Single sex spaces

I have a horrible feeling that the transition and the disabilities may in some cases be cause and effect. It makes me cringe with horror, if I am honest: imagine doing something to yourself that you thought would make you feel better, and realising, too late, that you were now crippled as a result of what you'd done!

Yes but they would be better lobbying for accessible loos as that would capture more people’s needs. There’s still far too few accessible toilets. There seems to be a greater number of trans people with disabilities so that would capture all the cohort.

Thank you! That makes it all fairly clear.

So trans people could lobby for example local caffs and pubs and such to provide the loos they want, if they wanted to.

There’s no duty for councils to provide public toilets. The British Toilet Association have campaigned for this to be changed for years. They have also promoted community schemes where local councils seek to increase the provision of public toilets by encouraging private businesses (typically food and retail outlets) to make their toilets available to members of the public.

It’s fair to say no one knows how many toilets are available to people in this country. For council-run toilets it is estimated 1 toilet for every 15,000 people.

The ‘slack’ has been taken up by businesses. Pubs used to be the places people went out to a lot more and used their loos. In fact, British Standards first came about with expertise from publicans.

This is for workplaces:
https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/workplace-facilities/health-safety.htm

You are right to question about other venues as it is a grey area. I think it’s still true that under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, premises with 10 or more seats for consuming food or drink on-site are typically required to provide toilets for customers. Also you have to provide a toilet if you serve alcohol. However you always have to provide for staff so in practice customers ask to use that. This is where local councils rules and interpreting building regulations and guidelines come in - they might decide more favourably on a business prepared to maintain customer toilets or even better if they allow non-customers to use the toilet.

When a city the size of Bristol has a total of two council-run public lavatories, one in a cemetery and one in a park and neither near the centre, it's clear to any one of the half million plus who live there that something is a little wrong somehow.

We now have to rely on the owners of shopping malls and the like for facilities, and as far as I know they are not actually obliged to provide them. KTS, you'll know: what is the law on this? I wouldn't know where to look for a loo in say Redland or Clifton, or anywhere with small shops but not stores like for instance a big Sainsbury's or Tesco. Pubs might be prepared to allow someone desperate in to have a pee.

It’s also worth mentioning the key points from that link I mentioned. As they are points that I come across time and time again.

KEY POINTS
• The increasing decline in public toilets is a threat to health, mobility, and equality.
• The lack of public toilets disproportionately affects people with ill health or disability, the elderly, women, outdoor workers and the homeless.
• Three in four of the UK public think there are not enough public toilets in their area.
• Knowledge of lack of facilities nearby acts as a ‘loo leash’, deterring as many as one
in five (20%) from venturing out of their homes as often as they would like. This rises
to over two in five (43%) among those with medical conditions requiring frequent
toilet use.
• Over half (56%) of the public restrict fluid intake due to concern over lack of toilet
facilities. Deliberate dehydration can seriously affect health and exacerbate existing medical problems.

It is unprecedented that so much has been about such a small % of people’s preferences in recent years. We need more toilets. We need toilets that are designed with health (cleanliness, ventilation) and safety (supervision, prevention of misuse) in mind. Unisex design is always going to be more problematical as it has privacy as a priority.

agree

Yes. There’s loads of surveys that say similar. Women want clean toilets more than men. For example, this survey below on council run public toilets covers male and female opinions. It says ‘gender’ as it’s a polite term for sex. Most older publications on toilets do which shows how quickly language has changed.
https://www.rsph.org.uk/media/filer_public/0a/f7/0af7df7c-2fd8-4ca7-a81a-1e4fecd226d1/taking_the_p.pdf

Also in this publication (2019) shows the beginnings of unisex ‘wants’ linked to the American term ‘potty parity’ (blergh) which mentions unisex toilets for transgender individuals. This movement (no pun intended) came from America. Unisex toilets are discussed as not being popular then right at the end it gets its own section.

Just to note there’s not a consensus in what is a ‘public toilet’ which is sometimes why I say ‘non-domestic toilet’ as that’s also the building regulations term.

In the Sexual Offences Act 71Sexual activity in a public lavatory
it states 1)A person commits an offence if—
(a)he is in a lavatory to which the public or a section of the public has or is permitted to have access, whether on payment or otherwise……

So that covers most venues.

That rather supports my feeling, that this simply was not ever considered at all, by anyone. If someone in jeans and a jacket was "challenged" about going towards the ladies, it wasn't confrontational: it was someone wanting to save what they thought was a bloke from embarrassment.

What comes back in toilet surveys the things that always come up top in ‘wants’ are clean toilets that don’t smell, that have warm water and soap.

Do the surveys show that men want that as much as women?

What comes back in toilet surveys the things that always come up top in ‘wants’ are clean toilets that don’t smell, that have warm water and soap.

As it should be. The other stuff should already be in place.

It's not just about safety. When a male is in a purportedly female space he doesn't have to do anything for the women there to feel violated and invaded, and it's even worse if they have a handmaiden/cheerleader fawning to make them feel welcome. Just their presence communicates "you have no rights to autonomy over who you are vulnerable with. I have the power here. You have no power." It's deeply upsetting and very much part of patriarchal oppression.

"But I didn't even attack you" is not a reason for it to be ok. The idea that "not being physically attacked today" is the standard of dignity we should be content with is deeply misogynistic.

I know a lot of people talk about safety but safety isn't my biggest reason for wanting single sex toilets. I personally don't fear using mixed toilets/spaces, I just don't like them. They tend to be dirtier and I don't want to be anywhere near a urinal.

Obviously this is just my own feelings. I am not speaking for other women, just expressing myself and my own views.

Sorry my last post didn’t read correctly - to clarify, Approved Doc T (2024) was applicable for non domestic refurbs and new builds in England (with a few exceptions). However, after the Supreme Court verdict, this takes on greater importance.

In 2008 there was a big cross party Government consultation on public toilets. It discussed disabilities, the loss of provision to misuse, effects on elderly people, and also sex including gay sex, drugs, vandalism, voyeurism, the Sexual Offences Act all in a very matter of fact way. At no point was men or women going in to the wrong toilets for their sex brought up in discussion.

I'm with you. I am completely done with this shit. There are more than enough universal toilets already. The TiMs can use an app to find them; use the gents; wait until they get home or piss themselves. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

My experience is that a lot of transwomen absolutely do not want to use a third space. If they did want them they’d have campaigned for them.

Validation that they are “real women” requires the use of the women’s toilets.

They complain that to use a third space would be “outing”.

A programme of building (entirely unnecessary) third spaces would be extremely costly for both private and public organisations in the service of a very small demographic.

A lot of what you are talking about here is already in place. Approved Document M is for accessibility. It talks about separate sex toilet washrooms and accessible toilets.

‘More often at the moment the ratio is like 45% for men, 45% for women and 10% for people with an accessibility need’
This is wrong. There’s always been more toilets for men if you count in urinals. This is historic as men got public toilets first. Older buildings have to create areas for toilets as flushing toilets would have been rare inside buildings only a few generations ago. Accessible toilets are tricky as they need to be accessible! A shockingly low number of accessible toilets conform to modern standards.

There is guidance in other documents such as British Standards about the calculations for the numbers of facilities based on venue type and also sex of users. In non domestic premises with equal numbers of men and women, it’s recommended women have twice as many toilets, for equality. Urinals can be counted as toilets in the overall number but there does need to be toilets within the men’s too. There’s also a calculation you need 25% extra toilets if they have sinks within the compartment as it takes longer per user.

What’s been legislation, regulations and guidance all needs to be tidied up. There’s a lot of historical problems getting buildings up to date. Even Approved Document T in 2024 was retrospective. However, when the Supreme Court effectively defined the toilet pictograms, businesses who had not been following standards (that have been in place for decades) were in a mess.

There doesn’t need to be as many as one third unisex facilities.

The accessible is usually unisex and has a much larger footprint with an alarm and rails etc.

In a separate sex washroom there is an ambulant toilet, usually at the end of a row with a door that opens outwards and handrails.

All this has been already been worked out. If I go into a cubicle I can see who has refurbished toilets or is a newer build and follows regs because they will be hooks in certain places at certain heights etc.

Why shouldn’t everyone have access to a single sex toilet? What change I would like to see is separate sex toilet washrooms being inclusive of non ambulant people too - it would also serve for parents with children in pushchairs. That would free up the mixed sex accessible for people who need the extra privacy or adults with different sex carers.

Or they could do what every single one of them did before about 2010: either piss in the toilets provided for their sex, or hold it until they got home.

Gender ideologists who are calling themselves the male or female gender should have their own separate toilet facilties for people who are gender ideologists. Single sex toilets are exclusively for the female and male sex

I'm not so sure.
I think lots of older men wouldn't be too happy to share a hospital room with a transman.
And the same with some religious groups they wouldn't be too happy with their young men sharing with young women in youth hostels or other sleeping accommodation.

I also think young transmen could be putting themselves at risk in certain situations where young men think they are "up for it".

But generally toilets and the like it probably doesn't matter.

Maybe as they grew up they were not socialised to see being violent, abusive, demanding, egotistical and threatening as acceptable? Nor were they taught that they mattered more than anyone else in the entire universe.

Nobody really cares what space transmen use.

They don't present a threat.

For those who are the rare ones who pass, they may alarm women, so they should use a different space.

Most transmen are very aware of the impact they may have and don't wish to alarm other women.

If what special men want is spaces for special men, then surely it is for them to get out and campaign for these?

I am interested in why men who believe things about themselves that are not factual should be given any sort of free pass as a result of that belief: we wouldn't give them the right to play the piano at concerts if they believed they were concert pianists but were not, after all. We certainly would not feel we had to pay to build them a concert hall to perform in, or legislate to compel every workplace and leisure facility and public area to provide a piano for them.

There isn't anyone else, but with basic levels of compassion and decency it is obvious that it is appropriate to provide a third option for anyone who doesn't want to use the facilities for their own sex, and it is obvious that legislation should be used to create an obligation to do so for those who don't have basic levels of compassion and decency. The fact that some of the people in question don't want to use a third space and want to use the wrong-sex option is irrelevant - they cannot claim they are being discriminated against if an appropriate unisex option exists, but it would certainly be discriminatory under current law to force them to use the facilities for their biological sex if they are so strongly convinced that this is wrong for them.

Approximately 20% of the population has a need for an accessible lavatory (not just people with mobility issues, there are a huge variety of accessibility needs). There should be legislation that requires that for any provider which is large enough to need to provide more than two lavatories, at least one third of the facilities must be fully accessible unisex facilities, at least one third must be single-sex for women, and the remainder for men, then everyone is fully provided for and there will be BETTER availability for those who need accessible facilities. More often at the moment the ratio is like 45% for men, 45% for women and 10% for people with an accessibility need, and I am not at all surprised that there is pushback about crowding more people into such limited facilities - but the solution is to require and mandate a better provision of universal facilities not try to force people to surrender their beliefs about themselves.

Women have the right to single-sex facilities. Any space that is for women that any male can enter just on a say-so is not single-sex but mixed-sex. Trans-identifying people should have the right to unisex facilities, whether or not they want them. There is no third sex and the law shouldn't pretend that there is, but when someone is getting on with living their life and just needs a dignified place to pee, that is not the right time to have an argument about science and facts, there just needs to be an appropriate and dignified place for that to happen which has no stigma attached to it.