I was surprised by my reaction to using a gender neutral toilet today

[RugbyBuoys]

I've been contracting this week for a company who work from a relatively small, quiet office building. I was advised that the loos for women were the gender neutral ones. Initially I thought this was a good thing - it felt like the way things should be going.

However, I was surprised how vulnerable I felt using the loos - going in to the cubicles (big gaps under doors and walls) when another person unknown was in the next door cubicle, and also when finding the loos empty, going into a cubicle and then hearing someone else enter the room.

I realised that when you are getting yourself partially undressed in a public loo, it isn't gender of your fellow users that feels relevant, it is biological sex. It was something of a revelation, as I had thought prior to this I would feel fine in a gender neutral set of loos.

I have no significant experience that should make me especially wary of the male sex, but I certainly did feel very uncomfortable and unsafe in that situation.

I now think that people should experience using these sort of toilets (in a non-busy environment where you can't be sure that there will always be people popping in and out) to see how they feel about sitting on the loo and hearing heavy foot steps outside, before they reach a conclusion about converting all loos to gender neutral.

By all means have gender neutral toilets, but women-only loos must not be taken away as part of this is my conclusion.

Interestingly, I noticed that there was another set of loos further on down the corridor - but for men only. No women-only toilets...

Thanks for your points people. I think I am going to have to say something, but I will spend some time phrasing it. If we don't raise these things at a local scale then the war is lost.

On the floor I was on, it was definitely one set of mens loos and one set of gender-neutral. It may have been a different scenario on other floors, so I will need to check this first. However my feeling is that there should be appropriate loos on each floor, and that wasn't the case where I was.

It is unlikely I will go back to do work for the company tbh, the work wasn't quite my thing, but obviously I need to protect my professional reputation so will need to proceed with caution.

Meanwhile, I shall talk irl to others about my expectations of using gender neutral looks and how I found it in reality, to try and increase awareness. I really was surprised at myself today!

I taught at an evening course in a school with unisex loos. I hated it. I didn't want to stand washing my hands/looking at the mirror etc when I came out next to a man.

I could not care less about unisex toilets. We've had them at work for years. I would object to women' toilets being changed to uni while the mens' were not.

Thanks tumble

Ask them to make the male toilets unisex. Its not equality to have a male and unisex toilet. Women aren't asking for unisex toilets.

I took my DD to try on first bras yesterday. The shop we were in had menswear and children's on upper floor - so men's fitting rooms. I tried telling DD it'd be fine, no need to go downstairs and to other end of store just to try on we'll use the ones up here.
She wasn't having any of it.
She's 12 and wanted to do it on a male free space.
I think she's not much going to like dealing with periods in unisex toilets.
Fair dos.

Why would you have suggested your 12 year old dad use the men's fitting rooms?

Dd, not Dad

Sorry, confused - if the mens' and childrens' fitting rooms were on the same floor, they weren't just then mens' surely? Were they the same fitting rooms or separate ones?

I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable here, but it strikes me that there's a lot of OTT backlash about some shared spaces. Yes, it is unreasonable to expect a teenage girl to try underwear on in a male changing room. However, if it's a changing room for men, women and/or children with enclosed cubicles, I can't really see the problem?

Strigoi, I don't know how things are where you live, but in the shops I know, there's just a flimsy curtain in front of each cubicle, that often doesn't cover it fully!

The main privacy is afforded by the fact that, in the women's clothes section, there'll only be women there.

I never thought about that until now, because one could just expect there to be only women.

I would be very uncomfortable in such a space with men.

YANBU It's utter bullshit that the women's loo is 'gender neutral' but the men's untouched. I would be tempted to march in to the men's and just stand and stare...then declare myself as identifying as male...just to fuck with them on the same level...

Ok, in recent years I've only ever come across changing rooms with actual doors rather than curtains, so that was what I was thinking of. I agree that in the women's clothing bit it should be just women if they don't have properly enclosed cubicles. It's bad planning for a shop to make people change floors to try stuff on, especially underwear.

We've had people at work asking on our work forum should we have gender neutral toilets. We employ 4000+ .

People quickly reminded them of the posts and I'm being serious here about men posting about the absolute state of the men's toilets on the same staff forum.

Two that stuck out for me were. 1st "Why is there shit up the walls of all the mens toilets, seriously why are you wiping your arses on the walls and not on toilet paper.

2nd Now I know the toilets are totally disgusting but today topped it all. Went to have a crap only to find man essence on the toilet seat wtf.

Now these are not urinals but cubicles like the ladies.

So after safety, hygienes my reason, and a risk of pregnancy from viable sperm left on seats.

Yesterday 20:37 ZilphasHatpin

What would be the reason someone, a man , would use the gender neutral loo when there was a perfectly good man's loo available?

"Read to the end of my post".

It was a rhetorical question.

I was agreeing with you.

My reasons for not wanting "gender neutral" toilets are nothing to do with hygiene or anything else. I feel threatened by men on the street, going out of my house, on my road, everywhere. I do not care if people think this is irrational because it isn't. I have known the worst male violence in my friendship circle and can never forget it. Do not force me to have men in one of the only women's spaces I know.

I am against it until men learn to pee into the toilet and flush. It was s huge trend here a few years back but it's since gone back to male and female and, if space allows, a mixed toilet.

They don't even flush. It's bloody disgusting. And as though the queue for the ladies wasn't long enough.

Just introduce a 3rd option and we'll all be fine.

I was advised that the loos for women were the gender neutral ones

WTF? Women need to start using the men's loos and marching past the urinals. The only way to stop this trend is to make men feel some of the discomfort we do. Not suggesting you do this in a work scenario, OP, but I would totally do it at the sodding Barbican.

" after safety, hygienes my reason, and a risk of pregnancy from viable sperm left on seats"

Why is it not sex discrimination to provide single sex toilets for men and not for women? I don't get how organisations are getting away with this.

I can just about accept the idea of gender neutral bogs as long as they are a separate entity from male and female facilities. To have the female space coopted as "gender neutral" while the male space remains solely male does not sit well.

If I were in a situation of having to choose between "male" and "gender neutral/women", you know, I think I would go into the "male" option. Fuck it. Self-identity is a free-for-all. I'd put up with the inevitable pee-splattered seat and raised eyebrows/threats to make the point.

TheCountessofFitzdotterel

I agree. If both loos are gender neutral, as at the Barbican, only being distinguished by the actual facilities therein, then it's equal.

But only making the women's loo gender neutral and not the men's has to be discrimination.

Men get a loo to themselves, women don't.

Sums up the entire issue rather neatly, I think.

I went to a club recently (first time in over a decade!) for a friend's birthday. My friend booked tables in the VIP area, which had the selling point of "VIP" loos with no need to queue. These loos were unisex, three cubicles, sinks outside the cubicles, door from the club into the loos. There was another group who had also booked into the same area, and I felt very uncomfortable when I was in there with two men from that group. When I was washing my hands, straightening my hair, doing my lipstick etc, they were talking quietly to each other and laughing. Now, I'm a lot older than them, don't dress in a particularly trendy way, so they were probably just twats laughing at why I was there. But what if they weren't? Or what if I'd been less confident or had been assaulted or abused? To be fair, if I'd felt too uncomfortable, there were female loos I could have gone to, so there was the option. But I don't like thinking about everywhere having female facilities turned into unisex facilities.

I know this is going to sound like hideous Paranoia but I can't shake it since I saw with my own eyes.

I was talking to a male friend once about different types of sexual activities. He explained voyeurism and told me it was more common than you think. And that there were websites dedicated to secret cameras hidden in toilets that record innocent unknowing women (as that's the turn on) preparing for and using the toilet in public places.

I didn't really believe it, but it's not exactly a niche thing, it's a lot more common than I'd ever realised.

Sadly because to prove him wrong I looked on the Internet. I was astounded.

Now every time I hear gender neutral I think to myself it's a potential magnet for voyeurs.

Personal paranoia I know, but it really makes me feel vulnerable.

Ineedmorelemonpledge

I had the same experience a couple of years ago. I was told that voyeurism was a lot more prevalent than I had realised. I checked, and it's right.