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?

thebewilderness when that mad rush of care staff appear with their stories and some facts then extrapolating from someone who is actually in the NHS working on a busy acute ward is all you have. Oh and what yer mum said...

Erishgal I don't disagree... oh and the irony of that seriously unpleasant experience is I'm what people on here like to call a "TIM". One of those mental cases diagnosed with gender dysphoria... it's a weird world innit?
Thanks for the flowers. You still have time to take them back I won't be offended. It's something you get used to.

No of course I won't take them back. I think you should respect women's boundaries though, that's all.

thebewilderness when that mad rush of care staff appear with their stories and some facts then extrapolating from someone who is actually in the NHS working on a busy acute ward is all you have. Oh and what yer mum said...

Thanks for that.
I prefer documented evidence to anecdote, regardless of the source but you go right ahead posing as the authority.,

Bloody hell! I'm beginning to see what you all mean! Like little mice, sneaking in.

Bewilderness I haven't posed as an authority. Rather I presented opposing anecdotal evidence vs what your mum said. I'm happy for toilets and hospital wards to remain segragrated unless there is a good reason not to be.

I used to work for an organisation that installed a uni sex toilet in one if it's new buildings and I hated it to be honest. I only used it a handful of times when I really couldn't be bothered to walk and use the female toilets at the other end of the building. It had cubicles with floor to ceiling doors for privacy but the wash area was very confined with no window and if I'm being perfectly honest I did use to worry about the possibility of being assaulted by a man in there. I imagine it's even worse for women who have been raped / sexually assaulted by men in the past. In fact for this reason alone I think it should be illegal for women not to be given an option to have access to women only toilet facilities where they don't have to worry about being alone with a man. I hardly EVER saw anyone else in there, I'm guessing because other members of staff (men and women) didn't feel comfortable using it. It all seems like part of a push towards a very specific agenda, one that I am not comfortable with at all. Women have a right to feel safe in their place of work. Why should we forgo that right to fulfill a political agenda?

I have seen many TIMs support sex-segregated spaces, except for them, they're different et cetera.

Just had a memory: I had a holiday job cleaning with some friends. We were young but the regular team were 50+, all women (as you would expect) plus one man. Turned out the man was a convicted sex offender. So a regular woman worked with the man (we worked in pairs). Okay. Fine. But, would we have wanted to share unisex toilets with this bloke? Of course not. Toilets are vulnerable spaces. Mostly, most of the time, women are not aware of this. Doesn't mean that isn't a fact. This anecdote also reminds me that the most vulnerable women are in low paid jobs with poor protections. Working in bright, modern workspaces may mean unisex toilets are safe. When you work in isolated buildings on a university campus out of term time, suddenly unisex toilets doesn't seem so safe.

h and the irony of that seriously unpleasant experience is I'm what people on here like to call a "TIM"

How is that ironic

I worry about ds1 all the time when he is out at nightclubs, as i gay man i worry about him being sexually assaulted and being beaten up by someone who doesnt like his choice of partner

I wouldnt give him flowers though...he would much prefer vodka

Working in bright, modern workspaces may mean unisex toilets are safe. When you work in isolated buildings on a university campus out of term time, suddenly unisex toilets doesn't seem so safe.

Yeah, that. In some of the fancy office buildings I've worked in? I don't love the idea but I wouldn't feel unsafe, just annoyed. The vast majority of the world does not work in places like that, though.

These incursions do occur but the frequency is actually quite rare and it's usually the confused or dementia patients. For instance in my last two years working on a ward I have had to remove two people from opposite sex rooms. Both dementia sufferers. One male and... one female

In the aged care facility my relative was in many of the patients were suffering from dementia or similar inflictions. Even in the time my relative was there, it was necessary to remove the 'old dear' from her and others' rooms probably more than six times a day. I was warned to keep away from another patient because even though he had a degree of dementia he was still a known sex-offender. Just because the men have dementia does not mean that the women (who may or may not have dementia) are not scared or traumatised by having men in their rooms or trying to get into bed with them. This is all argument for sex-segregated spaces be they toilets or wards or whatever.

From the perspective of the women being groped, having random men climb into their beds, etc, it really doesn't matter why the men are doing those things, and I'm concerned that you as a HCP think it does, Poula. The women on the receiving end of the unwanted behavior are also your patients.

These incursions do occur but the frequency is actually quite rare and it's usually the confused or dementia patients.

So keep the confused and dementia patients who are likely to cause severe distress and fear to women, away from women.

On wards for men, for instance.

These patients with dementia and confusion who try and sexually assault other patients - how many of them are women?

Individual locked rooms opening direct on to a station concourse

The stuff of nightmares. I would have to be truly desperate to use a setup like this.

Rape and sexual abuse in hospitals is epidemic. Mixed wards are a higher risk for women. The NHS has to pay out compensation to victims every year, and its not a new problem.

Mixed-sex psychiatric wards warning
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/11/nhs-launches-sexual-abuse-probe-amid-fears-dangers-mixed-sex/
archive.is/wwyXH

Sexual violence soars in UK hospitals 2014
Records show 50% rise in reports of sexual attacks, with more than 1,600 in past three years
Last year the Metropolitan police received reports of 17 rapes and 124 other sex abuse crimes inside London hospitals.
www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/31/sexual-violence-soars-uk-hospitals

@AngryAttackKittens

The women on the receiving end of the unwanted behavior are also your patients.

They're women. Fuck 'em.

This anecdote also reminds me that the most vulnerable women are in low paid jobs with poor protections. Working in bright, modern workspaces may mean unisex toilets are safe. When you work in isolated buildings on a university campus out of term time, suddenly unisex toilets doesn't seem so safe.

YY and this is largely being ignored by unisex toilet fans. It is harder to hang around in women's toilets and loiter as a predatory male if they are sex segregated because you're automatically doing something wrong and people feel alarm.

Absolutely. Although women will still FEEL alarm, they just won't feel like they can speak up unless the man is doing something actively and obviously alarming. Many woman of my age - 30 something - or older will automatically feel alarmed on some level by finding a man in "their" toilets even when these toilets are now gender neutral because we have been conditioned to feel like that. Some would argue with good reason.

And even if you want to make the argument that gender neutral toilets are the way to go, that doesn't change the fact that by not making a gradual change ( keeping sex segregated toilets and adding a gender neutral option for the time being) my employer is choosing to put some of its employees in a state of alarm on a regular bases for no good reason.

Individual locked rooms opening direct on to a station concourse

The stuff of nightmares. I would have to be truly desperate to use a setup like this

Why ? It is the safest arrangement. You are going direct from an open public place to a single locked room.


One of the reasons transactivism annoys me is the obsession with toilets. It's constant.

It's because women's feelings about privacy are easily handwaved away.

I know but there's all this lofty 'why are you so obsessed with genitals' nonsense when in reality it's us being forced to talk about them because they want in to our toilets.

But why do they want in to our toilets? Does it help them to feel even more like women if they use our toilets? Still trying to get my head around it all.

Is it that they see us as some kind of "secret club" and they need to be in it?