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

@Kanaloa

I don’t think girls are leaving the toilets with ‘bloodstained hands.’ If a little bit of blood got on them they would wipe it off with tissue before washing their hands in the sink. As I said, I do agree with single sex toilets (more for reasons of safety) but I think it’s daft to pretend the reason they’re needed is so girls can wash blood off their clothes/themselves.

Other teen girls are much more likely to comment/be nasty/jeer if a girl walks out of the toilet cubicle with her hands covered in blood.

And if a parent wasn’t available, as a pp said I would tell my daughter to go to the office/fetch her pe kit with her jumper tied round herself.

There are many reasons why females should have single sex toilets. Safety, dignity, privacy being three of them. Ultimately, females saying they do not feel comfortable with males sharing their single sex spaces should be enough.

@Ionlydomassiveones

I could cry for girls in this situation especially with the lack of any empathy from the sisterhood like on this thread. Older women basically saying tough shit - your discomfort, indignity and biological reality doesn’t matter. Only the march towards having no female spaces seems to be the goal. What a fucking backward step - under the Trojan horse of supposedly ‘inclusivity’. Tragic.

It's distressing and rage inducing. Girls can use tissues, they can take a jumper wherever they go, they can make phone calls about period leakage in the toilets within earshot of boys, they can walk through the school with blood on their clothes to get their PE kit/see the office.

Any solution, at all, however inconvenient or unlikely, rather than have a little bit of bloody privacy because it what, inconveniences the boys?

What, exactly, is the benefit of mixed sex toilets?

There’s zero benefit to mixed sex toilets and it’s absolutely infuriating how children’s single sex facilities are being removed to benefit an adult-led political campaign centred around adult male sexual entitlement.

Multiple disbenefits to having unisex toilets in education settings- and these specifically impact on girls. Like the unasked for job of cleaning male piss off the communal unisex toilet seat before a girl can sit down to use it. And the liklihood of the girls just holding it in all day and avoiding drinking water freely at school or college because they are hoping to avoid the whole shitshow of having to do this at school and college, and then girls getting UTIs, or not being able to change tampons or pads as often as they would otherwise do. And so on. It’s completely sexist and inappropriate to create unisex toilets. New toilet provision must not impact negatively on female health and well-being by taking away single-sex female toilet facilities or other female-only spaces.

It’s not just about periods. School toilets are disgusting enough. And you are vulnerable in there anyway - sometimes alone, back turned while you wash your hands. Confined space with no supervision.

There’s already a sexual assault problem in schools.

@stillsleeptraining

It’s not just about periods. School toilets are disgusting enough. And you are vulnerable in there anyway - sometimes alone, back turned while you wash your hands. Confined space with no supervision.

There’s already a sexual assault problem in schools.

But you're not in a confined space when washing hands, the sinks are out in the open school corridor. The only confined space is the cubicle. This is what happens at DS's school. Half the row are for boys and half for girls.

There’s zero benefit to mixed sex toilets and it’s absolutely infuriating how children’s single sex facilities are being removed to benefit an adult-led political campaign centred around adult male sexual entitlement.

Agree. One girl a day is raped in school. Not to mention the relentless sexual harassment that even primary school girls are subjected to. Not being able to have any privacy away from males, whatsoever, when you're dealing with menstruation, or with your knickers around your ankles, is just re-enforcing the power differential that leads to women being seen as lesser than.

I would be interested to know whether or not all the staff toilets have been made mixed sex.

We are being distracted by the details.

Girls and women need and deserve single sex spaces away from the male gaze (and male idiots). It’s that simple.

This should be enough.

@ChateauMargaux

We are being distracted by the details.

Girls and women need and deserve single sex spaces away from the male gaze (and male idiots). It’s that simple.

This should be enough.

This should be enough - but it never is. There are a vanishingly small number of women and girls actively asking to share toilets with the opposite sex. When asked (but they rarely are) girls state that they want single sex toilets (and changing rooms, showers and dormitories).

It's very powerful to ask if the school have actually consulted children about this and asked them what they prefer. (They won't have asked and will avoid doing so at all costs).

I wrote a letter based on the template linked above as my DD was deliberately dehydrating herself, and NOT dealing with heavy periods due to boys next door. It's a health risk.
The toilets all stank and had urine all over and seats up and not flushed.

I wouldn't deal with that as an adult, why should young girls.

They have reinstated one lot of single sex.

I wonder what they'll do after the first girl alleges sexual assault or rape, an entirely predictable occurance. I wonder if the school will provide condoms since it's now normal for girls and boys to go to the toilets together.
IDIOTS.

We do not have self ID in the UK. No under-18 can get a sec reassignment certificate, therefore they should use the toilets and changerooms of their sex, or the all enclosed unisex ones.

FYI - to be unisex, the 3 walls need to be floor to ceiling, made of a different material to the door, and sink inside. Sink outside is NOT a unisex toilet, it is a mixed sex toilet. Which is not legal.

But you're not in a confined space when washing hands, the sinks are out in the open school corridor. The only confined space is the cubicle.
This is what happens at DS's school. Half the row are for boys and half for girls.

I have PCOS, have ways had incredibly heavy periods and even now routinely have blood on my hands after changing san pro, I’d not be remotely comfortable at my age standing in a public corridor washing the blood off my hands, much less so in school.

In my DDs primary school the toilet cubicles often have broken locks, to where my DD thinks it’s wholly normal to hold the door closed for a friend in the toilet. She’s helped friends when their period started unexpectedly, talking them through what they need and getting adult help if needed (leaving the unlocked cubicle door unguarded). Yes, let’s add boys into the mix as something else they need to deal with, aged 10.

Is it really so hard to understand women wanting privacy to toilet and attend to their personal hygiene in peace.

As an adult, if I had bled through a skirt, I would not be "popping out" in my bloodstained clothes to just go and buy a new skirt in the high street

You bet I would be trying to rinse it out with soap and water before I left the ladies'

As far as children go, why the everburning hellfire are you assuming pubescent girls at primary and secondary school always have a charged mobile phone with them in the cubicle to phone for help and a parent waiting at the other end of the line? They are supposed to leave it in their bags if they have a phone. They're not supposed to pause to dig a phone out of their bags before they leave year 7 History in a hurry!

In fact, why are you assuming there is even reception at all? My local school has terrible mobile reception the moment you cross the threshold. (I've always wondered whether it was an unfortunate legacy of pre-mobile phone architecture or whether they have a jammer).

@Kanaloa do you really think these aren’t scenarios worth considering? As an adult who uses tampons you get blood around your cuticle and under your nail, of course you wipe but it’s only clean with washing. Bleeding on clothes is common, especially for girls learning about their periods, mobile phone bans are common in schools, I like many will be an hour away. In a single sex toilet you can come out and ask someone else to grab a jumper for you to wrap around your waist and go look for a phone at least. These are all humiliating events in mixed sex toilets/ mixed sink environments. Teens are easily humiliated.

I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that I personally have never seen people washing bloody clothes/bloody hands in a public toilet. As a teen, I would have been horrified to do this, and other girls would have been as likely to mock/be nasty as boys.

Realistically the school will say they are providing privacy as the toilet cubicles are separate and private.

I do think there are issues with mixed sex toilets but all I was saying is I don’t think the major issue is girls who would previously have been happily washing menstrual blood off themselves in the public toilet not wanting to do this in front of boys.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

As an adult, if I had bled through a skirt, I would not be "popping out" in my bloodstained clothes to just go and buy a new skirt in the high street

You bet I would be trying to rinse it out with soap and water before I left the ladies'

As far as children go, why the everburning hellfire are you assuming pubescent girls at primary and secondary school always have a charged mobile phone with them in the cubicle to phone for help and a parent waiting at the other end of the line? They are supposed to leave it in their bags if they have a phone. They're not supposed to pause to dig a phone out of their bags before they leave year 7 History in a hurry!

In fact, why are you assuming there is even reception at all? My local school has terrible mobile reception the moment you cross the threshold. (I've always wondered whether it was an unfortunate legacy of pre-mobile phone architecture or whether they have a jammer).

And even if you do have your phone, having to make the call in a mixed sex environment where everyone can hear you!

I do think there are issues with mixed sex toilets but all I was saying is I don’t think the major issue is girls who would previously have been happily washing menstrual blood off themselves in the public toilet not wanting to do this in front of boys.

I don't think anyone's doing it 'happily'. Its mortifying.

How old Is your daughter ?