Actually do you know what, fuck it. I don’t want to use the term gender neutral any more. Its bullshit. Make them own it that it’s Mixed Sex, Both In Together toilet provision, that they are proposing. Which is not a ‘neutral’ position.
Sorry to go on but I said upthread it’s not just about the older girls starting their period. It’s also relevant to younger girls to have single sex provision.
We know that tiny children can tell the simple differences between male and female bodies unclothed and unclothed and many of them feel self conscious about changing clothes or using the toilets in a mixed sex set up.
Backed up (by NHS Choices info www.nhs.uk/conditions/urinary-tract-infections-utis-in-children/), UTIs are a painful health condition which predominantly affect little girls because the urethra in female people is nearer the bum as a source of urinary tract infection. UTIs increase frequency and urgency of needing to go.
Female kids are not all told how to wipe properly. Even if they have been told, not all are able to comply at young ages unprompted and independently, ie making sure they are not wiping from back-to-front. That is an infection risk but is an easier more instinctive way for them to do it while sitting on the toilet. None of this is commonly a relevant risk or issue for male children.
UTIs are also very painful which NHS Choices doesn’t really go into.
You will also see from NHS Choicss that UTIs are exacerbated and UTIs can be started by withholding toileting.
I think this is a key thing for Governors and Heads to understand. Trying to hold on all day without using the school toilet, or trying to avoid using the school toilet because it’s unpleasant to use, dirty and smelly causes painful UTIs that need antibiotics to shift.
This is actually IMHO a discriminatory issue. I remember myself in reception, Y1, y2, y3 and y4 myself having repeated UTIs. I know a lot of female children who have had the same.
In some primaries there is a lot of fuss about asking permission to go to the toilet, they are suspicious of children who want to go too often etc. Requirements about putting up your hand and asking in front of the whole class which offput some children.
It also seems to be widespread still that primary age kids are often under pressure from school not to spend too long in the toilet or to go repeatedly. My school was like that and being socialised as a girl, I was keen to be compliant and averse to being difficult or other kids knowing that I was needing the loo a lot of the time.
Girls may be embarrassed to ask to go, or be known to be in the toilet for a very long time, or very frequently or simply averse to using that environment if it’s not clean. (Could you ask about how often the single sex toilets are checked and cleaned and paper replaced during a normal school day?)
I can’t imagine what state mixed sex primary age toilets would be in by breaktime let alone the end of the day.
IME Adult men often leave even their own workplace ‘gender neutral’/mixed sex cubicle toilets unclean with piss all over the seat and don’t clean it up, or they leave the seat up at best.. let’s be honest here.
Women’s toilets rarely seem to have that issue because women are not generally trying to piss standing up.
This is often the case already with school single sex toilets where kids have less experience at toileting cleanly or remembering to flush unprompted and they have less internalised expectations to leave the toilets in a fit state for the next person.
So i really think that there are in some schools already toileting issues that only or mainly affect girls, which are exacerbated by school culture even where there is appropriate single sex provision.
Moving to take away single sex toileting is just very wrong. Adding in a new mixed sex/‘gender neutral’ options would be fine. So long as it’s genuinely ‘new’ space and not cutting down on existing toilet provision.
This is outside the experience or understanding or interest level of most men and boys. So thank you for speaking up for girls and women.