London public toilets report

Or even Nitro!

Niro great post

Well said NitroNine.

There are 600000 people with epilepsy in this country who are some of the many ‘invisible’ disabled. As I said upthread, there are conditions and situations that I or my family have been in where it is safer to be in a toilet where you can easily see someone is in there and can get access to if you collapse behind a locked door. Heart attacks, miscarriages. There are lots of people who have died in public toilets. And then there’s quickly checking the toilets are free in the event of a fire or bomb alert. And then hygiene (wet mop against the doors). The problem is if you have door gaps and mixed sex toilets. Because then safety and privacy are a problem.

Health and safety is a greater right.
Disabled loos for disabled people.
Womens loos for women.

Nitro - fantastic post.

An obvious solution to transpeople being embarrassed in the toilets which match their sex is for lobbying and campaigning organisations (such as Stonewall) to push for 'third spaces' in new build public buildings, in the same way that disability rights organisations fought for accessible toilets. This would also be advantageous for other groups (parents with opposite sex children over the age of 8, baby changing facilities, etc etc). As a pp said, baby changing facilities have just been dumped I to accessible toilets for convenience - this would offer a better space.

Stonewall could have used their considerable power and money to do this. They chose instead to campaign to erode women's single sex spaces.

I am a non wheelchair using disabled woman, who has been assessed as needing a blue badge due to poor mobility. I only use the accessible toilets when necessary out of respect for wheelchair users and their carers.

Advocating for able-bodied people to use the accessible facilities for whatever reason with the argument it makes little difference to disabled people is insulting and categorically untrue. For example, some people with disabilities need to use the toilet urgently and with little warning of that urgency. An able-bodied person clogging up an accessible toilet could result in a disabled person soiling themselves.

Women’s facilities and disabled facilities were both campaigned and hard won for exclusive use of people sharing the same protected characteristic. They were neither designed nor designated for anyone other than people from those two protected groups.

One is a facility for the privacy, security, dignity and safety of women and the other is for the privacy, security, dignity and safety of disabled people. The rights of these two protected groups are neither to be given away nor to be taken.

08:08 JennyPourQuoi

I can't believe the arrogance of this post!
I'm sure I'm not the only one.

You're now trying to say "ah, but what if a transperson was disabled? Gotcha"
Yeah, obviously disabled people need to access disabled loos/disabled seats on trains/buses/use the accessibility ramp instead of stairs.

Who do not get to access these spaces are anyone who fancies it or if they have gender dysphoria which is categorically not a disability.

If men are a threat to transwomen in men's spaces, let transpeople sort out their own accessible, gender neutral spaces the same way that disabled people successfully achieved accessible spaces.

It really is that simple.
Disabled spaces are not up for grabs.
Women's spaces are not up for grabs.

It's completely unethical, ignorant and obnoxious to give them away to people they are not meant for.

JellySaurus brava!

Having accessible, ladies, mens AND 'everyone' toilets is the obvious solution. There are other groups that benefit from mixed sex toilets (fathers and daughters, mothers with sons, those who are with a carer but not disabled...).

But.. thats probably too obvious for many.

I am sure the campaigners who worked so hard to achieve facilities for disabled people would be only too happy to advise trans people about how to campaign for additional mixed sex toilets.

There are vanishingly few trans people in our society, fewer than disabled people by miles. Adding a few embarassed transpeople will not overload the facilities.

Irrelevant. That is the same argument as was used to give away women's rights to facilities for exclusively female use: that there were only ever likely to be about 5000 GRCs issued. Trivial effect on a population of about 30 million women.

We do not have the right to give away other people's rights.

As a further point - Would you consider someone with surgically reconstructed genitals who has difficulty peeing to be disabled enough to use the disabled loo? If not, why not?

Isn't it horribly ableist to presume that trans is an exclusive category to disabled in any case? If you are someone who takes a battery of pills each day and has been diagnosed with a significant gender disorder, if you were of a mind to argue for it you probably count as disabled anyway.

I'm sorry but this is absolute cobblers.

We have a unisex toilet, required in all public places. They are not used commonly, and they are appointed with the facilities to cater to any and all who need special toilet arrangements. There are vanishingly few trans people in our society, fewer than disabled people by miles. Adding a few embarassed transpeople will not overload the facilities.

You are arguing, in effect, that trans people need to just suck it up and go in the gents, as a way to punish them for being trans.

That's outrageous.

Transpeople shouldn't be in the ladies, but for gods sake they are human beings.

Thank you
Was actually feeling quite frustrated-cross with myself for lack of clarity & how lumpy & lumpen that post felt. So am vvv relieved that I managed to communicate more effectively than it feels I did.

Thank you Nitro.

Bravo NitroNine

It's the terra nullis argument we see male people use on female spaces: there's nothing going on in there that matters to me, it's not a group I know about or understand the issues of, so it's a space I can commandeer for something more useful.

Also reminds me of the attitude often seen on other boards here re disabled spaces on buses: they've been appropriated by parents with buggies and prams, and now you see entitled parents who insist a wheelchair user has to sit at the bus stop and wait through multiple buses to be allowed to get to work, because they cannot possibly move their shopping, fold their buggy and wake their toddler in order to clear the space it suits them to use.

NitroNine wish we had upvotes on Mumsnet.

Excellent post, @NitroNine. Spot on 👏

@JennyPourQuoi
I mean, thanks for generously giving away the already-inadequate facilities that disabled people campaigned so hard for, but despite the way they’re treated, disabled toilets are not a “convenient way to just ‘fix’ [insert issue here]” facility.

Not, I hasten to add, inadequate in any way because of the people who worked so hard to afford [other] disabled people the opportunity to be away from their homes outwith the constraints of their bowel & bladder control. But we have a government who were censured by the UN for violating the human rights of disabled people - & in amazing panto style, simply responded “oh no we didn’t!” (the landslide of evidence accompanying “oh yes you did!” has brought us to eat your gruel & be grateful damn you…) Rolling the DDA into the EA was absurd - disabled people’s needs conflict often enough to need guidance just on balancing that; & the loss of specific legislation gives the impression of things being vastly better than they are.

It’s bad enough that almost everywhere (obviously not referring to places with a single toilet for everyone) the baby change has been stuck into the disabled loo. Rarely at a height a wheelchair user can use it, naturally ; & the Changing Places facilities required for [older] children with disabilities are few & far between, too. I’ve been to places where, once staff have been located to unlock their disabled toilet (not Radar Key) they’ve then had to clear out the stuff they were storing in there. “Because we never really get, you know, people like you here…” was the Manager’s explanation as to why they’d turned the disabled loo into a store cupboard And while the chain they belonged to made all the right noises about that “experience”, you’ll find countless stories like that if you were to ask around.

There’s thread after thread on MN about “they’re called accessible toilets now because everyone is able to access them” & “it’s fine for me to use them because if someone DOES have to wait it’s just like if they had to wait for a disabled person” etc. Full of people turning up to tell each other they are absolutely right & it’s totally ok & not at all selfish.

Disabled toilets are not simply a convenient empty space. They are not places for people to get changed [with their friends], nor for men to defecate at leisure - NOR are they there to offer up as a “third space” for anyone who fancies excreting in splendid isolation.

If trans women don’t feel safe in the men’s loos that is an issue with male behaviour for men to fix. Just as it’s not ok for women’s loos to be made mixed sex to fix it; it’s not ok to turn the disabled loos into the “any random person who fancies it” toilets. They were campaigned for, are designed for, and are needed by, an actual vulnerable minority. We need more & better-equipped disabled loos - we don’t need yet more people identifying as needing to use the ones currently available.

Obviously I meant that transpeople have the option of the loo of their sex, or a unisex disabled space. How is that damaging women's rights?

That damages disabled people's rights to services designated for them as a result of their protected characteristic in the same way that men saying that TW should use women's toilets people's damages women's rights to services designated for them as a result of their protected characteristic.

@JennyPourQuoi believe the argument about not giving away disabled toilets is not about female rights but disabled rights. There are a lot less disabled toilets than other toilets, yet you are proposing to give them away to non-disabled people because they identify as trans?

A quick search of this document shows that:

• the words "woman" and "female" are not used once
• the word "women" is only used once about "trans women"

One would think there were absolutely no issues with sex equal provision or that women weren't more likely to be one of the "people with small children" or experience the effects of the urinary leash more or need toilet facilities more to deal with menstruation or the effects of the menopause.

Fucking shocking bias.

@JennyPourQuoi that stance is the typical response to females though? Didn't quote you.
-girls not liking boys changing with them for pe at school, girls need to change elsewhere.

• don't like mixed sex changing rooms in shops, don't use them, try at home and return.