To ask how you all feel about mixed sex loos and wards?

[Toorahtoorahaye]

Just in the past day or so there have been discussions on social media about the new NHS guidelines that allows patients to choose which sexed ward they feel most comfortable in reality making wards mixed sex. And today the Old Vic is also following the recent trend to make its loos mixed sex - mixed sex with urinals, mixed sex with with stalls and gender neutral loos. Just wondering how folk feel about the end of single sex wards and loos for mixed sex provision.

I personally have no problem with mixed loos, anything intimate is still behind closed doors. But I get that there are good reasons why other women are not comfortable with this, that they should be allowed to raise without being spirited shouted down.

Wards are quite intimate spaces where we may be shuffling about in nighties or flimsy hospital gowns so I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Why are womens toilets and wards being invaded by penis?

The issues do not require that womens loos are invaded at all.

If you have a penis use a urinal and stay away from women with vulvas, do your own thing.

I don't believe it's okay for young girls to have to change in front of young boys, teens and adults likewise.

There are inherent risks and huge discomforts mainly on the part of the female, but also very much on the part of the regular males.

There are very obvious disparate needs by the two groups.

Urinals seem to manage very well the mess that men make of peeing.

If required to use a regular loo bowl most can't seem to manage - ever seen the mess of mens loos and smelt the stench!!

They need urinals as can't manage without,and should bloody sit down at home if they spray the toilet seat and walls/floor when peeing

I would no way stand up and pee risking wetting floor and walls. Gross.

Well said Francis and in your case your df needed protecting from himself, as did your dp. How difficult for you

I do wonder, if those incidents had been with females, how at risk from sexual assault those vulnerable women would have been, and nhs failed in their protection of them.

The same is happening all over the country in universities.

And surely my wishes, as a patient, are just as important as a trans-persons wishes?

Apparently not...

Gender neutral is meaningless

This is about sex, and nothing else.

Lets stop pretending how you prefer to dress is in any way relevant

I go intonladies sometimes wearing head to toe 'gender neutral/unisex' clothing.

I still yhe female sex loo facilities, my clothes have fuck all to do with this.

Neither does whether I am wearing makeup, or fuckibg 'girly' earrings.

Gender stereotypes are harmful, toxic and a load of ol baloney frankly.

I can't think of anything worse. Most of us have been in a men's toilet and there's always piss everywhere. I have a DH and 2 sons and there's always some degree of piss around the toilet. Not only because they pee standing up but peeing from a height splashes up so even just having cubicle wouldn't work for me- it's not their fault and I can put up with my own families splashes but I don't want to deal with stranger piss.
If it's urinals too I don't want to see anyone with their tackle out thank you very much and I'm sure most men feel the same.

DH doesn't want to share toilets with women either.

A few years back due to a bed crisis I had to admit male patients on to a female psychiatric ward. To manage that we put the men at one end of the ward, women at the other (all individual rooms) and designated separate shared bathrooms for each sex. Then had 2 staff full time just sat on observation on the corridor to make sure everyone was safe.

It's weird that it's now perfectly fine to just admit someone who is male on to that same ward with no safeguards because they say they are female. Why did we do all that before?

Another psych ward I know well still has bays how that is possibly ok is a whole other issue I cannot fathom the risk in that situation. The assaults there are already high and the amount of patients who end up on restrictive 1:1 / 2:1 observations due to the environment is already high. It has a negative impact on mental health.

There are a lot of other issues on MH wards when people self identify - search is a huge one - affecting both staff and patients safety. I do not understand how anyone can make policy like this, possibly they've never actually been on a ward

Mixed wards make me uncomfortable.... for not entirely rational reasons.
Mixed toilets? On the face of it I have no problem, but in reality it's going to make the queues a lot longer for us men because we won't be able to just quickly use a urinal. There will be longer queues as people get in and out of cubicles and adjust their dress etc...
I acknowledge that some are uncomfortable with unisex toilets, but I don't understand the rationale behind it.

Are you all actually thinking of mixed sex wards or mixed sex bays? I think mixed sex wards is fine as long as there is enough staff on duty to be plenty of movement around the ward, rather than not enough staff who could easily be caught up in one bay for a great length of time then risking patients in the other bays from assault or even blamed for a non existing assault.

I acknowledge that some are uncomfortable with unisex toilets, but I don't understand the rationale behind it. not even an inkling why women and girls might feel embarrassed or nervous or intimidated or even scared by having strange men in such close proximity where they might feel a bit vulnerable?

Jesus Christ Mr McHenry has no one ever told you anything about female biology?

entran.home.blog/2019/10/05/the-bathroom-debate-is-a-mans-issue/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Just read this on Twitter and think we need single sex facilities even more now

MrMcHenry

You need to read that link.

Males advertise these spaces for voyeurism, masturbations, sex, bjs.

Most men would not let their young boys into them alone. Why would they.

Men peeing are watched and masturbated over.

How does that help expanding it to exposing women and young girls to it too!?

This has been on the news today

I hate it. I don’t go swimming anymore as local pool’s showers are now communal mixed sex. The blokes have a quick soap all over and a discreet spray of water into the shorts: they’re fine. The women get stared at by teenage boys while we wash, we can’t soap stomach / chest area because is under swimsuit, and most importantly I got thrush because I wasn’t able to wash chlorine from my vagina until I got home. Women need privacy sometimes!

Don’t want to share toilets either. Men’s urine stinks, that’s why male animals
scent-mark territory with it. Why should women have to use a toilet that stinks of male urine? Plus when I’m trying to relax to insert a tampon it does not feel right to have a man waiting on the other side of the door.

There’s been a very vocal minority lobbying for years to invade women’s private spaces. It’s not ok. I’m English so it’s weird to me that I feel much more respected/protected when I visit the middle east.

It seems, feom the news, that girls are holding in their urine all daybat school and causing health problems, purely because they can't bring themselves to wee in toilets where there are boys.

What about periods, and taking a shit.

What will it take for ignorants to realise the harm they are doing to girls, and I bet some boys too.

Our hospital has mixed sex wards BUT, the two ends (male and female) are separated so there isn't really any mixing. That I am fine with.
Truly mixed sex- as in sleeping in a room with both male and female? I would not be comfortable with. Toilets... I would be OK IF they were single cubicle.

I can't say I'd be atall happy going to mixed sex loo alone and a male following in after me.

I have had too many handy men think they've a right to touch and poke (assault). As for young girls, the mind boggles, frankly very worrying

This is a really retrograde idea; women and girls seem to be losing the right to have safe spaces for biological functions, because the ideology trumps reason and physiology. I don't care what transgender people wear, if they possess male genitalia they use the designated male bathroom. Most people in society have a "live and let live" attitude towards those who feel they're living in the wrong body, but they cannot be allowed into female wards, bathrooms or changing rooms

'They' Paul, whos father father still struggles not to refer to him as he (prior to becoming non-binary), seems to also be aversive of mixed sex loos.

Now i am feeling fucking confused. Isn't this the ideal for a non-binary person? They don't identify as male or female (in gender terms I mean) but still identify as male or female for toileting needs.

They (Paul) go all the way to the science block to avoid the mixed facilities that the school has forced upon its poor children. Breaking equality rules along the way.

For what? What driving need is there to do this when it clearly makes children, and adults, uncomfortable enough as to cause great discomfort and risk damage to themselves.

Anyone with any empathy is against mixed sex wards and toilets. Women have shared their experiences when sectioned - they were vulnerable, sexually assaulted & often not believed or too scared to report.

I have never felt more vulnerable than when catheterised & incapable of even sitting up for a couple of days post surgery.

Visiting an elderly relative on ward where the sexes were segregated by bays...except the old man wearing just baggy PJ bottoms with dementia didn't respect the boundaries, day or night.

Women have a right to safety, privacy and dignity.
www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/shock-rape-figures-at-hospital-17014301

If they're going to do this then surely there should also still be segregated toilets/wards for those who don't feel comfortable with mixed. Just because you call yourself a woman it doesn't make me comfortable with basically sharing a living space/bedroom with your penis!