To not feel happy with gender neutral toilets at work?

[BalletBunting]

My company has recently relabelled all toilets on my floor as 'gender neutral'. As well as being rather confused as to what the need is for them (there are no trans people at my work as far as I'm aware) I don't like them, and I would prefer to keep the ladies loo as is. The nearest women's toilets is 3 floors up now!

I don't really feel comfortable going to the loo knowing that there are men in there but I don't really know how to bring this up and with who. I work for a large media company, fairly young/progressive and I don't want to cause trouble for myself.

There was also absolutely no consultation regarding the change. If anyone has been in a similar situation and managed to come to a different solution? Or AIBU and should drop it?

With mixed changing rooms

If I ever see one of those posters it's not going to remain there untouched.

The idea that we aren't allowed even to react to males invading our spaces

That sign is just appalling MenstruatorExtraordinaire. It needs to be torn down and replaced with NO MEANS NO.

That poster is shocking.

Plus a small majority of biological females (FTM), presumably. Or do those ‘women’s’ feelings not count? I find people insisting on referring to MTF as ‘men’ really gross. They might be biological men but they’ve been through a horrific process to get to the point of living their lives as women.

It's a disciplinary matter where I work! If a member of staff transitions (and there have been a few, although none at my workplace), an email goes round explaining that from X date, this person will be known by their new name and from that date the opposite pronoun will be used.

It's never made clear if that's retrospective though, and I have no idea what the etiquette is on these matters.

Tbh, there are some staff where I genuinely don't know if they're male, female, MTF or FTM. Even if we didn't have unisex bogs, it would be a brave person who challenged someone for being in the wrong one, just in case of gender misattribution.

WTF. I would not be happy for my DD to go to Plymouth university knowing her safety is compromised in this way.

To those talking about mooncups and not feeling able to wash them in the sink with male colleagues there - do you seriously wash your mooncup with your female colleagues there in single sex toilets? 🤢 That is seriously rank. I do NOT want to see or smell my colleagues period blood while standing beside them at the sink. I have never, ever seen that happen. I would report it to HR if I did. Rank.

I'd email HR, tell them about the health and safety law.

Play stupid and ask why you now have to go to the third floor? Ask how many 'gender neutral' people are employed.

I'd then point out that women do not just use toilets to urinate and defecate but many women have miscarriages, and if, as often happens, that is while she is at work how would the HR person feel a) being a person miscarrying with a man in the next cubicalor b) being a man witnessing it.

@mannersmakeththepig

"I find people insisting on referring to MTF as ‘men’ really gross. They might be biological men but they’ve been through a horrific process to get to the point of living their lives as women."
Many men have been through no process at all. They just self-identity as a woman and we are then expected to regard them as such. Their process is to wear a wig, wear women's clothes and make-up. A minority of men have been through surgery/surgeries.

If I am talking about transgender issues on here I will refer to MTF as men and FTM as women because they are, because you cannot actually change sex. You can only change socially-constructed gender. I am sorry you find it gross but I find it gross to do otherwise.

How do we distinguish between a man in drag or male Cross-dresser who still identifies as a male and a man who self-identifies as a woman because, frankly, most MTFs look like men dressed as women. They are both of male sex so both are men!

That is seriously rank. I do NOT want to see or smell my colleagues period blood while standing beside them at the sink.

I thought peopke emptied the cup over the toilet bowl?

What an offensive post by GoneGirl

to RiotLady - and I applaud your courage, tolerance and openness

Empty the cup down the toilet immediately. Might need a quick rinse in the sink and you probably want to wash your hands anyway.
I think dealing with a difficult period is bad enough when you're feeling awkward about cleaning up in a toilet with other women; it would be mortifying trying to deal with it in a toilet where men go too.

*Presumably people think it’s a good idea because it avoids the thorny issue of having to decide which toilets transgender employees should use•

As a few others - not many! - have said it’s also where there is an imbalance of sexes in the workplace or a handful of employ.

Also I don't understand why some women find it difficult to understand that other women are uncomfortable in enclosed places around strange men, especially when said enclosed places involve us getting partially undressed and carrying out intimate bodily functions.
Some women carry trauma from difficult experiences.
All women are vulnerable to abuse and assault - ranging from someone listening in, to shoving a phone under the door, to loitering in the loos waiting for you to come out, to knocking on the door, to making inappropriate comments when you're trying to deal with blood and puke, to full-on assault.
Single-sex spaces don't eradicate that risk, but they fucking well help A LOT.
If you don't need that security for yourself as an individual, then yay, go you. But please please appreciate that many other women and girls DO. And stick with us.

Also I don't understand why some women find it difficult to understand that other women are uncomfortable in enclosed places around strange men

I think they're being deliberately disingenuous

‘Process’ doesn’t mean ‘surgery’. Having an op is a long way after all the other shit you have to deal with and the mental health struggles.

A lot of male people go through shit. It doesn't give them a free pass to women's spaces. Absurd logic.

What is this "other stuff?" Let's be real, it is all about the psychological issues, isn't it?

So sorry, "other shit" they have to deal with.

I think they're being deliberately disingenuous

I concur.

I thought they are now claiming being transgendèr isn't a mental health condition:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7085341/Being-transgender-no-longer-recognized-disorder-World-Health-Organization.html

So what is it then?

Women have a lot of shit to deal with too.

Now also including the fact we have to allow males into previously female-only spaces.

manners

Re your post on Alabama: I wouldn’t choose toilets as a hill to die in and wouldn’t refer to a trans woman as a man.

However, I honestly believe that this focus on gender, undermining biological sex as the basis of female oppression and smearing anyone who wants to focus on sex not gender as being a T* or a bigot has made it far easier for shit like that to happen. It has undermined the branch of feminism which wants to focus on biological sex, and prioritised the branch which says biological sex is a spectrum and that gender is the essence of womanhood.

Allowing biological women to mobilise together to promote issues pertaining to sex without being told it isn’t “inclusive” is vital when it comes to reproductive rights.

Having an op is a long way after all the other shit you have to deal with and the mental health struggles.

Many men who identify as women do none of this. Cross-dressers are under the Stonewall trans umbrella, and they're just men who like dressing as women.

Very few men who identify as women have any sort of medical treatment (about 20%), and most of the ones who do only have things like breast implants, facial feminisation surgery and/or hormones. The number who have their penis removed is tiny - about 5%. Most of them are more like Eddie Izzard (who now identifies as trans).

And as a PP said, it's transphobic to suggest that transgender people have mental health issues.

I never referred to being trans as a mental health disorder, I was alluding to the elevated levels of mental health problems like depression that the trans population tends to have.