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?

Yes cassian, I honestly couldn't care less if some women are happy to use mixed sex facilities, crack on, I would never presume to tell anyone that they were weird for wanting to do that. But many women want sex segregated toilets and it's not up to others to tell us what our boundaries are.

I do not understand the word unisex being employed here in relation to toilets. Toilets are either single sex (men's and women's) or mixed sex (like accessible toilets). Uni means one so is the word unisex should mean single sex but here is seen being purposefully misapplied to mixed sex toilets here or is there a genuine lack of understanding of the word??? Is this more back to front nonsense speak designed to confuse and blur boundaries?

I am not generalising anything except toilets and having 15 plus years of experiencing mixed sex accessible toilets I can tell you that men make more mess than women in public toilets. Presumably because they pee standing up and are less socially conditioned to clean up after themselves. Add to that the obvious danger any woman will be alert to of being vulnerable in an enclosed space away from other people with an unknown male and you have an obvious issue.

When the lift doors open to a woman she has a choice about whether she will get into the lift or not. The presence of a man in that lift will influence that decision.

When a woman enters or exits a bathroom stall she has the right to trust that her surroundings are safe and she will not find herself already in an eclosed space with a man she has not risk assessed.

This is the reality of life for women.

It is not weird for women to have single sex spaces, it is their right under the equality act.

Why are you so anxious that women and girls be forced to give up their privacy, confidence and safety?

Why are so many "women" pretending to not know what that privacy is required for whenever this very valid objection to mixed sex facilities is raised?

Washing a mooncup in a bathroom sink is no different to washing hands after using tampons.

I have never seen women's toilets in the state that I have seen mixed sex toilets in. Added to that I have never seen sanitary wear just "lying around", even if the bin is full beyond use things are wrapped in tissue and placed close by.

I have seen women safe and relaxed with their children going about their business undergo complete atmospheric adjustment when an adult male janitor enters the toilets. That is the reality of human life and it will not be altered by minimising or mocking instinctive response.

I'd feel more comfortable with gender neutral - so many bloody women where I work bloody hover and spray piss all over the seat!

Do you understand the women would still be there? You'd just have male pee all over the place too.

I wouldn't want to share space with women but I think fully closed off cubicles with their own basin is OK. Bit like going in one of a line of portaloos, if its done correctly.

And from the perspective of the company it solves a few headaches. But again, if done correctly.

It is not weird for women to have single sex spaces, it is their right under the equality act.

Not any more. Not when the simple workaround to that act is for a man to just decide he is a woman for however long he wants to be in that space.

If you are having chats so private that it could change dynamics than maybe you should be more professional and have them outside of the work place? Personally, sounds like high school girl's wanting to gossip...

We use the space next to the stairwell, by the goods lift, for private chats!

@LakieLady

"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'm pretty sure none on the ladies on here who object to unisex toilets are referring to this type. The fact that these open individually onto a corridor makes them a separate room.

What many ladies on this thread do not want are the toilet cubicles which are not self-contained. They do not want to come out of a block of cubicles into an area where there are sinks which men and women share. This is a totally different scenario to yours.

@birdsdestiny

no it wasn't; that was gender neutral changing rooms in public leisure facilities.

Also, where did you find the stat that 97% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by men? I found one that suggested that just under 1% of men have been victims, and just over 3% of women, but couldn't find the breakdown of perpetrators.

We have them in our work. The walls are floor to ceiling and thick so you can't be heard. They each contain a hand basin, dryer and sanitary bin so really private. I prefer them to the traditional male/female toilets as I can do my business in peace so to speak.

Wouldn't it be great if multiculturalism worked. I imagine if it did he wouldn't have said it.

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.

Actually, the narcissistic need of a small minority of male people to have their supposed innate “gender identity” validated by not having to use the men’s toilets is hardly a reason for companies/institutions all over the UK to completely change their perfectly well functioning (and preferable to the vast majority of people) single sex toilets operational policy.

And yet this is what is happening. A very powerful, well funded lobby group of mostly male people is managing to convince nice, well meaning liberals everywhere that “inclusivity” means we should include males in all spaces and services that were formerly women only.

That “inclusivity” means women no longer have the right to any boundaries around the male sex, that women’s needs and feelings are of no consequence whatsoever, that there is no need to consult with women or carry out any risk assessment or equality impact assessment before making these sweeping changes.

And that this new form of traditional male dominance, of the sidelining of women’s opinions and the demonising of women who do try to speak up, is actually a shiny new form of “progress” which only the bigoted or the terminally outdated would resist.

All you women supporting the erosion of single sex spaces have been very well brainwashed into doing your masters’ bidding, haven’t you? And you really think you’re “woke”! FFS. 😂😂😂

Can anyone tell me where I can find the legal doc saying this can only be done when there are sinks in individual cubicles? At my work the downstairs one with 4 cubicles has snks outside the cubicles. I hate using it and feel very uncomfortable particularly if young men who I manage at work are in the toilets at the same time as me. I have no idea why...but I am now using the disables one instead which is not right either! Can I challenge the labelling of this toilwt now it has been changed to mixed if the sinks are not in the cubicles? And if there is any gap under the door (ie like old school toilets) do I also have grounds to say they are not complying?

Oops wrong thread.

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

I agree that most people dont have a problem with individual toilets

Making a 10 toilet ladies lav into gender neutral...or unisex to give it a more realistic name...is what a lot of women object to

I don't really get this either. I suspect it's some sort of internalised misogyny, that nice ladies are not supposed to shit and piss and make smelly emissions, and we're supposed to pretend to men that we only ever nip off the to the "washroom" to powder our noses. We don't want the illusion to be shattered by sharing facilities.

I have to say, I can stink the bogs out like the best of them!

I had this at work previously and did actually puty a thread on about it. I absolutely hated it, they were not wall to ceiling cubicles, no sink in there and you could hear blokes taking a shit next door. Not to mention pee everywhere.

Or multi sex

Deffo multi sex....could not think of the phrase when i typed

@ScottishDoll I do not understand the word unisex being employed here in relation to toilets. Toilets are either single sex (men's and women's) or mixed sex (like accessible toilets). Uni means one so is the word unisex should mean single sex but here is seen being purposefully misapplied to mixed sex toilets here or is there a genuine lack of understanding of the word???

Does the 'uni' not come from universal? Like unisex clothes where it means clothes for either sex, not for people of one sex...

We have a gender neutral toilet at work basically because we just have one loo for at least 20 people!

I find that men do get pee everywhere but also once recently found blood on the loo seat from some woman with a period sooo gross!

Now I keep bleach wipes in there & wipe the seat every time I use it!

I don't think actual gender neutral cubicles would bother me as I used to flatshare with male flatmates but I appreciate lots of women haven't & would find the situation embarrassing.

I'm aghast at how many men seem to have aiming problems.

As a man, I'm very uncomfortable with GN toilets. I've seen DP with blood on her hands and rather upset and vulnerable with it. This must be truly horrific for a woman to even have to think about a man being present at such a time.

I'd just use the one 3 floors up, but then I'd just see climbing 3 flights of stairs as a handy bit of extra exercise.

Unisex is used for clothes I suppose so universal makes sense but I can't help automatically interpreting uni as one! Americans use co-ed for mixed sex facilities too or is that just dorms and university facilities?

I think Mixed Sex describes better the forcing of women to share what should be single sex spaces with men against everyone's better judgement.

@talkinginthedark

My only master is me. Ok, it's my daughter, but it's definitely not some shadowy male cabal, so try again, cupcake.

I just don't see the issue here. For whatever reason, OP's company wants to make the toilets unisex (and to the earlier poster who is harping on about 'unisex' being wrong, take it up with the last 30 or so years - it's the word in common parlance, regardless of etymological correctness). It could be an operational reason (maybe to speed things up, a disproportionate number of either gender at work, cutting down on the long chats over the basins) or it could be because a transgender person (of either side) has requested it.

Whatever, it's their choice. And the OP has the opportunity to go to a single sex toilet if they want to, so everyone's catered for.

This is not the same as eroding safe spaces for women - it is not a shelter, it is not a refuge. It isn't even the WI.

It's a fucking toilet. At work.

Fight the good fight but for god's sake choose a more important battle. Wasting energy on the right to wash your hands without standing next to a man is distracting you from the real issues about inequality. Which is probably exactly what the shadowy cabal of men want you to do, little miss woke.

Amazed at the concept that only men pee on the seats. If that's the case, there must have been an awful lot of men sneaking into the women's toilets I've used over the years.

I'm aghast at how many men seem to have aiming problems

So am I. A assumed that the piss all over our gender neutral toilets was from men. After reading this thread, I'm not so sure.