Gender neutral toilets in Primary School

[Nanodust]

So a recent visit to a new school that has opened also included confirmation that it will be the last Primary School to have gender segregated toilets.

All new Primary schools in the area will be ‘unisex’ (gender neutral) as described by Head.

Thoughts on this? I’m not against gender neutral toilets, I am indifferent as a toilet is a toilet. However for younger kids it’s sometimes the only place to get some headspace etc. I wonder how it will all go....

Justabunch because there seems to be a disconnect between what parents think of their little boys and how little boys are actually behaving. No parent would dream of thinking their boy was the one who could be capable of sexual assault/ inappropriate comments/ or just teasing with regards to sex but clearly some of those parents are raising boys like that and I’m struggling to understand how it happens. Most of the comments in this thread seem to be dead against mixed sex toilets at primary age, and imply that it’s beacause the boys somehow can’t be trusted (rather than the girls) to behave in a suitable manner. Is it because of hysteria, a real threat, or simply trying to eliminate any threat from the very rare instance of a child who sexual assaults? I don’t know the answer but from MN I very much get the imopression that it’s a real threat. Therefore I conclude that more parents have troubled boys that are disrespectful to girls from a worryingly young age.

I think the difference between school gates and toilets is gender roles (gates) vs biological needs

I think this is a really important point.

Treating girls and boys differently due to gender (social roles) is absolutely unnecessary e.g. uniforms, subjects, expectations of behaviour....

Treating girls and boys differently due to sex (bodily differences) is a completely different thing.

Sex is not gender.

I think some of the solutions mentioned in this thread are good and if more schools had sex neutral individual cubicles with all the facilities in them, I think it would be great, a lot of sex role nonconforming people have fought for a while to get more of those in public places. If it's just relabelling more typical public toilets as unisex with no supervision then it will cause problems which is why women fought to have sex-segregated toilets in the first place. It wasn't because they thought they were victims, they weren't imagining what was happening, it's because they were survivors and knew what was going on. I find the idea that women recognizing and trying to put in safeguards from openly available crime statistics (even if we don't yet have sex-based hate crimes recognized and recorded nationwide yet) being deemed as old-fashioned, hysterical and are somehow at fault for how social systems are built and maintained really bizarre and insulting to the hard work women have been doing to make social change.

I find it interesting that many international organizations and charities that work in the area are open and show evidence that one of the best way to keep girls in school and safe in school and to help women get better access to medical facilities and public in general is private sex-segregated facilities and yet it seems people think it's progressive to want to throw those away. Amnesty International, Oxfam, United Purpose, UN, WHO...exactly where are people get the information that leads them to feel that mixed-sex public facilities will be better?

Rumpled Both of my daughters are primary age and have already dealt with being sexually harassed and threatened by boys who have already learned the power in using a girls' body against her. When dealing with it, the common view from other parents was, unfortunately "My darling didn't do that but I know his friends talk and act like that" often with very vivid examples they'd witnessed and done nothing about and discussing how carefully they were monitoring their child's media usage unlike other parents they knew (some of the threats were clearly inspired by porn). There are growing numbers of child-on-child sexual assaults as has already been posted in this thread, the vast majority being boy-on-girl. So yeah, there are boys who are disrespectful and harming girls and some will be our own and someone having a son who is respectful doesn't change broader recorded social trends and concerns. The how it happens is a complicated mix of things most of which are out of parents control but yeah, recognizing that our sons could be part of the issue is a good step in dealing with it but not sure it should impact toilet designs.

Women are raped in unisex loos such as the examples in india.
India is still waaay behind Britain on womans rights. There's no comparison. What might now be necessary in a society that still badly devalues women in just about every respect, isn't necessarily right in the society we live in the the uk. It conflating two very different issues.

Women didn't campaign for sex segregated toilets in the uk. It was what was done. In a patriarchy. It is a left over from when much of the body and bodily functions, both sexes but especially a females was considered shameful.

because thats what removing sex segregated spaces is really about. Its about appeasing a minority with mental health needs at the expense of women and girls.
OR rethinking and challenging what our concepts of gender are. Asking ourselves questions like why it is healthy to be teaching our women and girls they have to cover up and segregate themselves to protect themselves from a whole 50%ish of the human species? Why we should be more shamed by being naked in front of a man than a woman? Why we should feel embressed asking for a tampon in front of a man but not another woman. It absolutely is chicken and egg.

I mean deliberate looking over and under toilet cubicles and doors.
We had this at primary school. It was a girls school. It was dealt with. It's not a nice thing regardless of gender. Bad stuff in life should be dealt with by dealing with those who do it, not telling a whole gender it is inevitable that they will be a victim if they don't keep themselves apart.

Why is having separate toilets for bodily differences making people feel like they need to protect themselves or see themselves as victims? Is this how people with disabilities who use disabled toilets also feel?
Again this is a very different issues. I would welcome every loo to be an accessible unisex loo... Disabled loos aren't segregated because of gender etc, theyre segregated because it is sadly impractical and uneconomical to equip every toilet as a disabled toilet.

Treating girls and boys differently due to gender (social roles) is absolutely unnecessary e.g. uniforms, subjects, expectations of behaviour.... Treating girls and boys differently due to sex (bodily differences) is a completely different thing.
But here where the issues get confused. Treating boys and girls due to bodily differences is the difference between offering man a urinal or toilet and woman a toilet and sanitary disposal. That's all you actually need to do to accommodate bodily difference. All of the arguments I've seen on here are actually about gender

who are you people who have sons who piss all over floors and toilets? Teach them how to use a fecking toilet rather than acting like that is the norm. It is not.

Primary school toilets have been gender neutral in some places since I was a child, and I am OLD.

We never had gender specific toilets in school and I’ve grown up without being affected in any way by this. I always thought it was weird when toilets were separated, but it’s pretty normal now... although not needed at all.

Asking ourselves questions like why is it healthy to be teaching our women and girls they have to cover up and segregate themselves to protect themselves
It's not about covering up and segregating themselves in daily life, just in those activities which involve getting undressed and performing intimate activities.
We're not 'shamed' by being naked in front of a man, we just reserve the right to decide which men we get naked in front of. In my case, it's a sexual partner and HCPs (chaperoned) and nothing is going to change that.
The reason being is that men have a tendency to objectify and sexualise women's bodies, yes even the nice polite ones. I'm not an object, my body belongs to me and me alone and I have brought my daughter up the same way.

@Toffeelatteplease perhaps I've misunderstood, but you want to encourage girls and women to be naked in front of boys and men, and to not be embarrassed by that? I wonder why you find being embarrassed/uncomfortable being naked in front of the opposite sex to be a problem? Or even in front of the same sex. Why is being ok with being naked better than preferring not to?

Is the answer to this to force this to happen, and for girls/women simply to have to learn to either deal with it or avoid those situations? What would you expect boys/men to do to enable this situation to happen without negative consequences for girls/women?

Why should we feel embarassed asking for a tampon in front of a man but not another woman
Well I've always regarded whats happening with my menstrual cycle as private information, to be shared only with the people I wanted to share it with. That doesn't include random men. It's called privacy. Obviously you don't feel the need to be private about your bodily functions, which is fine, but I don't see any need for others to feel the same way.

@Toffeelatteplease "Why we should be more shamed by being naked in front of a man than a woman?"

It's actually a reversal of women's rights and freedoms to peddle this bollocks. Its not shame, it is privacy and safety.

If you want to be seen naked by males or females, fine. Most of us do not want to be seen naked by any random person. But when we do need to be in potentially 'compromising' situations such as toileting and changing, most women want to be in female only spaces. Not because we are ashamed of anything, but because we want our bodies to be private, especially our sex organs, we don't want men seeing them.

"All of the arguments I've seen on here are actually about gender" How so?

You keep talking about 'gender', why is that? Most people are talking about sex, biological sex, not notions of gender.

@Rumpledfaceskin "But is all this sex segregation (I’m talking kids areas here, men/women are different) a reaction to the deterioration of young boys behaviour/parenting over the past couple decades? Or are they inherently more likely to be inappropriate around girls? Because that’s not my experience from childhood so can only assume it’s the former."

When I was at school the juniors toilets was sex segregated I am sure. It is only in nursery or primary where the toilets were shared. So from age 7 or 8 the toilets are always (as far as I know) sex segregated.

So it is not a new thing.

Are boys becoming more sexualised/sexually aware, are they developing earlier, are girls?

I think yes, to all.

Girls are starting period and growing breasts earlier, so they are more like adult women at 11 than little children. Some may even start period at 8,9, 10. Whether the alternative changes happen for boys earlier, I am not sure.

Both girls and boys are more likely to be exposed to porn (through the internet) than my generation, and even raunchy music videos were not part of my experience as a young child.

Maybe it is not just children are naughty/naughtier or less supervised but that they are treated sometimes more like adults and with more freedoms. Also, our male-led society likes to sexualise girls and women, so if we treat boys more like men, and men see it sometimes as their right to chase, pursue, touch, chat up, control etc women, why would we be surprised if boys want to do it?

Toffeelatteplease "Menstruation is just a normal part of everyday life, why should girls be embarrassed by it in front of either men or women? Whilst there's no need for shouting about it, it shouldn't be hidden , taboo or something to be embarrassed about either."

I don't think it is taboo, I think it i private. Just like taking a shit. I don't feel the need to announce to the office what I am off to do! It's private. You are confusing privacy with shame, they are not the same. Yes, some women and girls are embarrassed about periods and gynecological things but that will not be dealt with by forcing them to share with men, just because a minority of women want it.

In neither a unisex nor a ladies loo do I sit down in front of another human being and do my business. Both offer privacy (not as private as your home loo but a relative privacy).

No one is saying that you must be naked in front of anyone!! There's no conflict between respecting a woman, or any human beings right to privacy, and asking why we should be more shamed by being seen naked in front of a man than a woman.

Not being seen being. In neither case a are you seen.

@Toffeelatteplease you are asking a question, (others are welcome to answer) but I am saying your question does not make sense to me.

I am not shamed by either being seen by a male or a female.

You could ask why for some it is preferable not to be seen naked or to be on a potentially compromised position like changing etc by a male.

But if you are asking that can you also answer why you think we do already have sex segregated facilities for things that involve removing clothes/bathing/toiletong etc. Your opinion I mean.

Primary Schools go up to age 11 don’t they. I think at that age they would be better separated, some girls can hit puberty quite early.

No one is saying you must be naked in front of anyone . Well, thats the impression I got from your post. That we should encourage girls not to have boundaries about getting undressed or changed in front of boys/men.

coffeeforone I think it's age 8 at present, which I think is quite appropiate. That is in line with boys being allowed with their mothers in female changing rooms.
I remember my sons having to get changed for PE behind their desks right up to age 11, and a lot of the kids hated it, both boys and girls.
As far as toilets go, I prefer sex segregated toilets, tbh, though unisex ones are ok if they are properly secure and have a mini handbasin.

I wouldn't use gender neutral toilets and wouldn't expect dc to. I still vividly remember some pervy male spying on me over the top of the toilet wall with a mirror in the female toilets. I still check toilets every time I go in!

I doubt it would occur to 5 year olds. The toilets in home are used by both genders. What does it matter, Vulnerable patients in hospital is a completley different debate

Do you have a row of cubicles in your home toilet, that you share with 30 other people? It's not comparing like with like. Your home toilet is totally private to you, and only shared by those you want to share it with.

@AssassinatedBeauty was coming on to say something bland like 'public toilets are not like ones in a private home' but your answer is much better!

If we are taking about loos then let's get what we want!

Sex segregated

Disabled( need more of these)
Anyone/family