To dislike male cleaners in female public toilets?

[GarliceGran]

I travel a lot with work, mostly via train. For some bizarre reason, a huge amount of train stations have male cleaners for the female toilets. Worse yet, these men are often doing non-urgent cleaning, such as washing mirrors etc.

This makes me very uncomfortable. If I’m not desperate, I’ll often just walk out.

AIBU?

Any toilets I’ve used in public usually have doors, so really doesn’t bother me at all.

So trans women now aren’t allowed in female only spaces but actual men are 🤔

Yes they’re paid to work there but Would a trans female toilet attendant be allowed ?

You sound dumb.

Erm I would rather be somewhere clean than not, it's not like there sharing a cubicle with you lol

I agree with this or at the very least if a cleaner (opposite sex) has to enter, they should make sure it's when no one is in there, if possible.

You find it interesting that people have common sense?

How is it common sense to strongly insist that female-only spaces shouldn’t allow any male-bodied people to enter in order to keep women safe, and then on the other hand say it’s fine if it means the toilets are a bit cleaner?

Really great point 👍

So when do you want the mirrors and other "non urgent" jobs done, especially in motorway service places where they are open w4 hrs?
Would you prefer them yo be shut so they can clean them.and wait gor however long it take

They're cleaning up your mess, the know what ladies are doing in there.
I just have to remember that when the sign is up in the gym changing room I shouldn't whip my top off without shedding where he is first 🤣

i mean the ones who psss you paper towels & offer perfume & deodorant for a tip

Men are allowed to enter female only spaces (and women mens spaces) if there is justifiable reason. For example, to do their job. This is not a new thing and applies to most restricted settings. The person goes in ONLY in the course of their job, and leaves when they've done it.
Men who's work requires them to access women's spaces can't and don't then waltz in and out of them at will to use them alongside women outside of their job.
TW now can't do this either.
However, a TW employed as a cleaner of women's toilets would be able to go in there to clean just like the male cleaners do.
This is pretty obvious, so its a bit daft to frame this as TW being treated differently.

Well yes I completely agree with you. I can't understand the dichotomy of "no men in the women's toilets to keep TW out" / "but male cleaners and staff are ok".

Nice! I do the ‘low paid dirty work’ full time for minimum wage to support my family. Nice to know my hard work goes appreciated! 😡

It's become a norm but in the back of my mind the question, why would a man want to clean women's toilets, lurks.

I'm sure a man would rather not. I'm sure women would rather not, as well. But people have to keep a roof over their head and maybe feed their children. If you have a choice of what you do for a living, you're privileged, frankly.

Janitors in places like stations etc tend to be male. And cleaning the women's toilets will just be one of the many jobs allocated to them.
If you don't want the queues for the ladies to be even longer then they are already, while the whole facility is closed for a male to clean it, you put up with a naan cleaning or you go and find another toilet. There's always a sign warning you.

Its become the norm because we now have more men in cleaning roles, where once this was pretty rare. These men don't apply for jobs as Women's Toilet Cleaner, they apply for generic cleaning jobs, often because they need a job, sign up with an employment agency, and there's usually plenty of cleaning jobs on offer. They then clean wherever they are sent by their company.
We should perhaps question why cleaning companies allocate men to clean women's toilets (given nearly 70% of cleaners are women, youd think it wasnt too hard to avoid) rather than the motives of men who take cleaning jobs.

I put up with it because they’re checked and verified; and wouldn’t get away with any funny business

It comes down to consent.

Male workers in female toilets should have some warning that a male person is present. That way a female person can choose to enter or not.

Whereas there is no warning a male people is accessing the female toilet to use the toilet. Therefore no female person is able to give their consent for that male person to enter.

We should perhaps question why cleaning companies allocate men to clean women's toilets (given nearly 70% of cleaners are women, youd think it wasnt too hard to avoid)

You've answered this in your own post. Cleaning the women's toilets will be one of many jobs that a janitor will do. And a lot of his jobs will not generally be done by female cleaners, as they will probably involve heavy lifting etc.

If it’s a trans woman cleaning the toilets would the sign have to say the toilets are currently being cleaned by a man ?

I would expect under the EA that yes, I would expect the sign to say ‘male cleaner’.

A lot of cleaning of public spaces, where we use public toilets, airports, stations, shopping malls is subcontracted to large cleaning companies, who send their teams on site and allocate their duties, rather than by a person in a janitor type role employed directly by the site.
The staff of these companies will typically consist of more women than men given the over representation of women in cleaning. So my point was that given that, I'd have thought it possible to avoid male cleaners in women's toilets. Clearly its not something the companies consider.

I would support a campaign for women to have women maintenance staff only where reasonable. It may not be reasonable in some cases where there is really no alternative.