Have a look at my previous posts. I make it a general rule not to mention individual incidents but you can see how and why I think this.
How would all unisex toilets work practically? Scrap all urinals and create massive public corridors all lined with individual toilet rooms? The queues and cost would be enormous. In British Standards, calculations show you need 25% more toilets if you use unisex toilets because people are waiting longer for the occupant to finish washing and drying their hands. How does ventilation work? What about cleaning? How can they be supervised? If someone is misusing them, how would you know? How does that work for emergency building evacuations or being worried about a child/colleague who has gone missing? At what point do you bang on the door? Do you have cctv on every toilet with people watching if you go in and out?
Your preferred design is creating private mixed sex rooms in public spaces. Why do you think they are required to open in public spaces? Do you think that will work in not such public spaces or when those public spaces are quieter?
Toilets are such vulnerable spaces to misuse they have their own section in the Sexual Offences Act. How do you think making them all mixed sex and private it going to impact on safety?
There’s also health. Because the toilet plume flush covers up to 1.5m unless something stops it, you are washing and drying your hands using objects covered in everyone else’s flushes. In fact, unless the warm air hand dryer filter is thoroughly cleaned, studies have shown you can end up with more microbes on your hands than you started with. Unisex toilets are worst for pathogens.
I spotted a young woman had stopped breathing (choked on vomit in a nightclub cubicle) straight away, as soon as I walked into the ladies. We got her out and breathing again. In contrast, people have been left for hours and even days in this country in toilets in private designs you are preferring. People have died in toilets in very public workplaces and venues but no one knew until it was too late. I have many recent examples of this.
I research actual incidents, police reports, coroner reports, foi’s for data and statistics. I wanted to know why toilets designs were becoming more enclosed and what happens when they do. I now have a books-worth of information from across the world, but focusing on the U.K.
There are a variety of things that people have tried to do to make your preferred completely private design safer:
Put heat sensors in the room to monitor how many people are in there, put alarms in that activate to send text messages to ‘help me’ or ‘stop it’ prompts, weight sensors in the floor so the door won’t close if it thinks there are too many people in the room, various things such as coloured lights to try and stop people injecting drugs and overdosing in their preferred private design, cctv fixed so it’s looking at the door, making the toilets very small so two people can’t fit in, making the doors open automatically after a set time, create a one way mirror the occupant can see people outside their toilet cubicle/room (this one I don’t think was ever used - this very influential toilet designer wanted to see others when he was seated), have glass doors and walls that frost up when the door is locked, only open toilets up when an attendant can watch everyone going in….
All of the above is retrospective and not as effective as a single sex toilet in a single sex environment that has a 15cm floor to door gap. Single sex design safeguards against misuse happening in the first place.
These things are also true: Most men are good men who wouldn’t want to cause distress to women or children in toilets. Despite various alarmist people discussing some may being killed, it is extremely rare to be killed in a toilet.
It is not rare to collapse in a toilet. Building regs state non domestic toilet doors should be able to open outwards from the outside or taken off their hinges precisely because people collapse against the door and you can’t open them. Once collapsed the time taken for rescue is vital.
I am aware my posts can get long, if you want links to the above info, I can post more.
I think you need to consider the unique environment of toilets and why the default has been and is single sex. We need toilets for safe and hygienic sanitation and single sex design is best in non domestic situations. That, of course, gives exemptions for a man bringing a girl into the men’s toilets, and a woman bringing a boy into the women’s toilets, because it is for the safety of the child.
The fact is, unless it’s a small venue, if you want all unisex toilets, it’s not permitted anyway. Single sex provision has to be prioritised.