All gender toilets

[MissBax]

Bit of a lurker on the fem chat usually but just wondered people's opinions on this.
At my university today I noticed they'd changed the women's toilets on one floor to "all gender" toilets. At first I thought ah ok that's not a big deal, there must be someone in the uni who is trans and that's why they've done it. But then when I came out of the toilets I noticed that the men's toilet and disabled toilet hadn't been changed. I can't understand the rationale of changing only the women's toilets? Or am I being overly sensitive? I'm not sure how I feel about it...

I was somewhat flummoxed last week when in London. There was a male loo and I looked around for the ladies but it turned out there was one cubicle labelled disabled and gender neutral. As said above, maybe a urinal issue but surely this is a tad unfair and will lead to longer queues too. Hopefully as time passes all the loos will become cubicles and just open to everybody rather than women losing their facilities and men just carrying on as normal.

Datun I absolutely agree noone should have to provide evidence of harm or distress about having to share toilets for the situation to be changed.

I would guess that in my workplace though, this would be what would be required in order to outweigh (..if it ever did outweigh..) my MTT colleagues' right to use the women's.

Clearly the women in my workplace are meant just not to react to whoever is using the women's. That expectation feels misogynistic. In this case these are fairly new colleagues in other departments, I know nothing about them, we don't work together. No idea re possible risk, misogynistic attitudes, sexual orientation or not.

The MTT colleague exiting the stall next to mine in the ladies was a lot older, taller and bigger than me (and I do now know she is in a more senior position to me in her dept).

And honestly it gave me a bit of a fright at the time. Now I feel fucked off at our shit managers that me and my colleague have been put in this position, to just work it out amongst ourselves. I've no idea what my (MTT) colleagues' view is on this..

MissBax I did consider it, but then I thought if I'm the only one I'll look like some lone meanie and probably won't be taken seriously.

Don't say which one, but is the University in the north of England?

saskia yes, North West. Is it a new building?

FuckYeah

I've no idea what my (MTT) colleagues' view is on this..

Who cares!

Miss Bax and Saskia, I suspect I am also at your uni, we had an email round last week about gender neutral toilets in the new building.

I have already kicked off about the ones in our building which are corridors with floor to ceiling doors. They are currently designated male and female by floor.
They piss me off because there is nowhere to put a sanitary machine, aparently this wasn't considered important enough to bother with. The only one in the whole building is in the disabled toilet on the ground floor which you wouldn't know unless you already knew it was there.
Head of Dept said she'd take it up with housekeeping but none have appeared so far.

Apparently it's happening at Royal Holloway too. Women's toilets becoming gender neutral and the men's staying as the men's.

thetab.com/uk/rhul/2016/10/19/girls-toilets-gender-neutral-roho-now-10840

Mine is the other side of the country, so that means there is more than one and this might be a 'thing'. How depressing.

That article was interesting, if a little twee. It's right though, why do men get two toilets, one of which is for their sole use, while women only get one which they have to share?

and anyone at all can choose to use the urinals

This always bugs me, because even if previously-male toilets were also changed to gender-neutral, they still wouldn't be accessible to women, because - ta-daa! - biology. Unless we all invade and stand on the urinals to pee.

Or all start carrying she-wees.

Do all men's toilets only have urinals? They must have cubicles too?

This has to be the reason why the women's are being converted and not the men's.

Men will be upset because they are actually in a state of undress. It's fucking ridiculous. Misses just about every point going and is sexist.

It's happened in some of the toilets at my university- I went looking for the ladies in one building and it had become gender neutral. Men and disabled toilets still there. In the main building, they have made the ladies smaller, removing the breastfeeding area, and added a separate gender neutral toilet.
It's not that all the ladies' toilets have gone, they have dotted gender neutral ones about the place. But there was only one ladies' with a nice sofa and breastfeeding area.

They removed the breastfeeding area? Wow. So it's more important to have a gender neutral facility than it is to provide a breastfeeding facility for women?

I do get the feeling that over the last few years it has become increasingly socially acceptable to discriminate against women.

Yes, thinking on it I don't think it has been replaced either. There are sofas outside but that is on a corridor.

Another reason the women's are being converted is I think it'd be a travesty to suggest men should have to adapt, or take away male space (which all public space is seen as by default anyway I feel). Forcing women - who already have inadequate toilet provisions in many venues anyway - to give up their space and silence any objection with accusations of bigotry is completely acceptable of course.

nolove

Whilst I agree with your post, I think the real reason is because men Just. Don't. Get. It.

They are not women and they do not use women's facilities. They remain entirely unaware that that their male privilege is informing their decisions.

The only logical reason why the men's is not converted instead is because men have to get their dicks out to have to urinate in a urinal. Women don't. So that's that.

The discomfort and sense of intimidation that women feel in the presence of men, particularly in private spaces, simply doesn't cross their minds. How many men are truly surprised when you tell them how it feels to walk through life as a woman?

MRAs who hate women, have an obvious agenda. It's deliberate.

This utter lack of consciousness over women's lives is far worse. It's mecurial, it slips through the fingers because they are seeing everything through a male filter that they don't know they have.

It's like talking to someone who has only a basic understanding of your language. You say potato, they hear tomato.

I was recently at Gatwick before 6am, and when I went to the toilets they were empty, quite distant from the main area, and a bit spooky.

It made me wonder what I would have felt if they had been gender neutral. I think I would have freaked if a man had come in at the same time as me, let alone sat in the next cubicle. If a man had come in and the toilets were "Ladies" then I could have legitimately rushed out and reported him. As gender neutral toilets, I would have been behaving in a discriminatory way if I had looked askance at him and hurried off.

I think a lot of women will be using the disabled toilets if they are faced with gender neutral ones. I know this is wrong, but in the case of a lonely or quiet toilet block, I'm afraid I would put personal safety above the chance of a disabled person coming along.

And as for toilets in universities! What about in the evenings at drunken bar events? I'm going back 30 years but men in the ladies loos? That is not progress.

"I was recently at Gatwick before 6am, and when I went to the toilets they were empty, quite distant from the main area, and a bit spooky."

I recently had the same thought. I used to work mainly evenings and nights, so I'd be free during the daytime when most people were at work. I really wouldn't have liked going into a deserted toilet and there just being another man in there with me.

That's true Datun. Even with comments about how women take ages in the toilet at a venue, it suggests many men don't even register the queues, how long it takes to even get into them in theatres for example. My mum has also been on a number of courses and conferences in venues designed solely with men in mind, so now with there being a pretty much 50/50 split in her profession (dentistry) women have to queue for an age to use the few facilities they have whilst men stroll in and out of their plentiful ones. If those women's ones were converted to "gender neutral" as seems to be happening in so many places that'd cause even more inconvenience for women, but many men won't even have registered it.

The discomfort and sense of intimidation that women feel in the presence of men, particularly in private spaces, simply doesn't cross their minds. How many men are truly surprised when you tell them how it feels to walk through life as a woman?

Very much so. When I've told the ones who actually listen about this they are astounded. There have been some clips in America where women wore hidden cameras then showed the footage of all the street harassment they received to their fathers afterwards, who were horrified but completely shocked. There are so many things - small and larger scale - they are just completely oblivious to. So in this case as you say, the decisions are made through the lens of male privilege, couldn't possibly convert any men's spaces due to how men use urinals but the idea women would be at all uncomfortable having to share ours wouldn't even occur - then those of us who object are labelled bigoted for doing so.

A few years ago I watched one of those Channel 4 programs where they do a swap. In this case, it was around cosmetic surgery - and they had a bloke who'd been badly burned when a child, and wasn't a fan of the idea of cosmetic surgery, because he'd had so much necessary surgery and thought people would be better learning to live with themselves. He was paired with a younger woman who wanted a breast reduction. They both came across as lovely, grounded people, but he just didn't understand why she'd want to have surgery until she took him out and about. It didn't matter how she was dressed, the comments were continuous and rude.

When they came back in from what was a perfectly tame and normal night out, he understood why. He just couldn't believe how she'd been treated.

Men just don't get that we've been swimming against a tide all our lives, our experiences are different.

Dh doesn't understand why I get quite worked up about the gender neutral toilet issue. I just feel it's a (hopefully) safe space and if I'm going to the loo I don't want to be hovering nervously either from embarrassment or from fear.

Clearly in a workplace one can "get over it" and hopefully the other toilet users are reasonably civilised. In a public place... no.

A few years ago I was parked up at the village hall waiting to take ds in to be weighed at the baby clinic. I saw a fairly regular parade of men going into the attached public toilets. It slowly dawned on me that these were not all men being "taken short". Now, were these toilets gender neutral... bleeeuggh. I do not want to have to encounter that in the next cubicle, thank you very much.

A few years ago I was parked up at the village hall waiting to take ds in to be weighed at the baby clinic. I saw a fairly regular parade of men going into the attached public toilets. It slowly dawned on me that these were not all men being "taken short". Now, were these toilets gender neutral... bleeeuggh. I do not want to have to encounter that in the next cubicle, thank you very much

Was it a beat?

If we are thinking abut which Unis are doing this, for the record, my experience was in the union bar of the Imperial College buildings.

It is disgusting to hear that breastfeeding areas are being removed to make way for this lunacy.