Museum of London - why female-only toilets were so important

ToeToToe

I'm with you, I'm against self id. I don't want men to be able to go into women's toilets unchallenged.

But what I'm saying is a third space is pointless. Trans people don't want it and so won't use it.

Toilets arn't particularly safe now anyway. So using toilets as an argument against self id is a bit pointless.

For example : trans women could enter a woman's toilet for sexual gratification reasons if we allow self id.

• men either posing as women or not already enter womens toilets for sexual gratification. As Rowntrees article illustrates. So self id becomes irrelevant. What is relevant is men being sexual preditours and the law doing nothing about it. Self id isn't the issue here, men being able to harass women unchecked is the issue. They don't need self id to do that. If the toilet is in a quiet area they don't even need to dress as a woman.

Nowhere is a 100% safe space - not even our own homes.

Safeguarding rules gives us the best chance of making spaces as safe as possible - and one of those safeguards for women has been single sex spaces.

No, it won't stop every man going into a ladies toilet ever - but what it means is that women can challenge men in a ladies toilet.

With self ID - we won't even be able to do that - because he will just be able to say "I identify as a woman" and be allowed to stay.

Rowan's linked news story shows that this is a risk to women and girls.

This is your response on Mumsnet FWR board discussing the serious case of two young girls being sexually assaulted in supermarket toilets apparently by a male teenager who it seems likely does not identify as a man?

What's your point. We were discussing for and against a third space. My point is a third space would be expensive and ineffective and its not going to happen.

You brought up an incident of a possibly trans male sexualy assaulting two girls. I said this proves my point that toilets arn't a safe space regardless of self id.

So what's your point?

Yes and we don't have self id. These issues already exist

This is your response on Mumsnet FWR board discussing the serious case of two young girls being sexually assaulted in supermarket toilets apparently by a male teenager who it seems likely does not identify as a man?

Why do you suppose the article has so consistantly used gender neutral descriptions eg the accused, the teenager, the person, my client etc and use of pronoun 'their' whilst also including reported speech "She explained that a crazy man" "A male voice was heard" ?

Yes and we don't have self id. These issues already exist. How would a third space stop it? As I said, any man can slap on some drag and enter a toilet. There is litrially nothing stopping them. Third spaces and self id don't change that.

Why do you think the 10 year old's dad waited outside?

I don't understand this comment. Are you saying her dad should be able to enter the toilet to protect her?

The convicted person is reported as having been accompanied to the supermarket with their carer and "been in the social care system from the age of three"

The father of one of the girls waited outside whilst she used the toilet. This is commonplace for girls of these ages who are with their father (or male adult). The father might well expect that this was a single-sex space.

If a father is out shopping with his daughter and she needs the loo, what should they do?

Anyone can enter a toilet to harass women and girls. A third space won't fix that and self id won't dramatically make it worse because we already have these issues

Why do you think the 10 year old's dad waited outside?

Wherismymind

Why do you suppose the article has so consistantly used gender neutral descriptions eg the accused, the teenager, the person, my client etc and use of pronoun 'their' whilst also including reported speech "She explained that a crazy man" "A male voice was heard" ?

R0wantrees

But your proving my point thar toilets arn't a safe space anyway. Its not transwomen that are the problem. Anyone can enter a toilet to harass women and girls. A third space won't fix that and self id won't dramatically make it worse because we already have these issues. The only way you can make a toilet safe is to have someone guard it. And let's face it that's not going to happen.

Self id could make it worse but most of the arguments around why self id will impact women's toilets are things that already happen now.

Yes, much worse, than just 'listening' goes on, I know.
Yes, reminds me of this one, Joel Hardman, who put on a rubber mask and wig to make audio recordings of women urinating. And photographing their feet under the door(!).

More recently, the Korean spycam scandal. And the attacks above, on young girls.

Men have already shown us why we don't want them in our spaces. Many times. Anyone agitating for more males to come into our spaces has no regard for women and girls' safety.

Toe: Because men's toilets are grim. Men wee on the floor.
Yep. Where I used to live, the local council made all the new public toilets single-cubicle neutral ones (a row, all with doors outside). Basin inside.

I used them a week or so after the opening, was ok-ish. Within about a month, they all stunk, locked in a small room with that man pee smell. Even the worst of women's public toilets were never as bad as that.

ReluctantCamper

It is so serious and for anyone who says 'there's no problem' this case exemplifies exactly what the very worst problem can be.

It is also terrifying that the wider implications of this case do not seem to have been picked up on.

It is a matter of child protection & needs serious, nuanced consideration.

Its the Fife Courier!

Christ R0wantrees, your last post is terrifying

Also re gender neutral toilets point they are a magnet for sex pests. They had these at my univesity in one of the buildings. People only went there for sex.

Do many women really strugglr to hold it like that? Genuinely curious. I rarely need the loos while out (only when I have forgotten to go before leaving the house). Do you think that corsets maybe made it harder to avoid using the loops for more than a few hours? Interesting project though.

I'm not saying any tom dick and harry should be in the womens. I'm saying the system we have his works fine
Wherismymind

This article was published yesterday. Two girls aged 10 and 12 were seriously assaulted:

(extract)
"the accused had been to the toilets with a carer and was walking towards the exit when the young child walked past.

Miss Lumsden said: “The accused (said their) mobile phone was still in the toilets and returned to them, alone.

“The young girl was in a cubicle and was sitting with her leggings and pants down when she saw a hand holding a mobile phone over the partition wall.

“The girl shouted and the person rushed out of the adjacent cubicle.”

The young girl then left the toilets and was described as looking “shocked”. The matter was reported to the police who retrieved in-store CCTV footage from the time of the incident.

Investigators were able to identify the teenager, whose accommodation in Kirkcaldy was searched.

A 12-second video clip of the girl on the toilet, followed by footage of the teenager running away, were recovered when an iPad and a mobile phone were seized.

A second incident took place at the Morrison’s store in Kirkcaldy on March 4.

The court was told a 10-year-old girl had been inside the toilets while her father waited outside.

Miss Lumsden said: “The complainer’s dad then heard his daughter screaming and came running out of the bathroom, looking as if she was running away from someone.

“She explained that a crazy man with long hair was in the bathroom and had grabbed her face and pushed her into a cubicle, before demanding she take her trousers off.

“She said the person had said they would stab her mum. She was upset and inconsolable.”

Police officers attended and found the cubicle locked inside the female toilets.

A male voice was heard coming from inside, saying: “I’ve been silly. I bumped into her. I’ve been silly.”

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/fife/702003/fife-teen-on-sex-offenders-register-after-supermarket-child-attacks/

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3329936-teen-films-girl-in-toilet

Reading this it really reminds me what a disingenuous, solipsistic argument ‘I just want to pee in peace’ is.
It takes no account of others’ feelings nor the documented antisocial behaviours and crimes that males boast of (and are convicted of) in female toilet spaces.

Why should women have to welcome men into single sex women’s spaces, however they indentify? We’re the ones that will suffer as and when it does go horribly wrong. Prevention is common sense and way, way better than cure here.

Toilets aren't safe so let's make them even less safe.

Can I just say to Wherismymind it's intensely annoying to have the "transwomen are already in your loos" argument thrown at us, as a reason or justification that any Tom, Dick, Harry or Jess Bradley should therefore be able to use them.

I'm not saying any tom dick and harry should be in the womens. I'm saying the system we have his works fine. I'm saying a third space will be expensive and ineffective. Transsexuals would still use the womens ,transgenders off the back of that would use the womens and the unisex loo would just be non binary and men's. Transgenders won't use it because they don't want too,and who's going to force them? The police that no longer respond to burglaries?

What I'm saying is why throw transsexuals out of the womens when they're not causing any harm and force them into unisex toilets. Yes self ID is wrong, no men should not be allowed in womens toilets unchallenged, but this hysteria around toilets is trivialising the more pressing issues around self ID. Jess Bradley is breaking the law getting her cock out in the communal part of a toilet self ID or not. Transgenders are already in the ladies, are we having massive problems? Self ID could create problems, so yes stop that but a third space isn't needed if we don't have self ID.

A man in drag' is a transphobic description, if the man says he identifies as a woman.
There might be a woman in there alone who is too scared to challenge him.
There might be a woman suffering a miscarriage who just wants privacy.

That's not what I said. I said any man could get into drag and enter a woman's toilet now, pre self ID. So these issues you refer to are not post self ID issues. They're present now. Toilets arnt a safe space. A third toilet will not make womens a safe space, it's pointless. I've been followed into a toilet and harassed by a man, there was no magic to stop him and a third space won't stop him.

There was a recent segment about this on R4's 'Making History' :
"Iszi Lawrence is in Fitzrovia with writer, broadcaster and Victorian historian Kathryn Hughes to find out why the lack of public toilets meant women were so inconvenienced in the Victorian and Edwardian period. What lay behind the then-accepted notion that women shouldn't "go" in public?"

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3309317-Radio-4-Making-HIstory-A-history-and-background-to-the-first-public-loos-for-women

Yes, much worse, than just 'listening' goes on, I know.

Can I just say to Wherismymind it's intensely annoying to have the "transwomen are already in your loos" argument thrown at us, as a reason or justification that any Tom, Dick, Harry or Jess Bradley should therefore be able to use them.

I have seen transwomen in women's toilets - but I have never yet seen a man, who presents as male, or clearly is male, saying "but I identify as a woman" in there - and I'd like it to stay that way.

Because there are voyeurs around who enjoy listening to women in the toilet. I don't know why it gets them off so much - but it does.

And worse - there's the bloke who posted about wiping pre-cum on the toilet rolls and winding them back up so the next user got it on them, or the one that rummaged through sanitary bins to get used pads to wear (and he was in a community talking about it, so he's not the only one).

And yes, the problem isn't transexuals, who are who the original 'gender-reassignment' clause were written for, the problem is the new wave of transgenders who don't intend to do much more than wear a blouse, and it's women and transexuals who are being used by them as human shields so they can exert control and access women's spaces for sexual kicks.

I’m pretty sure Jess Bradley and co would be screaming “transphobia” at the suggestion they use the men’s. They would not accept that they look like men, they want access to the women’s.

They don’t care about how it makes women feel.

I don't care that they can already use it. I want eventually for the women's multi cubicle toilets to be ruled out as an option for males to use and a third space to be mandatory for service providers.

I don't care if you see it as unrealistic or that self interested male anti woman activists won't campaign for it.

It is the only way to protect women's rights to privacy and dignity and safeguard female children when they are vulnerable.

But Jess Bradley won't use the men's. JB argued that they would use the women's.

Because Jess Bradley identifies as a woman.

That's the difference between gender reassignment being the protected characteristic (ie. India Willoughby using the women's) and gender identity "I identify as a woman, you have to accept my beard and lady-peen".

It's the Jess Bradleys I want NOT to be in the women's loos. Because they are a perv (allegedly).