To highlight this case of voyeurism in what appears to have been a unisex toilet on private premises?

[BadSkiingMum]

I came across this case of a voyeur who placed phone cameras under the sink in a toilet. Note that this did not even make BBC news - this is on a local London website.

Women secretly recorded by south east London voyeur | This Is Local London

This was a toilet in a hairdresser, so not open to passers by and with the need to make a booking to enter the premises. So it would seem to be a low-risk environment. But unfortunately this did not prevent an employee from committing a crime. While the article is not clear that the toilet was unisex, presumably the offender was able to enter the toilet and place the phones inside because he was using it himself and was therefore unlikely to be challenged.

In my opinion this case suggests that unisex toilets, even those which are in what we could consider to be a relatively 'safe' environment, present greater risk than toilets separated by sex.

Voyeurs are like vampires - if there is a label on the door which suggests they aren't allowed to enter, they are not able to.

Oh. I do apologise.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

This one is about changing rooms, but I would ask anyone who chooses to dismiss this article what they would consider the difference between toilets and changing rooms are in their mind?

Then we have had at least one report of a sexual assault in a 'gender neutral' toilet in a school in the UK.

https://unherd.com/newsroom/girls-assaulted-in-gender-neutral-toilets-as-predicted/

Risk is not just the risk of sexual assault though. There are other risks of harm to female people - women and girls - with the increased provision of unisex / mixed sex toilets.

Just one example is that there has been reported to be more girls who are putting their health and learning at risk to avoid using unisex toilets. I have heard this from teenaged girls directly themselves but it does get picked up by media sources too.

https://archive.ph/2GPVR

https://archive.ph/P19EF

inews.co.uk/news/kemi-badenoch-uti-single-sex-toilets-claim-fact-check-3038768?srsltid=AfmBOooDydOqvy8dL9S3JFMFjLBD81-hh2g-3LJ_5wEOEvAto-m7-7P_

Students even have staged protests in the UK about these issues and readers may remember this.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/28/more-schoolchildren-stage-tiktok-protests-over-toilet-rules-18364986/

Regarding full floor to ceiling doors, we have had posters on MN FWR describe their harrowing ordeal of being pushed into these cubicles in clubs and attacked. I am not going to go find these posts though. But here are a couple of examples of rapes and assaults occurring in fully enclosed cubicles.

Trains have lockable full floor to ceiling doors too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyv9vz30l5o

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/predator-guilty-of-rape-after-attacking-teenager-he-cornered-on-london-train-b1156183.html

If we take on board poster's comments about floor to ceiling toilets and the fact that people cannot see whether a female person is being attacked, how will people be able to intervene? At least if we can keep as many spaces as being single sex as possible, we give women the choice of facilities.

There is no doubt that there is a degree of risk for using public toilets, either single sex or unisex.

The issue is how many additional female people - girls or women - are accepted to be harmed either physically or through self exclusion with the decreased provision of single sex toilets?

Why has this actually become a trans debate?

From what I can see, a male - who identified as one, went into a unisex bathroom that already existed due to business size etc. He wasn’t trans, and the toilet hasn’t recently converted into being “gender neutral,” “unisex” or shared - it always had been.

Does anyone honestly think if it’d been a female only toilet it would have stopped him? And what does it even have to do with trans people?

Because they are paraphiliacs who get off on the non-consent.

I have been to several around London that are merely the female toilets with a new sign up.

There are complaints on MN and social media about toilets, including a Hammersmith theatre off the top of my head, that has simply added gender neutral signage on both male and female toilets. I am not sure the male toilets with the urinal have been signed that they are urinals and that people have to walk past the urinals to get to them.

The discussion involves the changes to make toilets gender neutral now instead of single sex toilets. Unfortunately, these changes have been driven in part from campaigning for male access to female toilets and the public reaction to this. Some organisations felt it was a good alternative to change all their public toilets to gender neutral rather than providing single sex toilets and additional gender neutral or utilising the exceptions as provided under the EA2010.

"And I definitely do think some pervy men like the very idea of a woman’s toilet rather than a unisex one."

Indeed they do!

I have watched on social media male people have discussions mocking the toilet sounds made by female people in the cubicle next door to them.

And there is a porn category of male people masturbating in female toilets either for their own self publishing experience or pay per view. I remember seeing one particular piece of footage of a male masturbating (I believe it was on twitter - does twitter still allow self published pornography) while a mother toileted several children. You could hear all the discussion and noises very clearly.

So, yes. Trangression into the female single sex spaces is part of it. And it always will be.

The issue for me, is the loss of single sex spaces and the additional risks of harm to female people in these gender neutral spaces. Whether that harm is from attack, abusive behaviour such as voyeurism, exposure, or female people feeling unsafe, distressed at male people's presence and any self-exclusion from female people based on the lack of female single sex space provision.

Okay.

But unless I’ve missed something, the original article wasn’t about a toilet that had changed to gender neutral - it had always been a shared space. So that specific male didn’t invade a female space, he’d always been allowed in it. He’d also likely have done the same thing even if a female sign was on the door.

It feels a little like shoe horning the debate into an issue that as much as it’s horrific, wasn’t about that.

Why wouldn't the current trend of making more and more public toilets gender neutral be part of the discussion? Surely it is directly relevant to discuss this growth as it is to discuss the impacts on female people of the changes?

Can you explain the significance why this discussion should be limited to this being an already established gender neutral toilet when there is a significant issue with more and more gender neutral toilets being created, either through conversion of existing single sex toilets or in newly built buildings?

But if it's an employee, they could place a camera in a single sex toilet just as easily before opening. The problem is the criminal not that a hairdresser only has one toilet

Because Mumsnet is obsessed with trans women 🙄

No, it's obsessed with women's rights. That means single sex spaces away from all males, including trans women.

Seemingly sharing spaces with males doesn't bother you. But it bothers many women, some of whom are vulnerable , such as sexual assault survivors or religious minority women, some who will self exclude as a result.

As I said upthread women weren't consulted on the change from single sex facilities to 'gender neutral' ones. I get that you don't care and that doesn't bother you.

I've asked you several times how YOU benefit from the change which you have declined to answer, presumably because you know that women don't. Which only leaves the possibility that you think that the wishes of 'tiny minority' of males are more important than the needs of vulnerable women. I wonder what has led you to hold that belief and have asked you that. You have also declined to answer.

You will be waiting a long time. I am not having a trans debate with you.

I don't gain anything from unisex toilets. I don't lose anything either. I have no beliefs like you are claiming. You don't truly seem to understand that I don't care or you wouldn't be asking inane questions geared around trans people.

I read somewhere that one of the justifications for taking single sex spaces, such as public toilets, away from women was “90% of rapes and sexual assaults against women are committed by someone they know”

My argument to which is that 10% is still too many and that maybe, the reason the stats are skewed this way is because of lack of opportunity for a strange man to get hold of a woman somewhere he won’t be caught.

I certainly don’t think taking single sex spaces away from women are going to reduce these instances, are they?

Men certainly don't need a unisex toilet to give them the opportunity to rape a woman so they certainly aren't limited by their absence. Most women raped in public places are dragged off the street into alleys, cars, parks etc.

My other argument against this is that the risks are solely women’s to bear, and it is not our choice to take that risk and we get absolutely no benefit from it.
I take a risk every time I drive my car. However, that is my choice and the benefit I get is that I get somewhere quicker.

Likewise, if I was out with friends drinking and I decided to walk home alone, drunk… you might say that this is an unnecessary risk to take. And you’d be right. However, it would be MY choice to take that risk and the benefit I get is getting home without paying for a taxi.

No I'm not asking you to have the trans debate, this isn't about trans people it's about males and why you think that the wishes of males come above the needs of women?

Because Unisex/ gender neutral facilities do NOT benefit women at all. They only benefit males.

Yes, and why is that? Opportunity… that’s literally what I said in my post…

Can you categorically state that men having access to women only spaces wouldn’t increase instances of public attacks?

This is just it.

Why would we add to the risk of any type of harm that is already there? Why would we add to the opportunities for harm to be done while reducing the usability by female people of the spaces that are provided?

This is also a false argument.

While segregation sex spaces exist, people would think it strange if they saw a load of men follow a woman in to a public toilet.

If it becomes the norm, nobody would bat an eyelid. Nobody would think it was weird that there was ‘a strange man loitering outside the toilets’ or that a creepy guy was hanging around IN the toilets because it’s a unisex toilet. Opportunity to commit these sorts of crimes increases and it would likely be harder to catch the perpetrator.

Actually they benefit businesses by allowing them to have fewer facilities taking up less space and costing less in maintenance for the same number of customers.

Yeah, happily.

This exact issue wasn’t in a newly created shared toilet, and it didn’t involve a man identifying as a woman.

It’s literally not relevant in my view.

I can obviously see that a lot of people have very strong feelings on the toilet conversation, I do happen to not be one of them.

But I don’t see any value in taking issues and turning them into a debate about trans people, when the incident didn’t involve any of them.

Certainly when women start to avoid said businesses in droves there will be far less pressure on the facilities. They could scrap facilities for women altogether, it'll be like the good old days.

Well yeah, no one is making you go there.

If you seriously wouldn't go to a hair salon because they only have one toilet I think you would be in the minority.

Exactly.