To ask why women would be uncomfortable with unisex bathrooms

I've been in 'gender neutral' toilets which were previously women's loos. The amount of men peeing in cubicles without closing and locking the door was shocking. As expressed above, most of them couldn't aim properly, and women had to wait in even longer than usual in queues due to them being there.

That's my take before we even talk about the safety aspect. Just grim.

Our local lesiure centre have decided all toilets, changing rooms and showers are now unisex, lots of women including myself have cancelled their membership and joining the next one in town, also lots of availability now in their swimming lessons now they've made this change.

Because women need their own spaces, not just when we are more vulnerable and in a state of undress (and at risk of voyeurs) but because there is greater risk of assault, sexual or otherwise, behind closed doors. Those born male will always have a physical advantage, no matter how hard we fight back.

Women’s loos are also places where women can escape and find female solidarity - we’ve all seen a woman being mopped up by other women, found a place away from a man who is hassling us on a dance floor or whatever.

Women’s spaces are also not there to offer validation to those men who think they are women. We are not here to validate men’s false beliefs or fetishes.

Women need their own spaces and men - of whatever identity - need to keep out.

This. Men’s toilets are always more dirty than women’s toilets. The reason is that a lot of men piss on the seat, the floor, anywhere really. I find it utterly disgusting and resent having to roll up the bottoms of my trousers and clean the seat in order to pee.

I think we have to normalise men not behaving like feral animals in public toilets - weeing everywhere and generally leaving a mess.
Who has to do this? Women? Women aren't support humans for men or there to tell men to clean up after themselves...

We have unisex toilets at work and they are disgusting. Pee on the seat, skidmarks, just disgusting. Female toilets have never been this bad. I also hate the fact I’m forced into close quarters with male colleagues. Women generally are doing more intimate things in a toilet; I just feel uncomfortable changing a tampon etc knowing there’s a bloke using the cubicle next door.

Disgusting, creepy, not needed
a man cleaner is ok, people are used to them and that is different

I have no issue if they are single toilets. Our local library has row of doors in a corridor and each toilet is in its own room.

A bathroom can be a place of vulnerability.

There are lockable cubicles. A man could use his physical advantage to shove a woman inside one, lock the door & assault her.

Imagine you enter a cubicle, go to lower your underwear to pee/insert tampon, and someone in the next cubicle puts a phone camera under the partition.

The only acceptable unisex toilet provision has cubicles with sinks inside & doors & walls right to the floor/ceiling, accessed directly off a public space.

And thats before you get on to how men leave bathrooms. I cleaned them in various pubs and leisure facilities i worked in and men leave them in a fucking disgusting state compared to women - piss & stains everywhere, disgusting smells, dirty paper left on the floor etc, its unspeakable - no wonder women don't want to share!

Don’t feel unsafe, but men’s toilets are generally less clean. I think it feels nicer if I know it’s just a women’s toilet. DS who’s just 8 already refuses going to women’s toilets as he feels shy, so guess some boys/men feel the same.

It’s the people that shrug and say ‘what’s the problem’ that are the problem. They don’t want to listen.

Women use toilets to clean up after menstrual flooding. Some 600 women miscarry in the UK every day, some of them in a public toilet. So what if men want to pee with us? We don't have to be cool with it.

Depends on the unisex toilet, for me.

If it's taking a typical single sex one, which in many establishments tend to be put out of the way in left over corner spaces that makes it difficult to get help if there is an issue, the layout means there are areas more secluded, and - particularly if it's been switched from single sex to mixed sex, there is an expectation of it being single sex that can make people feel more vulnerable when it's not.

If someone makes a conscious effort in how it's set up, knowing the increase in risk and actively mitigating it, ensuring it's opens onto a main area where it's easy to get help, ensure all stalls are self contained with sinks and such within them and large enough for mobility devices or pushchairs to reduce feeling and being exposed, and it's clearly set out to ensure there aren't secluded areas in the area, then actual and perceived threats can be lowered and so feeling less vulnerable.

Most of the ones I've seen the former, even in newly built public spaces which I find can be much worse for the 'we'll shove the loos in this random janky corner, down a weird corridor away from everything' meaning a high risk if there is any issues that it'll take longer to get help compared to adjusting old buildings, which have much more reason for less safe toilets on being limited on space to expand or create self-contained stalls to but far more often, but the public toilets are on the main routes and generally don't have the weird internal layouts trying to maximise space so I'm far less likely to have the feeling that if something were to happen, I could be without help for a long time. It's very frustrating for me how many new buildings make toilets an afterthought, and as such make them much riskier -- and if they then want to throw mixed sex on top of that, that just raises the risks.

God I don't even want to share a toilet with the men in my house! Public toilets? No thank you.

A nightclub in Leeds has unisex toilets.

it was disgustingly, really rank. Women were walking in and then walking out again.

I absolutely do not want to see men with their nobs out standing at urinals.

especially when they were turning around grinning.

I don't care at all about smells and so on, I know women's can be worse than the men's. I just don't want to share a toilet with a man when it's not necessary to do so. I don't mind some small cafes etc have one toilet that's unisex as that's all they have space for, but I am completely against places who had/have separate male and female facilities changing them to unisex.

We have unisex toilets at work, really doesn’t bother me.

My colleagues in building services have always said when the loos were separate, the women’s were often dirtier than the men’s.

Unfortunately, the attempted rape in the east of Scotland showed that there's more to safety than single stalls - the would-be rapist pushed the victim into a cubicle.

Was in a restaurant with (adult) DD yesterday. The loo was unisex with three cubicles. Went in and a woman was washing her hands but it was so cramped I had to squeeze past her to get to a cubicle and I was grateful she wasn't a man. When I came out there were two women crammed in there, waiting. DD went a bit later and she said there WAS a man and that he'd gone into the first cubicle, which had a woman sign on it and the others were for both. ( I hadn't noticed the signs either.) DD wasn't thrilled at there being a bloke there. Not good, is it?

My personal feeling is that whenever I've been in (when young 😉) or just outside men's toilets, they always absolutely STINK of stale urine. Same for unisex toilets on planes and trains. Piss on the floor. No thank you.

Nothing to do with dirt and piss. I want my own space away from any male. I am a domestic abuse survivor and deserve that right, end of.

unisex toilets are vastly, vastly more disgusting on the ‘weeing everywhere’ front.

In a women’s toilet I encounter this ~5% of the time.

In a unisex toilet after 6pm this goes up to about 95%.

This subject has been done to death on MN. So I'm out.

Sometimes.

When I worked in a Scottish secondary, the boys' toilets were constantly rank - you could smell them from the corridor.

We moved into a new build. Within a year, the new toilets were just as rank - in spite of constant cleaning.

I just don't want to share with men in public. At work all the toilets are unisex (there's is a woman's toilet but it has the big sink which is used as the kitchen sink as we don't have a kitchen, so its not really single sex), which is ok in the safety sense as I trust all the men I work with (very small company), but my god they stink out the one good toilet.