"But toilets in France are unisex"

France always seems a really unhelpful example to use - the catcalling and groping of women there (in Paris at any rate) is far worse than in the UK and suggests a lack of respect for women and boundaries anyway. Small wonder I suppose that some boundary pushers think we should adopt their toilets too.

Slightly off topic but I went to university in the mid '90s. A very well regarded university.

Our halls of residence toilets (5 in a room), and bathrooms (2 baths and 2 showers in each) bathroom were unisex. I didn't like sharing a bathroom with a flimsy door with a large gap beneath with anyone. But I didn't feel any more uncomfortable about sharing with men than I did women.

I've been in many campsites in France where the showers and toilets were unisex. All toilets and showers were in cubicles.

I have to be honest and say it didn't bother me.

I've also been in smaller unisex toilets in France and been very surprised to see a man using a urinal on my way to each a cubicle. Each time I've sort of been caught unawares and been very surprised. I've just kind of got on with it, I guess because I just needed to use the toilet.

I realise there is a huge debate around this, and I respect this entirely. Just reporting my own experience.

I've been living in France for nearly 20 years and have never walked past men's urinals to get to the toilet.

I have also only ever seen mixed toilets in small cafes where there is just one toilet.

Came across one of these in a fast food outlet in Lille this summer. DD (aged 6) wants the loo, so I go with her. There's a unisex type of sign and we go in, I'm expecting to see three more doors M, F and accessible, instead there's a bank of urinals and beyond that a single cubicle door. "Merde" I think, "I've misread the sign, we're in the gents". Out we go. I check the sign. I check the rest of the cafe. I ask the staff. That is the only loo. I hope it never comes in here or we'll have to give up eating out, it was grim.

Toilets are not unisex in France, unless there is just one toilet, for instance in a small restaurant.

I hate squat toilets and am physically incapable of using them.

I'm curious how many women here avoid using toilets that declare that male staff are cleaning the facilities? Or whether that might depend on the facility itself, eg. how busy it is.

Yes, France is not the best example......

No, I'm not mad! We can't squat in this country because we don't squat regularly, and as a result, we lose leg strength and the flexibility in our knees, hips and ankles, so it feels really hard. I used to live in an Asian country where people of all ages, including pregnant women, routinely squatted, not just for toileting, but to rest, for example when queueing or chatting.

I'm not saying we should ban seated toilets, but that using squat toilets has its advantages.

When I was a student in France in the 80s, the halls of residence had a unisex shower and toilet block. The urinals were behind a sort of low wall and the showers and toilet cubicles were beyond that. The shared toilets never worried me, but the showers didn't seem anything like private enough. I never used them - went to a friend's flat and had a weekly bath there. I had a sink in my room that I used for washing the rest of the week.

link: tinyurl.com/yd2l2v55

They have some unisex toilets in Belgium, usually bars, where you walk past the urinals to get to the cubicle. I always feel uncomfortable walking past men with their dicks out, I don't imagine a lot of men enjoy it either. They also have public urinals, walking past the Gare du Midi there is the stench of stale urine which lingers all along the road towards the station's entrance and no facilities for women either (In the Netherlands too there were recently protests about the very same type of facilities for this reason: www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/21/protests-planned-amsterdam-urinals-women-toilets), so foreign facilities are hardly a good example for making the TRA's point here, and in any case what is being proposed would be entirely different from the example they are using.

Rebecca36 I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say,
I'm sure that everything is hunky dory when facilities are in well maintained, monitored, graffiti free, and with floor to ceiling cubicles.
As usual people who can't afford this sort of facility are at the sticky end of the unisex policy.
There was no one checking these showers apart from the daily clean. Graffiti was not removed.
I certainly don't think that working class people are not entitled to proper facilities. This was the holiday camp where I was staying, remember.
Of course they are segregated by class. It all depends what you can afford to pay for.

I remember, as a teenager, on holiday in France having to walk past the urinals to get to the cubicle. I felt uncomfortable and vulnerable.

Yeah, yeah...

Oh so familiar with the "Everyone else has...." argument proferred by whiney children...

No they don't, it does not matter what someone else is allowed, the answer is still no.

I lived in France for 6 months back in 2005 and didn't see any unisex toilets in bars or supermarkets. I'm also just back from Disneyland Paris and didn't see any unisex toilets so I can't imagine they're actually that common

The more I hear about Paris the more relieved I am I have never visited.

@scienceroar

Are you mad? I’m 8 months pregnant and very glad the U.K. doesn’t seem to have adopted ‘squat toilets’. I’m pretty sure I’d fall in/loose my balance. What about the elderly? My gran can’t bend her knees!

Sexual harassment in certain parts of Paris and France is just awful.
Women are calling it out more and more there but frankly it isn’t a place I would want to take examples for safety for women in loos. I work there frequently and have lived there. Of course it isn’t everywhere though.

We came across a couple of public toilets where you walked past a urinal to get to the cubicle in France this summer. My 7 year old daughter was very uncomfortable with it and I don't blame her.

And just because something exists doesn't make it right!

only time i saw unisex toilets in france last year was portaloos at an event

Summary is: Men kept being fined for peeing in the streets, and being fined again and again but they'd not stop.. so..

The purpose of any kind of punishment is to act as a deterrent. In this case, the punishment is not harsh enough. Increase the fine to a level that these men find onerous, and they'll stop.

I live on the Franco-Swiss border and am married to a Frenchman. Toilets in France are not unisex, in the vast majority of cases they are single sex, just like in the UK.

More bollox whataboutery from those determined to erode women's rights to safety.