Ireland will no longer be providing single sex toilets in primary and secondary schools!!!

The disabled toilet is for both sexes at my child’s school and obviously has a sink inside and opens onto the corridor. The similarities to this design is that it affords less privacy opening on to a corridor (crunchy tampon wrappers) and that it gets messier with both sexes using it.
Some children need to use the disabled toilet in case they have an emergency and need to pull a pull-cord. I am not crunching numbers or daft, just saying the disabled loos have some of the disadvantages of loos for both sexes.

If you're concerned about lower standards and less equality for disabled children btw, you may be interested in the excellent post above by a poster about the experience of her daughter with Autism regarding compulsory mixed sex provision.

No, disabled children either use the single sex facilities provided, or if they need an accessible toilet, they have a single, enclosed room with a sink. Which is wholly different, obviously, to a row of stalls with spaces and shared sinks.

This is about as daft as the 'but you share a single use room as a designated bathroom which the people you live with also use, so no female person can possibly have an issue sharing a row of cubicles with spaces at top and bottom and shared basins alongside any male stranger'. Your numbers don't crunch.

Disabled children have to put up with them

In addition, as an adult l really would not want unisex toilets so why should our children have to put up with them?

This is another area where language matters. Three types of toilet:

1. Single sex
2. Mixed sex - cubicles, floor to ceiling doors, each with a sanitary bin, wash basins in shared space. Not sure if they have to open into a public area or not.
3. Unisex - single unit with lockable door, sanitary bin, wash basin and opens on to a public corridor.

A local secondary school had a new toilet block put in and it was unisex. As may be imagined, the girls only use these particular toilets in extremis. Which blithering idiot thinks of these ideas? After all, adolescence, particularly girls dealing with their first few periods, is embarrassing enough without having to cope with immature boys on the other side of the cubicle door.

The girls at dd's school drink nothing all day so that they won't need the toilet. The basins hadn't worked for years and nobody cared because nobody used them. Until covid of course. Whoever thinks this works is utterly deluded.

And once we've established that it would be far more (insert all the social justice words and jargon) to have additional spaces and retaining the sex based ones so that all needs are met instead of girls harmed....

and that funding really is not the issue.....

Then we can get to the real issue.

If there is money to buy all these toolkits and packs and hold long meetings with all the pay of the people at them and the policy writing and the creation of these new toilet blocks, there is absolutely definitely funding for additional toilets to single sex ones.

Schools weren't thrilled when they had to provide accessible disabled toilets, but they were funded and pushed through. And disability charities were neither loaded, nor heavily government funded, nor constantly popping into government select committees, nor with half the establishment and institutions rushing around with shoelaces and badges and enthusiasm for their cause.

Funding is not the problem.

It's ultimately going to cost the schools a fortune, as - after the inevitable legal battles - they are forced to retrofit single-sex facilities.

Totally agree that some unisex options in addition to single sex is a great idea.

Hooray!

Can someone tell Ireland, please?

Great letter bestmammy.

"Unesco is urging governments around the world to prioritise providing single-sex toilets in schools, warning as many as 1 in 10 girls in some countries are missing out on lessons because of their period"

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/single-sex-toilets-unesco-un-international-womens-day-period-a8244776.html

It is well known in development circles that single sex toilets are essential for girls to access education.

Not having single sex toilets is denying female children their human right to be able to access education.

We KNOW period shaming is an issue in UK schools, we KNOW some girls stay off during their period. These policies will make it worse.

The people pushing these policies should hang their heads in shame. They're taking away rights of girls and sending the country backwards.

(I have no problem with third spaces for trans kids - actually think that would be a good thing).

Exactly Michelle

The problem with that is if there isn't space or funding for 'extra' unisex toilets, schools may well just use the ones already there, and means there are less single sex toilets available overall.

As pp said, many schools are already struggling for funding for essentials.

Hear hear!

[quote daysofthunder]@ASugarr

That's good to hear. I think if there's a demand for it there should be a third space and standard single sex toilets should be left as is. [/quote]
Understood. I think many young people will not mind sharing a bathroom space and unisex bathrooms will help a lot with young people who are transgender and more. However I understand your point that certain people won't be comfortable and that some single sex bathrooms at the school are still necessary.

I agree. Having some unisex options sounds like a fabulous idea to me too. Lets add more. Let's add all the ones any child could possibly need, lets be diverse and inclusive and meet all needs.

That isn't what this is. So can we agree removing sex based provision from all girls is a really, really bad and unethical idea?

@ASugarr

That's good to hear. I think if there's a demand for it there should be a third space and standard single sex toilets should be left as is.

Theres a boys school near me that is in the process of moving to a new site because they've grown in number so much over the past few years that they've outgrown the current building and even outgrown the site itself.

I think the new school is planning on accommodating 1200 boys, can you imagine what break times are going to be like with 60 cubicles for the whole building (they said a ratio of 1:20 in the document) for 1200 boys? Getting rid of urinals for all boys schools seems crazy and surely will just lead to them going up against walls etc outside.

[quote daysofthunder]@ASugarr

You recently shared a video on your Twitter page condemning the French government for their laws on the hijab. You think they are discriminatory. Britain has a large population of Muslim women who are not happy with mixed sex toilets.

How do you draw your lines of what is acceptable and what isn't?

Are mixed sex toilets to be celebrated because it suits your ideology around gender fluidity and because you think trans people trump Muslim people in this instance?

It is in everyone's interest to have all toilets remain single sex. If you want the vanishingly small population of trans people to feel comfortable in the toilet then you should campaign for a third space for them. It is not right to rip away women's hard fought for rights and safety for the sake of another class of people. [/quote]
Do I think all of the bathrooms in school should be unisex? No. But I like the idea of the option.