Good Law Project to report Sex Matters over 'deviant' remark

The argument against the new EHRC guidelines?

Apparently I was wrong about this.

So you think there are safety risks, but that some men are less risky than others, and they should be allowed to use women's toilets.

How would one identify the less risky men?

OK, so what if safety is removed from the discussion - what is the argument against maintaining the standard configuration of toilet provision that works fine for the huge majority of people?

You reckon? Unfortunately some of us here were brought up by women who knew full well that was the reason they had fought for women's public lavatories, and know that you are wrong in that assumption. My grandmother was born in the nineteenth century (that's when Victoria was Queen, in case you didn't know) and had no qualms about talking of these things in the presence of her grandchildren, and I promise you that the violence of men against women was part of the reason women of her generation wanted to piss in places men were not allowed to go. You have to take your bloomers off to piss, you see, and some men would then be likely to want to get an eyeful and more.

You sweet summer child!

Of course I do because that's what they believe & are entitled to believe because everyone has the right to their own personal values as a function of how they understand the world. It's not that I don't empathise with where they are coming from or even disagree with all their demands rather I don't hold the same safety risk expectations from trans women AND I don't think public toilets are a setting that would likely occur in.

I suppose we are at least debating the point of single sex toilets, and (at this point in the thread). nobody is trying to suggest that we should have single sex toilets that can be used by anyone.

In many ways this is progress.

To quote Justice Swift again:
39 ... would place too great a burden on employers, requiring them to either “police” the use of lavatories or risk prosecution for breach of the 1992 Workplace Regulations. This point is significantly overstated.

40 The notion that an employer or anyone else is required to “police” the use of a lavatory, person by person and day by day, reveals the application of a “logic” so strict that it is divorced from reality and from any sensible model of human behaviour.

'any sensible model of human behaviour' is that you put up a sign saying that the toilets are designated by biological sex not gender, and asking people to respect that.

That's what sensible people do. They use the toilet designated for their biological sex. No policing necessary, just common sense and respect.

We have had single sex toilets for quite a number of years, and people have been able to understand which one they should use.

Are you at least acknowledging that whether or not you agree with them, Sex Matters are concerned about men using women's facilities? That they would be suspicious of any man who wanted to use women's facilities?

It's all very well having something works in practice, but what if it doesn't work in theory?

Like loo policing?

People either ark up about it or they pretend no such law exists & sometimes both…like in Iran over hijabs.

Indeed. The first thing I look for when I desperately need a pee is a good theory, the more unscientific and groundless the better!

Wow.

It's all very well having something works in practice, but what if it doesn't work in theory?

And what if it's possible to find someone saying something ridiculous on the subject via Google?

Eh?

Forgive the lèse-majesté, I should of course have said 'Her Majesty KTS!🙂

While safety is a vitally important issue, and, unlike what was claimed in the US article cited by Baileyonice, there have been attacks perpetrated by transwomen in women's toilets, there are reasons other that 'safetyism' for men and women to have separate spaces.

Without going back to the history of sanitation and public toilets and all that,
there are very practical reasons why the established norm has been sex-segregated toilets, up to very recently.

Men and women have different ways of using toilets, due to the physiological difference between male and female bodies.
I have facetiously suggested that forcing men to use gender neutral toilets with floor-mounted toilets is discriminatory, because clearly urinals are more appropriately adapted for their use.

The throughput in men's toilets is much faster - I'm sure KTS knows the exact stats, but I think I'm safe in saying that on average women take twice as long as men to pee, and you don't see the long queues in the men's.
Having completely mixed sex cubicles slows everything down, and both men and women would have to queue for longer. Hardly a win for either sex.

When you do away with single-sex cubicle toilets, you have to replace them with individual 'universal' toilets which are building regs etc. compliant.
They have to be a contained space which includes not just the toilet, but also handwashing/drying, bins etc.

So not only is the toilet occupied while the user is performing bodily functions, it is also occupied while they wash their hands, brush their hair, etc., whereas single sex cubicle toilets are quickly freed up for the next user because handwashing facilities can be shared.

Again I defer to KTS who may be aware of research into the ratio of 'universal' toilets needed to provide the same level of access to toilets as single-sex toilets.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the removal of sex-segregated toilets and their complete replacement with 'gender neutral' toilets causes a net loss of provision, for both men and women, who are now forced to wait longer for the single-occupancy toilet to become available.

It's not all to do with 'safetyism', or Victorian notions of 'the weaker sex'.
The established configuration men's/women's/accessible worked, from a practical point of view, and the segregated spaces were generally speaking respected, until a very small, very aggressive group of men started asserting an alleged 'right' to use the women's toilet.

If it works, don't fix it. Men's/Women's [segregated on the basis of biological sex not gender ID] and accessible for disabled people who need them works.

Call me 'keeptoiletssimple', Keeptoiletssafe's tribute band😁

Again, individuals vary on what they consider comfort & safety risks.

Values.

Which design is riskier to anyone at their most vulnerable?

The design on the left is single sex.
The design on the right is mixed sex.

(Apologies to those who have seen this picture before but words don’t seem to be engaging)

Might help if you took your own advice.

Camille Paglia actually identifies as transgender and has experienced gender dysphoria since childhood. She is primarily critical of the contemporary "transgender wave" rather than the existence of trans people themselves. Her core issues centre on biology, cultural trends, and institutional overreach not toilet etiquette.

with forcing them to take completely pointless risks by doing away with basic sensible single-sex facilities.

Still not getting is ain't an ought?

Again, the blind spot in GC ideology is the assumption that people all view facts the same way in terms of how they should be dealt with. Ultimately this is a values issue proven by the fact that many Western countries & their feminist population don't agree on the risks & whether the risks warrant segregation.

@Baileyonice spend a few more years on looking at design and safety and you’ll catch us up. I need you to read this carefully to understand this is not about anything other than safety.

I want safer toilet designs for everyone. ‘Inclusive’ design is not safe. It was not borne from safety. And it is definitely not ‘inclusive’. It’s worse for everyone at their most vulnerable but least bad for healthy men.

You seem to be wading through the common historical toilet articles. Carry on. Wait til you get to research the person whose first foray into design was looking at maps and finding penis shapes amongst the street gridding. Articles, which eventually get around to toilet design, include detailed drawings of penis amputations for good measure. This gender studies professor has international influence on toilet design which is termed ‘inclusive’. The professor thinks a good safety measure is to have a one way one-way mirror lookout on the door positioned so when the occupant is sitting on the toilet it is at eye level so they can observe their surroundings looking out at men, women and children in their communal washing and grooming zones. Also, of course, making the cubicle private visually and acoustically.

As an aside, from a safety and design point of view can you think why a one way mirror at seated eye level may not be a good feature? Luckily that one didn’t catch on. But the complete privacy of the cubicle did.

This is important because I am campaigning for safety for anyone at their most vulnerable. When the government looked at toilet designs, they commissioned a private company to look at the needs of people with long term health conditions in standard and ambulant cubicles. This is good. However this company didn’t look at many of the common long term health conditions that could have safety issues in standard toilets. Collectively they missed out millions of people with heart conditions, epilepsy, diabetes, endometriosis, heavy periods. All these conditions where people end up unconsciousness on the floor of a toilet and need emergency help. They did mention stroke in terms of a handrail and discussed positioning of this. But if someone had a stroke in a toilet and was on the floor? No mention of collapse.

But guess whose name was referenced in literature evidence for recommending U.K. toilets are private for those with long term health conditions?

I don't know.

Baileyonice seems to be accepting that women should have the right to single sex spaces

"I'm not suggesting there isn't legitimate justification to this approach"

At any rate, any political party seeking to change legislation would struggle with the 'give women the freedom to risk rape' line.

How is it relevant that the origins of sex-separated facilities include moralistic/patriarchal segregatory principles? Anyone over 60 or so has probably seen old Victorian school buildings whose history of sex segegation is carved in to the structure -- with the words 'Girls' and 'Boys' appearing in stone above the two separate entrances. There are many such historical remnants of the herding (and exclusion) of women in public spaces. For example, my ocal cathedral has an in-built structural line near the back, which marked the boundary of how far women were allowed to be.

The Equality Act is a modern piece of legislation, not a hangover from the Victorian era. It explicitly disallows any such remnant of patriarchal sex segregation. It's primary function is to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex. But, secondarily, it sets out parameters for the cases in which discrimination - in this case separate provision - is lawful. I've only skimmed your posts, but I think you are saying that where mixed-sex provision presents no discrimination against women, facilities should not be separated by sex. The Equality Act agrees with you.

I agree with you, too, and I expect many other posters do too. Probably where we differ is in respect of two things. One is that we would like to call a 'mixed sex' facility just that, and not pretend that it is single-sex just because it only allows in a sub-set of opposite sex people.
And the other is in relation to the definition of what counts as a detriment to women (ie how we determine whether or not thay have been discriminated against by the absence of single-sex provision. I've seen you speak of male violence, and of course the risk of sexed violence (where it exists) is one of the clearest legitimate grounds for excluding men in order to avoid discriminating against women. But the risk of violence isn't the only possible detriment of mixed-sex provision. It is perfectly lawful and reasonable to also consider lower-level sexual abuse and harassment, such as exhibitionism and voyeurism.
It is also lawful to consider the fact that almost all women have life-long experience of some level of harassment, making it distressing and in many instances traumatic, to share toilet and changing facilities with men. Where there is reference to women's 'privacy and dignity' it relates to their legitimate need to be free from this constant and corrosive male gaze, NOT to any moralistic overhang of Victorian prudery.

If your mission is to ensure that facilities aren't separated by sex where there is not reason to do so, then, fine, I'm with you. But look fairmindedly at all of the evidence of actual and possible detriment generated by men as a sex class. And look at the entire absence of evidence that a trans-identification somehow exempts a man from being regarded as a member of his sex class when it comes to the demographics of male violence and harrassment.

I'm still ordering that T shirt.