I’ve not made anything up. But you are entitled to disagree with me.

So you are agreeing I have lots of scientific facts about toilets.
I believe policy should be based on facts.

So what should policy be based on?

yes any reasonable person would agree that policy should be based on facts. You can come to a different opinion with the same set of facts - hence different Chancellors will make different decisions about the economy. Or you can choose to focus on some facts and, for whatever reason, not think about other relevant facts.

Reasonable people however do not accuse other people of making stuff up when it doesn’t fit in with their opinion.

oh I see you tagged your post to the wrong post of mine. Like I did you. I should have deleted my post or gone back to tag the correct post of yours to make it clearer.
I will do that in future.

I am really interested in opinions. It’s where I look and see if there’s common ground and concerns. There was a poster on here saying they were going to spend money on a portaloo painted in flag colours especially for trans people and allies and lots of people had a long discussion - in the end I think they realised that wouldn’t work.

Tell me your relevant facts regarding toilet design.

I am interested in your opinion still on what happens with toilet design. There’s 3 options really.

1. keep single sex toilets as single sex toilets.
2. Make all toilets mixed sex and private
3. change building regulations, legislation, British standards and HSE guidance, and possibly parts of the Sexual Offences Act so that all existing toilets are open to everyone.

Which of the facts show that the best solution for health and safety is 2 or 3?

What relevant facts do you think KeepToiletsSafe is missing?

Did you actually read any of what @Keeptoiletssafe wrote? She is talking scientific fact - she has repeatedly said, she collects the data, she looks at the reports, she has the numbers. Why are you so reluctant to engage with that?

eta - and policy should be based on fact, not opinion

Ahh am multitasking so forgot to add a sentence with 2.

I will repeat the options again.

1. keep single sex toilets as single sex toilets.
2. Make all toilets the mixed sex and private design . However to fulfil building regulations these designs still have to be divided into Male and Female first. Once those numbers are satisfied, there can be unisex pictogram on the door.
3. change building regulations, legislation, British standards and HSE guidance, and possibly parts of the Sexual Offences Act so that all existing toilets are open to everyone.

I do not think the best solution is 2 and 3, it is often/usually 1. It is going to be a different decision for each venue. I was talking from the very beginning about swimming pool changing rooms (not toilets) where it is now the norm to have unisex facilities. If you have single sex pool changing rooms, you also need a mixed sex disabled changing room because you get mothers bringing their teenage or adult disabled sons to the pool - and vice versa. You also need family changing rooms because, in single sex changing, children of 8 and above have to change in the changing room of their own sex but these days mothers bringing their 8, 9 and 10 yo sons are mostly not willing to send them alone to the male changing rooms. And the same is true in reverse. So a pool either needs one unisex changing or 4 separate changing rooms. (And please don’t tell me this is not true. I used to work in a leisure centre and when we had single sex changing, I had to deal with constant complaints about boys being in the ladies).

Single sex changing works very well at my local pool. There are signs up saying children over 8 years old need to be in the changing rooms for their sex, or in one of 2 family changing rooms if older.

These family changing rooms have their own shower and have two doors, one from the main corridor and one from a single sex changing room (one family room is next to the males, the other next to the females). There is a red and green light system outside to show when the room is occupied and it can also be locked from the inside.

These family rooms are also used by carers and those with disabilities. You might have to wait to get changed, but it's never long.

I realise the discussion prior was with regard to single sex toilets.

Do you normally tell people who have a different opinion to you they are not prepared to listen?

No, KTS doesn't. You can tell this yourself from the length and detail of her answers to you. The patience she shows in explaining her research is extraordinary.

I perhaps wouldn't respond to this slip into frustration by assuming she's rude - the evidence doesn't support it - but insteqad asking whether I'd missed something so self-evident that it brought that about - which I'd gently suggest the evidence does support.

You don't seem to be distinguishing very clearly between data, facts, evidence, anecdote, personal experience, policy, overview, patterns etc. yourself. Yes, they all have a complex interrelationship. Agreed, there are no absolutes (see my earlier post - there's no point in repeating this as a core part of your argument, as it's so obvious).

The question is how all these elements interrelate and the best - if imperfect - conclusions that can be drawn from them. On this, KTS's posts are hugely convincing.

I've a feeling that, if you were to come back at her with long pages of equivalent research supporting your view, she'd leap in with a degree of enthusiasm rarely seen about toilets to debate it in depth. You're not doing, though - and she's still patiently engaging regardless.

"We are talking policy here, not scientific fact."

Very Trumpy.

Thank you. This is the kind of pragmatic solution that works when the needs of different groups are considered - rather than the niche demands of transactivists for access to the opposite sex undressing.

As a general point it's very interesting that so many transactivists who try to dominate threads on here usually resort to rudeness, abuse and hostility when their flimsy arguments (that have been shared hundreds of times before) are dismissed by those who respect the importance of women's rights and child safeguarding and have done the research.

They should make all toilets gender neutral. That will piss off all the feminist identifying transphobes types.

Tell me you haven't read the thread without telling me you haven't read the thread 😂

Or the SC judgement and subsequent guidance.

Honestly, the language used here - it's so childish, it never stops astonishing me.

Abuse is all they've got left now. Oh... along with coercive control, bullying and violence.
#sadtimes

It feels kind of ironic that the single thing that frustrates me most posting on here is how badly visitors like this make their case. It's sometimes genuinely upsetting - there are vulnerable trans people out there, and these are the voices representing them?! It's doing them damage - the decline in public support shows this.

And that in turn makes us cynical about the motives of such posters in the first place. They surely can't believe they're making a positive difference, so what kind of people are they and what's their motivation for being here? Any new lurker will, at the least, be struck by their tone, and anyone with more time, encouraged by it to ask the difficult questions that brought us to where we are now.

A more measured approach could have got society through this and out the other end by now, with everyone feeling as seen (SEEN!) and supported as possible in a complex situation.

#sadtimes indeed.

The sentiment they express is also incredibly childish indeed. "Let's make life more dangerous for all women and girls, just to spite some women." Way to show you care about vulnerable people - not!

Did you actually read anything I said?

So earlier you said:
Where I live some people complain about the leisure centre having mixed sex changing but I don’t see the issue because everyone has a lockable cubicle with high walls and walls and door going to the floor.

I am not an expert on changing rooms. However there are crossovers with toilet cubicles. When I have chatted to toilet manufacturers and cleaners, a big thing is maintenance. Toilets literally get everything thrown at them, and they can need a thorough clean of urine, faeces, vomit, blood and semen. If you use a mop with lots of chlorine to disinfect, it starts rotting panels that go down to the floor and it’s difficult to get rid of detritus that builds up along the edges and behind the door as you have to get into the toilet and shut the door behind you. In a leisure centre I have never come across cubicle partitions that are touching the floor of a swimming pool because of chlorine rotting the base and the water expanding the door so it sticks. The humidity in them must be bad. Another poster and yourself were talking about proper walls between each cubicle which I can imagine wouldn’t be so much of a rotting problem. The cost of doing this is much more substantial.

It’s good to be talking about design but there’s been many experts that have been doing this for decades and there’s rules and regulations to follow if you want to be compliant with building control - which I know a lot about regarding toilets.

You also talked about safe unisex spaces and said:

However, I think it is possible to build and manage safe unisex spaces. The economic reality is that unisex spaces usually cost a lot less to create and run. It’a both a question of what level of risk we are prepared to accept and also what level of cost.

You said that with such certainty about unisex spaces, as if it were fact. I know that the economic reality is that unisex toilets cost a lot more to create and run per toilet unit. For instance you need mechanical ventilation, a separate VAD device in each toilet room, a dryer and washbasin for each facility so the plumbing and electrics are more expensive to connect. You need 25% more units in total to achieve the same turnover because of the time spent washing hands (though men are scientifically proven not to wash their hands as often) inside the compartment. The positioning on unisex toilets is paramount too as universal toilets, with outward or inward opening doors, must open onto a well-lit corridor or circulation space. You can’t retrofit them into a single sex toilet block, behind a door. The layout when entering, exiting and using a toilet room or cubicle should cater for the safety, privacy and dignity of users. Toilet cubicle doors should only open into single-sex toilet accommodation.

I know that risks to anyone at their most vulnerable are much greater. In toilets, the most vulnerable groups are anyone having a medical emergency, women and children. As well as the extra cost, those are the demographics that you have to be prepared to risk by making everything private. Even in the case of an emergency evacuation from a building, ensuring everyone is out is harder.

There was an article about the joys of ‘gender neutral’ toilets by Adrian Chiles. Alastair Campbell also likes them. Men who like a long sit down in private like them. They can’t or won’t see the dangers.

Thank you both. That did actually lead very nicely into my post. It wasn’t planned because it took me a while to write it.

💐for @Keeptoiletssafe for her work and information - and patience!

Indeed! Her patience astounds me, and her work is so incredibly useful.

👏

I am putting off a load of cleaning today. What you are seeing as patience is more like me trying to avoid housework by doing something more interesting and using my knowledge for better use 😂. I kid you not, I am now off to clean the bathroom…