Co-op removes trans inclusive toilet policy

(Note that 'room' has a specific meaning in regs and relevant standards eg soundproofing fire resistance etc. It does not mean cubicle or partition.)

20.—(1) Suitable and sufficient sanitary conveniences shall be provided at readily accessible places.

(2) Without prejudice to the generality of paragraph (1), sanitary conveniences shall not be suitable unless—

(a)the rooms containing them are adequately ventilated and lit;

(b)they and the rooms containing them are kept in a clean and orderly condition; and

(c)separate rooms containing conveniences are provided for men and women except where and so far as each convenience is in a separate room the door of which is capable of being secured from inside.

The relevant bit of the Workplace regs is very very short. And clear.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/3004/regulation/20

That’s nice. Isn’t the case for many other parts of the country. That aside, this is from the policy for colleagues (staff). Not customer toilets.

Well since women have been excluded (and are still) by men in their single sex spaces, because many women have needs of their own and can't use mixed sex spaces, on a women's rights forum its obviously a bit of a serious interest, yes.

They're interested in where women can pee and cannot pee you see. And women's equality and access to society and spaces. This being a problem for women that is only now, slowly and very grudgingly being sorted out.

No one was offering women additional accessible facilities as they are men with gender identities, they were a whole lot more disadvantaged. Thank goodness for the signs that the law is getting places to be properly inclusive and think about everyone's needs and not just one group's eh?

Yes. The calculations for sinks within the toilet compartments, rather than in a washroom, mean 25% more toilet compartments have to be built to achieve the same turnover.

This graphic is a nice demonstration of how many women’s toilets are needed compared to men’s to achieve the same turnover. Women rarely get equity.

Only having mixed sex toilets is not the easy solution it is sometimes presented as-
Apart from the negatives about them from a health and safety point of view, and that they are less efficient for 'through-put' of users, etc., they are not building regs compliant in some jurisdictions.
New buildings in England have to have separate men's and women's toilets, acc to building regs, unless there isn't enough space in the building.
So toilets that are made available to the public in places like new supermarkets will have to have single sex toilets, and they would have to apply the sex=biological sex ruling to their use.

In terms of the Coop’s original statement re: use the toilet you feel safest in, I just want to point out the differences between feelings and real incidences.

I have been researching real incidences where safety is compromised. I have also looked at academic articles mentioning safety and toilets.

In the last few years, journal articles on toilets safety have focused on the viewpoint of transgender individuals by academics who do not have experience in building safety. Here’s an example of one by Ben Colliver:

https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/12661/1/Colliver-Duffus2021_Article_QueerSpaceToiletProvisionAcces.pdf

Note in the above that the tendency is to put word ‘safety’ in ‘quote marks’ when it concerns women. The safety of transpeople or non binary people is not put in quotes.

Articles like the one above don’t relate to what is happening in real life. It doesn’t discuss incidents of what happens in real life and ways to make toilets safer.

I spend a lot of my time trying to find out the how’s and why’s of what actually happened.
Building Regs are put in place for a reason, relating to health and safety incidents.

I want all people to be safe in toilets. To do this we should look at facts not feelings. Evidence shows single sex toilet cubicles (with door gaps) within a single sex washroom is the safest configuration. In a mixed sex environment, the required privacy becomes a problem. There are various ways to mitigate these to make them somewhat safer.

In the Coop wants some ideas on how to achieve safer toilets for everyone, I would gladly assist.

Of course there’s problems with mixed sex toilets. However, the fact there’s only one toilet in smaller places does give some safeguards but the toilet needs to be in a visible position near the entrance so it is as monitored as much as possible.

Also when there’s one toilet, it will often be accessible so as many customers can use it as possible.

As much as you want to @imdunfer you can’t change ADT or ADM or the myriad of other health and safety legislation, regulations and guidelines.

In places with no public toilets (much of the country!) new supermarkets will build one in and this may be part of a community scheme with the council. It’s not some sort of gotcha. It’s just local planning. Councils are under no obligation to provide public toilets and they cost a fortune to maintain (often due to misuse) so they look favourably on businesses that allow toilets to be used by the public on their premises.

Well the new one 200m from my house does.

I'm talking about staff toilets.

ETA. Smaller Co-ops don't tend to have customer toilets.

If all single sex toilets are replaced with unisex there will be fewer of them as they take up more space and people will take longer to use them so they will result in longer queues in busy venues

Plus the fact that unisex toilets are not as safe as communal single sex toilets with door gaps

In any case, the announcement was about staff toilets not customer ones

I shop in Coop stores in the north west and all of them that have a toilet have one toilet that is gender neutral. All the Aldi and Lidl strikes are the same, and they are much bigger stores.

Shell garages are all the same in this area.

So are all the 5 Costa shops I use, only they normally have more than one. KFC, Greggs, the list goes on and on.

And I've never seen a sexed disabled loo in my life.

There is no problem whatsoever with exclusively gender neutral facilities and it is doing no favours to the female side of trans discussions to insist that there is, it simply makes gender critical women sound as mad as the trans zealots (without the violence).

I don't think that's true. I'm not going to read it all but AI tells me that piece of legislation allows all toilet facilities to be gender neutral as long as each cubicle has hand washing facilities inside it and is lockable.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me.

@MintBird didn't specifically reference trans-men, though.

You still don't seem to grasp the issue. It's about where males can pee.

This thread is like swiss cheese.
Someone has been naughty, haven't they?

Anybody would think that the legislation is new when it obviously isn't.
Stonewall et al must take their fair share of the blame for misleading trans people, leading to TW using the incorrect spaces, including toilets, for their sex.
Meanwhile, I guess they might have buckets at the ready

I said, in my post, "And AFAIK, people with DSDs really don't like being bundled in alongside the cross-dressing/blue-haired brigade."

I did not say there is a 'problem' with blue hair. I mentioned it to identify the group/tribe of people who cross-dress and/or often dye their hair blue (I've no idea why). It's a cliché, yes, but certainly a tribal marker, alongside piercings and walking sticks.

Yes, there are small workplaces, and that's understood, and covered by the Workplace Regs., Building Regs etc.
That's not the point - the point is that where there are separate men's and women's facilities - which has been the usual configuration for yonks - all people have to use the facility which is designated for their biological sex.
They are single-sex spaces, not single gender spaces.

And back on topic.

The Co-Op could make things much clearer to comply with its responsibilities to all employees. Favouring men to the extent of depriving women of their rights, is not in keeping with its original ethos, as well as being unlawful.

Privacy and decency should be afforded to all employees. Not to the detriment of those who want a dedicated single sex space, according to laws that have been in place for decades.

Gosh. All his posts are gone. It wasn't me Pet Guv. My syntax was playing up.
But till the next time, toodleoo.

Returning to the original post - apart from the regulatory requirements of providing single sex spaces, what is being pointed out in the Co-op's statement is this recurring feature:
Organisations angsting about upsetting their trans et al. employees because they ave to tell them to respect single sex spaces, and in so doing they might as well put up big Jenny Holzer-style neon signs that they didn't give a damn about their women employees when they abandoned single sex spaces, and still don't give a damn about their women employees because they are still too busy angsting about their trans et al. employees' feelings.
[big sign; lots of neon]

It doesn't occur to all these organisations that they have women employees - most probably a lot more than trans et al. employees - who were never consulted about the withdrawal of their right to single sex spaces in the first place, and who are now very pleased to have that right re-established.

Where is the statement of concern about their women employees' privacy, dignity and comfort?

This is the not-so-hidden meaning behind these statements which have proliferated since it dawned on people that no, it's not complicated and yes, regulations and laws apply to everybody.