Third facilities

[wordsinourmouths]

Compromise position proposed by many in response to those who don’t want to use the facilities for their sex, mixed family groups, and those who don’t care or who are trans allies.
YABU = no this won’t work/ be enough/ would be unsafe
YANBU = fully support/ it might work/a chance for everyone to get some of what we want.

I realise that it may be a close vote. Personally I fall on both sides. On some level it is the only option now but I don’t think that children or women would necessarily be safe. I think that trans and NB people might.

If it's the only option then I'm for it. I am 100% against male bodied people using female bathrooms and spaces, however they identify. I can also imagine it's uncomfortable for men who identify as female to use male bathrooms/spaces, but that is not the fight of women.

Suits me. Every body deserves to pee in peace.

Bump

But I also wonder how safe this third space might be for children if anyone can go there? Hospitals no, toilets , changing no, prisons no, but I am glad that enough people who don’t mind will be happy to support those that need to use them.

@Langrycleg

But I also wonder how safe this third space might be for children if anyone can go there? Hospitals no, toilets , changing no, prisons no, but I am glad that enough people who don’t mind will be happy to support those that need to use them.

I'd presume children wouldn't be using the third space? In my experience, girls and boys (children) are taken into the female toilet/changing room with the mother.

Something which occurs to me sometimes is that a lot is always said about women who because of their strict faith (I assume Muslin, Orthodox Jewish, some sects of Christianity?) cannot/absolutely may not use facilities or be in spaces in which they may have to encounter a partly-clothed male-bodied person, or indeed be close to an unrelated-to-them male-bodied person at all if there is nobody else present.

Isn't the same true for observant male members of the same religious beliefs, but reversed: they absolutely must not be alone or in close proximity with a female-bodied person who is not directly related to them? I'm thinking here of Orthodox Jewish men asking to have a female person moved from the seat next to them on an aeroplane, or of Mike Pence never being alone with a woman, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. Third space facilities would be of no use to them, so they need male-body-only spaces in the same way that religious women need female-body-only ones. Having only third space facilities definitely isn't the answer for them any more than mixed-sex ones is.

Pumpkinbump, if there is a third space toilet then a parent of either sex could go into it with a child of either sex so a problem about children using it shouldn't arise in that case, I wouldn't have thought. But toilets are not the only places in which people who need single-sex spaces exist: there are also hospital wards, prisons, gym and swimming changing rooms, school dormitories (which are a safeguarding of children matter) and so on. Thinking only of public toilets is seeing only a very small part of the question, I feel.

I think this thread got lost somewhere. Bump

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Something which occurs to me sometimes is that a lot is always said about women who because of their strict faith (I assume Muslin, Orthodox Jewish, some sects of Christianity?) cannot/absolutely may not use facilities or be in spaces in which they may have to encounter a partly-clothed male-bodied person, or indeed be close to an unrelated-to-them male-bodied person at all if there is nobody else present.

Isn't the same true for observant male members of the same religious beliefs, but reversed: they absolutely must not be alone or in close proximity with a female-bodied person who is not directly related to them? I'm thinking here of Orthodox Jewish men asking to have a female person moved from the seat next to them on an aeroplane, or of Mike Pence never being alone with a woman, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. Third space facilities would be of no use to them, so they need male-body-only spaces in the same way that religious women need female-body-only ones. Having only third space facilities definitely isn't the answer for them any more than mixed-sex ones is.

Pumpkinbump, if there is a third space toilet then a parent of either sex could go into it with a child of either sex so a problem about children using it shouldn't arise in that case, I wouldn't have thought. But toilets are not the only places in which people who need single-sex spaces exist: there are also hospital wards, prisons, gym and swimming changing rooms, school dormitories (which are a safeguarding of children matter) and so on. Thinking only of public toilets is seeing only a very small part of the question, I feel.

Yes I absolutely agree, I was just using that as one example. All should be single sex.

I do wonder about this though, let's say we did have third spaces, and these were being used by predominantly men or male bodied people, women and possibly transmen would feel more comfortable using female spaces anyway, therefore, the third space would end up being male spaces which of course, for various reasons, various men would not be happy with.

I think you need both. But I would like single sex spaces to remain in places like schools and workplaces, alongside mixed sex.

As a woman, I want people to listen to me regarding issues regarding sexism.

Accordingly, I believe we should listen to trans people regarding issues regarding discrimination against trans people.

The law is pretty clear that we should not be treating people differently on the basis of being trans, so this solution doesn't work, it's discriminatory.

Is it discrimination not to allow people of the opposite sex into single sex spaces?

The law states that people are allowed to have single sex (as opposed to gender) spaces where necessary, and necessary includes hospital wards, prisons, lavatories and changing rooms.

People who have changed their gender have not changed their sex, because it is not possible to change sex (this is a biological fact); so saying "this single sex space is for people of that sex only" is simply expecting acceptance of a fact.

Not accepting the existence of trans people is discriminatory, yes.

Trans-gender people exist in exactly the same way that any person exists: they are people as any other person is. Knowing that it is not possible to change sex is not disbelieving in the existence of people who have altered their gender.

(I also believe in people with red hair, people with one leg, people with very white teeth, people who are six foot ten tall, people who are four foot two tall, and so on. Some women wear trousers: it doesn't change their sex. Some women have had hysterectomies or mastectomies or both: that doesn't change their sex either....)

But that's like say that you believe in people with red hair, because they are people, but you really think they are deluded people with brown hair because there is no such thing as red hair.

If you only see trans people as deluded cis people then you don't believe in trans people.

I imagine our views are probably too different to find middle ground, though.

Well we are talking about someone with brown hair who thinks or wishes it were red since no one has changed sex really. But we can still recognise the existence of men who really wish they were women in the same way we can recognise someone with brown hair who desperately wishes they had red hair.

In many public places this is the ideal, dp's dd is disabled so would be helpful for him at the swimming baths etc. I personally have no issue with mixed changing at our local swimming baths (they are cubicles around the pool).

Larger shops and shopping centres etc can easily accommodate this and often do already. The flip side of very small places eg coffee shops are better off with self contained unisex facilities. It's actually the in between size that may struggle if they don't have space, but wherever possible I prefer there to either be single sex plus third option or proper self contained facilities with doors that are complete.

I know people who believe they talk to god too. There is no legal or moral requirement to accept that as real. The people who believe do themselves exist and have their rights and so on.

I think the most sensible option would be fully enclosed facilities for individual use. These could be unisex or designated but would remove any concern about sharing space.

This would also address any more general privacy concerns about cubicles which are not floor to ceiling.

I thoroughly agree with third spaces, for all the people who don’t wish or need to use the space reserved for their biological sex.
I am bemused by posters like Stompy who seem to think that people somehow don’t ‘believe’ that transgender people exist. Of course they exist, with all the human rights attendant to that existence; this doesn’t mean they have magically changed sex though.

@pumpkinbump

Is it discrimination not to allow people of the opposite sex into single sex spaces?

No, Single Sex Spaces are legislated for in the Equality Act 2010.