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?

Yes good point, what they specifically want is the removal and erasure of female sex specific space.

Unfortunately, " male bodied at birth" people usually get their way!

@hipsterfun: who knows what filth lurks in the cistern.

I sometimes use cistern blocks, so chlorine bleaches, detergents, and a citrus scent can lurk in mine. None of this is stuff you want in your vagina.

The idea of rinsing anything that is then going to be inserted into my body in a toilet makes me want to run away screaming. Not just dirt and germs but bleach and artificial scents - what has your vagina ever done to you that you'd do that to it, mooncup rinsing in toilet person?

I was thinking small deceased and decomposing creatures but yeah, excellent point about chemicals [shudder]

I think it's probably just "people younger than us" who want unisex loos. Not all of them of course, but enough to notice.

Serendipitously Greg James and Mollie King mentioned it in passing on Radio 1 yesterday; both saying they think it's time we all just had gender-neutral.

I can't find any age-related stats, but it was a find of the youth consultation report in Ireland, December 2017:

"A strong message from both the survey and the consultation events was the need for gender-neutral bathrooms and changing rooms."

Here's an article about that titled "Young people want better sex education, gender-neutral toilets and LGBTI history taught in schools".

Oh, and parents with children; apparently they're quite keen on unisex loos. I was trying to work out who wanted unisex loos the other day and read the following:

"Another benefit of unisex bathrooms is that they make it far easier for parents to accompany children of the opposite sex to the bathroom. Most men would feel uncomfortable entering a women’s bathroom, and vice-versa; the only alternative is to let children use the facilities unattended. Although it’s rare, leaving children unattended in public bathrooms can have tragic consequences: in 1998, a nine-year-old boy was murdered in a public restroom when his aunt decided to let him use the men’s bathroom alone."

So I guess the architects/developers etc. have good a few different perspectives to consider.

@ratrolypoly: I think it's probably just "people younger than us" who want unisex loos.

I didn't care, until I realised the miscarriage and menstruation angle and the "hide from pushy men" angle. If you are young enough to have never been pregnant, use the kind of contraception that suppresses menstruation, and lucky enough to have never had to hide from a man in a social space, you won't see the big deal.

Ratpoly’s Irish youth consultation refers to a consultation to develop a strategy for LGBTI+ youth. It’s not representative of what young straight men or women want and it’s disingenuous to suggest it is.

bd67th yes, I do think there will be an element of that, certainly.

Unisex bathrooms are NOT what parents want though. What we want is a sort of family friendly space. I have often had to pee in public loos with the buggy wedging the door open because no cubes are big enough to take them in - I can ONLY do that safely in a single sex bathroom or in a solo space. I would be very reluctant to use a unisex loo of the type described here (single cubicles opening into a shared area) while wedging the buggy into an open door. And no you can’t leave the buggy with a baby on the opposite side of a locked door.

Ditto changing rooms - what the best places have is a sort of bigger, single room ‘family’ space. NOT a unisex space. I would feel far less comfortable changing with young kids with men around.

Family change, baby change and proper access disabled loos (the latter as detailed in the changing spaces campaign) are a separate thing entirely. They are not going to be solved by making all the bogs unisex.

rat if it’s not too intrusive to ask, how old are you and do you have children?

It was a separate point Gone:

I specifically said I can't find any age-related stats, but...

I wasn't trying to prove anything to be the case, I simply said "I think it's probably just "people younger than us" who want unisex loos" and gave a couple of loose reasons why I might think that.

It gets so tedious having to rewrite every single post when the necessary language is all there is the first one.

Toilets are already gender neutral. They're separated by sex, not head-feels.

So what you want to see more of, Rat, is mixed sex toilets.

rat if it’s not too intrusive to ask, how old are you and do you have children?

It's not too intrusive, I've volunteered the information many times before :)

I'm 34 and I have two.

That thing about parents wanting unisex, that was from an advice page on a washroom equipment suppliers website. It was them offering up the pros and cons of unisex washrooms to their customers - their customers being architects, builders, developers etc.

So what i'm saying is, the people who design and build these facilities seem to think it's what parents want. They may or may not be right.

But I think there's more to why these things are coming up than simply , or what have you. That was the point I was making.

So what you want to see more of, Rat, is mixed sex toilets.

Don't think I've stated a preference as such, but yes, unisex is certainly the correct term rather than gender-neutral. Reading that youth consultation got the term stuck in my head!

No, not unisex. Toilets are currently unisex and gender neutral. You want mixed sex toilets. Mixed sex is the term.

It’s certainly not what I want. How can i pee safely with a buggy in a mixed sex bathroom? It’s not possible. When I’ve had to do it women sort of politely ignore you (and I’ve seen plenty do it too) but with men in the sink space I’d feel very unsafe.

I don’t think there’s any call for unisex bathrooms from a majority. This is a small, vocal group of activists pushing what they want to the detriment of many other groups.

By all means add more diversity of changing and toilets - better adult disabled changing spaces for example (see changing places campaign.) better family friendly lockable single rooms. A family loo.

To me, the enthusiastic adoption of unisex loos is cost based. It’s cheaper. And builders will do anything cheaper.

But honestly - a Mum with a newborn and a buggy - how can she piss safely in a unisex toilet ? She can’t. We are restricting women’s access to public spaces with this. And why? It’s just not needed. Keep the bloody toilets as they are.

I don’t know if you’re aware of. The struggle women had to get public toilets byvthe way - because before they existed women’s participation in the public sphere was heavily limited. The provision of safe public toilets was a huge step forward for women being able to go out for longer than a short time in public. It was a big deal. What about Muslim women who can’t use mixed sex facilities? Don’t we care that they will have their lives limited in scope by this?

And now we are going backwards, for no reason. There’s no logical reason AT ALL to do this. Men go in the men’s, transwomen (who are men) go in the men’s. Women go in the women’s. Done.

Mixed sex is the term.

It's not the one we use here in the construction industry, but if you like it can be the term on Mumsnet. Happy to keep it up to see if it catches on in common parlance.

Everything else is PR whereas mixed sex is accurate. So yes, I hope you're right. If you are on the construction industry, why don't you start using it? The meaning is very clear.

To me, the enthusiastic adoption of unisex loos is cost based. It’s cheaper. And builders will do anything cheaper.

Oh yeah, definitely, this is absolutely on their list of "pros" too!

These guys are no sort of authority but their list of pros and cons is here just in case it offers any insight into what developers etc. might be thinking when they build these things.

Pratchet I don't have much to do with toilets - the things we build are truly universal! But if it comes up I will use it :)

Great 🙂 I'm all in favour of a mixed sex/family toilet option, in addition to a female specific space. If men want their own spaces they can campaign for them. If anything has to change right now, I would designate men's toilets as family/mixed sex, and keep the women's toilets as female-only.

I was just reading the link from that washroom supplies website I linked Practchet; it was a link on "line equality".

You've certainly heard of it already, but apparently it's a phenomenon of everyday sexism that women have to wait loooooads longer than men to use the loo. I'm up for arrangements that reduce line inequality, and I think your suggestion of womens vs. mixed sex would do that really well!

But I suspect you'd fall foul of the general feeling that you can't provide something to one sex that you don't provide to the other, unless there is a good enough reason. I'm not saying you wouldn't have a good enough reason - in fact I think you would and your solution would work really well - I just think someone would have to be prepared to defend that reason, perhaps even in court :(

Perhaps I'm being pessimistic; I like your solution, I'd put my name to it if the petition ever came round. Perhaps it would be taken up as a common-sense solution to both gender/sex incongruence, families, and line-inequality.

Men don't seem to mind. They aren't campaigning about the loss of mixed sex spaces, like women are.

I'm glad you are in favour

I like it! I like it because although it appears to start from an unequal premise it achieves an equal result between the sexes - in terms of line equality in particular - and it's those sorts of little inequalities between men and women that really grate me.

And it's good for families, be them families of single parents of either sex, or families of multiple parents of any combination of the sexes.

Can we get this idea to take off? No-one talks about line inequality in the context of feminism very much any more. I think that's a good angle.