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.

It somehow doesn’t seem right to wash blood down a sink that people might be cleaning their teeth at and hand washing? Why? Do you scrape your toothbrush around the plug hole? No difference if it was blood from a cut.

If you think washing off menstrual blood in a sink is the worse thing, you are terribly naive! Blood is far from the worse thing in a public toilet sink!

I also do not want to alert men to a portion of my body being naked. Or that we are potentially about to insert something into ourselves.

Is it "ingrained in our sex to feel shame"? So why do they use blue liquid to advertise sanitary products?

starzig

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

^
Human has emotion, shocker.

@Waddlelikeapenguin

Oh I well believe in the curiosity of toddlers, I just don’t believe for a minute that any 2 year old would use “vulva”. It’s one of those words only Mumsnet gets up in arms about using correctly.

@LassWiADelicateAir Have no idea how people vary as individuals? How some would be happy to strip down to their undies in a public loo to get changed/clean and how some would find it utterly mortifying?

You seem to think every woman on here should be the same as you, and act the same as you and want the same as you. That's very controlling of you, almost as controlling as the men who want to come into our spaces under the guise of "self id-ing" as a female.

How unbelievably dismissive you are being.

I was like Lass until I was sexually assaulted. Luckily I fought him off (he wasn’t very tall for a man and I am tall and big for a woman). I thought I was invincible before that and like Lass, I thought women were just being daft, fearing men and wanting privacy and all that old fashioned stuff. But being assaulted by a total stranger in a public place - whose clear intention was to drag me off into a more secluded place - changed all that.

Look, nothing about this is difficult.

Single sex services and spaces, including toilets, gradually evolved over the twentieth century as we began to acknowledge and mitigate against male violence and inequality due to female biology.

Although we have managed to gain some ground in reducing male violence and sex-based inequality, unequal outcomes are still extant and male violence is still a problem. Therefore, getting rid of any of these spaces and services is regressive.

End of. #nodebate

(If they can #nodebate, so I can I.)

LangCleg sums it up perfectly.

Starting - yes, I agree it is wonderful that it is acceptable for women to have emotional reactions. Won’t it be great for men when Society is happy for the to have emotional reactions too.

*them

*Starzig!

End of. #nodebate

(If they can #nodebate, so I can I.)

^^
This all day long.

@Lobsterface
In my house the words used are vulva & penis so it's the words my children learnt. FWIW i wasnt on mn until pretty recently so it's not just a mn thing. What words do you use?!?

"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?"

But you might as well say, "Why are women embarrassed about weeing and pooing? They're perfectly normal bodily functions, and we should do away with cubicles and just have rows of toilets where everyone could pee or poo in front of everyone else."

The truth is that some things are just private. Every society on earth treats some bodily functions as things to be dealt with away from other people.

Girls hands up if you’ve had a very uncomfortable encounter in a club/pub/bar?! ME.
Where do you go to get away from weirdo man? WOMENS LOOS.
Unisex toilets should be a thing but I don’t care what anyone says about their rights I don’t want men in women’s loos. There is absolutely zero discussion.
I don’t understand why it’s such a problem to understand, women don’t hate men, but women want to protect themselves, as do men. As do trans people. But trans folk shouldn’t put their rights above women’s safety. Campaign for unisex. Not to invade my spaces that I feel safe in.

You seem to think every woman on here should be the same as you, and act the same as you and want the same as you. That's very controlling of you, almost as controlling as the men who want to come into our spaces under the guise of "self id-ing" as a female

That is not what I am saying. I was referring to this perpetual self-fulfilling cycle of saying these things are embarrassing.

But you might as well say, "Why are women embarrassed about weeing and pooing? They're perfectly normal bodily functions, and we should do away with cubicles and just have rows of toilets where everyone could pee or poo in front of everyone else."

That is an utter straw man argument. No one has suggested any one should do any of these personal activities outside a cubicle.

Men are embarrassed by their toilet behaviours as well Lass

And if you disagree then, simply put, you do not understand men.

Toilets were invented by men and for men.

I'm embroiled on an awful thread on this subject on twitter right now. A man is comparing a miscarriage with having a poo.

I cant link to it as my keyboard isn't working properly

I just screenshot that. Absolutely vile.

thread [[https://twitter.com/sambailey1976/status/977860589728030721]]

twitter.com/SPeitsch/status/977855856330100736

I’m not always sure if it’s my shame or men’s shame that is going on but I have had enough experience of jokes at work about irrational hormonal women, PMT rage... and I remember the boys ripping the piss out of us at school for carrying pads and tampons (going into our bags for them and chucking them about..). I have had that little window into the reality that a lot of men think menstruating women are disgusting.

At work and in public spaces I feel that in order for women to take the same opportunities as men, and to compete with men, that the things that men feel are messy, detrimental to our productivity and are actually quite disgusting about women (like our bleeding or leaking bodies, breastmilk, urinary incontinence after childbirth etc) are not something women generally want to advertise to men when they are happening because they can be used against us.

Women are judged harshly for what our bodies are like, and what they do, in a way that men’s bodies are not. Because sexism.
If there is only mixed sex toilets or men are allowed into what were once the womens’ toilets, then women have no choice but to show all this to men. And we will still then be judged harshly for what our bodies do, in a way that men’s bodies are not. Because sexism.

I don’t want to rejoin the meeting table after my senior male colleagues who happened into the toilets now know I’ve just been changing my pad and cleaning up leaks. it’s none of their fucking business what my body is doing right now. It’s intrusive, i think contributes to some men othering of all women and to reductiveness about our bodies. And I really can’t think of a male equivalent of this feeling, which is my standard test for if something is sexist.

I mean what would the male equivalent be? A wet dream? Dealt with privately at home.

That bloke is a numpty of epic proportions, and that’s the polite version.

Oh dear. The worst numpties are those who can't comprehend they are being numpties.

Hwr, he and his vile uncomprehending attitude has proved the validity of the argument that female spaces need to remain exclusively female.

Wow, that Twitter thread. Yes, I'm sure men would be perfectly happy if women started having miscarriages in their public toilets and would not at all make the experience even more miserable than it was already going to be for the woman concerned.