Children protesting about unisex toilets

oops, that was for the AIBU thread

The children ARE complaining: www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/23350409.weston-secondary-school-pupils-protest-uni-sex-toilets/

There's a limit to how many kids you can practically put in detention in one go. They've all got to be supervised, which uses staff resources, and if you end up moving them into the hall to supervise large numbers with fewer staff then surely you're going to ask "why is this happening?".

The queue for the remaining single-sex toilets will need to be pretty long for dramatic effect.

This is the thing with any industrial action - solidarity is essential. You've got to work en masse

The girls you tend to find going out during lessons go out frequently. As in every lesson every week.

Unless girls have weekly periods, it really isn't a period problem for most female students

I don't understand this comment

That's a very interesting post @Icedlatteplease - thanks, I will think about that.

So I hate to say it but I don't think it is right just to congratulate the protesters. Nor is it so black and white as a straight GC issues

Not all the schools with protests have single sex schools.

The school I'm involved with that had protests has single sex loos. They are locked during lessons. They have available a single sex loo.

My guess (and I don't know for sure) is that because it is easier to police a single loo visible from the corridor. Noone can hide out in it or vape in it easily.

Most of the girls and boys using the toilet during lessons aren't really using it for the toilet. They're using it because the classroom is too intense and they need a break. Unless girls have weekly periods, it really isn't a period problem for most female students.

Unisex toilets and access to toilets may be the headline, but it's as much about the bigger problems within schools (poor sen provision, Andrew tate culture, ridiculous uniform policies etc). Unisex toilets are just the flashpoint.

We have atm however got a culture of rights and protesting for them. I can appreciate why teachers and nurses are protesting, but these are people with responsibilities. If we aren't demonstrating how to protest through the political system, we can't be surprised when our teenagers chose direct action either. When you see kids copying nurses at the side of the Road appealing for support from motorists, you really do have a law of unintended consequences.

The big problem is that School property is being damaged in these protests, kids are being scared and teachers are going to be even less likely to get into or continue teaching. It's actually deeply counterproductive.

Oh and also we now have to double staff break time thanks to the toilet antics so can't actually go for a pee myself even if I wasn't scared of having my provably plastered on the internet

Hmm. The pupils at the school I teach on staged a 'protest' because they are banned from having 5 in a cubicle and vaping. They don't see why staff have to man the toilets when they are vaping/smoking/bullying in there. We have single sex toilets but they have to be supervised by an adult at the entrance. In lesson times pupils have been crawling into the ceiling space and then taking photos of staff toilets and so only one toilet is available
in lesson time as it doesn't have a suspended ceiling like the others.

I have been afraid to go to the toilet at work incase a pupil takes a photo of me and shares on social media.

It has been a nightmare

Baffling isn't it? A highly expensive, shiny sparkly new progressive idea is dangled in front of them by a group of equally shiny, highly branded dodgy salesmen good at playing on good attentions and sympathies, and they don't bother to check their facts, or common sense, or experience, or anything else. Like might there be ways to meet the needs of this small group of students without completely abandoning 50% of the entire population?

I can never quite shake that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (it's Saturday night, go with me on this) where the monster was able to turn into two separate, beautiful, wide eyed children making witch accusations and manipulating the populace into killing whoever they chose. "Protect us from the bad girls - you have to hurt the bad girls, we're still scared."

It's like someone read the bloody script.

Most people drink far too much water anyway. It worried me, when I taught in schools, that children were constantly sipping. It is possible to overload your body with fluid and it is not that difficult to do (and it can be fatal) and yet children are told they can drink water all day and it will be fine - rather like the assembly I attended when a teacher stood up and said that you could eat as much fruit as you liked - she'd obviously never eaten two pounds of cherries and seen the effects. Unlimited anything is bad for you.

But the toilet issue is a real problem because not only will esp girls restrict their drinking, but they will also 'hold on' making themselves liable to urinary tract infections (which women are more prone to, anyway, because of the shortness of the urethra). They may also miss school during their period or leave tampons in place for too long (toxic shock) because changing it with a boy on the other side of a 10cm partition (so he can hear) is just too uncomfortable. Why do schools not think of these things? Most teachers are women ffs!

And then children get behaviour notes for being late to class - two notes means a detention, and so the children just stop drinking water as it's easier.

I don't see it as victim blaming, neither does her mother. It's a tragedy to my mind that so many women and girls may need to learn self defence.

She always enjoys it when she gets there, but protests about getting ready, as she has better things to do. Like Roblox, or telly. We have tried other things, various dancing, gymnastics etc.

She started JJ before lockdown and was begging to go back, but wanted to get a bit slimmer. It's only the last couple of weeks that she's been moaning about it. Last two lessons, she didn't make a peep.

I get the point of the jiu jitsu post but I don't love it. I have a kid in jiu jitsu and a kid in a dance related sport--they picked their own sports. Yes, their choices are socially mediated (as all choices are), but why should my daughter have to give up her precious time doing something that makes her feel good in her body because men can't control themselves? That feels pretty victim-blamey to me.

I think there are ways to do this that are safer. Eg in my workplace we have uni sex toilets but they are tiny rooms with fully enclosed doors if that makes sense as opposed to cubicles so offer more privacy. They also open into the hall and sinks are in with the toilet so no untoward loitering around waiting to go in. Just switching your standard school loos to unisex is a bit naieve on the schools part. I understand they want to make allowances for increased numbers of non binary pupils but this is poorly thought out.

Sounds like an opportunity for a disruptive go-slow. Pupils arriving after break in dribs and drabs saying "Sorry I'm late Sir, there was a queue for the toilets."

It astounds me that there are so many. Twenty odd years ago I worked at a school where there was a rape during the hols on the school playing fields - the number of girls entering year 7 that year dropped tremendously as parents voted with their feet. I cannot imagine what it must be like now, if rape is going on in schools. The argument for single sex schools is getting stronger by the week.

I'd have thought that the horrendous amount of 'sexual bullying' (peer on peer sexual abuse, up to and including rape) that goes on in schools would have been enough to deter them from this idiocy. Sadly not. I don't know what will be enough.

TheBiologyStupid · Today 19:30

How the hell is this statistic not universally known and being taken really seriously? But no, schools are moving ahead with "inclusive" mixed-sex toilet provision. FFS!

I don't know, it's very disturbing, to my mind; a newspaper really needs to pick it up and run with it and get the bloody public informed. What on Earth are schools doing to identify the causes and stop, or even reduce incidences of sex attacks on premises?

Some of them seem to have been doing assemblies on Andrew Tate and it seems that they certainly need to do more, to educate the boys. Heavens, if just a few call their friends, if they are friends, out for harassing girls and letting them know that it's fucking awful, that would be a good start. Most boys won't stand for their sisters and cousins being targeted by creeps - shouldn't they be thinking outside their families, too?

As a bit of an aside, (relating to my earlier post) my daughter's Jiu Jitsu instructor often tells the girls to bring their friends and that it's important for girls and women to learn self defence. Tonight, he had a little speech at the end of the class, because there were five girls out of 25~ish pupils, which is a first.

He (Jonny Poulter) has done over 1,000 hours of research into DV, sex assaults and assaults on women in general and said that he has counselling sessions, because it's had such a mental toll on him. There's a very condensed bit of text on the club's FB page. The girl shown isn't my daughter.

www.facebook.com/SerenityJiuJitsu/?locale=en_GB

Click "See More" on the post February 21 11.32 am

He wrote a more detailed, members only post, with sources and his statistical analysis (he's a former maths teacher). He stressed several times that women and girls should choose any martial art and any club - not just his.

dimorphism · Today 19:09

As previously mentioned, parents who want to complain are sent the school complaints route which is long winded and deliberately individual only - even when it's an issue that affects many children and parents.

If they could get a list of names of supportive parents, who are happy to add their names and details to an email, or letter and copy it to the local MP and say, the Daily Mail, the school would find it very difficult to ignore, even if they claimed that it's unorthodox.

Yes, very scary! Someone posted the "more than one rape a day in schools" fact on another thread a while ago and I was very sceptical, but it's entirely true. 600 rapes in school over three years, and 190 school days in an academic year.

How the hell is this statistic not universally known and being taken really seriously? But no, schools are moving ahead with "inclusive" mixed-sex toilet provision. FFS!

We still have single sexed toilets. One of my young colleagues said there were unisex toilets when she was at school. She is in her late 20s. It surprised me. As for pupils not going to the toilet in lessons,this is because they are expected to go at break. This is our school policy,we do use our discretion with this. Boys will often say they didnt need to go at break,when I said you need to try, they looked at me as if I had 2 heads. They explained it not like that for them. I know this is true because my partner used to get in bed without going to the toilet,which is alien to me.Another reason that pupils are discouraged from.going to the toilet during lesson time is it disrupts the learning,but also there is often anti social behaviour going on- vaping etc. Staff are on duty at breaks etc but in lesson time they obviously are not.

Sorry if I've missed it but have any of the schools ever declared the reason for the changes and the evidence base for it?

I would be trying to find a friendly lawyer to write a letter, from a campaign group organised by concerned parents, to the school, council and OFSTED noting that the school is breaking the law and that all organisations have failed in their duty of care in removing safeguards with no evidence base for doing so.

At a personal level I would be mentioning to the head that my journalist friend at the Times is showing quite an intense interest, since there is no explanation for such a clear breach of their statutory duties other than an ideological one.

See the threads currently on the board:

Lesbian group should stop enjoying themselves together and meeting the needs of the women in the group, and support a T person.

Autistic child with severe need has no business struggling with high anxiety and language confusion and must comply with the urgent, serious need of her employed teaching assistant for her to support his identity.

Young male with varying identity depending on which page of the thread you're on is outraged that a middle aged woman at a women's rally brazenly Looked at him in a disapproving way, (construed as a threatened incipient attack) but fully supports the decapitation of women as justified retaliation for their stating of female needs and raising of problems for females in males in their spaces.

The narrative is getting clearer, and if it's accidental then this political lobby need to do some very urgent repairs. Posters on threads like these are indicating a powerful belief that T identified people are of a much higher caste and what they expect is an entitlement only for them. The posts make clear that everyone else can get to fuck. Including those with other protected characteristics: there will be no reciprocal education, understanding, kindness, or even basic humanity. Other people's inclusion, needs, struggles - irrelevant. They can shut up and get over it.