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.

Sanitary products have been advertised on television for decades;

Two words: blue liquid.

After all the arguments, some of which I do agree with in principle, how do who ever know?

Most of us will twig a man, no matter how well he thinks he passes, even after surgery.

If we say "ok, we allow men in, but only if they've had their dicks chopped off", then how are we going to tell? We aren't. And we can't check. So for women, the safest way to make sure we reduce harm is to keep all men out.

We seem to have moved away from the point of this thread. It is about things women do in toilets.

The main issues here are privacy and consent.

Safety is a concern, but the reason women feel like loos are safe spaces is because society as a whole upholds the principle of segregated spaces (based on privacy and differing needs). Some campaigners are working very hard to break this down so that society no longer “gets worked up” about the needs of women (or indeed men) to have single sex spaces.

I agree with with the poster much earlier who said we shouldn’t have to defend this, but it seems we do.

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.

This is contradictory.

Your absolutely right that perpetrators assess the "risk of being caught" when offending - groping a woman on a tube carries a low risk of detection.

Sex segregating high risk spaces increases the risk to perpetrators - they may be seen following a woman in, she may leave when they enter because he's not 'supposed' to be there and may draw attention to his presence there, or someone else may walk in and challenge his presence. There are lower risk options for these offenders.

I've know burglars who carry a dog lead with them, in order to give them a valid excuse for being in a garden if they're caught casing a property. Offenders will try and minimise the risk of being caught any way they can - timing, location, familiarity...all of those things help an offender "get away with it".

Yet, we're talking about giving predators increased access to spaces where there are potential victims, allowing them the opportunity to assess the location as a potential offending site am giving them access to female victims with a justifiable reason if they are challenged.

Reducing the risk to the offender will inevitably increase offences.

Pale for me safety is really the only concern. Why should I be embarrassed about men seeing my periods/breastmilk/morning sickness? Why are women embarrassed about these things? Why are we saying we need the segregation for dignity and privacy then complaining about society making women’s bodily functions embarrassing? Surely it a self perpetuating cycle? The truth is that although most men live or have lived with a woman at some point in their lives, they probably want single sex toilets as much as we do. If a few want to come in and see me barfing fist thing (I’m sure women don’t want to see that either) then it’s their choice and if they’re not behaving in a threatening manner I just wouldn’t care. I certainly wouldn’t feel any sense of shame in my womanly bodily fuctions being on show to someone with a penis. But of course I can’t speak for all women.

the reason women feel like loos are safe spaces is because society as a whole upholds the principle of segregated spaces (based on privacy and differing needs).

But it's not just a feeling nor just a social convention. It's an effective crime prevention technique.

I don't just feel safer in a sex segregated space, I am safer. Just like I'm safer if my bus driver hasn't had a drink before his shift, or the elevator I use is subject to regular safety inspections. Those Things reduce the risk of harm to me, and so do sex segregated spaces.

Society has reached a point where it is embarrassed by the statement "men are a risk to women".

Yes, I know not all men, but statistically, that is the case. And sex segregation reduces that risk. If men want to self-ID out of the group that is statistically a risk to women, then that's fine, (although it raises lots of other questions), but their choice to remove themselves from the group that poses the risk doesn't mean that the risk to women (collectively) from men (collectively) is lower.

I don't want a man in a women's only toilet they can get out. Dressed as a women or not they still have a penis and go in the mens.

I agree with everyone who says we shouldn’t have to defend single sex spaces like toilets. However, as PaleBlue says, we really do now if we don’t want to lose them. And women’s toilets/girls toilets at schools are only one example of what self ID puts under threat.

So this thread is a place for women if they want to articulate how we use them and why we want or need women’s toilets to remain exactly as traditionally provided - cubicles and women’s shared space, with only women allowed inside them.

I think the fact men don’t really understand the many purposes for which women want or need those spaces is partly why it’s so easy for them to dismiss us as making a stupid transphobic fuss when we say
-we don’t want men our toilets, or
-we don’t want to have gender neutral toilets plus a shared sink area with men, or
-we don’t want to be made to use gender neutral toilets (through lack of availability of women’s toilets) at all.

(The other reason men try to silence us on this: misogyny. They know women don’t like it, feel threatened by it, misogynists are happy with that, it keeps us in our place). Literally and metaphorically.

Snow I meant that in a cramped busy space it’s almost impossible to accuse someone reliably of groping, it’s probably not going to stand up in court, thus they know there is no risk of being caught. If a man follows a woman into a loo regardless of whether it’s segregated he’s still at higher risk of being caught because he’s an individual whose clearly there with intention to harm as opposed to an anonymous hand that could potentially be attached to any body in that cramped space. I agree that removing the psychological barriers for the ‘sly groper’ types (the ones who would never do anything if they thought they could be caught) is more of a concern. Yet I still think those types of men would be happier continuing their current tried and tested methods of abusing as they clearly work pretty damn well.

@Rumpledfaceskin Different offenders seek different opportunities to offend - but all look for the lowest risk.

So a groper will choose a packed carriage not an empty one, whereas a voyeur will choose a unisex toilet/changing facility rather than a segregated one.

Offenders have styles and preferences - their modus operandi - and that includes sexual predators. Their offending may escalate, but stay true to type.

Removal of sex segregated spaces will not "benefit" all sexual predators - only the ones whose MO includes accessing women in secluded spaces. But for those offenders, removal of segregation reduces risk.

Surely the set up of most toilets, with small lockable cubicles designed to be private, often at the end of the corridor often not in the main thoroughfare, no cameras inside for obvious reasons, makes certain kinds of crime easier to do because they are made harder to detect by the designed-in privacy of the environment. Therefore prevention by use according to single sex segregation becomes really important. Especially for the protection of the usually physically smaller weaker sex, ie women and girls.

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.

It's not just mumsnet, it's women in general who have different ideas.

It's also an age thing. My intern used to put her tampax up her sleeve before she went to the bathroom. In case our (male) boss saw it. As did I when I was younger. But after 400 or 500 periods, I'm over it. And have been quite happy to ask same boss to pick me up a packet when he popped to the shop.

Pale for me safety is really the only concern. Why should I be embarrassed about men seeing my periods/breastmilk/morning sickness? Why are women embarrassed about these things?

Some women will definitely be embarrassed about these things. But that's partly because they are private. Not shameful.

Deciding what you consider is private and justifying it is incredibly difficult when someone else says I'm fine with it.

Which, to me, it's one of the aspects of this that is most telling.

Men are perfectly used to getting their penis out and peeing next to each other. Women aren't.

Many men don't understand that a woman having never peed standing next to a total stranger, makes the act of peeing, for many women, more private, by its nature, than it is for men.

And it's not difficult to understand.

If we had toilets without walls, and you had to do a poo in front of people, how would that make you feel?

By describing that feeling, you're describing privacy.

And no I'm not equating doing public poos with unwrapping a tampax. Just the nature of privacy.

The first time a woman has to breastfeed, she looks down at her blouse and there are two circles of breast milk on it. It's a first. Not something she is inurred to.

Same with a period leak. For many women it only happens rarely. But the first time it does, it's embarrassing. Again trotting off to the loo to sort yourself out isn't something we do every day, and can just dismiss with a nonchalant grin.

Privacy doesn't have to equal shame. Privacy for female intimate functions, is far more relevant for women than men. And isn't something we should even be in the position of negotiating.

What for? To validate a man's feelings? Ffs.

Rumple. I am not embarrassed by these things either, though I used to be when younger. I am not sure why that is relevant for the reason you set out (we cannot speak for all women). I still think that single sex loos are valuable for a host of reasons and whilst I am not embarrassed by these things, as a rule I still do not want to have to share those experiences with men. The emphasis being that I do not want my power to consent to be taken away.

The emphasis being that I do not want my power to consent to be taken away.

Plus, you have to bear in mind, that transvestism is now officially part of the trans umbrella.

Fetishising womanhood and, if it develops into AGP, their actual biology is a huge motivation to access women's toilets.

Fetishising menstruation particularly, seems to be quite common.

And yes, there will be women who will say, well how will you know?

Well we do bloody know. Because they make no secret of it, and you can read it all over the Internet.

Who wants to be in a position in the ladies toilet, with a middle-aged man presenting as a woman, and wondering if he's getting a boner because you're putting some money in the tampax machine.

Or donning Marigolds and scrubbing your mooncup with a Brillo pad. (Not really).

Yes we are all different. And it’s appropriate therefore to cater to the more vulnerable/least confident girls and women.

I don’t think anyone on here has said they have always felt confident about letting others of both sexes know that they have their periods since day one. That’s not really in the nature of teenagers tbh.

But women all need to use the toilet (sometimes a lot) for various reasons and we shouldn’t have to wait to grow that confidence about what our bodies are naturally doing (bleeding, leaking milk, poo, wee etc) before we can freely access a toilet with peace of mind and with our privacy respected.

This is such basic stuff. I find it so worrying that if gender self identification is brought in as law, we won’t even be able to talk about this any more without it being ‘hate’ to do so.

And have been quite happy to ask same boss to pick me up a packet when he popped to the shop.

I thought I'd passed the stage where MN had the power to shock me, but Datun has done it.

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?

I’m not, no. I rise my mooncup out and don’t give a crap but I do understand and have sympathy for other women who have different life experiences to me.

shock I thought I'd passed the stage where MN had the power to shock me, but Datun has done it. wink

To be fair, we're very good friends.

And given the sort of stuff he would tell me after a couple of glasses of wine, picking up a packet of Tampax seemed to be the least embarrassing thing he'd ever done.

Regarding AGPs. Rachel Moran in her book 'My Journey Through Prostitution' describes that a common request from 'clients' is for them to dress in women's underwear, lay in the bath and be urinated on - perhaps even hold a wineglass under the stream and 'sip it like champagne'.

Another thing she couldn't bring herself to was sell heavily soaked tampons to a man who liked to chew them.

Women's bodily functions are definitely fetishised by AGPs as Datun says.

Women and girls sharing facilities, using sanitary bins, with AGPs is a real violation of privacy.

My DH won’t even walk through the lingerie department in M&S because in his words “women don’t want men there when they’re choosing their undies” yet some men think they have a right to use women’s toilets!

Great thread. Haven't RTFT but will chime in:

• as a diabetic woman with a pump that is attached to my thighs or stomach, I sometimes go in to adjust it/check it/bolus and don't always need/want to do so in a cubicle. This involves discreetly removing some clothing (e.g. lift up skirt or put hand down trousers) to fish it out. I also use the loos sometimes to check my blood sugar.

• take off bra (hate bras and often find them starting to get really uncomfortable half way through the day)

• adjust tights/pull-ups/knicker wedgies

• didn't actually do this in the end but when first started BF and was away from baby I prepared myself for hand expressing into the sink if my boobs got too full and uncomfortable

• dealing with anxiety-related stomach aches and bowel movements

• cry

• make up / hair

• nap (being bullied in a job where I was barely allowed to go home and sleep, sometimes would close my eyes for 5 mins in the loos)

BigPink Cheers to your DH. I don’t like being near solo men when I am buying bras or pants at all.

I really hate the idea that a man is getting off on hearing women use the toilet or being in the same enclosed toilet space with women. Those intimate things we need to do are what feeds the fetish.

To me it’s the same as when women on the street get leered at by men leaving strip clubs. It increases the risks for ANY women being forced to be near men who are in that aroused mindset. BUt especially for the women necessarily doing the very thing (pissing, crapping, having periods) that men with whatever fetish it is are finding arousing. Ugh. And in a small, unsupervised area.

Why should I be embarrassed about men seeing my periods/breastmilk/morning sickness? Why are women embarrassed about these things? Why are we saying we need the segregation for dignity and privacy then complaining about society making women’s bodily functions embarrassing? Surely it a self perpetuating cycle?

Exactly- a self perpetuating cycle.

Another thing she couldn't bring herself to was sell heavily soaked tampons to a man who liked to chew them.

Well it would eliminate the problem of full sanitary bins in cubicles I guess...

No wonder women get a reputation with the number of people on here that need a wee cry and sit down.

I'm sure people are aware there have always been weirdos out there.

The problem with this specific piece of legislation is that it is designed to benefit that very cohort.

And the fact that Stonehall have deliberately included a fetish under the trans umbrella says, to me certainly, that it is a big enough cohort to have power.

It really is a huge issue.

Not just that they will be legitimised in female spaces, but that no one is prepared to acknowledge it.

Despite overwhelming evidence everywhere you look in TRA land.

Being bullied or intimidated into writing legislation that legitimises fetishising womanhood, at the expense of women, is quite breathtaking.

Fear is driving this. The fear of politicians to appear politically incorrect. And possibly ignorance. Which, quite frankly, is equally scandalous.