Do you feel nervous or uneasy using unisex loos?

[Motuihe]

It is a bit offputting when several men are washing hands and whistling away and you are only woman there. Or if you leave a loo at same time and clock eyes with a bloke.

We have unisex toilets at work off a single door. None of the women like them. Several cubicles have the seats up. The sani bins and squeezed in close the to toilets and are clearly splattered in pee.
it feels really awkward if you walk out the same time as one of the guys.
I would never have a number 2 in there!
one of my team has had some major issues with flooding and was mortified to have to enter the same areas as the male workers

Because given a choice nearly all the women are queuing up for the ladies'. 😀

More seriously, it just depends on how busy places are. When there are only single-user enclosed toilets there will be queues for those as well unless a lot more are provided.

I suspect a signifcant minority avoid entirely and use other non mixed toilets.

I would if set up left me feeling unsafe - SA and rape victurm women under relgious constraint may feel they just can't use them.

FIL and DS strongly dislike them - DH more shrug and get on with it.

I suspect any workplace surveys may also suffer from fear of objections being used against complainants - there has been a fair few employment cases around mixed sex facilites in past few years.

As a cleaner who's done more than my fair share of both women's and mens loos, I can say with some experience that both are equally mucky and both tend to smell when they're not properly maintained (well-maintained loos that are cleaned often enough should not smell).

The mens is probably more "pungent" (as it were) but the womens is more likely to have soaked loo roll all over the floor (thanks to those who can't bear to sit directly on the seat and who don't pick up after themselves), and then there is the obvious issue of sanitary products disposed of in varying and creative ways.

So in short, I wouldn't really care about a unisex loo, because as far as I'm concerned both sexes are equally entitled and disgusting in public.

My first thought is always about stepping in the pee all over the floor! The ones at pubs and clubs are disgusting!

*sue .... Not use. Sorry typo.

It's not pointless but it takes time. We've had a couple of decades of prioritising supposedly "inclusive" designs over what people actually need and in some places it's going to take time to implement a better mix of women's, men's, and individual unisex facilities.

For some places it will just be a matter of changing labels (like the venue near me I described upthread) but for others it will take longer.

They not queuing for the Ladies in the National Portrait Gallery because there aren’t any. The one in the Pret round the corner is unisex too.

If you are in the UK what you are describing is illegal.

Especially if it's at your workplace where having single sex toilet or changing facilities is mandated by law.
Unisex loos in the UK HAVE to be fully contained units including a wash hand basin. Loos with a shared washing area should always be only single sex. Where is this? And can you complain?
And I agree, sounds horrible. I'd hate it.

I'm a bit shocked at this thread tbh. So many workplaces and service providers just openly breaking the law. And so many people who don't know what the law is.

I had no idea it was this bad.

Not a fan. The real reason is probably because it represents a cost saving and potentially some extra square footage to make money out of?

No. You’re deliberately misunderstanding. She’s not uncomfortable with strangers. She’s uncomfortable with men she doesn’t know in a confined intimate space. As she should be. One’s gut instinct should never be ignored.

One’s gut instinct should never be ignored.
gut instinct about men in general?

I am not deliberately misunderstanding when I point out that there are MALE in female loos. I rarely see female cleaners.

Perfectly happy with the sort that are self enclosed cubicles with a sink inside.

As a man i hate them. They are almost on every French campsite, so ive ended up in the uncomfortable position of cleaning my teeth next to a Swiss woman who lives in Sussex (not the Swiss bit or Sussex, just the complete wrogness of it)
I worry that women will fill uncomfortable using the loo/showering next to me that I may be peeping under the door/divide.

I think this is a really good point and it’s interesting to know that some men are not comfortable with unisex facilities either.

Unless they are in the cubicle with me i figure they have more important things going on in their lives to worry about me

Men or women i am not the centre of their toilet time

Perhaps for different reasons though. I know DH doesn’t like them at all. He moans about the lack of urinals and cubicle floors covered in soggy loo paper. He is convinced that’s a woman thing.

It seems it's not legal in new buildings but is acceptable in older buildings. I've only come across this set up once, in a cafe in Derbyshire. It felt weird and awkward.

Agree it's not legal if it's for workers though. Not sure how this affects the cafe workers. Do they need to have single sex facilities for their use?

No...no I really don't FFS

Yes they do. The cafe has to provide either single sex facilities or a separate enclosed unisex room. Sometimes there's a separate single staff toilet. I doubt that anyone is going to complain because they need the job but the cafe would fail a Health and Safety inspection.

Not a fan. A restaurant I liked brought them in. Seats left up, smelly, piss all over the place. Haven’t been back. I honestly think some of them piss everywhere on purpose. In a former workplace you could smell the men’s toilets from the corridor even though they were regularly cleaned. Just too disgusting for me.

I encountered this too (Summerhall?) and it pissed me off. Gender ideology is sexist because changes such as this in the name of inclusion have a disproportionately negative effect on women while barely affecting men. Architects used to know that you need more toilet provision for women if you want to avoid Qs. The lost knowledge...!

We went to a venue in Manchester with ‘gender neural’ toilets. In practice this meant a large space with sinks down the middle of the space with urinals to the left and cubicles to the right. The urinals were through an arch way but clearly visible to all. It was a bit disconcerting and not pleasant made worse by some idiot bloke who thought it was funny to simulate masturbating (he was fully clothed) towards all the women coming in and out of the toilets. Our one experience of gender neutral toilets really didn’t change our minds that they are a bad idea.