"Wrong bathroom" sign in university toilet

[PinkChestnut]

I peak transed a while ago, but then have leveled out recently and taken the live and let live approach in my thinking.

However this sign in a Scottish university bathroom, designed by transpeople, bothers me.

"they are using the facilities they feel safe in - please do not take that right away from them"

So if there's a petite young woman in the toilets beside a 6'3 muscular male appearanced person and she feels uncomfortable, where does she go to feel safe? The disabled toilet?

Also "don't challenge them" sounds wrong to me. Like they're untouchable. What if they're acting inappropriate?

Do you actually want to know Datun? Or is this just another chance for words to be put in my mouth and another attempt at a pile on?

19 November is "World Toilet Day". We should be working towards doing something important to mark this day, and highlight how we are in danger of slipping backwards in terms of provide safe, dignified sanitation for girls and women in the UK

This from the UN is useful reading, as is this, and this

TerranceandPhilip

Do you actually want to know Datun? Or is this just another chance for words to be put in my mouth and another attempt at a pile on?

Well I could say, with an element of truth, that I couldn't care less.

But, nonetheless, it's interesting to me where people draw the line in sex segregation. And why.

A* for honesty to be fair.

19 November is "World Toilet Day". We should be working towards doing something important to mark this day, and highlight how we are in danger of slipping backwards in terms of provide safe, dignified sanitation for girls and women in the UK

This is officially in my diary.
Thanks!

Good resources Olenna although they seem to focus on access to facilities full stop, issues caused by people relieving themselves outdoors in terms of health etc.

I agree this is a very worthwhile cause in general but I'm not sure that these resources will help us. In the UK we have good sanitary facilities and most have homes with toilets, we won't risk being raped because we have to go and crap in a field, we'll just stay at home more / plan our journeys more which TBH many women already do as toilet faciltiies in the UK when out and about are already inadequate for many women's needs (pregnant women, elderly women, and they aren't the only ones with urgency / incontinence, plus I believe things like irritable bowel are more common in women).

I'm not sure that anyone really cares about that, is the bottom line. Public spaces re toilets in the UK are not really accessible for lots of women as it is. IYSWIM.

Maybe we should focus on that, anyway, as well.

I still find it amazing that we first had female public toilets less than 100 years ago.

Women couldn't spend too long away from the home in case nature called, public Loos for men were understandably dangerous and unhygienic.

The first women's loos were burned down because men didn't like women being able to spend time away from home, and never have liked women having anything they couldn't have themselves, even including a room to pee in.

Good while it lasted...

But then, women always worked, didn't we.

And I always think of buckets from blackadder

Didn't we used to have huge dresses and no underwear and just go wherever? Or have I made that up. And the streets were just full of human waste.

Note - not a historian! But I have a feeling that in the past >> further back, before public toilets existed at all, women took part in public life more in this country? We weren't ever in a situation like in modern Saudi say, not allowed out, I don't think? I really know very little about it, may have a google.

Sorry that's another sidetrack and google isn't telling me what I want to know easily

Snibble - I would love if the msot pressing campaign for women's toilets was to take provision a step further and ensure that they really did meet women's needs in both the obvious (tampon machines) and more subtle (enough space for a sanitary bin next to the toilet without having to sit on it)

The problem is that we are in danger of losing what we already have, if self-ID goes ahead and organizations persist in "getting ahead of the law". We may as well be shitting in fields if what we currently have is largely removed from us.

The fact that the UN recognises that gender-based violence is very much an issue in respect of toilet facility provisions should be food for thought for anyone who is sitting on the fence, or doesn't understand what the fuss is about regarding toilets. The fact that they recognise the provision of safe, sex segregated toilets as critical to involving women and girls in public life, employment and education should be a wake up call to those who think that this is about nasty bigots being mean to poor Doris, who has been using the ladies for thirty years without causing a problem.

But there ARE laws - indecent exposure, sexual exposure, public nuisance, breach of the peace could be used if a man if a man was causing problems in the ladies (but not actually assaulting them).... But if someone flashes my tween dd in a public place they can be arrested. With self id if they do it in a changing room then my tween dd gets to be 'educated' as transphobic?

" I would love if the msot pressing campaign for women's toilets was to take provision a step further and ensure that they really did meet women's needs in both the obvious (tampon machines) and more subtle (enough space for a sanitary bin next to the toilet without having to sit on it)"

But this is a fundamental.

They are talking about inclusion, for "all genders" as though women's toilets are already in a good situaiton re inclusion.

They aren't, over the last couple of decades hundreds of public toilets have been closed.

We have always put up with massive queues.

Our facilties are not fit for purpose as they are, really, let alone when you add all these extra people in.

The point is. That the people in charge don't care, and women are expected to put up / shut up / stay at home if it doesn't work for them already.

The laws around nudity in the UK are interesting - being naked in public in and of itself isn't illegal, there's a host of things around it though about intent and so forth, as I understand it.

here's a fairly old piece on the BBC about it

A man wanking at someone in a changing room is just as illegal as wanking at someone in a park.

A man taking his clothes off with no "intent" in either situaiton is not necessarily illegal.

The law around this has a lot of room for manoevre.

Then there is the large amount of behaviour that is extremely creepy and will make women and girls avoid the area where it happens, but is definitely not illegal (unless the police get a bit creative - we have some very broad laws for this purpose. I don't think they will with this due to hate crime laws , victims beign women and girls etc).

@SnibbleAgain
Years ago I read an excellent paper on the history, but could not find it for you.
I did find this. ask.metafilter.com/235727/Have-humans-always-sought-privacy-to-defecate

I really think the law is a red herring here as laws are (literally) man made and do not serve women and girls well already.

Most women and girls don't report stuff.

When they do they're often not believed.

Much of what creepy men do is not illegal.

They target those that they think are less likely to report (schoolgirls in particular - girls and young women).

We want to stop things before they happen, after the event is too late (and most won't be reported anyway).

Patodp I was actually just thinking about that issue, women being kept at home because they had no access to public toilets.

I recently read this article from the Museum of London, ironically given the thread I'm posting it on, it's called Women's Right To Sit Comfortably.

The article is based on research on how women were still excluded from workplaces after the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was brought in, by businesses using the excuse that they couldn't employ women as they didn't have any toilet facilities for them.

And as you say, this was also evident in the way that women could really only stay at home or close to home, or were limited to visiting friends and family, but couldn't really occupy a public space because of a lack of public toilets for them to use.

Sorry, came back on late

Actually, it’s been ok in the men’s toilets so far. Obviously I’ve been selective of when to go in etc but most men have just looked a little bemused at me coming out from the cubicle.

I won’t lie, there was some uncomfortable moments but it’s livable.

@kneedeepinunicorns thanks for your question. By the time I had opportunity to reply the debate had moved on. Just to clarify, I am still opposed to the GRA and self-identification, despite the challenges single sex toilets present to GNC people. I would prefer an end to cubicles and introduction of mandatory self contained individual washrooms for all. It's a pipe dream I know.

Thanks for taking the time to reply Sarah . It's not a pipe dream, I think it's important to not just be saying 'no to self ID' but 'this would work better, and here's why'. There is a genuine need to be met, and no one should have to be using facilities where they feel unsafe or uncomfortable or the target of poor behaviour. self ID is just the wrong answer.

I agree that it is impossible to change sex and that gender is a social construct. However I would not challenge a male-appearing person in a female toilet as it would be entirely possible for that person to be a biologically female person who is choosing to present themselves according to masculine styles but who has every right to use the female facilities and may well be vulnerable to attack/verbal abuse/corrective rape by transphobic men if they use the male facilities and are detected as being biologically female.

I also think it's a bit silly for small places like cafés that only have space for 2 cubicles to label one with a female sign and one with a male sign.

The problem is that we are trying to formulate one set of rules which covers a vast number of different sizes and types of facilities.

Somewhere like a motorway service station or shopping centre I think everyone would be safer and more comfortable if all facilities were unisex with floor-to-ceiling doors and no open urinals, and enough larger cubicles a with mirror and sink of their own that anyone who needed to get changed or wash out a moon cup could do so. And enough staff on duty that if a person who pees standing up wees on a seat then it is cleaned immediately. And ideally several alarm-points so that if anyone was behaving in a creepy or inappropriate way they would be removed - but there would generally be no problems as traffic would be high and generally creepy pervs don't be creepy when there are lots of people about. There would be ways to keep these unisex facilities safe for everyone, like the unisex changing facilities at many swimming pools.

However those same principles can't be transferred to a pub where the available space is two small rooms with a pair of cubicles in the ladies' and 2 urinals and a cubicle in the mens'.

Perhaps the solution is that all businesses and services to be given notice that by X date in the future (2 or 3 years to allow for budgeting) they must

(1) convert all loos and changing facilities to being unisex with individual private lockable cubicles (ban communal changing areas and places with just a curtain)

(2) have in place a proper policy and action plan in which staff are fully trained and regularly drilled for ensuring that anyone of any gender presentation behaving in a pervy, inappropriate or antisocial manner is removed, and anyone being followed/controlled against their will has an easy-to-access escape method clearly publicised so that the previous method of escaping via the ladies' isn't missed.

The consequences would probably be that a vast number of small businesses would stop offering toilet facilities at all because it would be unviable for them to properly manage a small unisex facility.

It's not the people who #justwanttopee who are the issue. It is that there are way greater numbers of predatory men who will abuse any opportunity they have to dominate women than there are trans people who #justwanttopee. There is a willfull blindness, probably from naivety and inexperience, that setting up rules that make everything lovely for the harmless non-predator who #justwantstopee is also making things far too easy for predators and those who get sexual pleasure from public lavatory situations.

@YimminiYoudar I don't see how your unisex toilets idea would keep everyone safe? You mention lots of traffic in the toilets but at 4am this wouldn't be the case.

Sorry to crash your thread, I am crashing a few, but I have been away, then snowed in, and have a lot of catching up to do. Would it be possible for some of you to give this thread a visit?www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3185398-Biological-SEX-MATTERS-How-many-mumsnetters-say-aye-to-this-campaign

in advance

I think people making these decisions need to realise that there is a community of people being looked after that are scared of men due to their care in the past. I understand trans rights but what about everyone else.

""they are using the facilities they feel safe in -" The message is obvious, isn't it? They feel safe here. If you no longer feel safe, well hard cheese. You're only a woman so your feelings don't matter.