peer abuse. I'm glad nobody told me that because I might have worried about it, but the mindset in the 1960s was so different. Then it was regarded as high jinks, an initiation that was a bit of fun provided it didn't go too far. Thanks to the 1960s attitude and the fact that "blacking" is at the mild end of the abuse spectrum, it honestly didn't trouble me. On top of that, school and upbringing had inculcated in me the idea of taking things in your stride and not making a fuss, and that included some nudity at school.
A 15 year old today might be more likely to find such an initiation traumatic. There are plenty of resilient youngsters around but they live in a society in which (1) they are acutely conscious of their rights, (2) strident protest has become the norm and (3) stoicism is out of fashion.
I'm not suggesting that the past was better. In many ways it wasn't but I was better able to cope with my experience because of the prevailing attitudes of the time.
I am certainly not condoning what happened even though I laughed it off. The problem with that sort of pranks is that if a malevolent boy had been in the group it would have been easy to subject me to a serious assault. But it was over very quickly and nothing of the sort happened.
I hope that answers your question.

Mike, totally agree with your comment.

I have just had a glance at the website Nathan mentioned. In my opinion it fair whineys with fetishism, for example:


https://www.communalshowerassociation.com/how-tos/how-to-persuade-others-to-communal-shower

It reminds you of those people who used to advocate naturism. I frankly haven't got the interest or will to read all of the site, but this gives some indication of it's flavour

Comment by: Jason on 17th October 2023 at 17:40
Mike proving the voice of moderate common sense on here.
I think almost everyone will agree.....won't they?



Don't be so silly Jason, the one someone I thought would not agree came out the starting blocks like Usain Bolt on steroids.

Alan, you have focused yet again on your pet project here but has it not occurred to you that Mike was not actually trying to defend so called perverts and was talking in more general sensible terms?

@ Nathan - Thanks for the input on showers. I made a few comments in a post on the 6th October.
T

Mike proving the voice of moderate common sense on here.

I think almost everyone will agree.....won't they?

Just in and before I forget this I'm just going to add it here for you.

Did you know that there is something called the Communal Shower Association. No, me neither. It is based in the United States. I have no idea if there is a UK equivalent. They also have something going called a School Shower Study. I came across it during the weekend whilst I was doing some looking into the issue after having received a bit of a hard time on here.

Somebody (sorry I tried to find the post to name you) a few weeks ago asked about the history of such things. Well there is a very interesting explanation on this website that I think some of you might find fascinating even if it does come from an American perspective. It suggests the first communal shower appeared in 1900, and that they really took off in the 1920's with very widespread use from the 1940's to the 1990's in particular and notes 1995 as a watershed year. Very specific I thought.

Now I had no idea about any of this but found that my own general ideas matched quite closely with the timelines suggested here.

There is some very good reading if you follow the links. I'm sure it will provoke some further comments.

https://www.communalshowerassociation.com/school-shower-study

Comment by: Mike on 16th October 2023 at 23:04
We must get away from this overwhelming desire to rewrite the past in the image of the present.

Surely we don't want the generation of the 2070's and 2080's rewriting our present in their present in another half century from now.


This depends, Mike, on not giving school students from today and the future, the grounds for feeling angry or aggreived at being treated like cattle, or worse, doesn't it?. No boy or girl should have had to endure being taught by paedophiles whether that was the 1940s, to certainly the 1990s, as we have seen in numerous court cases, especially not in situations like PE where the teacher has seemingly unlimited access to those pupils in changing rooms and showers.

Some teachers treated the pupils they had under their control abominably. You can't rewrite history to accomodate perverts, however "nice" you want to be, and understanding their times. A predator remains a predator whether it was 1950. 1970 or 1990 and should be dealt with in the same way through the courts.

Comment by: Steven on 16th October 2023 at 18:59


You write in part......

"Where do we learn about our personal hygiene, well it's at home isn't it, and that's the right place for it to be, nowhere else and from nobody else than the family, or maybe a medical professional in some situations quite possibly.

The rigorous implementation of school showers always seemed strangely obsessive to me at school and actually quite draconian. I used to see boys at school who were never any bother to anyone around school find themselves getting a roasting from the PE teacher because of showering after PE.

I would actually go further and suggest that the real issue was not the actual showering itself but the manner it was done by many schools and the practices such as close checking you were wet enough on exiting and things like having to lift your arms up to check armpits and all that nonsense we put up with. "

I agree with everything you write here, Steven - especially the final paragraph. Some teachers took it upon themselves at playing at being corporals or square bashing sergeants. This was absurd since nobody has been forced to join the military now for 60 years or more. There was, and is, no need to treat every lad as if he were a potential squaddie, or the inmate of a borstal. . Didn't Shakespeare have it? "dressed in a little brief authority".

Some of them were pathetic little men, probably hen-pecked at home, possibly in unhappy marriages, and their only way of feeling "big" was to make their pupils feel small. Perhaps they acted that way because, psychologically they knew themselves to be failures? - after all - "those who can, - do. Those who can't teach" Still doesn't excuse their conduct though.

Simply - I completely agree with Mike.

We must get away from this overwhelming desire to rewrite the past in the image of the present.

Surely we don't want the generation of the 2070's and 2080's rewriting our present in their present in another half century from now.

Do you think that was an abuse of sorts William, looking back now, as you said you never gave it a second thought until a lot later.

Anthony - 'you filed towards them like sheep shorn of their fleeces.'

Nice turn of phrase that one. I liked that analogy.


Where do we learn about our personal hygiene, well it's at home isn't it, and that's the right place for it to be, nowhere else and from nobody else than the family, or maybe a medical professional in some situations quite possibly.

The rigorous implementation of school showers always seemed strangely obsessive to me at school and actually quite draconian. I used to see boys at school who were never any bother to anyone around school find themselves getting a roasting from the PE teacher because of showering after PE.

I would actually go further and suggest that the real issue was not the actual showering itself but the manner it was done by many schools and the practices such as close checking you were wet enough on exiting and things like having to lift your arms up to check armpits and all that nonsense we put up with. Steven

It all makes you wonder why they didn't teach this personal hygiene to us all at school when we were 12 in front of the showers, if school is where we are meant to learn! They just set the water going and you filed towards them like sheep shorn of their fleeces.

Rob can speak for himself. but perhaps he preferred to rely on the first-hand experience of someone who was taught by Mr Parry than on Alan's gloomy speculation.
I was "blacked" aged 15 as a first time cadet at summer camp. Our sergeant told us it would happen and said "just go along with it, it's nothing and happens to everyone." I can confirm that the worst part is removing shoe polish from pubic hair. We were two cadets to a room and both of us had to spend ages at the wash basin to make sure our pants weren't marked. I took the sergeant's advice and never gave it a second thought until decades later I read that former cadets who felt they had been abused were suing the MoD.
The first episode of the current television series "Soldier" shows young infantry recruits being instructed on personal hygiene.

Rob: Unless you were in Parry's mind how do you know my interpretation of his behaviour is erroneous?

Paul R: I didn't disbelieve Charlton - nothing surprises me of what goes on in some institutions, but I agree with Tanya, no normal young man, who has passed all the intelligence tests to getting into the Army needs to be taught such intimate matters Most of us know by ten or eleven at the oldest what we are supposed to do regarding personal hygiene.

James: Again not surprised, even though it is disgusting. The football clubs should be in the dock charged with facilitating sexual abuse, not just assault. Not a professional player, but during and after my schooldays I had a mate who was a keen amateur player, and sworn to secrecy, he told me of something that happened to him while at school, not just once either and, I am sad to say, that R was the instigator. given his behaviour in public, his private shenanigans were of no surprise. This was the best part of forty years ago now. As I have said before, we like to think these disgraceful events are a thing of the past - but are they?. Instituitions like the FA and Army seem to have inherited Nelson's bad eye.

The marine looked like he was enjoying his hygiene instruction far too much.

Of course grown men don't need to be told how to wash themselves. Kids often do though, but that's the parents job, I wouldn't suggest they do that in school. Infact my school showers were nothing but slightly warm water, so not exactly a lesson in proper hygiene if you ask me.

What the hell was it about the 1970's and 1980's.

This article ends with - "You Couldn't Be Shy Or You'd Be Crucified"

This is in professional football at the time.


Even in such a macho sport as football, the punishment ritual inflicted on apprentices who were judged to have failed in their work at one top First Division club in the early 1980s was an extraordinary one. The word or a nod would be given and the victim would be ordered to walk to the shower room beside the naked team captain, holding that individual’s genitals.

Other players from the 1970s and 1980s era will respond with a shudder to the word “blacking” – the pinning down of young apprentices while their testicles were daubed with black boot polish. “It took you three weeks to get it off,” says one former Liverpool player, whose account of those days reveals the damage done to those who failed football’s survival of fittest test. “I remember one player was left with a stutter,” he says. “Others never played football again. It was mental and physical abuse on a daily basis.”

All of that pales in comparison to the testimony given at Preston County Court in the past two weeks by George Blackstock, the former Stoke City apprentice claiming damages for allegedly being subjected to a ritual known as the “The Glove” and “The Finger”, in which goalkeeper Peter Fox allegedly daubed his glove in Raljex and inserted it up the 16-year-old’s backside while he was pinned to the treatment bench. Several witnesses have testified to Blackstock getting “The Teapot” – in which the hot receptacle was held to his backside. Blackstock’s transgressions included serving lukewarm tea and making a line decision against a first-team player in a training game. Stoke and Fox deny the allegations.

Football awaits with trepidation Judge Philip Butler’s decision, due in the New Year, on whether to give Blackstock leave to sue Stoke and Fox for an estimated £5,000 damages. The court heard from Stoke defence barrister Nicholas Fewtrell on Tuesday that other players are “waiting in the wings” for possible legal action and the Independent on Sunday understands that several other ex-Stoke apprentices have consulted no-win, no-fee lawyers about “blacking” incidents.

The Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive, Gordon Taylor, declined to discuss the case ahead of the judge’s ruling, but there is a sense of dismay in the game that 1980s practices might provoke a spate of litigation. The Blackstock claims are grim – the court heard that former players George Berry, Carl Saunders and Steve Parkin allegedly held down the Northern Irishman while Fox applied the glove, though the alleged incident is far removed from the kind of sexual abuse from that period which the Jimmy Savile case brought to light, and which also led to the former Celtic Boys Club manager, Jim Torbett, being jailed for 30 months in 1998. Torbett was convicted of shameless indecency for abusing boys, including the future Scotland international Alan Brazil, between 1968 and 1974.

At Stoke, Berry, Saunders, Parkin all deny the allegations and Judge Butler’s response has so far revealed reservations about the quality of some of the evidence.

One of the witnesses to Blackstock receiving “The Glove”, former apprentice and now serving Staffordshire Police officer Justin Edwards, was heavily censured in court by the judge for testifying in one statement that he himself had been abused, whilst not mentioning this in another statement during the force’s 2008 investigation into the allegations. Edwards was asked to explain why he did not inform his force of the abuse when he became a serving officer, if he knew of it. Edwards felt at the time that it wasn’t something worthy of a criminal investigation.

The decision of Blackstock to go to The Sun with his story, after it allegedly became clear that Stoke were unwilling to pay compensation, has led to a financial motive being discussed at length in court. “They go to Stoke with the allegations, who deny it. So they go to The Sun,” Fox’s barrister John McNeill said this week. Judge Butler seemed to acknowledge that the case had significance beyond football, in sports where punishments come with the territory.


“If you have got a university rugby team on their way home from a match, you may say they are all consenting adults,” he said. “The victim may go along with the idea that if they have ‘failed’ with a pass, he might have to take [punishment].”

Even in recent years, the apprentice footballer’s environment has remained forbidding. A player at one leading Premier League club had his nose broken when a towel was flicked at him because he refused to cooperate with the initiation ceremony of standing on a chair to sing.

But the brutality of the punishment culture began tapering off in the mid-1990s. “It began to change with the Academy systems, the arrival of foreign players and maybe the recognition that these were not much more than children. It changed with the change in attitudes,” said one Academy coach.

“It’s a lot different,” a 20-year-old Liverpool player told the Independent on Sunday. “Standing up and singing in front of Jamie Carragher, which I had to do at my first Christmas party, was a challenge. But it was just sharp banter and that’s good for those of us coming in.”

But the Stoke case does raise the question of how many young talents fell by the wayside because they could not run this gauntlet of abuse. “It helped if you were tough in the first place,” said one witness to events at the time. “You couldn’t be shy or you’d be crucified.”

The Independent - 15th December 2013.

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news/grime-and-punishment-dark-tales-of-ritual-abuse-in-bootrooms-could-spark-a-wave-of-legal-claims-against-clubs-9005494.html

I can't believe that any young man needs another man to tell him how to wash himself thoroughly, especially his prize asset.

Comment by: Jim on 13th October 2023 at 00:48
Based on the exchange between Alan and Charlton I felt sure I'd once seen what Charlton described on one of those reality fly on the wall shows but haven't found anything.


Comment by: Charlton on 12th October 2023 at 01:18
We used to get 20 minutes each morning for what they called a sh*t, shower and a shave. That is not very long when sharing with a lot of others. They even show new privates how to wash their privates in the army, well they did in the eighties when I joined.


FOUND IT!

It looks like I have found what you might have been looking for Jim and what Charlton described in the 1980s. Looks like it was still happening 20 years later. This was 2007 according to the end credit.

https://youtu.be/dYF-qDopam0?feature=shared&t=646

Yet another assumption from Alan proved incorrect and rectified by Burnley boy Rupert here.

I liked the final line of your post Dean, so much more positive.

Comment by: Steve on 14th October 2023 at 21:29


You have clearly led a very sheltered life Steve and clearly never had a Mr R. watching you, or any of the recently convicted or named men who behaved with conduct unbecoming.

I am very happy for you. However, I bet that Nathan as a teacher in 2023 would not conduct himself in the way Parry did. He has a lock on his school shower door.