Single sex spaces aren’t just about safety – they are about community

@Keeptoiletssafe Thank you for posting the detailed and interesting information that you have on various threads. I had not considered some of these points you raise until I read your posts and I’m very glad to have had the chance to realise that there are many other safety aspects relating to health that are important and currently being ignored in favour of ideology.

Completely agree with you about safety and am very grateful for you highlighting this issue.

I remember a craze for 'twobicles', do they still exist?

I only looked at her LinkedIn and saw a video from a New York university (Columbia) where she sounds American. The ‘community’ ‘inclusive’ roots are American so I did think that it may be relevant as it does seem a stranger concept over here and the references in the uk toilet legislation commissioned document I talked about were all American.

I didn’t realise the hyperlink from the influential Stalled video popped up out of all of my hyperlinks. It’s interesting to see how these American ideas evolved. In it the director talks to Harvard university students about a ‘social justice issue that could be addressed through design innovation’. He says they designed the restroom areas through the ‘queer lens’ of trans inclusivity. If you look at examples, it’s private cubicles off huge open spaces, with communal sinks etc. I think there are some nice ideas like sinks of different heights (which I have seen before here). But even if they were safe, it is impossible to transfer that design to every U.K. situation. If their designs had not been completely enclosed cubicles there would be nothing to take issue with, as they would not have been used as the source of evidence for enclosed designs in our legislation. I doubt they would think one element of their designs would be used in this way either.

These designs are not safe for anyone at crucial moments of vulnerability. They have not been risked assessed. And to use them as a justification for a crucial design element in toilet legislation here, without any discussion, will have tragic consequences.

My focus obviously is safety. Think of the following situations. The first is one of the reasons I campaign for safe toilets.

I was in a nightclub. My friends and I went to the ladies toilets and saw a blue hand, sticking out of a cubicle door gap, on the floor. So we hoisted one of us over the top of door to get into the cubicle, pulled the body away so we could open the door, dragged her out, scooped the sick out her mouth, shook her on her side, she let out a weird noise and started breathing again properly. Once the paramedics arrived we went back clubbing.

Contrast that situation in a mixed sex area with totally enclosed toilets, as they will have to be if they are mixed sex, from October in the UK. No door gaps are specified even in the single sex designs (though it is not specifically stated that single sex must be enclosed). The toilets can all now be opened outwards from the outside (as per legislation). So an improvement of going over the top and having to move the body to open the door. She wasn’t making any noise but, in legislation, the new cubicles have ‘acoustic properties’ so even less of a chance of hearing her if she was trying to cry for help. But the crucial difference is we never would have seen her on the floor. We would have ignored the closed door. She would have been found by the hours later after the nightclub shut.

Now a different scenario of someone hiding in one cubicle and going into another to assault someone. Because there are lots of examples that that is happening now. Contrast the 2 designs from the point of view of what the victim could see and any potential witnesses/ rescuers could see. And how both the designs prevent an assault in the first place (clue: criminals don’t like being seen).

Safety should always override ‘community’ and even total privacy. And every design element should be assessed before legislation.

In very much the same way women don't hang off ladders and scaffolding going "phwoar! show us your tits darling!" and then laughing if the person they are harassing/ tacitly sexually assaulting reacts and adding "You're beautiful when you're angry darling!"

Women's reactions seem to be a very key part of the pleasure for men in using the women in women's spaces.

Eden, if you wish to be your authentic self in the ladies and explain garlic to anyone in there, then I will gladly support you in this. #bekindtogarlicnerds

😆😆😆

I raise an eyebrow as bustling yourself into a space where some of the other people already properly using the space have clearly said they don’t want you is such utterly male type behaviour! I cannot imagine any woman I have ever known doing this.

It’s ok eden you just wanted to peel.

I'd like to apologise to anyone I've offended by offering to share my garlic peeling tips in the ladies. It won't happen again.

Really?? I have always had an irregular cycle and have often been rescued by ladies in the toilets! Not all, but certainly some, cliches have roots in truth

and it’s a good reminder of the whole “it didn’t happen to me…..doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to them” lesson

there isn’t a singular “woman’s” experience

@Keeptoiletssafe Brilliant piece, thank you for sharing!

Oh wow, props to her writing this from Melbourne Uni!
Never been tempted to get in touch with an academic before to give them moral support but I might try.
Toilets in Islamic countries with dress codes are very different spaces to functional public amenities in western countries. Lots of them are still like the ladies' toilets used to be in deparment stores, with a small lounge with comfortable chairs to sit in. And that would be the place to compliment someone's dress because you won't have seen it before you all go in and take off your abaya for a bit.
TRAs are 21st century imperialists so good for her trying to make this a more multicultural conversation.

(Also I was asked several times in high school for menstrual products from girls who I know would never have been able to ask with boys around - never since).

Oh, that makes sense.
I assumed she was being completely cynical and knows no TRA actually wants trans-women only spaces alongside women only spaces. But wants to force them to explain why.
But I may be completely misreading her.

The dunny is not somewhere I go looking for joy. That sounds like the sort of thing a fetishist man would say, the type who gets a euphoria boner from crossdressing and forcing his presence on women.

I'm also rolling my eyes at the idea of the cruel harsh world these men have to endure. Bollocks they do. They're the safest and most privileged demographic out there.

Early sixties, ditto. I carried enough for myself, not for others, and only when I had my period or was close to it.

Some research for the Spectator below. I think the author is American which maybe relevant because traditionally toilets/restrooms over there are different.

Btw these toilet designs are already rubber-stamped and are from this October. So there’s no ambiguity you elude to in the article unless Labour stop them going ahead.

It’s a long post but it can be seen that the people commissioned to look at UK toilet design for people with long term health conditions, recommended enclosed design. This is dangerous for many with long term health conditions. Why did they recommended it? The ‘evidence’ was from two American designers who were promoting inclusive toilet design supported by transactivists. I think this maybe where the ‘community’ idea originates from? It certainly fits in with the articles in America I have read. But this type of design hasn’t been health and safety assessed and doesn’t translate to a standard design in the U.K. or something that will be retrofitted into a very different area.

Document T details the toilet designs that will come in to force in October 2024 in the UK. The toilet designs are dangerous for everyone but in particular, disabled people, medically vulnerable, women and girls.

There are 4 toilet designs:

• A Ambulant universal - full height door and full height floor to ceiling partitions

• B Universal - full height door and full height floor to ceiling partitions

• C Single sex ambulant - profile diagram shows full height door and no door gaps, no partition gaps

• D Single sex - no profile diagram, no mention of door or partition heights, AND can be designed as Type A or B ie fully enclosed for single sex use

None of the designs specify a door gap at the bottom of the door or at the top.

Why do gaps matter?

Because toilet door gaps save lives.

If you collapse, being able to survive or if you suffer long-term damage, will be down to whether someone notices and rescues you.

If you’re out and about or at work and feel nauseous/ill you are likely to head to the toilet.
There are around 100,000 hospital admissions due to heart attacks in this country, equating to one every five minutes. It is estimated there are 400,000 people in the U.K. with undiagnosed cardiac problems.
There are also around 100,000 strokes in this country, equating to one every five minutes. There are known medical reasons for a disproportionally high frequency of cardiac arrests and strokes while an individual is in the toilet.
Around 1% of people in this country have epilepsy and around 80 people are diagnosed with epilepsy each day. To put it into perspective there are around 9 children with epilepsy in an average secondary school.
There are many other conditions that lead to collapse where you need to be noticed and accessed quickly eg. diabetes.

A recent government report noted 80% of the thousands of incidents of drink spiking happen in public places, usually in bars and clubs, mainly to women, average age 26.

Prevention of sexual assaults
In any space that becomes private, more offences are likely to take place. In Parliament it was discussed that there was at least 1 rape inside a school premises each day (over 600 in a 3 year period). The data, collected by the BBC, mentions an example occurring in a private cupboard. This was in 2015, before many schools decided to change their toilet designs to fully enclosed and mixed sex. There is no available data on these new toilet designs but, teachers and pupils are reporting many problems with drug dealing, dirt and sex. The toilet door gaps are vital for safeguarding to help prevent activities that stop pupils, especially girls, going to the toilet. There are known problems of girls avoiding toilets and getting urinary infections or missing school. This legislation does not affect schools but they have been at the ‘coalface’ of new experimental toilet designs so it a good demonstration of what goes wrong.

A quick internet search brings up the disproportionate number of sexual assaults and rapes that happen to able bodied and disabled women and girls in disabled toilets in this country which are obviously mixed sex and fully enclosed toilets, often in very public places such as busy train stations and shopping centres.

More problems with toilets with enclosed full height doors are:

• Ventilation is decreased so there’s a higher risk of disease spread.
• Evacuation times are greatly increased as a responder can’t tell quickly if stalls are occupied.
• Hygiene is compromised as a mop can’t go underneath the doors nor floor be washed down. It is awkward to enter the cubicle with a mop and detritus ends up on the partition corners.
• Doors are more likely to get stuck/warped and the cubicle out of action.
• People are more likely to engage in illegal activities (drugs) or self harm if they are in a private space.
• Occupants can’t see if anyone is lying in wait outside their cubicle if they are feeling vulnerable, so no opportunity to call for help/ prevent an attack by using their phone. This is particularly important as the new designs allow the door to be opened from the outside.

Why have toilet cubicle door gaps disappeared from the new public toilet designs?

There are many articles and videos on why we have gaps under and over toilet doors - so it is worrying these have been ignored. The initial government consultation that was publicised several years ago led to Stonewall coordinating a response and very effectively dominating the results. There is nothing wrong with this lobbying but the policy goals that were created from the initial consultation concentrated on mixed sex ‘universal’ toilets and privacy because of toilets being mixed sex.

ARUP was appointed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to carry out research into the toilet requirements of the population of England in the built environment, in particular disabled people and people with long-term health conditions. The government also did a second consultation. I wrote a lengthy response to the second consultation, detailing the statistics and need for door gaps but none of these issues were mentioned on published consultation results.

In the ARUP document, the justification (evidence and literature) for fully enclosed toilets comes from two American sources on p.129 of the report. I have spent time analysing these sources as so much seems to depend on them. These are a restroom design for a Minnesota high school and an American paper from Joel Sanders and Susan Stryker. The later two authors are referenced in the Minnesota project. In a recent (April 2024), Sanders said that transgender access to public restrooms rekindled his interest in queer space so he set up the ‘Stalled’ company with Prof Susan Stryker, but he admitted he did not have enough data on whether his designs worked as so few had been built. The reason for the fully enclosed idea is discussed in their paper referenced by ARUP: ‘A better solution, supported by many transactivists, and increasingly found in trendy nightclubs and restaurants, is to eliminate gender-segregated facilities entirely and treat the public restroom as one single open space with fully enclosed stalls.’

No safety concerns of fully enclosed cubicles were acknowledged in these two ARUP ‘evidences’. No analysis has been done on the safety on fully enclosed cubicles. The only ‘evidence’ was the Minnesota school questionnaire asking students about the all-inclusive restroom design (very open plan, with security cameras, separate sink rows). Full height ‘walls’ were rated in 3rd place for safety from a pre-prepared list. Only 43%, who knew both restroom types, preferred the all-inclusive model to whatever their old restrooms were (the difference approx 35 females, 83 males).

So the Arup recommendation for fully enclosed cubicles is from a tiny amount of very poor evidence and literature focused on a different group. Their ‘evidence’ bears no resemblance to any of the designs of UK toilets in Document T. Their ‘evidence’ does not take into account any long term health conditions nor disabilities’ analysis.

Considering it was looking at the requirements of people with long term health conditions, in the whole Arup document there was no mention of the words: seizure, faint, diabetes, cardiac, heart, epilepsy, syncope, endometriosis, menorrhagia, collapse. There was one mention of ‘stroke’ in reference to a grab rail. There are two pages of lists of references to handrails. However I would argue that a floor-to-door gap is even more vital in design for those having a stroke and those who are frail because of a previous stroke, so it can be seen they have collapsed from outside the cubicle.

What other equality impacts have been done?

I can not find any other evidence or research as to why the designs are fully enclosed in the published documents. Obviously this does not mean everything has been published. However, the Equality Impact Assessment for the Provision of Toilets (updated 15th May 2024) does not mention door gaps. It goes through all protected characteristics and does not identify any negative impacts of full enclosure.

Conclusion

Specifying toilet door gaps will enable offices, shops and entertainment venues to be suitable for workers and children with health conditions where there is a chance of collapse without warning and then Document T will satisfy the requirements in Equality Act 2010, The Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), Children Act 1989.

In terms of negative impacts for the protected characteristics in the Equality Act (2010), the absence of door to floor gaps in design affects age, sex (discussed above), disability (discussed above), and pregnancy and maternity. It affects everyone in terms of disease prevention, a medical emergency and fire evacuation.

The designs in Document T do specify that every door should be able to be opened from the outside and an inward opening door have a release mechanism so it can be pulled outwards in the event a body is blocking the door opening - but how do you know there is a body there? At the very least there should be a door gap of sufficient height between the floor and the bottom of the door to safeguard the occupant in single sex toilet designs C and D. As the designs are in Document T, there is no specification other than full height doors.

The government needs to enable people with long-term health conditions to live safe lives and help them be independent and in work. It needs women and children to be safe and prevent assaults through good design.

These designs have dismissed the rights of certain disabled groups (people with epilepsy etc) to a safe working and leisure environment.

There appears to be no emergency evacuation assessment and a fire risk assessment for a row of fully enclosed toilets compared to a ‘traditional’ row of toilets with door gaps.

There is no risk assessment on the impact of disease spread from less cleanable and less well ventilated fully enclosed toilets.

They do not recognise the danger of fully enclosed toilets for the chances of surviving a long term injury or death from collapse such as from a heart attack, stroke, epilepsy, brain injury, diabetes and fragility.

And they do not recognise the dangers, particularly to women and children, that a private space in a public area brings.

Single sex designs C and D need to specify floor-to-door safety gaps. If models A or B are used in single sex toilets, they need their design altered to include floor-to-door safety gaps.

It would also be life-saving to have floor-to-door safety gaps in all medical settings that are single sex in design.

Mind the gap! It could save your life.

It is absolutely essential SAFETY comes first.

Sometimes I meet up with all my old women friends. We go back a long way. We can talk about anything and support each other without judgement. If someone brought their husband along because he doesn’t have any friends himself and wants to be friends with us it would totally change the dynamic. We would be polite and inclusive but it would kill the meet up for the majority. And this is the case for a transwoman in a woman’s single sex space. It kills it.

I can't answer for anyone else, but the only time I asked for a tampon was when I was 14, new to the whole thing and not used to always being kitted up, and I asked a girl I had been in the same form with for nearly three years.

I have never offered sanpro to anyone, friend. acquaintance, or stranger.

And feel really strongly that no woman should ever use a tampon if they don't know exactly when and where it came out of the manufacturer's seal, it is much too risky.

I read that last paragraph very differently- that we need to reframe it from being a place of safety from men which won't allow trans identifying men in, and see it as a community that can be extended and enriched by including transwomen.

I did wonder whether the clunkiness came from trying to use TRA language to frame a woman centred argument. Female joy sounds much like trans joy- maybe the hope was it would be respected as being as important as queer joy and trans joy?

If third spaces are outing, then make the third space an 'anyone but cis men' space (not my choice of terminology but y'know) & then trans people of any gender plus cis female allies can use it. To make the concept more acceptable, maybe market it as 'women plus'. The first & second spaces stay as they are, single sex.

I really think at this point it's up to trans people/allies to tell us what's acceptable given that women's single sex spaces will be unavailable to them. Start the discussion there & find a workable solution.

We need to take the removal of women's single sex spaces & facilities out of the equation, because we all know that the way to get the greatest good for the greatest number of people is to have adequate facilities for women who can't use/don't want mixed sex facilities. We need to provide for the majority & then add in for the minority. The alternative is to take away provision for the majority so that a minority get what they want: that would result in many women being unable to participate fully in society, & I hope everyone would agree that that's unacceptable.

‘For too long, the goal of single-sex spaces has been reduced to the provision of safety. But this approach has robbed both transwomen and biological women of something just as important: community.’

NO - safety is more important than a fleeting sense of ‘community’.

Safety is also more important than ‘privacy and dignity’ which are the new buzz words that have over-riden health and safety.

Even the new government toilets designs have fallen foul of it.

Because, unlike the author, I am focused on safety - and that’s for everyone. I wrote into the government consultation, and then analysed all the reports and results that were published because they didn’t mention my concerns in the analysis. I believe they ignored at least one charity too.

Unlike the author, I came to a very different conclusion because it’s not difficult if you put the time in - there is a direct link to show the influence of ‘trans’ design and how it practically will affect everyone at their most vulnerable - if they are seriously ill or if they are being attacked. And because I have done the research, I know it is unfortunately it is much more common than most people realise. I want safety for everyone.