What can I do about gender neutral toilets in college?

There are 600000 people in this country who have seizures. Being in the toilet is a common place to fall ill. Gaps under doors can save lives. However it is very likely girls and women would feel unsafe from men and phone cameras with a gap at the bottom of the door. Therefore single sex toilets are always the answer.

I wonder if we will ever find a solution.

Males need to be more welcoming to gender non-conforming males.

Ask where the accessible toilets are for female people who cannot enter mixed sex spaces.

Any suggestion on their part that you should disclose highly confidential, personal data in order to justify why you should have access would be against the Equality Act and highly inappropriate. There are 9 protected characteristics, not just one, and action should be proactive, not reactive after discrimination (against females who obviously will require toilet access but cannot access mixed sex provision) has happened.

If they do not have accessible toilets then is there anything in public signage or documentation that toilet facilities are intentionally not provided for x members of their population? What reasons do they give for this? What accommodations are made for said members who may need to go some way off site to find an accessible loo? And what address would they like the solicitor's letter to be sent to?

@onelittlefrog it's completely fair enough that you are fine with using shared facilities. Lots of people are. It's one of the reasons lots of younger women are so supportive of trans/nb people sharing their spaces - they honestly are not bothered.

And some of that nonchalance is because they haven't experienced the behaviours that prompted women in the generations that went before them to fight for single sex spaces. They have no idea what their grandmothers put up with. So obviously they don't think it is a big deal!

1 in 5 women have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Rape Crisis)

I'd like to see where that figure comes from. I've seen figures that 1 in 5 women have experienced rape, more have experienced other types of sexual assault that are easier to get away with in public.

Sorry forgot to highlight quote.

44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 35 percent of straight women
26 percent of gay men and 37 percent of bisexual men experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 29 percent of straight men.

Now my arithmetic is not very good but how do the above statistics show that women don't suffer as much abuse as male LGBT people?

@mightbeasillyquestion I work in an FE college and I think a lot of students and staff would have concerns about this. I would start by raising it with your tutor if you have one - anyone who is assigned to you as a learning support. Ask them what the best way to make a complaint about this is. If you have a lecturer you trust and get along with, ask for their advice also.

Colleges tend to take complaints quite seriously when they come from students, especially if you are willing to keep pushing on it. Is there a student association or student union at your college? They might help (but they might not - approach with caution!) It would be a good idea to talk to other students so that you have some back up.

Really what they've done here is limit women's ability to access education. If you want to go to college, you have to share loos with males. That is going to put a lot of women off.

Have they considered the needs of muslim students? They will not be able to access the college if there are no single sex facilities.

I don't know about you, but in my college there are many students with mental health problems, and lots of male students who have criminal convictions and anti-social behaviour. It's not fair or appropriate for females to have to share in those circumstances (or any circumstances, imo).

The college probably also has a percentage of students with additional needs, who are particularly vulnerable. What is being done to safeguard them?

It's also very strange if they expect female staff to share with male students, and vice versa. There are many, many safeguarding concerns here.

I don't think cookiemonster2468 has any idea what they are talking about. Women are statistically the biggest group that are sexually assaulted and that includes some of the LGBT too because guess what some of them are biological females as well!!

There should have been a call for a third space, why the need to go after women's spaces!!

Is this all self declared and self identified by the way?

Well the solution is men deal with/stop male violence. Unil that happens women including l &b women will continue to need use amd fight fir single sex spaces. As fir transmen they are welcome in womens spaces as they are adult human.females too. If they use the mens that's on men to sort out.

Its incredibly misogynistic the way that men get mens spaces and its all jsuy mens amd anyone ekse who may not be safe in the.mens.

Just no.

But these days even if someone did see a man go into a mixed sex toilets they couldn't challenge him. But if it was a female only toilet and someone saw him then they could challenge him. So it lessens the risk.

It's such a shame that this is such a difficult conversation to have without people firing accusations at one another.

I wonder if we will ever find a solution.

And of course women who for cultural and religious reasons can’t used mixed sex facilities are completely thrown under the bus by this ideology, but who gives a shit about them, right?

In any case, is it not enough for you that the OP feels uncomfortable? Does she not deserve privacy and dignity?

Mixed sex and unisex are different things though. Unisex is, I believe, completely self contained facilities to be used by one person at a time with a lockable door, whereas mixed sex means several people can use the facilities at one time - perhaps separate cubicles (of course) but communal sinks.

I think we need to stop calling them "Gender neutral" toilets and call them as they are "Mixed Sex" or "Unisex" toilets

MopHeaded you're right. As of 27th Jan this year, 87% support retention of separate male and female facilities:

yougov.co.uk/topics/philosophy/trackers/support-for-separate-toilets-for-men-and-women-and-gender-neutral-toilets-in-public-spaces

@onelittlefrog it's completely fair enough that you are fine with using shared facilities. Lots of people are. It's one of the reasons lots of younger women are so supportive of trans/nb people sharing their spaces - they honestly are not bothered. When I was younger I happily shared, for example, mixed sex dorms in hostels. Every person has different life experiences and things they are comfortable with. But a lot of people (not just women) do prefer single sex facilities and their reasons are equally valid as yours.

Personally I disagree that someone who is hassling a woman isn't deterred by them going into a female bathroom. No it's not a magic solution but in a lot of cases (e.g just someone feeling uncomfortable or wanting to ring a friend or taxi) it can be a good deterrent. Following someone into a place you are not supposed to be is clearly an escalation which can be a warning sign/enough for a bystander to help or at the worst evidence of intent to harm if an issue was investigated by the police.

There have been some really good initiatives recently, for example in pubs/nightclubs that have posters up in the women's loos saying to ask at the bar if "x name" is working as a code to say someone is making her feel uncomfortable - they will then take her to a safe space and call a taxi etc without making a scene. Same in doctors surgeries or hospitals where they've started putting 2 different colour pens in the toilets with advice that when pregant women do their urine sample (just one example) they write their name with the red pen if they are suffering domestic violence or want to discuss something privately and the doctor can then ask their partner to leave the appointment, pretending it is standard practice.

I've seen these initiatives praised online by the same organisations that are gung-ho for shared spaces and am puzzled that they don't realise the incongruity- I.e they won't be able to use them in gender neutral bathrooms as the abuser will know what's going on!

And why on Earth you think all LGBT women are on board with losing single sex spaces is beyond me. This is a womens issue, not a straight wonens issue.

@cookiemonster2468

I said I didn’t care about stats, which are distorted and used to push an agenda when it comes to this issue.

Many women and girls don’t feel safe in mixed toilets. If we had a national poll tomorrow, I would lay money on a majority of women saying that they don’t want to pull their knickers down, change their tampon or put their make up on with unknown males in the vicinity.

jellyfrizz

onelittlefrog
If a man accesses the single sex women's loos the women already there can challenge him and demand he leaves

What about my experience of coming out of a downstairs ladies’ public lavatory in an outside, city setting, where I was alone quite late at night, only to see a man standing blocking the narrow stairs who had evidently followed me there. He was exposing himself and masturbating.

He was not trans gender. The point is that at least I was able to react instantly within seconds of catching sight of him as a man and knowing he shouldn’t be there. Rather than hesitating even for a second, as I might have if his presence as a male had been normal.

As it was, because of my speed I was able to rush and barge him and got past on the stairs very fast.

As for ‘challenging’ a few months back there was a video from South America posted showing a school girl being beaten up by a trans girl whom the girl had challenged in the school toilets. It was only another young man who was able to pull him off.