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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To not feel happy with gender neutral toilets at work?

778 replies

BalletBunting · 30/05/2019 13:01

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?

OP posts:
Marinkazurie · 31/05/2019 11:23

Even with wall to floor cubicles, I think it's weird having unisex toilets. I've never used any, everywhere I go has single sex ones thank fuck

OldCrone · 31/05/2019 11:29

Why would they have higher levels of mental health problems, manners? Is that linked to being trans or just coincidence? Many people who aren't trans also have mental health conditions. Should we give them everything they demand as well?

And what 'other shit' do they have to deal with? I'm thinking of people like Philip/Pippa Bunce and Eddie Izzard in particular, but what 'other shit' do trans people in general have to deal with?

Marinkazurie · 31/05/2019 11:29

And as a PP said, it's transphobic to suggest that transgender people have mental health issues. But they can have mental health issues and be transgender at the same time how is that transphobic?

OldCrone · 31/05/2019 11:32

But they can have mental health issues and be transgender at the same time how is that transphobic?

Of course, but manners seemed to be suggesting that having mental health problems was somehow linked to being trans. I've asked them to elaborate, so maybe they'll explain what they mean.

birdsdestiny · 31/05/2019 11:33

The thing that is always fascinating in these threads is how people treat transwomen. They talk about their feelings and concerns and their mental health issues. Womens feelings and concerns and mental health issues are ignored or minimised. Honestly its like a flashing neon sign that peole see women and transwomen differently. If you truly believed that TWAW you would treat transwomen as women but you don't.

AlexaAmbidextra · 31/05/2019 11:37

Might need a quick rinse in the sink

No. Don’t give your mooncup a ‘quick rinse’ in a communal sink. Said sink will end up with microscopic splatters of blood all over it. Take a bottle of water into the cubicle and rinse it out over the toilet. Presumably you wouldn’t wash your reusable sanpro in the handbasin?

RiversDisguise · 31/05/2019 11:43

Many women's hands get quite bloodied during tampon changes anyway.

It is like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for me.

Aridane · 31/05/2019 11:44

Do you know what changes when bathroom/changing facilities become mixed sex as opposed to single sex?

An increase in sex attacks

What - in the workplace?

OldCrone · 31/05/2019 11:45

Womens feelings and concerns and mental health issues are ignored or minimised.

A higher proportion of women (22.5%) than men (16.8%) indicated they had some feelings of depression or anxiety

from here: www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/measuringnationalwellbeing/2016#how-good-is-our-health

Men (however they identify) are less likely to suffer from mental health issues than women. We should prioritise the wellbeing of women.

Ereshkigal · 31/05/2019 11:47

Said sink will end up with microscopic splatters of blood all over it.

I think you'll find they often do, not just period blood Hmm what do you think people do when they cut themselves?

OldCrone · 31/05/2019 11:49

What - in the workplace?

I've been sexually harassed at work. So have many other women. Why are you surprised at this?

Aridane · 31/05/2019 11:52

Have your single sex bathrooms, stay in your lane, fight against another maligned group, make a big fuss about nothing. Whatever you do, keep concentrating on your bathroom facilities and not the toxic rape culture or gender pay gap or any of the important stuff...

To be honest, I strongly prefer single sex public toilets but don't mind gender neutral ones at work, at the small cafes etc where there is just one toilet, and in my home,

However, I am much more exercised about the erosion of abortion rights in the US, gender pay gap, FGM etc. Yes, think end of the wedge, slippery slope, can care about more than one thing - but still...

birdsdestiny · 31/05/2019 11:53

I imagine it wouldn't come as a surprise to the women in my local city council offices either, a man planted cameras in the toilets and took hundreds of images.

Aridane · 31/05/2019 11:56

At work we have a 'men's toilet' and a 'women's and guests toilet'

Now that really is the worst of both worlds! Takes a particular type of genius to come up with that

mannersmakeththepig · 31/05/2019 12:16

@oldcrone

Well, according to one source, based on the US, around 7% of the general population suffer from depression, around 18% anxiety - those figures jump to around 50% of the trans community. 41% of the trans community have been reported as attempting suicide - 9 times the rate amongst the non-trans community. In the uk, suicide attempts amongst young trans people are 27%, 89% have seriously considered it and 72% have def harmed (all stats for trans). Same stats for overall trans community in UK are 48% suicide attempt / 84% considered it / 55% have been diagnosed with depression.

As for why, a study in the Lancet a few years ago linked the increased prevalence of mental health issues with the discrimination trans people experience.

There is a vast wealth of scientific study into similar correlates for LGB communities (studied for longer, so more info). I’m not equating them, I am simply pointing out that the link between discrimination and increase mental health problems is fairly well established.

I am not minimising or ignoring the importance of women’s feelings at all. But I don’t think it has to be one or the other. Referring back to the OP, women still have a single sex bathroom they can use in this workplace - and we don’t actually know why this office changed its policy - everyone is quick to assume it’s a trans thing, whereas it could just as easily be an operational reason based on the gender split in the workforce.

A study at LSE showed that making bathrooms mixed reduces waiting times for women (slightly increased them for men) without structural changes being required.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 31/05/2019 12:35

I'd use anything else other than mixed-sex toilets. I would not feel comfortable and my personal experience is that such toilets are usually filthy and disgusting because of men pissing on the seat and floor. Except in cases where women's toilets have been used as squat toilets I have never experienced this in single-sex toilets.

NKFell · 31/05/2019 12:39

@boobirdblue why do we bother with CRB/DBS checking? You can't honestly think everyone who wants to work with children is a paedophile? Why do you lock your front door? You don't honestly believe everyone walking past your home is a burglar? Are all men dangerous? Absolutely not, most aren't in the slightest and are just normal people. Are all women harmless? Absolutely not, some awful human beings are women. But, you surely aren't trying to say that men and women pose and equal threat? Separate toilets is a very small way of minimising a risk and I'm sure most men prefer the idea of separate toilets, even just for privacy.

NKFell · 31/05/2019 12:43

@AlexaAmbidextra is blood worse than faeces then? Or would you want someone washing their hands in the toilet too?

riotlady · 31/05/2019 12:50

@NKFell if you’re getting poop on your hands, you’re doing it wrong

TalkingintheDark · 31/05/2019 12:52

Plus a small majority of biological females (FTM), presumably. Or do those ‘women’s’ feelings not count?

@mannersmakeththepig I’d like you to do a small thought experiment with me, if you will.

Imagine, for a moment, that there were no male people at all who identified or wished to identify as women.

Imagine that it was only a small number of biologically female people who were “trans”: who wished to transition, be seen and treated as male. Imagine the Trans Rights movement was made up simply of those people, and their allies. No trans males at all.

Do you think for a millisecond that Trans Rights Activism would have taken off in the way it has? Would have made all the massive gains it has so astonishingly quickly, SO much more quickly than any actual civil rights movement you care to mention?

Would have been able to effect such global, far-reaching social and political change in a mere moment, would have brought about the changes in public and corporate policy that we are seeing enacted at breakneck speed, with zero consultation, zero concern for or awareness of the impact on other vulnerable, disadvantaged, marginalised groups?

Do you really think that a movement led by and centring the concerns of biologically female people would have gained even a hundredth of the traction that the “Trans Rights” movement has? Would have had the power this movement does?

In this world where women in NI and Alabama, Georgia etc don’t even have reproductive control over their own bodies? This world where sexual assault and harassment of women by men are endemic, where violence of all types by men against women and girls is endemic, where FGM and child marriage still thrive? Where women can’t even speak out about a subject that directly affects them without being monstered, threatened, fired, assaulted?

If you really believe that then there is really no hope for you. This movement has made the enormous gains it has and so quickly because it is led and driven by those who already have the power in terms of the sex class divide: the male class.

You keep talking about how it’s the “real” misogyny we need to tackle and this is nothing; harmless - but you are mistaken.

The attempt by primarily male born people (funded by immensely wealthy male people like Soros, Pritzker, Hauschker) to erode women’s boundaries, to control what women can and can’t do or say, to redefine the idea of what a woman is so that male people can identify into the group that they have traditionally dominated and still do - it’s all part of the same mindset that sees women denied abortions, sees girls mutilated or married off to old men, just another part of the spectrum.

It’s the SAME misogyny/sexism, just dressed up as “wokeness”. Male people attempting to control what women can and can’t do, can and can’t say. Male people who don’t see women as full human beings in our own right but rather as accessories to their own lives. Male people who regard the world and all that’s in it as theirs, by right, and are NOT looking to play nicely or share any time soon.

I don’t hate all male people. I love two particular male people more than anyone else on the planet, FWIW. I still don’t want them in a women’s changing room, women’s toilets, or anywhere else that’s for women only. It’s entirely possible to love individual men and boys but want to uphold women’s boundaries; to love men but hate misogyny and the way women are STILL the second sex.

And I think it’s appalling that women like you are propping up, enabling and promoting this hateful, misogynist, abusive ideology that is every bit as pernicious and every bit as much an attack on women’s rights and safety as the regressive shit in Alabama and NI etc etc. Every bit as much an attack on women and girls as all the men who deny the reality of #metoo.

If you weren’t so invested in supporting the lie that a subset of males are actually female, for whatever reasons you do that, you would be able to see this for what it is, as you presumably think of yourself as a feminist, you presumably think you’re against misogyny and sexism.

But at the moment, you’re the modern day equivalent of the women who campaigned against the suffragettes. Tragic.

NKFell · 31/05/2019 12:53

Well @riotlady, someone could be unwell or a child just getting the hang of it....but more likely is the fact that microscopic faeces gets everywhere!

MenuPlant · 31/05/2019 13:00

Things done in women's toilet at work

Escaping
Crying
Comforting
Talking about things like pregnancy, menopause
Getting changed for the Xmas do (so lots of semi naked young women)
Doing hair
Doing makeup
Having a hot flush
Vomiting due to morning sickness

I'm sure there are more but these are things I have seen /been involved in /etc

It will change things to have men in as well and I think that is the reason some men want in.

They are always complaining women take a long time and 'what are they doing in there?' and have an idea, an uncomfortable idea, that we might be talking about them.

Which sometimes we are.

So, get that gone.

Also, plenty of men enjoy making women uncomfortable. That's men of any or none gender id.

DodoPatrol · 31/05/2019 13:02

Manners, you are still using the trans point of view to tell us why women should not mind being disadvantaged.

Young trans suicides are very rare in this country. The remote possibility that a transgender youth might commit suicide is not an argument for mixed-sex lavatories and also doesn't make males female.

Mixed-sex loos exclude a lot of women. That matters.

Why not go and argue for better facilities for trans people instead of arguing for imposing mixed-sex facilities on those who want single-sex?

QueenOfTheTofuTree · 31/05/2019 13:02

Brilliant post @TalkingintheDark!

MenuPlant · 31/05/2019 13:04

Oh also at my work and my last work, loads of men used the disabled toilet. None of the women did.

I still can't work out what that's about.

Men are funnier about toilets ime, many unable to shit away from home etc. Threads on here back this up. Pissing etiquette.

I doubt many actually want unisex bogs.