What do you use the womens’ toilets for?

[FancyRibbon]

Inspired by recent posts on the Radio 4 thread.
I realised that the whole ‘Why do you even care who is pissing in the cubicle next to you?’ argument against single sex toilets underestimates how I think many women actually do use/need the ladies’.

It’s not just about the cubicle being private to you as an individual woman (though this is really important), it’s also about knowing there is a door behind which there is a women-only space that can be really important. Some of that is specifically about it NOT being a male space.

So eg what I use the women’s toilets for is:

• pissing, crapping, dealing with periods, POAS
• a place to cry especially at work when you don’t want anyone else to see
• a place to go and just sit and feel exhausted because your baby is not sleeping and you’re back at work

-as above washing and drying breastmilk leaks on clothes which involving standing about with some stuff off

• a place to sort out falling down tights and gappy shirts, -against adjusting/taking off clothes possibly while checking in a mirror
• somewhere to talk to other women privately knowing men won’t be around
• in bars and clubs, a place to get away from male hassle

I just don’t want to share women’s toilets with men. Self ID will be making that not my choice any more. I feel that I won’t be able to just avoid gender neutral toilets and look for a women’s any more, because women’s toilets won’t exist and campaigning for them will be hate speech.

What I don’t understand is this - transwomen accept that they have male bodies, they may not like their bodies but they’re male, I don’t think anyone could disagree with that. They may think they have a female brain, but they know that they are physically taller, broader and stronger than the majority of women.
It is a commonly known fact that the majority of violence against women is perpetrated by men, and that women fear going out alone at night or into certain areas alone in case they’re attacked by a man, because against a man a woman has a poor chance of defending herself due to her smaller size and strength.

So why would any man, transwoman or otherwise, want to go into a female only space where they know their presence will make women at best uncomfortable at worst fearful for their safety, unless they want to cause those feelings?

Does anyone else notice the interesting behaviour pattern that comes up on these threads from time to time.

Starts out cool, hip and very 'with it', then when schooled, devolves into victim status. The biggest victim ever, more victim-y than anyone else can possibly be.

Makes for very interesting ( albeit a bit shocking ) reading.

I’m impressed a toddler asked why hair grows on your vulva. If I overheard that in a public toilet I’d applaud.

We live in a society where until very recently women were not encouraged to talk about their periods, so shy away from their bodily functions. It is ingrained in our sex to feel shame about them so I can totally see why a rustle of a tampon wrapper would embarrass women

There was a while in the 80s and 90s when almost every female stand up comedian talked about little else. Sanitary products have been advertised on television for decades; every supermarket, corner shop and garage forecourt has them openly on display.

Is it "ingrained in our sex to feel shame"? Certainly not my experience or the experience of the girls I was at school with. Or is it ingrained in certain strands ofv feminist theory that this is ingrained? And this mantra gets (unhelpfully) repeated?

Lass
My mother is in her sixties, she tells me it was a big deal when adverts for sanitary protection were first on television. The first time “period” was explicitly mentioned in a television ad was in the mid-eighties by Courtney Cox. In the timeline of women shedding the lining of their uterus, I would say that’s fairly recent. Still to this day they are advertised with blue liquids and women skating in white trousers. The real business of periods, the associated mess and pain etc. is rarely talked about in media and certainly in huge swathes of society it is a no-go discussion zone.
As a former HCP, I’d say a third of women would blush or become incredibly shy when asked questions about their cycle. It’s conditioned, long term shame.

That kind of generational taboo lasts longer than the euphemisms do. The early advertisements were so circumspect that you may not even know what they were talking about and you never ever ever saw the product.

Lass
Of course nobody wants to know about periods unless it's to mock "why so emotional? Your time of the month?" My periods are very painful right now, no amount of paracetamol or nurofen can stop the pain. They are heavy too. When I'm sitting in a meeting in pain, but know if I use it as an excuse to leave, even though every time I cough I'm worried a big fuck off blood clot will escape and possibly stain my seat. People will see it as an excuse. Would the rest of the people in the meeting be fine with me saying "I have a really heavy period I'm in pain and I'm worried about leaking, I need to leave" would that be socially acceptable. If I said "I have a huge migraine and I can't concentrate" that might give me a get out of the meeting and sympathy.

My mother is in her sixties, she tells me it was a big deal when adverts for sanitary protection were first on television

I am 58. I was born in 1959. I well remember when adverts first appeared. I agree it was a big deal for oh, all of a week and we got over it pretty quickly- that was then and this is now.

It’s conditioned, long term shame again I am sceptical about this- feminists seem to like telling us it is.

Lobsterface
I’m impressed a toddler asked why hair grows on your vulva. If I overheard that in a public toilet I’d applaud.
Why? All of mine have they dont shut up. They also ask who they can hear peeing, is that person going to poo, why is it so stinky in here etc
I have in turn heard toddlers chatting or singing about all sorts too.

Lola people leave meetings to attend to bodily functions. Why on earth would you tell anyone at the meeting you were going to change your tampon or urinate or defecate? You just leave - do what you need to do and come back same as any one else.

Sorry but I just find this "ooh it is so embarrassing" mindset deeply irritating and counter productive. And for the record my periods were latterly arriving every 18 days and excruciatingly painful-so bad I eventually had endometrial ablation to sort it. On 2 occasions I was in so much pain I left work early having told my male boss why. It is not a big deal.

Lass
So why do you think some women dislike other people hearing them opening a tampon wrapper?

My mother never talked to me about periods - never. Not to this day have we had any conversation about them. The closest thing was when I started - she found that I had opened the pack of sanitary towels that school had given out to everyone when we had The Talk and asked me whether I needed them. I nodded and the next time we went shopping she put a pack of towels into the trolley. That's it.

I'm only in my mid-40s...

It has taken me a long time to get over the embarassment of a tampon falling out of my bag or the rustle of a wrapper in the cubicle - mostly because it is ridiculous and I don't want my DD to have the same experience. But please don't belittle those of us who were brought up to believe that periods are something, if not exactly shameful, at best something Not To Be Discussed

Lass
So why do you think some women dislike other people hearing them opening a tampon wrapper?

I have no idea. I think it is a ridiculous thing to care about- especially as in the vast majority of cases if any one even hears at all it will be another woman.

Can these listeners tell the difference between (a) opening a tampon (b) opening a packet of tights (c) opening a pack of heel blister pads (d) opening a tube haemorrhoid cream ? Do these listeners mistake (b) and (c) for (a) ? Is (d) more or less embarrassing?

If you really want to remove this "ingrained shame" a good start might be stop perpetuating the notion of shame.

It has taken me a long time to get over the embarassment of a tampon falling out of my bag or the rustle of a wrapper in the cubicle - mostly because it is ridiculous and I don't want my DD to have the same experience

I am glad you agree it is ridiculous- because it is. Yet this " someone might hear me unwrapping a tampon" gets trotted out over and over.

But if your parents and the environment you grow up in fosters the shame it’s hard to rid yourself of it. Can you not see that many people are damaged by the behaviour of their family and the type of society they grow up in?

My schooling as a teen in the mid nineties reinforced the shame of periods. How we weren’t to talk about it, how it was to be kept to that one day that the school nurse came and gave us a talk.

My 9yr old dd has autism, she can't stand closed in spaces, so more often than not in public toilets we use the cubicle furthest away from the door and I stand in front of it, back to her, with the door open (sometimes we have no other choice, but we avoid public loos because of this) I do not want her to have to share this (already difficult) experience with males. We are working to overcome it, but because we generally avoid them, we can't put the steps in place to help her overcome it very often.

When we can we try to use bigger toilets (usually disabled) so I can go in with her and help her stay calm, and some places have parenting suites that have bigger facilities, but you should see the looks we get when exiting them (because she isn't visibly disabled, nor a baby/toddler anymore)

And now, people will expect her to share that experience with TIM, something she knows very little about. Surely this isn't what we need for our girls?

My schooling as a teen in the mid nineties reinforced the shame of periods. How we weren’t to talk about it, how it was to be kept to that one day that the school nurse came and gave us a talk

That must be at least 25 years ago then. Are you really still using that as a reason to be embarrassed that another woman might hear you opening a tampon wrapper?

On the one hand there are posters who are so blasé about periods they are happy to use sinks in public loos to wash out their mooncups but on the other hand opening a tampon wrapper is mortifying. MN has some very odd ideas about periods.

When we can we try to use bigger toilets (usually disabled) so I can go in with her and help her stay calm, and some places have parenting suites that have bigger facilities, but you should see the looks we get when exiting them (because she isn't visibly disabled, nor a baby/toddler anymore)

This absolutely should be highlighted. There are many valid reasons for using the disabled facilities which do not require a visible disability.

Women will be able to encroach on male only spaces? Except, we don't actually want to...

At home I share the lavatory with dh and ds So they come in and listen/watch you use your toilet then, or do you shut your (floor to ceiling) door and shut them out?

Sharing a private toilet with your family is NOT the same as fearing you will be walked in on by a TIM at any point.

Well I am not equal to men because I can get pregnant and have periods

There may be less of a risk, but there is still s risk. Not all men are predators, not all women are perfect. Then why do men want access to our spaces if we are so terrible?

So why would any man, transwoman or otherwise, want to go into a female only space where they know their presence will make women at best uncomfortable at worst fearful for their safety, unless they want to cause those feelings?

This. Especially when there is a third space they could use.

In my workplace we have shared loos - three toilet cubicles and then three sinks all in one room. I hate having to do many of he things people have mentioned even topping up deodorant, sorting out makeup ... makes me feel vulnerable knowing a man might also walk in

"What I don’t understand is this - transwomen accept that they have male bodies, they may not like their bodies but they’re male, I don’t think anyone could disagree with that."

They don't accept this. Many of the TRA insist their penises are "female penises"

Re periods - there are varying degrees of comfort/shame amongst women as we have seen here. Feminists have fought for years to make menstruation less taboo. Now we are meant to share loos with trans who find the very mention of periods "triggering" and "transphobic". It's almost like the TRA movement is a conservative male rights lobby group... oh wait

I don’t see the issue with a trans woman who has no penis being in a ladies toilet.

How will you know?

This is exactly why I just can’t get worked up about the loo thing. After all the arguments, some of which I do agree with in principle, how do who ever know? If someone is behaving in an unpleasant or threatening manner in a loo it’s obvious, it’s not anyways obvious whether they’re male or female and actually both are capable of foul behaviour (I know a woman who was beaten up so badly by another woman in a loo in a club she was hospitalised). I’ve also seen a friend told to get out the ladies changing rooms when she had every right to be there. I’ve pointed this out on threads before and have been told it’s untrue as people can identify someone’s sex 100% of the time. This is just rubbish. I was watching an interview with Anne Ruzylo just the other day where she referred to being ‘mis-sexed’ plenty when out and about. I think we’ve always shared loos with anyone and everyone probably without realising a lot of the time. Considering their design and function, they are not a ‘safe space’ anyway (sadly). I’ve used many mixed sex loos and changing rooms and just not noticed any difference apart from it being more convenient for us as a family when we go swimming or when my dh wants to take dd to the loo.

If someone is behaving in an unpleasant or threatening manner in a loo it’s obvious

Your right, it is.

But do you accept that sex segregation does act as a deterrent to many predators?

If it didn't, then records would show that as many women are sexually assaulted and harassed in female spaces as they are on the tube.
Sex segregation is a crime prevention technique - it reduces the number of victims.

Snow I’m honestly not sure. I was thinking if you’re a predator following a woman into a loo (many I’ve been in are often empty) would be one of the easiest ways to trap a victim, yet you don’t hear many incidents of assault in loos, which seems strange as I don’t think you’d care about sex segregation if you’re going to do something immoral and illegal anyway. Things like groping on a busy tube, well I’m guessing the men doing this think they are anonymous, and do it precisely because they know they’ll get away with it. The assault often can’t be proved when you have 5 different bodies pushed together in a cramped space.