Is Andy Burnham reasonable to say only a small minority of women object to men being in their toilets? YABU he's right, YANBU he's wrong *titled tweaked by MNHQ at OP's request*

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15830845/Andy-Burnham-men-identify-women-use-female-toilets.html

'I don't think that's a majority view. I think it's a minority view and quite a small minority view, actually. But it is a view so you can't completely ignore it. Possibly they might be women who have experienced male violence at some point in their life. I don't know, that's one way of looking at it.'

Why do you think single sex spaces for women exist in the first place?

I do hope you talked him through the whole thing.

how women have to remove clothing, often several layers, or adjust clothing, lift it or lower it, from their bodies to pee, poo or change sanitary items

how women having a period then have to change sanitary items, be it pads, tampons, or mooncups.

how women then have to dispose of said items

how women then WASH THEIR HANDS because we are not scuzzy people who walk around with wee or blood on their hands.

Most men walk in, unzip, grab their penis,pee, replace penis, zip up.Leave. No waiting for a vacant cubicle , no fancy schmanzy hygiene stuff to do like dealing with blood and hand washing.

It is quite amazing how many of the politicians seem to think that women who don’t want men in their spaces are the “very small minority” whereas the loud, demanding, entitled group of men who think they should be allowed in women’s spaces are actually a tiny bloody minority, which makes the complete capitulation to their demands all the more bloody ridiculous.

Yes it is. Check out any Yougov poll in the last 8 years or so.

I see it as an issue out of support for those who have suffered abuse or assault and just don't want to be removing clothes in a small area where men's booming voices are feet away.

For me, it's a hygiene issue. Men tend to be disgusting and piss everywhere <hotel cleaner in my student years decades ago) and stink the place out. I just don't want to be sharing small areas with strangers who are blokes with their shit hygiene standards. That said though it is out of support for the survivors of rape and assault who are absolutely traumatised by men in women's areas that I don't want them there.

The women who 'don't care' have no empathy and not many braincells imo.

A man accessing women’s toilets or other single sex spaces is automatically behaving inappropriately. It’s not about “trans”. I know you know this but the pp’s conception of it is naive and uninformed 🙄

Fucking hell. He can FTFOAWHGTHCFOSM.

God, it's so depressing isn't it. Even if it wasn't the majority of women who have an issue with blokes in the ladies the fact that many do should matter. Obviously.

I don't care whether it's a small number ...
No one can take away my rights.

That’s not the same as saying he supports men using women’s toilets though, is it?
It’s typical shit stirring from the Mail.
I’m far more interested in what he has to say about climate change mitigation in the light of today’s report.

He also mentioned “people supposedly advocating for women’s rights”.

That supposedly is a nasty little bit of thinking. I was going to say misogyny but have given him the benefit of not knowing for sure.

POI a trans woman is a man.

If it helps think of them as Trans Identifying Men (TIM) then you don’t get distracted by the word woman which has been deliberately hijacked from the 50% of the worlds population it belongs to for that exact reason, to confuse the issue.

Once you get that straight you will see that the very act of being a man in a woman’s space is in itself “inappropriate behaviour”.

Using a single sex spaces not for them is behaving inappropriately, it's ignoring women's boundaries, decent men don't do that.

It's terribly crowded in our small minority, isn't it?

What is "behaving inappropriately"?

100% it means doing something that has an effect on a woman/women.

How many women need to be victims of inappropriate behaviour for you to decide it's not okay? In my world, one woman being affected is one too many.

Anyone who makes statements like this is not an intelligent man or a deep thinker but a trend follower. I can't believe this man is touted as Labour's big hope.

Here's a joke.
A Blairite, a Brownite, a Corbynite and a centrist walk into a bar. The barman says, ' the usual Mr Burnham?'

A.man using womens spaces is behaving inappropriately.

Since that clip is old, I look forward to him clarifying his position on this.

Exactly!

This very point came up in the recent case won by a female, and Muslim, NHS employee in Leeds, who won her case. ( There was a MN thread about it recently.)

The tribunal also heard from NHS England about the demographic make-up of its workforce and its Leeds offices. It estimated that around 2,317 employees were female, of whom 162 were Muslim, but that only one or two people were trans women.

That is over 1000 to 1 or even 2000 to 1 the opposite of what Andy is suggesting.

You are wrong Andy.

Edited for typos

What does "inappropriately" mean, though?

Does it include using a private changing cubicle in a female changing room, to exit that room in a tight fitting swimsuit with your male genitalia clearly present?

Does it include being quiet and demure in a ladies loo having walked in with Isla Bryson leggings on showing your tackle?

Why doesn't any man use the ladies' loo if it's oh-so-acceptable?

In my local, the ladies' loos are much nearer the seating area than the gents' are. Why don't the men just go in the ladies? Because they know it's inappropriate and the vast majority have no problem with that.

I think, speaking specifically about toilets, part of it is probably more rooted in a much older time when gender roles were more traditionally delimited and it wasn't considered "proper" for men and women to share the same toilet space?

Now I'm sure there's also part of it that is offering women a sense of protection from being behind closed doors with random men, who could use that private space and proximity to do anything from making inappropriate remarks to being physically/sexually abusive. I guess to me the question is: if unisex toilets became the norm, to what extent would this kind of thing happen more. There's nothing stopping abusive men coming into women's toilets and doing this stuff now, it's not like they're policed. And similarly, this kind of behaviour can and does happen in multiple places other than toilets. Obviously unisex loos would add to the opportunism factor though.

I guess I'm saying that personally, I wouldn't be bothered in theory sharing public toilet spaces with men (and have done in previous workplaces and public places), and by extension trans women, as long as there were no urinals, only cubicles. The question of actual (instead of perceived) safety/rise of opportunistic attacks is a separate thing to me, I'm not advocating that because I'd feel OK with it we should go ahead and enact it into law/culture.

I absolutely agree.

Politics has always had its fair share of liars and those lead by ambition rather than saying what they truly believe in, honesty and working for the best of the country , but it now feels this is the majority of politicians

Does it mean going into the ladies of a busy supermarket and molesting a little girl?

Of course he is unreasonable.

But in any case, it’s not about the numbers of women who have an objection to it, it’s about nobody having the bloody choice and there being zero reward for taking such risks.

If I wanted to walk home in the dark after a few drinks, that is my choice to make and I can weigh up risk vs reward of putting my personal safety at risk vs not paying for a taxi.

Allowing men in women’s spaces against the wishes of women takes away their choice and gives zero reward. Not to mention that I would imagine the number of men who want access to women’s spaces is far lower than the number of women that would object to it.