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?

Surely mixed sex toilets would reduce queuing.

Im curious about the women who prefer unisex spaces to single sex: are you against all single sex spaces eg sports, refuges, some hospital wards or is it just women's toilets that irk you?

Why are men so desperate to use the women's toilets?

Why do you assume men are the ones making these decisions? Gender neutral means its technically both men's and women's so it could be seen as women using the men's toilets.

Privacy and dignity is a thing Greyt. It’s a subjective thing. What might be ok to you cannot be applied to all women. It is also a set up that discriminates against the protected characteristic of beliefs.

There are reasons I sympathise with and, to some extent, agree with. But accusations of men being disgusting and women being all lovely and clean? Bollocks.

I've worked as an office cleaner in a prestigious building. The women's toilets were absolutely disgusting, even more so as you went up the floors to the people on a minimum of eighty grand a year. Shit over the seats, used towels and tampons dumped on the floor and on top of the blue bins, piss everywhere except for in the toilet bowl, toilets blocked with paper towels and sanitary towels that weren't left on the side (until they were removed for air driers as it was costing them thousands to have them removed every couple of months), turds the size of trees. Plus the occasional pregnancy test left in the sink with the pissy cup they'd peed in to make sure they got enough and the now seemingly obligatory false lashes, bits of hair extension and makeup smeared all over the place. The men's toilets, however, were damn near pristine on every floor, including the one that had the lowest paid workers of all using them. The most I ever needed to do in the Men's was a quick clean, sanitise and polish off water marks on the mirrors.

The girls' toilets at work now are far worse than the boys', too.

And, despite being stuck with various boyfriends in the past who had many, many bad points (DV being one of them for a couple until I worked out what I was doing wrong and acted on red flags), not one was dirty, either.

Don't ruin a perfectly reasonable argument with nonsense about all men pissing everywhere and being dirty. They don't and they aren't.

It's normal in smaller workplaces and can be advantageous where there's a gender imbalance. We had mixed toilets in the 90's as there were only 3 men and 80 women, I'm sure they loved the baskets of sanitary products we had in there! These are not public toilets they are colleagues not potential axe murderers

Why have employers decided they need to provide mixed sex toilets rather than single sex anyway? Who are we pandering to?

On the subject of how we know men's toilets stink, you only have to walk past a men's public toilet such as in a pub. Definitely smells worse than the ladies'.

Do you think perverts are mostly unemployed?

Imagine trying to wash out a mooncup!

Privacy and dignity is a thing Greyt. It’s a subjective thing. What might be ok to you cannot be applied to all women.

I'm well aware its a thing, thank you very much. The cubical has a locked door which is where women and men can get their own privacy. Why would people be undressing in the communal sink areas when there are private cubicles? I've never done that. Washing your hands while fully dressed is not a task that requires privacy. We have communal kitchens and people wash their hands in there.

Yes thought as much there is never an answer 're the sexual assault issue. Utterly predictable.

I absolutely agree that women and men should have their own separate toilets. I dislike unisex toilets. But some of the reasons given on this thread are somewhat dramatic. Women need their own toilets because they cry in them? Ffs. Or they need them because they have miscarriages? Well undoubtedly this happens to some but it's hardly a daily occurrence. And as for having to wash blood off their hands in front of a man. Would someone standing at the next basin even notice? Even if you do end up with blood on hands after changing a tampon/moon cup whatever, surely you would remove most of it with loo roll while in the cubicle? Don’t tell me the basin would be look like a scene from a horror movie. There are so many valid arguments for having single sex toilets without the need to generate hysteria.

I can understand that this must be frustrating if you are used to having separate toilets, but there must be lots of workplaces where this isn't practical. I'm a teacher and although there are separate boys' and girls' toilets, we've never had separate toilets for men and women.

We have toilets that are shared by anyone: men, women, people who identify as neither gender. Same as our toilet in our house! Seems to work fine in both places :-)

@birdsdestiny

Which study are you referring to when you say women are more likely to be sexually assaulted in unisex toilets? I could only find one regarding unisex changing rooms - which is hardly comparable since that is a public space open to all, where people get naked, and the OP is talking about work toilets that are presumably almost always only inhabited by colleagues.

And OP, you have a choice - go to the women only one. You not wanting to go up 3 flights of stairs because of your own weird hangups about not wanting men to know you fart or poo or bleed is hardly a reason for your company to change its inclusive operational policy.

We have gender neutral toilets at work. They see a fully self contained cubicle though. All the toilets are like this in my building. I have to say I haven't seen many men leaving the loo seat up and they are always very clean.

We only have one toilet in my office and it's shared. Don't understand the drama.

@birdsdestiny I actually gave an answer to that further on if you bothered reading through. Utterly predictable.

@Trafalger
I'm sure no-one would have grounds to object to unisex self-contained cubicles. The ones some of us object to are the non-self-contained stalls with shared sink area.

so you think you get to speak for all women, Grey?

Also - none of the blokes I know like mixed sex toilets either.

It was reported in the Times recently.
The rate of women being sexually assaulted in toilets is high anyway, particularly with cameras. Previously if a man was going into the sex segregated toilets he could be challenged, it didn't prevent all of them but it was a layer of safeguarding. Why people would agitate for a removal of these layers is beyond me. Men commit 97 % of sexual assault, of course removing sex segregation will increase the risk. How wouldn't it?

There are some grim women here who don't mind sharing loos with men and their piss.

I've worked in a building with "unisex" toilets for 12 years. Each toilet is in a separate cubicle, with full-lenght walls and doors, a basin, mirror and bin for sanpro, and each cubicle opens directly onto the corridor.

I've never found piss on the seat or on the floor. The toilets are really clean, with only the occasional skidmark on the pan. The women-only toilets at the local authority I used to work for were frequently worse.

The only issue I have with them is that they have woeful extractor fans and when someone's had a smelly shit it permeates all along the corridor (this is worse on the floor above, where two-thirds of the floor is entirely open-plan). I think there should be a rule that if you want a dump you have to use one of the 2 toilets in each block that have an outside wall and opening windows!

I really don't get the objection tbh.

@ThingsFallApartLive

"Do you think perverts are mostly unemployed?"
Who are you asking this question of? What's it got to do with mixed sex toilets?

I'm with you OP. I wouldn't like to be rinsing out my tights after a menstrual spillage. I doubt many men would be comfortable either.

If it's a fully enclosed cubicle with a washbasin included - no problem. But if it's shared washbasins - problem.

Other than that former gents toilets are often really quite gross. Men don't seem to care about toilets as much as women do.

PS. I assume they've removed the urinals? I once used a unisex toilet where they hadn't. And a guy was using it when I came out of the cubicle.

We used to have to share toilets at work with male colleagues and we all hated it. Men didn't mind at all though.