To ask what policy your Uni has on women's spaces?

[SerfTerf]

Those of you who have recent work or study experience.

Would you mind listing institution names and their policies?

NC if you need to of course.

Fwiw I don't really give a damn about toilets. I'd rather not share with men after cleaning toilets in a past life bit it's not the end of the world. But clearly there are women who mind, except they're not allowed to mind.

But lots of women do find cis offensive. Is that difficult to understand. Would you use other offensive words just because some sections of a particular group were ok with them.

Also, just because we discuss something and come to the conclusion that it's ridiculous, doesn't mean we don't understand. That's very patronising. It suggests that your feminism is so completely right that everyone who understands it would obviously agree, I could totally say the same about trans-inclusive feminism, but I can at least accept that you're not idiots, you truly do think this is true...and I absolutely don't.

birds Like I said, if someone in a group finds a particular term offensive, then they say so, and as a group we discuss alternatives that also don't invalidate other people. The group makes a compromise.

Nope No hierarchy here. Just women AND transwomen AND transwomen AND men. Or Transwomen AND women AND men... you get the idea. All different types of human being, all equal... but different.

Nobody at UEA is going to force you to use the word cis, but many people do, and nobody views it as offensive.

Because they aren't allowed to view it as offensive due to disciplinary and it just being supergross and old fashioned and laughable.

How is using the prefix trans implying they are lesser? I'm still confused. It might imply they're different, but they are.

IME, at the universities in the UK I've worked at as an academic (not giving names, sorry) women only spaces have been under threat from men's activists in student unions. "Men are frightened too" sort of stuff. or "It's sexist" to have women-only spaces.

I remember the same arguments when I was an undergrad in the late 70s/80s. But we had far more radical feminist activist groups then, and made cogent cases about why men-only spaces are entrenching partiarchy, and women-only spaces are not sexist.

I think nowadays, young people have been so brought up on the idea of "Everyone's equal now" that they can't see the deeper structure of patriarchal oppression & hierarchy.

Target in USA changed their stores bathroom policies to self indentifing. Leading to more reported assaults on women & children in three months than all stores had reported over the previous five years. Reference Link here

"It was the third such episode since Target had announced its policy, once for every subsequent month."

Perverts will take advantage of liberal laws, however well meaning. As Target proved perverts will take the easy route to victims.

I support PP suggestion of individual rooms for toilets with sinks which can be safely be used by anybody.

Or keep sex segregated toilets like we have now.

Letting all men into our toilets, will automatically be letting the perverts in too !

After all if we could tell by looking which men are nice and which are rapists, life would be a lot easier and the jails a lot fuller !

What is everyones opinion of transmen using womens toliets.

I bet most would be uncomfortable with that as they look too male to use them so the same people would be uncomfortable with thay

In campus (lecture theatres, department buildings, su bar, restaurant) was male and female toilets with unisex accessible ones too.

In halls I had my own bathroom but my boyfriend of the time was in halls with a shared toilet/bath/shower block. Think these are being phased out now as new halls built to replace that all have ensuite.

worridmum
Trans indentifing females are female and are therefore welcome in female sex segregated toilets and if society has to expand the bandwidth as to how a biology female looks, that is fine.

Still not open to letting males into female spaces.

I'm curious as to places that have male, female AND gender-neutral toilets: Is this because it's easier to just put in new toilets and designate them GN (rather than change plumbing in old ones), or specifically to retain male and female spaces whilst allowing non-binary/trans people to not have to pick? If the latter, would it be considered 'bad form' to use the toilet for the gender you identify as rather than biological sex?

It's just women haven't been consulted on this. That's what pisses people off.

What I would like to know is how trans activists have been so successful in such a short space of time campaigning.

if society has to expand the bandwidth as to how a biology female looks

hmmmmmmmm

I always wonder why people (particularly men) don't start to campaign to expand the notion of what masculinity is. And what "male" looks like.

Biology - hmmm, can't really be changed, except for what are known as "secondary sex characteristics" (eg breasts - you can cut those off).

But you can have all the surgery & hormones in the world, and still not change your chromosonal make-up. THat's biology - our endocrine system, our sex organs, the programming in our genes & chromosomes to produce sex hormones.

Note "sex" not "gender."

I'm with Germaine Greer on this: I'll accept people for who they say they are, but I will not participate in the misogynist fantasy (which goes back to Freud and "penis envy" that women are just men with a penis cut off.

I bet most would be uncomfortable with that as they look too male to use them
I want to share private spaces with people who have shared experiences. I don't give a fuck what someone looks like. If you're female, you know what it's like to have an unexpected period flood your knickers, to let out a bit of pee if you laugh too hard, and so on.

Oh and @SerfTerf my comment above about women's spaces was specifically about rooms/refuge spaces for women only to get away from men/harassment, have feminist group meetings etc. Not lavatories.

In my office building, which also contains teaching spaces, we have two sets for each sex of sex-segregated lavatories, 1 all-sex shower room, 3 all-sex (no sex specified) accessible lavatories, and 2 cloak-room like lavatories (part of the department is in an historic miniature former stately home), all-sex (no sex specified).

One of the all-sex (no sex specified) lavatories has a very stern notice about flushing and leaving the loo "in the state you find it" with a cctv camera very near by. I suspect this was because of skid marks. Sharing loos with men, I notice how blind they are to skidmarks!

I have had experience of staying in student halls with shared sex loos & showers - and coming in to a lavatory, seat up, and pee all around. Some men have quite disgusting toilet habits. For that, I'm glad of sex-segregated lavatory facilities.

Loops - i know this will sound outrageous to you but everything you said last night gives me such a whiff of how the nazis indoctinated folk about the jews, how they brainwashed kids with their hitler youth policy. Obviously i'm not equating with nazis but the policy/style seems similar. Write and teach your own version of events, exclude other trains of though, forbid any questioning, put in sanctions to make folk conform. I believe the communists had a similar set up.

Can you not see why people are really uncomfortable if not even shocked at your take on and acceptance on this pushing, forced acceptance of what is a new, relatively niche way of thinking?

Because they aren't allowed to view it as offensive due to disciplinary and it just being supergross and old fashioned and laughable.

Maybe haha you'd expect them to be trying to find other people who agree though, there just doesn't seem to be people who think that way. People are quite happy to refer to themselves as cis, haven't heard of any incidents of regular transphobia on campus and there definitely hasn't been any in my classes in the last 3 years.

Miss Our student union and university view all women as women, and all men as men, and all non-binary people as non-binary. I believe this is the case in the vast majority of universities now.

chocolate students, staff, and visitors at my university are welcome to use the toilets they feel most comfortable using with their gender-identity. So if a trans woman wants to use the women's toilets, fine, if she wants to use the gender neutral toilets, fine, if she wants to use the men's fine. Nobody is allowed to question anybody else using the toilet.

Nobody is allowed to question anybody else using the toilet.

That's terrifying.

bambam I think that's "Godwin's Law' isn't it, no but really, we are allowed to have debates and discussions, and to disagree with each other, but we have to be respectful of people's gender ID, sexuality, race, past experiences while doing it. When we all agree on something, and something else seems to completely contrary and nuts to us, we're also allowed to have a bit of a joke about it. If we didn't all agree, we obviously wouldn't mock people's differing views.

Very why? What gives anyone the right to question somebody else who is simply using the bathroom, obviously if someone is doing something wrong, or acting aggressive towards other people that's fine to challenge...but not just someone waiting to use the toilet/using the toilet/washing their hands etc...

Yet, Loops, you seem to mock anyone who doesn't conform to your brand of feminism as supergross, uncool, backwards, old-fashioned etc. There's more than a hint of ageism about this attitude too.

It's not true that there have been no issues with the gender neutral toilets at UEA, Loop.

This for example.

And you'll find a lot of gender critical people at UEA but can you imagine the backlash if they dared express their views.

Assassinated Eh, if it was as simple as this thinking being the way all older feminists think, and 'my' way being the way all younger people think yes, but it isn't. This trans-exclusion, gender-critical thinking isn't a majority view, not among women and not even among feminists. It might be on mumsnet, but I doubt that too. So it's a general displeasure at the way this thinking harms trans people, non-binary people, and women who don't want their whole identity to be tied to their biology.

The examples I gave were how my class decided, after discussing it, to view trans-exclusionary feminism, because to us...it IS gross, and very dated. Of course, a different class might have come to a different conclusion, I'm not actually in all the seminar groups, for all the modules.

My university has rebranded the disabled toilets as 'all gender inclusive toilets'. I'm not sure this was a great idea, because it's based on the assumption that disabled people don't really matter so you can use their toilets for all the other things you can't be bothered to properly make space for (see also, putting baby changing facilities in them). I'm pretty sure that the intention was to tick another equalities box in the cheapest way possible without actually caring about equality.

I notice the Edinburgh policy explicitly says that they do not consider repurposing the accessible toilets in this way acceptable, which I think is correct.