Uncomfortable about unisex toilets at work

[Onlyinanemergency]

My workplace is moving to new premises and all the toilets are to be unisex. Apparently the bathrooms consist of several floor-to-ceiling cubicals opening out onto shared sinks. There is then a large window onto a public corridor so that the sink area can be seen from outside the bathroom. There are 3 of these bathrooms, one on each floor of the building, as well as 3 single disabled toilets. The architects have obviously put a lot of thought into creating toilets which are unisex but also fairly safe and private, yet I still feel really uncomfortable about the idea. Particularly about not being given a choice. Am I wrong?

Well, in my case going back to my office in damp but not obviously bloody clothing was by far the more attractive option. If I'd been going back to a seat that someone else would be coming to take over from me in a few minutes I don't know what I'd have done. Sat on my cardigan, maybe. What you don't seem to be getting, Illustrious, is that these things are not predictable. I wouldn't keep an entire change of clothes at work, not least because I'd have had nowhere to put it. My own incidents happened several years apart.

The only alternative is to carry a suitcase on wheels everywhere, obviously. This will not in any way make your coworkers look at you funny or inconvenience them when it's in tight spaces.

@upstartcrow... I wouldn't go and strip off in any public area. My workplace doesn't have driers so washing clothes wouldn't be an option. Maybe I have just been lucky, but I have never had any issues and regular so plan accordingly.
If I had to I suppose I would use the cubicle as best I could.
Like I said, it's just my opinion. Wasn't meant to offend anyone.

You can dry clothes under hand dryers. I've done it with a completely rain drenched shirt.

I'm confused as to why the sight of a woman in her pants in the toilet would be offensive, especially if she was in the process of drying her other clothes so it was obvious why she was in pants.

If it hasn't happened to me, it hasn't happened at all.

angry I love you

My fridge is full, what do you mean 'people are hungry'

try to make them feel even worse about themselves than they do already for having this entirely physical problem which is in no way self-inflicted and yet absolutely loaded with shame

I don't think it helps in the slightest to keep on and on and on about how "loaded in shame" periods are or to come out with comments that a man might see me washing my hands and think I'm having my period or a man might see a sanitary towel bin.

It makes no difference whether you say oh it's not us feminists saying periods are shameful and embarrassing , oh no, it's society, we can't possibly do anything about that except repeat how terribly shameful society thinks it is.

As for having light periods, far from it. In my late 30s when I came off the pill they got worse and worse until I was bleeding roughly for a full week out of every 3. I was using the thickest towel available with a tampon and on bad days often reached the stage I couldn't safely take any more painkillers. This was eventually solved by endometrial ablation in my late 40s.

I agree with you Lass, although I think perhaps I took it further than I should have when commenting yesterday.

It's hard to find the balance; you spend your whole life telling young women and girls not to be ashamed, not to hide themselves away, that no-one cares as much as they think they do - adults don't care - we're all grown-ups, we all know how bodies work; and you do it knowing you're fluffing the truth a bit (because a lot of people can't help that they care - it's the way we've been conditioned) but you do it so that they might feel just a little bit better about themselves and that things might slowly, slowly change.

So you put aside your socially conditioned urge to hide yourself away, and you do it loud and proud in front of other women; younger women in particular; and it can rile so much when it feels like the hard work you and other feminists have done in setting aside your own discomfort for all this time is being undone by the public protestations of feminists who say "we do care, women do care, we want to be able to hide ourselves away" - and you feel for those poor girls who were starting to feel that confidence and you know it's just going to ebb away....

But of course there is privacy and dignity; there are aspects of periods you should be able to hide behind closed doors, but I don't think those things are using a vending machine, taking your handbag into the cubicle or having sanpro on show. So yes, perhaps I went too far saying we should all push back on everything, because perhaps I'm the type who would push back beyond the line just so the line could settle somewhere a little more moderate for the majority.

So OP, I've been thinking; if this goes ahead and these end up being your loos - and they don't have basins in the cubicles - you could perhaps lobby HR to provide little baskets full of sanpro in each cubicle and a packet of baby wipes for bloodied hand cleaning. If there is not shelf you can get little baskets that sucker to the walls. To be honest, this is the kind of guerrilla action I would take anyway without involving HR, but then insist they keep it up once initiated!

Obviously this doesn't help the whole bloodied clothes thing, but to be honest there might not even be hand driers in the toilets - so there's no guarantee you'd be able to do this anyway.

Obviously not a perfect solution, but it might help you and other women in your work situation, if these planned toilets do indeed come to pass.

I agree with most of rats post

Not all of it cos that would be weird

But the majority

Unisex toilets discussed at the end of Gaby Hinsliff's article in The Guardian today.
It covers the wider context and, I think, worth reading:

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/10/the-gender-recognition-act-is-controversial-can-a-path-to-common-ground-be-found

"The solutions to some points of conflict are likely, as Jess Phillips says, to be “very, very practical”. While the Oxford meeting heard poignant stories about schoolgirls feeling unsafe sharing gender-neutral toilets with boys (ironically the meeting’s venue had unisex toilets), sealed cubicles, locks and other design features may go a long way to avoid any anticipated friction."

thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3244904-Finally-a-balanced-overview-article-in-the-Guardian

As much as I think that if most women want sex segregated toilets that's what we should get I still think it's a bit of a red herring in terms of changing rooms where nudity is par for the course being the bigger issue. If we lose on sex segregation in toilets it becomes harder to hold the line on changing rooms though, so the two are interlinked.

Yeah. For me, it is honestly that almost every unisex toilet I have been in has been filthy. I also haven't felt safe and it's not the floor to ceiling issue - it's more that I feel that my radar is screwed up - if a man is allowed to be there then my radar shifts from 'a man, run' to 'a man. How is he behaving? Is he loitering? Am I alone with him? Fuck I need to wee but I don't feel comfortable...'.

It's a shift in social expectations that means it's harder to challenge a male person who your spidey senses are telling you is a bit off, a shift in the Overton window. Particularly worrying for girls growing up with that who're still learning to assert their boundaries.

Particularly worrying for girls growing up with that who're still learning to assert their boundaries

I suspect that 'we' will be teaching girls something very different about boundaries that might make it much harder for them to assert them. I also suspect that 'we' will be teaching girls (even more than we already do) to make sure that they put themselves last and others first.

Sorry 😐 f I've got this wrong but was it pombear who said how the hell did we get to the point where we have to fight for women's toilets by talking about miscarriages and heavy clots, and how the hell are we at the stage of planning 'wet wipe' planning. Male bodied people STAY OUT IF WOMEN'S TOILETS. It's not hard. Just don't go in them.

The message is why can't women just contort ourselves smaller and smaller so as to avoid inconveniencing male people?

Because we don't want to and we shouldn't have to, that's why.

To reassure Onlyinanemergency
...is the lack of choice. I feel it has been forced upon me. Even if, as some have suggested, it won't be as bad as I think, I feel as though something I felt was my right has been taken from me for no good reason that I can see.

A most reasonable response. You were not asked, it is a sign that 'your opinion does not matter'. This is a huge change, for the many reasons the above posts have outlined.

YaS: if a man is allowed to be there then my radar shifts
AAK: it's harder to challenge a male person who your spidey senses are telling you is a bit off

Well, quite. Any sexual assault or DV victim is likely to have very similar responses - and that is quite a significant 'minority' of women (25% or more). That is a hell of a lot of women to throw under the bus for the sake of . Oh right, inclusiveness it is this week.

Also, Only, if I may suggest a phrase to be bandied about when raising your concerns:

"for female NEEDS, this arrangement is not fit for purpose "

I frequently agree with chunks of your posts

Just reading this thread, what has struck me is how unfit for purpose current arrangements are for women. Why not have at least two cubicles in women's toilets that have basins and dryers in them for mooncups and fabric washing? That's just for starters.

It still fundamentally impacts the way women use the space more than it impacts men (if it does at all).

Women may come out of toilet cubicles with bloody hands, wanting to rinse mooncups, sort out their clothes and hair and put make up on.

It's not just inside the cubicles that we need privacy. I would be very unhappy with sinks that can be viewed from a corridor.

At one place I work we have unisex loos. There is only a small number of staff so two cubicles with full doors and a sink inside the cubicle. However the mirror is in the communal section with the hand driers. And the state of them?! Piss on the seats, pubes stuck to yellowing porcelain. Urgh.