Disabled Toilets We Fought Hard For Are Now Gender Neutral’ Say Campaigners

[CircleSquareCircleSquare]

Have we had this yet?

extra.ie/2018/04/15/news/irish-news/disabled-toilets-gender-neutral
So many questions raised.

@bd67th I was trying to outline a scheme for three cubicle farm spaces: one for women only, so if you are pregnant or on the rag you know there are no males present; one for men only that is mostly urinals; and a third for people who are trans or just not that bothered.

In theory that works.

But in reality you will have:
Men in the urinals bit
(Mostly) Men in the not bothered bit
Women, TRAs-who-demand-validation and the predators-in-sheeps-clothing in the women's bit.

So basically all you are doing is doubling the available space for men and not actually changing anything for women.

(I imagine that middle space will be pretty foul too, judging by the state of most men's toilets.)

If the loos are fully enclosed and opening onto a well lit open space, then perhaps that is the way it will go.
But: there should still be a separate disabled loo with rails, adult changing and the like and, please god, a separate room with urinals to stop the blokes peeing all over the seats.

What we absolutely shouldn't have is the men's (with urinals) and the one for everyone else. OR gender neutral enclosed cubicles in a small room with a door off a quiet, possibly ill lit, corridor.

Oh and why are men's Loos so disgusting? They can't like the fact that they stink and are covered in piss surely?

What we absolutely shouldn't have is the men's (with urinals) and the one for everyone else.

This is what they had at a gig I went to recently. They had replaced the male and female signs on the loos with 'Gender neutral with urinals' and 'Gender neutral cubicals'. They hadn't made any other changes to the facilities. I understood from DH that there is only one cubicle in the men's and you'd have to walk past a bunch of blokes using the urinals, so not a chance any woman would want to go in. So basically men in the men's as usual but also in the ladies' loos too.

I was pretty annoyed but thought I'd get called a bigot if I complained.

@averylongtimeasSpartacus What we absolutely shouldn't have is the men's (with urinals) and the one for everyone else. OR gender neutral enclosed cubicles in a small room with a door off a quiet, possibly ill lit, corridor.

There is a brand new shopping complex near me. In one of the restaurants the toilets are upstairs, walk right to the far end, past all the kitchens and staff/supply rooms etc. You then go into a narrow corridor with 6-7 or so self-contained, floor to ceiling cubicles.

The first 3 are marked as gents, next 3 are ladies and I think the furthest one was accessible.

1. What kind of fucked up ordering is that?
2. When I was in there I couldn't hear a pin drop from the other cubicles - they may have been empty but...

This was late lunch on a weekend day, with my OH waiting for me to return downstairs. God only knows if it was a busy Friday night with nobody to realise someone had been gone for much longer than they should have, and all sorts of comings and going to mask any noise of a struggle from behind a locked door.

What kind of fucked up ordering is that?

I have noticed that most places put the ladies further than gents, and have always assumed that it's because it would make it easier to spot a man who is up to no good and straying beyond where they should go.

Whilst it would absolutely make sense to put the disabled loo nearest, I imagine it might be because they think that lazy non-disabled people will use the disabled loo than walk a few extra steps to find the right loo.

@ZeroFoxGiven which is what the ManFriday thing is doing- challenging men by self identifying as men (on Fridays!) and going into male spaces, most men don't see the problem until it actually affects them.

I am led to believe some men are afraid of trans women because we have a certain part of our anatomy removed. That is something they see as inherently male and struggle to process.

When faced with one of us they have been known to lash out and attack us.

There is evidence of male violence against trans women, but don’t know how that compares to the female population.

When faced with one of us they have been known to lash out and attack us.

To be fair, when women raise this as an issue, we're told that if it happens, we can report it and it will be dealt with.

I'm at a loss to understand why that isn't the case for transpeople too. Should violence happen, it is illegal, and the police will deal with it.

Women who feel vulnerable will end up using the disabled cubicle as it's safer to be in there on your own.

A woman has reported a sexual assault in a gender neutral bathroom in a Toronto nightclub. It's feasible this could still occur in a sex segregated bathroom but at least in a women's bathroom it's likely other women would have been around and the perp might have been put of entering the space.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/woman-allegedly-sexually-assaulted-in-toronto-nightclub-bathroom-police-say-1.4631453

It's not surprising. Those uncomfortable in sexed public facilities have been told for ages now to use the disabled ones. I've heard that since the late '90s. I've read it several times on here.

People have been fighting for unisex single-stall facilities for quite a while now. There have been public talks and writings on it, the Ted talk by Ivan Coyote is probably one of the most well known. We've gotten very little public support in general for this. We get told it's too expensive, would take up too much space, that too few people would use them or need them for the costs for changes, that even those of us who have had our sex challenged violently in public are just being too sensitive if we say we're uncomfortable or others might be uncomfortable with us in typical sexed toilets, that if it is that bad then it's a disability at least by the social model so we should just use those. Where I live, there are now far more family toilet facilities than unisex single ones (and I debate how much longer I can ethically use the family ones as my youngest is 6).

It certainly raises questions, I'm not sure which ones will help. Safety and perception of safety is a big issue.

@disturbinglyorangescrambledegg @bronners78

^To be fair, when women raise this as an issue, we're told that if it happens, we can report it and it will be dealt with.

I'm at a loss to understand why that isn't the case for transpeople too. Should violence happen, it is illegal, and the police will deal with it.^

And when trans people report, most police forces will treat that violence as a hate crime, unlike the violence men subject women to.

@shotsfired I would back legislation to force the female-only loos to be female-only in my "three spaces" model.

@dn4geekinderby Single-occupancy unisex loos are cheap to design in, my employer does as a matter of policy in all new buildings with additional cubicle farm provision in high-traffic areas. This gives people choices. Generally, designing things in is cheap, retrofitting not so much.

I would argue for single-occupancy loos to be mandated as a proportion of loo provision in all new buildings, with risk to lone women, children, and vulnerable adults considered carefully and mitigated when deciding where in the building the loos are located. The small additional cost is then borne across all of us, not just women.

@bd67th @shotsfired I would back legislation to force the female-only loos to be female-only in my "three spaces" model.

And I'd be there with you, but that just brings us right back round to where we are now and the issue of female toilets for female people.

@assassinatedbeauty @rufustheconstantreindeer I looked online and you can buy one on Amazon for under £40. The problem is when places outsource provision and emptying to e.g. PHS, it gets expensive then and there may be health and safety implications of asking food service staff to empty a sanitary bin that has been stewing for a week so outsourcing may be the only safe option.

bd6

Your browser history must look very interesting

If you pee standing up use the gents, if you pee sitting down use the ladies. If you're disabled use the disabled.

A male acquaintance told me yesterday that he couldn't see any problem with transwomen using female-only spaces even if they hadn't done any transitioning and that if I would 'just view transwomen as women' then it would solve my problem.

He couldn't seem to grasp that not all transwomen have surgery or look any different to him, or that he as a big powerlifting man with a metaler beard and copious tattoos would be unlikely to ever feel threatened by anyone.

This was all after he'd said 'no woman is born with a penis' and 'If you have a penis, use the men's'. It was a bizarre conversation that began with him saying 'I can do this all day, I'm on a 12 hour shift!' and ended with him having a paddy and telling me 'this conversation is over' in classic mansplain.

I feel strongly that spaces disabled people and women have fought for because they allowed us to take part in public life shouldn't become open to all just because males want them to. Toilets shouldn't be about identity anyway, they're sole purpose is to serve a biological function.

I was at a day course at my local university at the weekend, and noticed all the toilets there had been made "all genders welcome". Ok - they had floor-to-ceiling walls and doors so there was no privacy issue, but the sinks were still all outside the cubicles and you could still hear what other people were doing! If I'd got bloody fingers from doing Mooncup maintenance or I wanted to have a dump without some random man listening in, it would have been useless. When I came out of there, there were a couple of other women dithering about trying to decide whether they wanted to go in, so it's clear to me that it isn't a welcome development for all women.

The next time there was a toilet break, I used the disabled loo. I felt bad about it, but uncomfortable with the other option.