Dirty protest over Somerville College, Oxford’s gender‑neutral loos

[WeAreGerbil]

I don't know how to do a share token (can anyone tell me?) but here is the link and text.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/dirty-protest-over-somerville-college-oxfords-genderneutral-loos-bf2jk50lc

A term after an Oxford college introduced gender-neutral lavatories, male students have carried out a “dirty protest” over losing their urinals.

Last week they urinated on the floor of the “gender-neutral” cubicles in the bar at Somerville College, Oxford, and wrote on the wall: “We want our f urinals back”, according to an email sent by the president of the junior common room, Niall Macklin. In a message entitled “I can’t believe I am writing this”, Macklin said: “[Last night] someone took it upon themselves to urinate on the floor of one of the cubicles and inscribe ‘We want our f urinals back’. If you have a problem with the changes please use the democratic process and not dirty protests.

“Otherwise if you could refrain from being a barbaric idiot that would be great.”

Somerville students voted in January to replace “male” and “female” signs with the words “gender-neutral toilets with cubicles”. The lavatories in question no longer feature urinals but have cubicles with male and female symbols.

Somerville, which opened in 1879, was one of Oxford’s first women’s colleges and is Margaret Thatcher’s alma mater. It declares on its website that it was “founded to include the excluded”.

So now the men have to queue up as long as woman have to, because there are never enough women's loos. And the woman have to queue up longer than they used to, and suffer piss on the floor. What a literal and figurative mess

Some women feel uncomfortable about haveing people with a penis use their toilets. Because some people with a penis also feel uncomfortable when using facilities for people with a penis, women get fucked over

Discussion of the NUStrans18 conference by Rose of Dawn.
Covers the 'occupation' of the gender neutral loo (previously the women's loo) and wider important issues including the power of non-binary ideology & hard left politics & what Rose describes as a new "homeopathic definition of woman".

Christ, back in the 80s we had a "silent protest" against Somerville losing its single sex status, where we all lined up in academic dress. We cared because there were sod-all opportunities for women. For instance, in maths, while the overall figures for women undergrads were in line with the national average (roughly 15%) the few women that there were were mostly concentrated in the three remaining women's colleges. We even knew of college admissions tutors who boasted about not taking women.

We had eminent female mathematicians, physicists, chemists among the fellows. Dorothy Hodgkin (Nobel Prize) had been a fellow; the physics fellow was an FRS.

We won that time round, but Somerville went mixed not long after. There are now no female fellows in STEM subjects in Somerville.

Now men at Somerville have noticed that they've lost their single sex loos and their idea of a protest is to piss over the floor.

Female vs. male socialisation, anyone?

(Temporary namechange as this outs where I went to university and roughly when).

The article reads like it was one idiot who has pissed on the floor and scrawled something on the wall, hardly a mass protest.
At least they had a vote before introducing it I suppose

Pissing on the floors in the college named for the woman whose work they used to teach but was not allowed in the door because she was female.
What could be more manly than that?

Slightly ot but surely men don't really need urinals? They don't design them into their own homes!

surely men don't really need urinals?

Without urinals, the queues for public male loos would likely be more similar in length to those for women's loos.

There may also be issues around how effectively public men's loos are kept clean?

I thought Somerville voted not to introduce unisex toilets. I’m sure it made national news a while ago...

Urinals are practical and pragmatic.

Men who don't like them have cubicles to use as well.

If they were all taken away, the toilets at eg large football stadiums would need to be the size of a small town.

(And they would be, because men would not accept long queues, and venues would want to accomodate them, and also because lots of men would simply find a corner and piss in there instead).

And no venue wants men pissing all over the place.

In case it wasn't obvious what I meant!

I saw decent unisex toilets last month - if people are going to insist on unisex toilets then going for ones like these are the way to go. Sink area open to the public lobby so less risk of someone getting assaulted there, floor to ceiling walls around the cubicles, and separate area with urinals behind a door clearly labelled for men.

Natsku
Isn't this 'unisex loo one that is zoned 'men' and 'gender neutral?

Oooh we can't have men being inconvenienced.

During college I worked part-time in a famous motorway cafe (which specialised in breakfasts)... as a 17 year old women, the need for urinals in men's public loos was pretty obvious to me when I was rotored for cleaning duties!

Isn't this 'unisex loo one that is zoned 'men' and 'gender neutral?

No, well the urinal section is zoned men but otherwise it's altogether. There's a separate disabled/family toilet just at the entrance too.

My belief is that if we are changing spaces previously separated by sex, there should really be an opportunity for all stakeholders in society to both be aware of this and to have the opportunity to have their voices heard.

Some of these spaces eg loos / changing rooms etc may be being changed piecemeal into unisex/gender neutral provision through (in some cases) the effective lobbying / needs / wishes of a particular group.

[https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3225459-Primark-Coventry-challenged-for-asking-trans-woman-for-ID-before-allowing-entry-to-female-changing-rooms]]

In a recent article, Hannah Clark for example discussed the concerns which formed the basis for #ManFriday

" HC: We are a group of women who oppose the push towards self-identification, both in law and in practice. We are concerned that self-identification removes gatekeeping to women’s identity, protected spaces, services, and roles. It also denies biology and women’s lived experiences of sex-based discrimination and violence.

We also want to ensure that current sex-based exemptions in the Equality Act are applied. The current push to base GRA on self-identification [if adopted, the legislation would replace the term “gender reassignment” with “gender identity,” meaning that Gender Recognition Certificates (GRC) could be issued without any conditions, by a process of self-declaration alone] has caused a lot of companies and service-providers to jump on a self-identification bandwagon and create policies that allow people to use whatever facilities they opt to. We are asking for the exemptions in the Equality Act to be applied, so that companies and service-providers, like [retail stores with changing rooms], swimming pools, etc. to enforce the exemptions which would allow for sex to have primacy over gender and that state we can have spaces separated by sex"

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/04/09/interview-uk-women-self-identifying-men-challenge-proposed-changes-gra-part-manfriday/

At least they had a vote before introducing it I suppose

I am sure I remember a thread about this vote, where people had decided that the vote could NOT be anonymous, in an attempt to get people to vote the 'right way'. might have been another college mind, my memory is a bit hazy. But that vote, was a bit of a farce tbh.

Disabled rights activists point out that their spaces were fought for, and shouldn't be taken away.

And rightly so. No reason for the disabled areas to be used just because a few people decide that they are not the sex that they are. Fight for their own spaces, is the answer. Not just taking over other random places.

Sardine

Exactly

Men need urinals because much of the time they are only having a wee and if they can do that really quickly, so no queue

In large buildings, the solution is so very simple.

Ladies toilets
Men’s toilets
Disabled toilets
Unisex toilets for any of the above

Having said that, new unisex toilets ought to have the sink and mirror inside the cubicle.

am sure I remember a thread about this vote, where people had decided that the vote could NOT be anonymous, in an attempt to get people to vote the 'right way'. might have been another college mind, my memory is a bit hazy. But that vote, was a bit of a farce tbh.

There was an Oxford college where the students managed to get a secret ballot, much to the chagrin of the people proposing the unisex toilets who objected to this but it was overruled. And the proposal was duly voted out.

If toilets are designated unisex - the venue needs to commit to cleaning them more regularly.

better still, just leave things as they are and add a unisex option. for the tiny percentage of people who feel they need or want to use it.

it just doesn't seem complicated to me.

There was an Oxford college where the students managed to get a secret ballot, much to the chagrin of the people proposing the unisex toilets who objected to this but it was overruled. And the proposal was duly voted out.

Ah right thanks for that. I knew I remembered a story like that. Good to see that the attmpeted shaming people into voting the 'right' way didn't happen. Bet they were pissed off they did not get their way.

It's all the same college.
Somerville College voted against in November:
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/11/27/oxford-college-votes-calls-gender-neutral-toilets-amid-fears/

Then it voted for in January:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5318473/Oxford-students-approve-gender-neutral-toilets.html
This is about so much more than signage, it is about recognising the detriment of gender binary spaces and the need for change. (Eilidh Wilson, Somerville’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Officer)

If they want to return to the toilet access available to women in the 1850s they could at least have the decency to admit that driving women out of the public sphere is now and always has been the goal.