Feminist school governor

Awesome job LetsHope I really like the ‘be who you already are/express how you want’ message in there.

It was Quoll who made the excellent point on the Home Office gender neutral toilets thread, that single sex toilets are already gender neutral. I totally agree with you it is a really profound statement and makes a great slogan..

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3337295-DM-Women-avoiding-new-gender-neutral-toilets-in-the-home-office-because-men-cant-close-the-door

I’m sure the meme and sticker fans and the lovely CesiraAndEnrico on the Vandals/Stickerwoman threads would love to see your work (and if you haven’t already visited those threads, they have some brilliant memes, sticker templates and slogans on there! ):

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3342172-Thread-2-Anti-trans-vandals-are-plastering-vile-women-don-t-have-penises-stickers-around-THE-WORLD?pg=10&order=

Hi, I made this meme based on something another poster said.

I think it’s really profound. “Single-sex toilets are already gender neutral”.

The question I'm asking may seem obvious but my main school seems rather gifted in some ways (and we're in a deprived area!), but do you have a full-time pastoral lead/school counsellor type person? Ours is bloody amazing. This year we worked together to purchase the Empathy Lab book pack which is full of wonderful books dealing with feelings, loss, refugees, all sorts of things. We use them in assembly and they're available to borrow in the library for the kids, they can be taken out by staff to use in PSHE and by the pastoral lead with individual children or small groups. I'd really recommend it. And talk to your pastoral lead about teaching assertiveness, too. It's a balance.

Oh, and if you want reading for pleasure inspiration, look up Reading Rocks on Twitter and go to one of their events. Really inspiring.

Another governor here. Our primary school policies all say sex, not gender, now.

Nobody that is shocking that the school would not let a child use the toilets- if they have problems with toilet passes they need to manage that better. Not leave girls being humiliated and uncomfortable by not allowing them out of the classroom.
I appreciate that Academies can do their own thing to an extent, but that’s a ridiculous and sexist policy that will make girls ill and want to stay off school when they are expecting their period.

Here is the Department for Education advice:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/410294/Advice_on_standards_for_school_premises.pdf

"...separate toilet facilities for boys and girls aged 8 years or over are provided except where the toilet facility is provided in a room that can be secured from the inside and that is intended for use by one pupil at a time".

DP is CoG at our son's primary.

Each class is named after a particular famous/influential British person and they keep this through their entire time at the school. One class is named after a male and the other a female. Every year, no exceptions. eg one year group has "Peake" class and the other is "Sharman".

No toilets are unisex. All children are allowed to leave class to visit the toilet if they need to.

Uniform isn't broken into boys and girls - we simply have a uniform list and it's pick and mix. We have quite a few girls wearing shorts rather than skirts. PE uniform is unisex.

There is an extra curricular group for girls only (single sex) called "Dare to be different" which encourages girls to break gender moulds and explore mechanics. Dare to be Different The year 5 girls won an award last year . Lena Gade has visited the school (one of the following year's classes is "Gade")

DP has passed the Transgender trend info for schools to the Head who was very interested. we don't have any "trans" children so it's not an issue (yet). The term "Sex" rather than "Gender" is used in all school policies.

The school sports teams are mixed sex 50:50 split.

There are still things we don't like - e.g. the head is the only male teacher. We had a male TA for a year and the kids loved him but he's gone back to finish his teacher training now. We hope he will come back in a couple of years as an NQT but at the moment our sex split for staff is not very representative despite encouraging men to apply for teaching roles.

metro.co.uk/2018/09/27/girl-sat-in-blood-soaked-clothes-after-teacher-said-she-couldnt-go-to-the-toilet-7984731/
Read this and weep. Someone on twitter said this is institutional mysoginy comparable to institutional racism. This is the real point boy's needs are the default model ,girl's an afterthought even with female teachers.

Fair point re changing Vix - there's actually a fair few women change in the main area of the loos at work simply because the cubicles are really small i.e. too small to change in unless you practice yoga. There's no changing rooms, and there's one decent sized disabled loo which is often in use by non disabled guys

I'm pretty sure unisex toilets in schools are illegal. There was a thread not so long ago and a link to an article by an expert - frustratingly I can't remember when and what it was. We need R0wan!

I agree about UTIs. My smaller daughter has started high school and hates the loos. She was holding on all day, not drinking. She started to get symptoms of a UTI which luckily has been nipped in the bud, but isn’t something that I want to progress, obviously. I’ve just got her to the point where she has agreed to go for a wee in school. If the loos become mixed sex, I know she will simply not use them.
My eldest daughter started her periods a year ago at 12 . She would be really embarrassed even rustling san pro if the loos were mixed sex. Just horrible not to allow girls any dignity over periods.
On an adult level, I’ve had to change in the loos after leaking milk all over a blouse. Toddler in tow and tiny cubicles meant I changed in the main area, women all lovely. If that had been mixed sex I would have been really upset. Men have no idea about female needs in loos, you can tell transactivism is male activism with their focus on “we just want to pee “.

I think it might have been 'talk for writing' that has helped a lot in literacy in helping all discrete groups.. I think that's the one where we had staged alien crash landings in the yard, fake crime scenes and so on.

Agreed grasspigeons.
A simple but useful tactic is to ask about access / usage of facilities, after school clubs, school trips, curriculum choices etc. Ask for breakdowns of which children are using them. That can lead to some really interesting discussions and gets staff and governors to look behind the statistics and question why and what they mean.

On a different note

I think some greater understand of the difference between boys achievement and girls achievement is needed here (can we not only discuss toilets again)

So what is the picture?

how is achievement overall compared to national and local averages
how are girls compared to national and local averages
how are boys compared to national and local averages
is the gap between boys and girls bigger than normal for instance
Is it a particular subject that's an issue

they you need to look at some schools that have a smaller gap or no gap and look at how they are achieving it

I know the school I clerk for was asked about doing some 'girls maths' and 'boys english' to try and change results and the head was quite robust in her response against this idea and has improved the gap without this kind of superhero stuff.

Op it's probably worth always referring to them as mixed sex Loos rather than gender neutral if the school is using that term at all. The new language isn't an accurate description.

On encouraging boys attainment. It's true that in our society there are boy things like super hero and girl things like fairies. It's not right but that's how it is and toy, book, clothes manufacturers know that and use it which encourages children to think of it this way and enforce it on each other. As long as the school don't present the superheros etc as boy subjects to the children then there's no reason to see it as negative. At the moment education isn't working as well for boys as it is for girls in terms of attainment all the way up to uni. At our primary where I volunteer they introduced more comic style books to encourage boys to read, but girls were expected to read them too, and boys had to read the books which would be considered traditionally girls interest. It will come down to how they sell it to the kids.

There was a bit of a hoo-ha over unisex toilets on a local primary school parents page recently; one parent posted a link to an article and said she was concerned as she'd just found out that loos at the school were unisex, and asked other parents if they knew and what they thought.

Loads of parents were concerned; it wasn't entirely clear if the school is exclusively unisex or had a mix but either way lots of parents really did not like the concept at all.

Then a parent of a trans child (apparently been trans since very early primary school) kicked off and started saying people were transphobic, they thought their child was more accepted than that, etc etc. It was a bit bonkers as trans had NEVER been mentioned until than and it wasn't the source of most parents concerns. Most were talking about privacy, dignity, risk of "I'll show you mine" type nonsense going on and so on. Lots were shocked that they were there at all, lots said their children refused to use them

I'd certainly be very unhappy with exclusively unisex/mixed loos. Girls are contending with period issues at the end of primary school and tend to find it really embarrassing. I know a few at this stage at the moment who have sometimes had to ask for help (confusion over how to use pads, things like that) which would be far worse for them in a mixed block of loos.

Individual cubicles with individual sinks, straight off a hall or classroom - different ball game.

junebirthdaygirl
Presumably you have no Muslim or Jewish staff or children? Many from these faiths would never share toilets / washing facilities with the opposite sex.
So are the rights of those with the protected characteristic of religion / belief of no concern in your school?

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.

Since some of the non-disabled, lazy men at work started using the self-contained accessible toilet within the women’s toilets area, there is, to be frank, far more piss spatter.

I imagine one reason men don’t concern themselves with the hygiene of the facilities so much is because they don’t need to use them for the insertion of anything into their bodies (tampons, mooncups).

At home you are in control of who is in your toilet. Totally not a comparison

After all at home they all use the same bathroom and have to leave it fit for the next person.
and at home there are usually no strangers coming in to use the toilets at the same time/shortly after... the home toilet situation doesn't apply to public toilets.

I am in a primary school. We have same sex toilets all the way through primary. But they are off each classroom so each class has its own three toilets in a little unit. There is absolutely no issue. Teacher usually encourages one at a time so girls can have plenty of time to wash their hands in private. Toilets are always fine. Maybe having lots of boys use toilets encourages a mess. After all at home they all use the same bathroom and have to leave it fit for the next person.
We also have a few private toilets with their own sinks that anyone is free to use at anytime..no questions asked. They are in a communal area.
The teachers toilets are also mixed and while l was a bit taken aback by that at first it has never been an issue. They have their own private sink though so no standing next to male colleague washing your hands..
I can imagine its more difficult in bigger schools and a total no no for Secondary.

^ That’s not how it works.

Men can find hysteria and drama whatever they don’t agree with or don’t care to understand.

So women should tell the truth and loudly.

@chickendrizzlecake Agree it needs to be a point made loudly but we can't come off as 'hysterical' and 'dramatic' because that'll give men an excuse to ignore what is being said