A Day Using Restaurant Toilets

I had my first experience of mixed sex toilets this week. Into toilets, 2 cubicles, one male one female, side by side. Floor to ceiling but very flimsy lock. Shared sink area. I felt very uncomfortable at being in a state of undress knowing a man could be in next cubicle- also always risk of young child opening the door when I’m not ready.
Not impressed - won’t go back and I’ll add tripadvisor review highlighting this.
What would have made more sense would have been lock on outer door, one cubicle also suitable for disabled access (neither were) and baby changing area (also missing) rather than mixed sex cramped cubicles. Small cafe so one all access toilet would have been sufficient

Oh, and men's toilets do fucking stink. There is absolutely no exaggeration in saying that, or pointing out that there's usually pee everywhere. It's not even like it's unusual. I don't want to have to clean up before either me or my children use toilets. I don't want to stand in it. I don't want my children to stand in it or touch it when they're too little to sit properly on adult toilets and have to use their hands. A million things. Just no. It makes me angry even having to spell all of this out.

For all of the above reasons and more I absolutely do not ever wish to share toilets with men. I'm not crazy about undignified experiences in front of women I don't know either but at least when that happens I don't feel unsafe, and that's the crucial point.

Between difficult periods, teen dramas and heartbreaks, feeling faint, stomach upsets, nose bleeds, being a little too drunk and needing a few minutes, morning sickness, minor first aid situations requiring removal of clothing, mental health related breakdowns of friends, a public toilet miscarriage, the occasional hiding-for-a-cry or hiding-from-a-man episodes, a million toilets with cubicles that don't lock properly, the occasional emergency breastfeed (I know, yuck right), the many many times I've had to get changed in a women's loo, and then the trials and tribulations with going to the loo with small children, I've had plenty of vulnerable life experiences that tell me I'm not ever going to be in a place where I'm comfortable with people other than women.

I don’t know if any other mum of toddlers can relate, when you are in your period and your toddler is loudly going “ew” and asking questions/giving comments about your pad/periods while you try and give a calm age appropriate response aware that everyone is listening.
There’s nothing gender neutral about periods, and sorting out periods and toddler childcare at the same time is definitely not what I want to do in any gender neutral space.

Possibly it will really take a women's boycott. Not of the toilets: of the shops and restaurants, museums and concert halls that subscribe to this nonsense.

Do they really want half the population to stay at home and stop spending money in their lousy shops?

They deserve to go out of business if they keep going with this rubbish.

Woke shops - expect to see your profits fall.

Zebras, you are absolutely right. That article is full of common sense. It’s ridiculous to make the majority feel uncomfortable for the sake of the minority. Male, female and unisex loos are the way ahead, if space permits, and bless Dominic Lawson for writing it.

That article is full of such common sense - and also, full of stuff that I feel we are barely able to even say anymore.

A woman saying "I want women's only toilets for my own comfort, safety and privacy" seems to catapult her into the highest levels of Nazism, according to some transactivists.

It really is ludicrous.

Presumably the gender neutral toilets at the Museum mentioned in the Mail article comes under the City of London? Sod off Edward Lord - with your dodgy survey that you won't publish the results of - trying to impose this shit on women.

It's like Christmas and Birthday and New Year's all rolled into one today, media wise.
After the brilliant Times articles comes this one, in the Daily Mail:

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6897005/DOMINIC-LAWSON-inconvenient-truth-unisex-loos-women-loathe-them.html?fbclid=IwAR14c8zoPeWZObek-le1VACvrPL-pG2c7N8KdL-Q4UIGjpuhQ40VJa8PPj4

I've used the end cubicle with the door slightly open so I could keep an eye on my pushchair. I've seen other women do the same. It's not possible in all public toilets but the ones I used to use in my local town it worked perfectly.
I hate mixed sex toilets - men piss everywhere.

Yup.

And if anyone tells you that men's toilet don't stink, they're lying. Men's toilets smell different - and IMO worse - than women's.

Gender neutral is a terrible idea - that when questioned non-leadingly - most people reject.

Gender neutral toilet = floor and seat covered in piss. Had to wipe urine off the entire seat of a trendy burger bar loo before my toddler could go. Then there was no soap to wash hands. Absolutely no way I will ever eat there again.

There was no mention of a buggy. There is plenty of room in a cubicle for 2 small children.

I mentioned the buggy (well, the word I used was pram).

It was my own experience of using a loo. When I had a pram with me. And no, the pram would not fit in the cubicle. And no, I would not leave it outside. And no, I would not feel at all comfortable doing this if it was gender neutral.

Well Lass it could be that the toddlers were in the cubicle with their mum. Only for them to open the door and escape whilst she was mid flow.

These things do happen.

Anyway what are you actually saying. Anyone with more than 2 very small kid# should not use public loos

It is a problem lass

In the evening we went to a chain restaurant and toilets were labelled ‘women’ and ‘men’. A woman was using a toilet with the door wide open and watching her two toddlers, both naked from the waist down, who were giggling and ignoring her pleas to stop running up and down the sink area!

Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of gender neutral toilets but did this really happen.

In all of my 40 years or so of using women's toilets I have never seen any woman using the toilet with the door open or semi naked toddlers running around. I think using a ridiculous scenario like that makes the argument for sex segregated toilets seem ridiculous.

I wonder if us women should all start using the urinal and cubicle toilets in these scenarios. I'm sure the men don't want women watching them piss so maybe they would start complaining and be taken more seriously.

There is not lass them cubicles are tiny. Unless you put one of the toddlers on top of the bin

There was no mention of a buggy. There is plenty of room in a cubicle for 2 small children.

Well lass it’s hard to get a buggie and 2 other kids in a cubicle
Where we meant to squeeze them in

It's not the first time I've seen women using a loo and leaving the door open to watch children who can't fit inside the cubicle. It's not something I've ever done but it does happen

How huge were these toddlers or children who can't fit in? Given it used to be a thing when I was a teenager for teenage girls and young women to go into a cubicle togerher I'm struggling to see why 2 toddlers would not fit in.

It seems like they want women and girls to just stay home all the time. I'm going to save a lot of money if that's the case! Seriously though, this is not acceptable and we all need to try and do something to stop this nonsense. I don't know what, just.. something.Even those toilets all enclosed on in a line make me uneasy.. say it was a quiet corridor? Too easy to get pushed in one of those, locked in and assaulted.. and no one would hear you crying for help.

I complained about this almost exact set up at a microbrewery. Except "gender neutral with urinals" was labelled "men". So men could enter all three and had their own space.
They replied to me that this met their customers' needs. I complained on fb (real name) so I couldn't take it further in case they were gender McCarthyists.

I have, when shopping alone with a baby in a pram, gone to the very end cubicle, and left the door open, with the pram in the doorway so I can still see it.

I would not be happy to do that in a gender neural space.

We know why places are doing this - it's to placate the trans lobbyists.

And we know 'gender neutral' makes women less safe.