Full Council Chaos. Bristol City Council refusing to implement single sex services

They didn't have partitions they had walls. There was a drainage channel in front of the row of cubicles with a grille over it and between that and the door there was a slight raised bit, concrete I suppose. The cubicles stayed very dry from what I remember. I think the Victorians were quite smart with a lot of their designs.

No they didn't all close years ago. The one I went to as a child is still open. It's a long way from where I live now but it is still open. My point was it was a safe system. No one ends up being alone in a changing village.

You know pools aren't just used by schools so not always monitored by teachers. I didn't have swimming lessons in the pool in case that is confusing, just went with friends for fun and learned how to swim.

So being on separate sides meant it was single sex?presumably all that has to be done is pools designate cubicles on one side of the mixed changing rooms to female and the other side to male and we have single sex changing. Job done. You've solved the problem very cheaply.

I think you are making things up, well I know you are. Where have I tried to stop women being safe from being filmed by predatory men? Where have I said anything about single sex spaces? My point was I want people to undress in private. You've never been sexually assaulted by a woman so you don't think that matters but it does to some of us. I have seen women parading around naked in open plan changing rooms. It is a minority of women but they exist. Single sex doesn't have to mean communal changing and it doesn't mean you can't have cubicles for everyone.

If you think communal areas are most space efficient then that would mean an area open to everyone and I know you don't want that. You didn't think that through

My feelings and the feelings of other women who want privacy don't matter to you, you just want a situation that suits you. How selfish.

My doctor’s surgery has toilets with floor to ceiling walls and doors.

How many? My doctor's surgery has toilets with floor to ceiling walls and doors too but there are only two. There is no room or need for single sex toilets.

You’re missing my point. The liklihood of any particular problem happening varies by venue, the type of customers, the staffing levels and their training etc. The likelihood of some problem going unnoticed depends on many of the same factors and others too Eg in this case it is much more likely to be noticed if it is a place where people go with groups of friends. And there is also the consideration of what risks take the highest priority. Is the organization more concerned about filming under cubicle doors or people collapsing and going unnoticed?

This is why all organizations have to assess and manage their own risk. It is not a black and white situation where some particular design or working method is always going to be better or required. My doctor’s surgery has toilets with floor to ceiling walls and doors.

The same applies to anywhere that you have private unisex spaces instead of open single-sex ones. Someone passes out in a changing room cubicle with no gaps, they have the same risk of going unseen as someone in a loo with no gaps.

shooting up - they kept leaving their used needles in the cubicles.

Everything else - entirely depends on circumstances. What type of venue? How busy is it? what type of people? How many people? How many staff checks - once a day, every half hour or constantly on duty? There are going to be different hazards and risks in different buildings and with different populations, so the safest solution for an airport is going to be different from a beauty salon or old people’s club or a school. So there is no right answer and no wrong answer.

I was not talking about toilets in the first place and that is my last word on the matter but thank you for discussing it anyway.

Hygiene - that is a surely more related to cleaning standards and frequency rather than whether the facility is mixed or single sex?

Nope. The gaps make it easier to clean and allow better ventilation.

For example your point about medical emergencies and people getting trapped - I would assume that it would be mandatory to design in an emergency mechanism to open the cubicle from the outside but that is only of use if there are staff around to deal with this.

The staff have to realise you're in there. No gap, oops, they can't see that you're lying on the floor.

I suspect that @KeepToiletsSafe will be along in the morning to explain how she, as a non-staff bystander, spotted someone collapsed in a loo through the door gap and broke into the cubicle to prevent that woman from dying prematurely. Staff are not the only possible rescuers.

we had people shooting up in them.

How did you know that? Were they telling you, or could you see them under the gap? If one had collapsed from a bad hit, how would you have known to rescue them if not from the gap?

The mixed-sex facilities are all cubicles. It's not a given that the single-sex facilities will be open-plan, but they can be. A single-sex changing room with cubicles will probably have some users who change in the open. Hell, mixed-sex changing rooms have problems with men stripping off in the open.

What percentage of sexual assaults are ok in your book?

That is an invalid framing of the problem. It makes as much sense asking what type of cheese the moon is made of.

Given the following:

• We cannot reduce sexual assaults to zero.
• There are objectively fewer SAs in single-sex changing rooms than in mixed ones, despite mixed facilities being 100% cubicles.

The answer is that to minimise the number of SAs, we adopt single-sex changing facilities.

The difference is no one is expecting me to strip off in an open changing room with men or just to walk through to find a cubicle and have to witness naked men but it seems like it's fine to expect me to do that with women.

• The woman has the same body as you, reproductively, so cannot take advantage of the situation to force you to risk a pregnancy.
• Most cultures require a higher degree of modesty in front of the opposite sex than in front of one's own, probably because of the rape and pregnancy risk I mentioned in my previous point. The UK is no different.
• It's accepted in the UK to share open plan changing rooms with one's own sex but not the opposite sex because the requirement for modesty is lower.

I wonder what the stats are for the sort of changing facilities I detailed in a Victorian swimming pool? I bet the are so low as to not register.

I'd expect them to be pretty high, because the lack of floor gaps means you can't see two pairs of feet where there should be only one, and the noise of the pool so nearby would cover the sounds of a struggle and even screaming because kids often scream when in the water.

I wasn’t talking about toilets. But I have discusssd this further in other posts.

i’m sure you’re right that many/most women prefer single sex loos.

I think this is much more nuanced and less black and white than how you describe it. For example your point about medical emergencies and people getting trapped - I would assume that it would be mandatory to design in an emergency mechanism to open the cubicle from the outside but that is only of use if there are staff around to deal with this. I was talking about leisure centres. There are always staff in leisure centres. Other places do not have staff though.

Or your point about sex and drug misuse being more common. How do you know? In the leisure centre I worked in which had single sex loos with doors that did not go to the floor, we had people shooting up in them.

Hygiene - that is a surely more related to cleaning standards and frequency rather than whether the facility is mixed or single sex?

Other posters have made really good points already in reply to this post.

As well as what they said I understand that a lot of trans identifying females (transmen) are not only keenly aware that their at-first-glance male appearance may make some other women uncomfortable or cause them to have an initial knee jerk fear reaction, they often take pains to avoid causing other women that discomfort.

I think they even have apps which help them find mixed sex spaces so a lot of them clearly consider everyone's needs if they feel they pass convincingly enough as male.

Some might even say that their behaviour in attempting to avoid putting anyone else out is quite typically female.

This argument always makes me smile.

To have any effect, it has to shock or concern us - "Heck, I'd not thought of that!" or "Oh my God, we've made things worse, haven't we?"

And for that to work, we need to have not heard it a hundred times already believe it.

Instead, it usually showcases GC posters' knowledge (the demographics involved, the likelihood of surgery - and the limits of this), their more genuinely inclusive feminism (transmen are usually pretty welcome in anyway) and the proportionate strength of their argument against transwomen (statistically so much more likely to be a threat).

Oh, and also, the ignorance of the person who posted it of the details of the SC judgement and/or guidance (which address this), and apparently sex-ist readiness to mention transmen only as supporting actors to the main character of the transwomen (telling).

Add to this the ploddingly obvious faux-naivety every single time - "something I read recently did give me pause..." - and all it does is show that not only are we unconvinced and unconcerned by this... but that poster is, too.

Not the strongest argument - but one of the more entertaining.

My last post missed off a couple of lines. The compromise, which many people have said, in a communal single sex changing room with a few cubicles (with door and partition gaps below and above) for those who want more privacy eg. Have a young child of the opposite sex with them.

Yet that is the cheapest option and the safest because everyone of the same sex is together. It will be very easy to ventilate and clean. It isn’t great for those who want a bit more privacy.

How?

The economic reality is that unisex toilets cost a lot more - they cost a lot more to create and run. They are less safe and less hygienic. They are scientifically proven to contain more pathogens. Women particularly avoid them. You have to create 25% extra unisex units than single sex units due to the extra time spent in each compartment. Misuse (sex and drugs) is a problem due to the private design. Hidden cameras are a problem due to the privacy and the excess equipment you have to have in a unisex toilet. If you have any kind of emergency, medical etc including being trapped, they are worse.

How do you manage health and safety, if it’s overriden by the absolute privacy?

I experienced these cubicles round the side of the pool. Boys changed on one side of the pool and girls on the other side. So the there was single sex sides of the pool with teachers monitoring it. As it was swimming lessons everyone was changing at the same time. It was effectively single sex changing areas

How did the Victorian baths cubicles work then? Surely the bottom of the doors and partitions rotted from the chlorine and water?

Surely we’re at the point now where the law is so clear that just a letter before action should have the lawyers having a quick think and deciding their clients need to comply pronto?

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This is a thread about changing facilities in Bristol. Afaik the last Victorian style swimming baths closed some years ago so you’ll have to go elsewhere for that.

This thread is discussing single sex services in Bristol, not you asserting your needs and wishing to deny others the choice.

How odd. Most people just get on with changing, often with their back to the room, they don’t stand around looking at other people.

Surely a single sex communal changing room with cubicles suits the most amount of people and is most space efficient? In my experience in a single sex space the majority of women are happy to change quickly and I’ve never seen a queue in the places I use.

You appear to be the exception but I think most would prefer to minimise their risk of being filmed or spied on by predatory men. Sad that you would like to deny women and girls that protection.

I never suggested Bristol should do anything. When open changing rooms were brought up I said I wouldn't want that. Fortunately at my two local pools they have plenty of cubicles and no one gets undressed in public but I hope no one suggests that cleaning costs would reduce if they got rid of the cubicles.

Because unless you are suggesting that Bristol Council should do this, it's not clear what you are suggesting.

Why ask me, I'm not in Bristol.