School toilets - rules

[CinderFuckingRe11a]

Hi all

I know someone here will be able to help.

My daughters school has just sent an email saying they will be continuing with year group toilets this year or mixed sex.

According to DD they are floor to ceiling enclosed, but handbasins are outside.

I recently had an accident at work where I bled through my skirt. This was embarrassing enough to deal with as a 42-year-old woman in a ladies only environment but I cannot imagine the modification of having to swill my skirt under a tap in a mixed sex toilet.

This has really focused my mind on this issue and I wondered if anyone knows the actual law on this - and if that law has been relaxed in any way because of COVID?

Thanks in advance fellow vipers

I have PCOS. My periods are both erratic and incredibly heavy. I have had to clean clothes, run out to the sinks to wet a paper towel to wipe the floor of blood drips, ask other people for sanitary products and use the sanitary product dispenser. As a teenager, I would have been absolutely mortified if a teenage boy could hear me unwrapping a sanitary towel while I was using the toilets at school. While I was at School, my parents wouldn't have been able to leave work and if I had bled through, there's no way on earth I would have walked through the corridors with a blood stain on my clothes.

Girls need single sex toilets due to their biology. For their privacy and dignity. Making toilets mixed sex discriminates against them.

Additionally, my understanding regarding mixed sex toilets is that they must have floor to ceiling doors with a sink inside the cubicle. As pp's have said, the Safe Schools Alliance should be able to advise.

The current generation are being denied dignity and privacy.
Babdoc says it in a nutshell.

It’s not a persuasive argument that some posters personally haven’t experienced something happening. So what? Why ever would that mean that proper facilities are unnecessary for everyone else, including those who HAVE experienced it?
I think we can trust women and girls to know what they want and need around their own female bodies. It’s a bit of a red flag when other people persistently try to minimise that.

I think part of the problem is how we view these natural bodily functions as taboo. One of my friends accidentally shit on her skirt once when she didn't realise it had slipped at the back. Now that's embarrassing!

But really most boys wouldn't give a shit about seeing a bit of blood on a girl's hand and would probably be more uncomfortable than the girl tbh. I don't think we need to justify single sex spaces with all these hypothetical scenarios. It's just unnecessarily stigmatising things to prove a point which doesn't need proved. We shouldn't need to make young girls dread their period in order to have a point. I'd rather people just focused on the law or sexual assaults etc.

Awful that this is happening. Unbelievable. Sometimes a single sex toilet is a very welcome place of solitude and privacy. I remember needing that privacy in my 20s (and finding it there).

Ask the school how they'll safeguard with regards to the content of this article:

Reports of sex abuse between children double in two years www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58332341

I am astonished that because some here don’t see the problems or have experienced the problems of mixed sex facilities, they can’t emphasise with those that have. Lots of women know only too well what happens and there is no reason to change single sex facilities into ones that welcome all and sundry in. Not just around menstruation issues, but nearly grown men in with 11 year old girls? No way should this even be contemplated.

But really most boys wouldn't give a shit about seeing a bit of blood on a girl's hand and would probably be more uncomfortable than the girl tbh.

Simultaneously the boy manages to be more uncomfortable than the girl AND not give a shit. That's some serious cognitive dissonance.

A girl at my school was called Brabrara for three years because some idiot boy noticed a strap before any other girl had one. Many boys at that age are arseholes. It's not their fault, really. But simple biology is incredibly embarrassing at that age. And teenagers are very peer focused so it's very important to them. Why can't they have dignity and privacy. And that's not even taking into account the high and rising levels of sexual assault in schools.

A girl at my school was called Brabrara for three years because some idiot boy noticed a strap before any other girl had one

Sorry but that's hilarious. 😂😂😂

A girl at my school was called Brabrara for three years because some idiot boy noticed a strap before any other girl had one

I shouldn't laugh because I'm sure it was very traumatic for the poor girl but what a name, kids can be cruel.

I never wore a jumper, my teen kids will not wear a jumper.
The favoured approach is to get a friend to run and grab a PE kit which has a spare skirt and pants etc kept in for this reason. However-being in a loo cubicle waiting while this kerfuffle goes on with boys presumably coming and going is far from ideal and very humiliating.

Scottish Schools Guidance is just that. Not the law. Trans children are being encouraged to use the toilets they feel most comfortable in. 200 per year school kids apparently seek help but that means the other 790, 000 need to stand aside regardless of their discomfort. Hardly fair.
A must read for parents on the school guidance.
dr-bruce-scott.com/2021/09/06/querying-the-queering-of-scottish-schools/

I've never experienced a period as heavy as some of you are describing and I don't think I'm in the minority?
However, that doesn't mean that the needs of those who do have heavy and/or erratic periods don't exist or deserve to have the facilities they need and the privacy they deserve.

It's hard because it's easy to rationalise why shared toilets are a benefit if you've not experienced any of the negatives. And since most of us are used to single sex toilets, many negatives just haven't been brought to our attention yet.

This is exactly why the people who should have the final say on this is the people it directly pacts, in this case, the children.

Taking as an example PCOS. There's no exact figures for a variety of different reasons but it's estimated that 1 in 10 women of reproductive age have it and may likely have one of the main symptoms - erratic and heavy periods. That means a fair amount of teenage girls using toilets in Schools will be experiencing menstruation issues such as I've described in my post above. And that's not even taking into account other gynecological issues such as endometriosis.

And at that age this stuff is acutely embarrassing. I was embarrassed myself within the last month when I accidentally bled through onto a chair at my parents house and I'm an adult with many years experience of these issues.

Some pp's have said that teenage girls can be just as bad. I've never experienced that. Even if they weren't directly supportive, they weren't mocking, realising I suppose that they could themselves be caught out very easily. Teenage boys not so much. I remember one friend at school being mocked by a boy because he could 'hear her sanitary towel!'. Said loudly and with the intent to embarrass.

Sorry that should have read 'could hear her sanitary towel!' when she was walking around.

I'd be more worried about these boys and girls using these unisex toilets as a private place to be doing things they shouldn't be doing together.

As a girl, i had various accidents, including coming out to get games skirt, or wrapping a jumper round my waist on a blazing hot day to cover a stain on my dress. As an adult I have stood rinsing my crops at the sink then drying then over the hand drier.

Stuff like this happens to a significant minority of girls and women.

So, what is the advantage to making toilets mixed sex? And why doesn't the needs of this significant minority of females out-weigh any issues for the smaller minority of females with gender identity issues who also menstruate. Or indeed, the small minority of males with gender issues? Why are females having their privacy and dignity taken away...............

@forgottonworkloaddays

I'd be more worried about these boys and girls using these unisex toilets as a private place to be doing things they shouldn't be doing together.

But the point of these toilets is the only enclosed space is the cubicle. There is no "unisex enclosed space"

[quote WarriorN]Ask the school how they'll safeguard with regards to the content of this article:

Reports of sex abuse between children double in two years www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58332341[/quote]
At my DS's school the sink area is completely open, the only enclosed space is the cubicle. So they are safer surely?

@bocodilloconqueso

They will go on the cubicle together

[quote forgottonworkloaddays]@bocodilloconqueso

They will go on the cubicle together [/quote]
So what's stopping a boy going into the girls toilet then?
These cubicles open directly out onto the school corridors. There will be other pupils and staff around who will surely notice two kids going into or spilling out of a single cubicle

I believe to get around the requirement for single sex facilities, the sinks need to be inside the cubicle.

As well as the point about girls dealing with periods, when my kids’ school proposed these I also asked where girls who wear hijab were supposed to adjust theirs, as there are no mirrors in the cubicles.

They eventually backed down and agreed to continue with single sex facilities

@bocodilloconqueso
"So what's stopping a boy going into the girls toilet then? "

Clear boundaries. The girls have their toilets and the boys have their own. Plus others in the toilet may tell on pupils who are I. The wrong toilet

"These cubicles open directly out onto the school corridors. There will be other pupils and staff around who will surely notice two kids going into or spilling out of a single cubicle "

100% kids with easily find a way. Especially in busy corridors, they will get their friends to huddle around, distract the teacher, anything. Kids will find it a fun game

I bet over the summer holidays more schools will have taken the chance to turn the toilets unisex if they have been upgrading them.

Ours did exactly this. I'm fuming.

We have 900 girls and 400 boys. So why we have now lost 2 girls toilet and turned them into unisex is beyond me. 900 girls on their periods, they NEED their single sex spaces.

On the back of the very serious ofsted report detailing the sexual harassment in schools and how rife it is, what a good idea to make it even easier for the boys who do that

Simultaneously the boy manages to be more uncomfortable than the girl AND not give a shit. That's some serious cognitive dissonance.

A girl at my school was called Brabrara for three years because some idiot boy noticed a strap before any other girl had one. Many boys at that age are arseholes. It's not their fault, really. But simple biology is incredibly embarrassing at that age. And teenagers are very peer focused so it's very important to them. Why can't they have dignity and privacy. And that's not even taking into account the high and rising levels of sexual assault in schools.

Absolutely. The boys in our school are very immature, and lots of them are total arseholes when it comes to the girls, and they period shame regularly. Girls are constantly having to hide pads and tampons because some dipshit boy in their class will highlight and start taking the piss.

I wouldn't want to share a toilet with any one of them, and neither will the girls.

Are people on this thread really unable to empathise with the messy reality of periods for young girls? FFS it makes me rage that girls have less dignity privacy and safety than was the case in previous decades. It’s not the minority that have to deal with bloodied hands and clothes. Girls and women need and deserve single sex spaces away from the male gaze (and male idiots). It’s that simple.