Unisex toilets in new office - dread going into work

[SocialMol]

The company I work for moved to a new office a few weeks ago. It is brand new and shared 50/50 with another company. We have our own side of the floor, key card protected so completely separate.

However, the toilets are in the middle of the block so are shared with the other company. These are unisex - several cubicles with shared area for sinks/dryers etc.

The other company is a sales one (they run a call centre there) and the demographic of their workforce is mainly young men in their 20’s.

There have been several instances of inappropriate comments made to staff in the toilets. Crass stuff like ‘give that cubicle 5 minutes’ to cruder comments directed at or about women - the men will often be talking about their own colleagues in a derogatory way in front of us.

The final straw for me was this afternoon when I walked out of a cubicle and a spotty young lad said he will ‘join me next time’ 😷

Our company are aware of our concerns but said there’s nothing they can do, as the toilets are designed to be ‘inclusive’ and similar to the other modern office blocks they viewed.

I don’t really know what I’m looking for by posting this to be honest, just wanted to know if anyone else finds this sort of set up completely ridiculous?

And it’s precisely because some men are creeps that the law mandates single sex toilets at work.

It is for safeguarding and risk mitigation against the behaviour of some men and the risk that some men present to women.

Given that some men have always behaved in a shitty, predatory, and threatening manner towards women, and always will, single sex toilets are better. With a couple of “all gender” single toilets for inclusivity purposes.

I was in my work toilet a few weeks ago having to change my top, rinse out my breast pump after pumping and had a very messy situation embarrassingly. The lactation room provided didn’t have a sink so I needed to use the toilet.

So yeah, some of us want sex based toilets.

As for those who don’t believe so many of those men exist, it’s clearly top down culture. I’ve worked in places like this where one horrid man is senior and hires men just like him as underlings.

Lack of single sex toilets led to sexual assaults on women, and still do in places where women don’t have them. It’s why women did, and still do in places they need to, campaign for their own toilets.

And women shouldn’t have to tackle intimidating crap or ‘banter’ when they go to the toilet. We shouldn’t have to face this regression in our facilities just to please a minority of men. You are not ‘bossing it’ by accepting this worsening situation for women, you are submitting.

It’s amazing how many pick mes in the comments thinking it’s perfectly okay that women have no privacy to use the bathroom away from men.

You can’t talk your way or HR presentation your way around misogynistic dangerous men. Those who rape, assault or degrade women know it’s wrong.

More women die in car accidents driven by men they know than die after having accepted a lift from a strange man they've never met before. Do you think this means random men are likely to be safer drivers than our male family members? Or do you think there could possibly be a different explanation?

Well said.

Toilets should be the one place we shouldn’t have to fight off men.

This. The toilet provision is illegal. The men’s disgusting behaviour makes it worse, but the central issue is that your employers are breaking the law and should be reported to police.

They are not unisex toilets though are they? They are standard cubicles with shared hand washing facilities.

Does each cubicle have a sanitary waste bin? Are the doors floor to ceiling? Does each cubicle have hand washing and drying facilities? If no then they cannot be called unisex toilets.

Your employer must, by law, provide toilets which woman can use that provide dignity and security. Let your manager, building facility manager, and HR know that they failing to do so.

Judging by the 60% attendance, I think you may be a civil servant.

If you are:

seen-network.uk/

Well said.

Thank you. Gosh, I hadn’t realised the proportion of stranger rapes was as high as that - it seems that there’s been a jump in recent years.

We come across that argument quite frequently - “You shouldn’t be worrying about X because Y happens far more frequently”

but this dismisses the very real issue of X purely on the grounds that Y is ‘more likely’ (although as you highlight, with stranger rape it’s now ’as likely’).

This seems to be a thought terminating argument often deployed (or parroted by those who previously had their thoughts terminated). I wonder if there is a name or term for it.

Not well said.

Just because you’re comfortable doesn’t mean we all are. Have some empathy for some women who don’t want to get involved in a fight with men when trying to go to the bathroom. Maybe the woman is pregnant, maybe she’s young, maybe she’s an abuse survivor - there may be many reasons she doesn’t want to instigate an argument with a group of blokes nor should she have to.

If you had to share with a man (trans-identifying or not), the toilet would be mixed-sex and therefore illegal in a workplace.

I can’t stand the idiocy of people who ignore this misogynistic culture we live in which permeates everything and who think it’s fine (or even progressive) to take away women only spaces including women only toilets.

I hate unisex toilets and think they should all be turned back into women’s toilets that men may not enter, because women do not benefit from these changes, and women are harmed by them. There are important reasons of safety privacy and dignity why separated toileting was put in.

Gender non conforming women of any kind are absolutely welcome (as they always have been) to use the womens toilets. They are visibly not male in person. Their safety will also benefit like any other woman from being in a female only environment. Unisex toileting is actively more unsafe for women and shouldn’t be the goal of any company.

Have you been in touch with the directors of the other company and described this behaviour? That seems the logical course of action.

The toilets aren’t the issue here, the men are - I’ve worked in offices with toilets like this and we never had anyone behave like this. I think all hell would have broken loose if we did!!

Your employer has a responsibility to protect you from sexual harassment in the workplace, whichever part of the office it occurs in. They’re just being lazy and hoping the problem goes away on this which is completely unacceptable.

Be very explicit with your manager that you’re feeling so intimidated by the sexual harassment you’re experiencing in the office, which you have previously reported, that you now feel anxious about coming in. Tell them verbally but follow up with an email and copy in the relevant person in HR so they are also aware of the issue. If you’re in a union, loop them in as well. Report every single incident by email and encourage others to do the same.

They should be logging and reporting every incident to the other company and the building managers. If that doesn’t work they could terminate their lease (which probably has a clause about unacceptable behaviour) and move to a new office. Even if the toilets are still shared, they could look for somewhere that doesn’t share with men that are vile pigs.

You said “well said” to the comment that ended with this: I’m sure sharing cubicle toilets in a modern building won’t kill anyone.

So is that the bar now? “It won’t kill you to be sexually harassed in the toilets so suck it up and stop complaining”?

This is such a daft argument. So because most assaults are by someone a woman knows, we should forget about safeguarding from other men? How does that make any sense at all?

If this is your thinking, then because most children are assaulted by family members we should get rid of safeguarding in schools, scouts and youth groups and stop teaching children about stranger danger, right?

I think we can all see that would be ridiculous. Especially as safeguarding against strangers is easier than safeguarding against family, so it would be particularly stupid to throw it away.

Yeah by these arguments let’s all stop locking our doors at night

The toilets aren’t the issue here, the men are

I think the fact that there is a law that these toilets are not compliant with means that the toilets very much ARE an issue.

Well, hardly. How are they going to resolve something that requires major building works to premises they are sharing? OP's contract is likely to require her to work in the office.

On the rape crisis page linked to, it says 6 in 7 rapes against women are carried out by someone they know which means 1 in 7 are strangers rather than 1 in 2.

I’m particularly annoyed by the comments that blame the OP for being uncomfortable and not telling off the men in the toilet who are harassing her (even though men can become violent or worse when confronted). Not blaming the directors of the companies (usually male) who have done this to women in order to appease a tiny percentage of the population. Yet again, women have to correct the male behaviour and adapt their own behaviour and feelings to accommodate.

Unisex toilets is not some big feminist win, it’s regressive.

But it’s okay, because the rape stats haven’t gone up.

fairplayforwomen.com/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger/

The toilets aren’t the issue here, the men are

@rrrrrreattthe toilets are the issue because they provide a space for men who have inappropriate boundaries to be intimidating and sexually offensive in an enclosed space where women are semi dressed and undertaking intimate personal care tasks.

We have single sex toilets to protect women from dodgy and creepy men.

The men are the issue but that is why we design out opportunities for them to harass women. If we stop doing that, but instead design in opportunities for them to harass women, then the design does also become the issue.

What EHRC ruling? If you mean the Supreme Court case, you clearly haven't read it.