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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Re: unisex toilets and cubicles?

71 replies

IntoValhalla · 03/08/2019 13:37

Feel free to tell me if I am indeed being a complete dick, but this got my back up and just made think “eww”
Driving this morning, and 4yo DD starts yelling that she needs a wee. So I pull into some services.
There’s a disabled toilet with baby changing facility, and then a unisex room with 3 cubicles (proper 4 walls, floor and ceiling cubicles), all of which have lockable doors. I take DD into one of the cubicles, and there’s more than enough space inside for both of us so I can close and lock the door behind me.
Get the job done, and come out to wash our hands. Only to be greeted by the sight of an adult man, trousers and underwear down round his butt cheeks, pissing with the door wide open Now I have no issue with unisex toilets. But AIBU to think that if I can get my hugely pregnant self and a 4yo inside a cubicle and close the door, then one average-sized adult can manage it too?!
I’d rather not have to look at a stranger’s bare arse cheeks while washing mine and my child’s hands thanks!!!

OP posts:

Original poster

IntoValhalla · 03/08/2019 14:55

DH was in the car because toddler DS was asleep, but when I told him he said “I haven’t had an arse-out piss in a public loo since I was about 5”
Which leads me to believe the trousers round the arse isn’t normal toilet behaviour for most men!

OP posts:

Slightaggrandising · 03/08/2019 18:01

Why is there always an apologist for bad behaviour. It is not normal, even in a men's toilet, to get your arse out to have a stand up pee.

Venger · 03/08/2019 18:08

I'm not an apologist and I did not once say the behaviour was right. What I said was that the man probably thought he was in the gents where peeing with the door open wouldn't be such a big deal given that in a lot of places it's customary to only close the door if you are shitting.

This matter does not deserve the level of outrage being given over to it.

SarahTancredi · 03/08/2019 18:16

No its not customary . It's always been polite to shut the door.

Its laziness, and entitlement and a total disregard for anyone but themselves.

It's not customary nor is it manners.

Ffs.

Do all your husbands piss with the door open at home?

Venger · 03/08/2019 18:17

Why are you so angry about it?

Venger · 03/08/2019 18:19

Like really.

Why?

It doesn't warrant that level of froth. Man pees with door open, potentially due to not realising it was a unisex toilet. It's not ideal but it's not as if he stood there wanking while winking at the OP and her daughter, is it? And yet there are people here calling him a pervert with no grounds to do so.

everythingthelighttouches · 03/08/2019 18:19

venger you may not be an apologist for it but you are minimising it and highly dismissive of the way it made the OP feel.

It is not outrage to suggest that this is crap behaviour.

I'm glad that you wouldn't be upset by this but many women would be. Why should we have to put up with such inconsiderate behaviour?

Why on earth should she have to ask him to close the door, in order to "resolve" the situation? He is a grown man and responsible for his own actions.

I'd rather suggest she said "I'll be reporting you for exposing yourself in these mixed sex toilets". That at least would make him think twice about doing it again.

PettyContractor · 03/08/2019 18:20

I've been a man for several decades, I've never seen a man's arse in a public toilet while he was standing peeing.

Campervan69 · 03/08/2019 18:21

This is the problem with unisex toilets. I don't use them and always complain.

SarahTancredi · 03/08/2019 18:21

Because pretty soon men will be able to enter every womans toilet or every toilet will be unisex . There will be no womens toilets.

So we need to stop making excuses. Stop letting men off being disgusting, inappropriate and entitled. And stop shrugging off deliberate attempts to be intimidating or harass women.

They absolutely can help it

Thet absolutely do not do it by accident.

Expect more.

Sexnotgender · 03/08/2019 18:23

Pretty sure they’re breaking building regulations by having mixed sex toilets without the wash hand basins being in the cubicle.

And YANBU he’s a dirty pig. This is one of the many reasons single sex facilities are required.

Pieceofpurplesky · 03/08/2019 18:30

An arse crack wouldn't shock me in that loads of men find it impossible to wear trousers around their bloody waists anyway! I hate the idea of mixed toilets but do agree that a lot of men leave the door open to wee and only shut to poo. Not all men are perverts or doing things to deliberately antagonise women - more
Likely he didn't realise.

I would have made a sarcastic comment about not wanting to see his arse - and hopefully made him realise! My dad would never realise a toilet was unisex and would be mortified (I am sure he would shut the door though and his braces stop an arse show).

Venger · 03/08/2019 18:31

I'm glad that you wouldn't be upset by this but many women would be. Why should we have to put up with such inconsiderate behaviour?

I didn't say how I would have felt about it. See how you're presuming things? That's what you're also doing about this situation, presuming the man did it intentionally and for malicious reasons when - like many real life situations - it was more than likely an error. Unisex toilets aren't all that widespread, there are absolutely none that I know of where I live, so it wouldn't be entirely out of the realms of possibility that he thought he was in the gents and was totally unaware there would be a woman and her daughter there.

SarahTancredi · 03/08/2019 18:32

The dads take their dds into the gents though.

Theres always the chance of kids

Hence why you shut the door

rwalker · 03/08/2019 18:35

Unless he was waving his cock about at you sounds like he forgot it was unisex.
Yes many fellas piss with the door open and some do pull pant and undies down rather than undo waist band and files

SarahTancredi · 03/08/2019 18:40

Unless he was waving his cock about at you sounds like he forgot it was unisex
Again

Kids may also be in the mens. Its disgusting and selfish in whatever toilet they are in.

barryfromclareisfit · 03/08/2019 18:40

The only unisex toilets I’ve had to use were at the Cliffs of Moher visitor centre (where they seemed to have simply taken down the wall between the formerly male and female facilities) and yes, there too the men did not close the cubicle doors.

I half-remember the urinals still being in place. Perhaps men use those while the women queue, in the same room, to use cubicles. I’ll check next time I’m there.

everythingthelighttouches · 03/08/2019 18:42

venger your posts question why others have a problem with this, so yes, i assume you wouldn't.

I am not assuming this is deliberate at all.
I have copied my earlier response to you below:
If you're correct venger then it just goes to show that having mixed sex toilets doesn't register with a lot of men because it makes no difference to them.

Most women would have been very conscious of it being mixed sex.

This guy may not have consciously done this but was highly inconsiderate. This is a prime example of why we shouldn't have mixed sex toilets.

ChangeYourThinking · 03/08/2019 18:43

Unisex toilets are a violation of women’s rights.

Banananananas · 03/08/2019 18:45

I doubt OP and her child were in total silence during their time in the loo. He would have walked in and heard a woman and child speaking.
He did it on purpose.

SarahTancredi · 03/08/2019 18:48

And I bet the reason men dont call each other out on being disgusting like this in the mens is because deep down they are also mysoginistic dicks who love being able to use the mens loos being full of idiots incapable of using doors as an excuse to get out of doing stuff with the.kids.

PapaShango · 03/08/2019 18:50

But if it was an honest mistake, why were his trousers all he way down so they could see bare bum? Men don’t have to take their trousers all the way down to pee. I’ve never known anyone to do that

Jaxhog · 03/08/2019 18:50

I've only used a unisex loo twice. The second time it was one lockable cubicle that everyone locked while in use. Fine. The first time was a re-signed gents, where I came out of the cubicle to find a man using the urinal. Not fine.

If men cannot close the door behind them, then unisex loos are never going to be acceptable to women. This matters.

Spinnaret · 03/08/2019 18:56

Unless the OP's son is an unusually quiet one, there is no way a man didn't realise there was a child present when he decided not to bother shutting the door. He knew what he was doing. He may not have known there was a woman there, but he knew there was a child.

bellabasset · 03/08/2019 19:57

There has been an issue with the unisex toilets at the Home Office and men have been requested to close the doors when using the toilets. This was last August.

So perhaps there needs to be a petition to set out a code of conduct to protect all those who need to use unisex facilities.

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