Uncomfortable about unisex toilets at work

Yes AntiGrinch. I've been caught a few times sitting in cafes, by men swinging their coats outwards to put on. When I stand up to put my coat on, I always look to check there's enough room. Often they don't and I've even been flicked in the eye! A few have not even noticed, a few have said "oh, sorry didn't see you there", and a few have been reprimanded by their wives who have noticed. The "didn't see you there" is ridiculous. I'm a large woman and always wear bright clothes. Annoying and a bit dangerous. Have to add, I've never been caught by a woman's swinging coat.

I was sitting at a table in a public place yesterday, alone, reading, waiting for my children to come out of an activity. Another family near me consisted of two smallish children and a man. they children were changing their shoes and the man was supervising them and felt far too close to me. he felt tall and looming and while he was giving his full attention to the children, he was behaving as if there was no one in the space I was in and he was just too close and too obtrusive.

Having been reading and posting on this thread I was thinking about WHY he was annoying and making me uncomfortable. In this case, it honestly had nothing to do with safety. He was definitely there for the sole purpose of looking after his children and not to pick up, flirt with, assault, or annoy women or men or anyone else. YET. he was just RUDE with his hugeness and his disregard for me. Not a huge deal, but I was pleased when he went away.

Sometimes I think the emphasis on safety / threat is misplaced. I really do just want men to go away, often, even when I have no sense of threat at all.

Sometimes, I think it is subconsciously about a sense of physical threat; that what I think of as "just uncomfortable" is something that my body recgnises as "in this situation, he could do anything and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it, and his body language is giving you no indication that he is considerate or polite so you shold be prepared for anything".

I don't know. why can't they all just fuck off.

Validation. It's not safety - attacks on TW in the men's aren't frequent like attacks on women.

Is it that they see us as some kind of "secret club" and they need to be in it?

But why do they want in to our toilets? Does it help them to feel even more like women if they use our toilets? Still trying to get my head around it all.

I know but there's all this lofty 'why are you so obsessed with genitals' nonsense when in reality it's us being forced to talk about them because they want in to our toilets.

It's because women's feelings about privacy are easily handwaved away.

One of the reasons transactivism annoys me is the obsession with toilets. It's constant.

Individual locked rooms opening direct on to a station concourse

The stuff of nightmares. I would have to be truly desperate to use a setup like this

Why ? It is the safest arrangement. You are going direct from an open public place to a single locked room.


This anecdote also reminds me that the most vulnerable women are in low paid jobs with poor protections. Working in bright, modern workspaces may mean unisex toilets are safe. When you work in isolated buildings on a university campus out of term time, suddenly unisex toilets doesn't seem so safe.

YY and this is largely being ignored by unisex toilet fans. It is harder to hang around in women's toilets and loiter as a predatory male if they are sex segregated because you're automatically doing something wrong and people feel alarm.

@AngryAttackKittens

The women on the receiving end of the unwanted behavior are also your patients.

They're women. Fuck 'em.

Rape and sexual abuse in hospitals is epidemic. Mixed wards are a higher risk for women. The NHS has to pay out compensation to victims every year, and its not a new problem.

Mixed-sex psychiatric wards warning
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/11/nhs-launches-sexual-abuse-probe-amid-fears-dangers-mixed-sex/
archive.is/wwyXH

Sexual violence soars in UK hospitals 2014
Records show 50% rise in reports of sexual attacks, with more than 1,600 in past three years
Last year the Metropolitan police received reports of 17 rapes and 124 other sex abuse crimes inside London hospitals.
www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/31/sexual-violence-soars-uk-hospitals

Individual locked rooms opening direct on to a station concourse

The stuff of nightmares. I would have to be truly desperate to use a setup like this.

These incursions do occur but the frequency is actually quite rare and it's usually the confused or dementia patients.

So keep the confused and dementia patients who are likely to cause severe distress and fear to women, away from women.

On wards for men, for instance.

These patients with dementia and confusion who try and sexually assault other patients - how many of them are women?

From the perspective of the women being groped, having random men climb into their beds, etc, it really doesn't matter why the men are doing those things, and I'm concerned that you as a HCP think it does, Poula. The women on the receiving end of the unwanted behavior are also your patients.

These incursions do occur but the frequency is actually quite rare and it's usually the confused or dementia patients. For instance in my last two years working on a ward I have had to remove two people from opposite sex rooms. Both dementia sufferers. One male and... one female

In the aged care facility my relative was in many of the patients were suffering from dementia or similar inflictions. Even in the time my relative was there, it was necessary to remove the 'old dear' from her and others' rooms probably more than six times a day. I was warned to keep away from another patient because even though he had a degree of dementia he was still a known sex-offender. Just because the men have dementia does not mean that the women (who may or may not have dementia) are not scared or traumatised by having men in their rooms or trying to get into bed with them. This is all argument for sex-segregated spaces be they toilets or wards or whatever.

Working in bright, modern workspaces may mean unisex toilets are safe. When you work in isolated buildings on a university campus out of term time, suddenly unisex toilets doesn't seem so safe.

Yeah, that. In some of the fancy office buildings I've worked in? I don't love the idea but I wouldn't feel unsafe, just annoyed. The vast majority of the world does not work in places like that, though.

h and the irony of that seriously unpleasant experience is I'm what people on here like to call a "TIM"

How is that ironic

I worry about ds1 all the time when he is out at nightclubs, as i gay man i worry about him being sexually assaulted and being beaten up by someone who doesnt like his choice of partner

I wouldnt give him flowers though...he would much prefer vodka

Just had a memory: I had a holiday job cleaning with some friends. We were young but the regular team were 50+, all women (as you would expect) plus one man. Turned out the man was a convicted sex offender. So a regular woman worked with the man (we worked in pairs). Okay. Fine. But, would we have wanted to share unisex toilets with this bloke? Of course not. Toilets are vulnerable spaces. Mostly, most of the time, women are not aware of this. Doesn't mean that isn't a fact. This anecdote also reminds me that the most vulnerable women are in low paid jobs with poor protections. Working in bright, modern workspaces may mean unisex toilets are safe. When you work in isolated buildings on a university campus out of term time, suddenly unisex toilets doesn't seem so safe.

I have seen many TIMs support sex-segregated spaces, except for them, they're different et cetera.

I used to work for an organisation that installed a uni sex toilet in one if it's new buildings and I hated it to be honest. I only used it a handful of times when I really couldn't be bothered to walk and use the female toilets at the other end of the building. It had cubicles with floor to ceiling doors for privacy but the wash area was very confined with no window and if I'm being perfectly honest I did use to worry about the possibility of being assaulted by a man in there. I imagine it's even worse for women who have been raped / sexually assaulted by men in the past. In fact for this reason alone I think it should be illegal for women not to be given an option to have access to women only toilet facilities where they don't have to worry about being alone with a man. I hardly EVER saw anyone else in there, I'm guessing because other members of staff (men and women) didn't feel comfortable using it. It all seems like part of a push towards a very specific agenda, one that I am not comfortable with at all. Women have a right to feel safe in their place of work. Why should we forgo that right to fulfill a political agenda?

Bewilderness I haven't posed as an authority. Rather I presented opposing anecdotal evidence vs what your mum said. I'm happy for toilets and hospital wards to remain segragrated unless there is a good reason not to be.

Bloody hell! I'm beginning to see what you all mean! Like little mice, sneaking in.