Newcastle students put sanitary bins in gents for the gender neutral

[spontaneousgiventime]

Sanitary bins are to be placed in male lavatories at a university so that gender-neutral students can use facilities “they feel most comfortable with”.

Article in the Times by Gabriella Swerling

I'm sure our second hand tampon and towel wearers will be over the moon at this news.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/newcastle-students-put-sanitary-bins-in-gents-for-the-gender-neutral-k00mwx73s?shareToken=bb836581c548c4ae05b4f2891c05af2d

Grumpybearblue Validation is often more important than safety. They also like very, very soiled sanitary towels due to the weight and bulk.

um... is this second hand use of sanitary items for real? I feel a bit sick.

But I guess it is ecological :)

If you have a strong enough stomach, read this. Fair warning, it's not for the faint hearted.

We had a conversation about this exact article at work, and a female child-free colleague said all loos should be gender-neutral, so I raised the issue of the huge gaps above and below the cubicle partitions and asked "what if you're having a miscarriage?" She hadn't even thought of miscarriage. I think a lot of young women are cosigning this TRA stuff because they don't want to seem "bigoted" and they don't have the life experience of pregnancy and other female biology stuff to realise the value of female-only spaces.

I agree with the NSU president's point that other clinical waste can be put in the sanpro bins. I think all loos should have a suitable disposal container for clinical waste so that people don't have to flush it and have it end up on a beach.

What? Very soiled sanitary towels - spiked with what? Are women donating used sanitary towels for these purposes?

Can't say this presents much of a danger to anyone. It's just silly.

Not spiked, soiled!

TooExtraImmatureCheddar No, they are stealing them out the san bins. Soiled with menstrual blood.

As a woman I would totally use the men’s toilet if there was a choice of gender neutral and a men’s toilet. I mean surely nobody could complain?

Yes, some odd men like to find used sanitary towels and put them in their pants!

@bd67th - Young straight women are rubbish at feminism. We were too busy trying to ingratiate ourselves with the boys.

IME most transmen use the ladies toilets anyway unless they are 100% sure they pass.

Not entirely sure who this move will benefit tbh.

Kyanite, I think the ovaries is a reference to the testicles. A male can push his testicles up into the inguinal canal and past the front of the pubic bone so that they sit just above the pubic bone in the abdominal cavity. In that position, they are maybe 10cm away from where ovaries would be if the male was actually female. Shame they produce motile sperm and so can never be ovaries. Nature is the ultimate TERF...

When I was in my twenties I used to use the men's loos fairly often on a night out at the disco. Queue for the ladies too bloody long. I was bolshy then. Now, I find them a bit insanitary.

Oh my god. That is disgusting!

How on earth do you know? Why would you a) do such a thing and then b) boast about it??

TooExtraImmatureCheddar Someone posted screenshots of someone talking about it. They were the ones doing it. I'll see if I can find the thread.

Here you go.

This thread is hilarious with two conversations running in parallel and it's not always clear which post belongs to which conversation.

this thread has really opened my eyes.

I am in favour of all toilets having sanitary bins purely to raise awareness of bad cubicle design, i.e. sanitary bins frequently being too close to or even overhanging the toilet seat due to narrow cubicles with the toilet stuck in the middle. If men end up having to navigate their bottoms around badly placed bins maybe this issue will get sorted out.

This is going to get expensive fast for organisations such as Universities. Right now its just at least one in each students union bathroom and asking the University to put at least one in each of their bathrooms but if its rolled out to every cubicle, its going to be a lot.

Sanitary waste has to be disposed of by a licenced company. I know when I worked at a petrol station it was something like £90 per bin per year to get taken away and replaced every 4 weeks. Even if they're paying half that, given the amount of toilets they have its a fairly big outlay especially if they're in every cubicle

This is a great idea that means the drunks in Wetherspoons will have an extra pot to pee in and pee all over because most men pee on toilet seats and can now pee on your towel bins 😁

Yes I wonder if they even let the university administration know they were doing it. Thinking about the university I used to work at all the waste pick up was done under contract, negotiated for I think three year periods at as low a cost as possible. The contract would have to be renegotiated as we're talking about essentially doubling the number of bins to be collected from which would significantly increase the cost. I would imagine that the bins would be removed and returned to the student union very quickly indeed (unless the union were prepared to pay for them to be emptied and cleaned from their own funds, or unless the only loos affected were in the union building which they might be responsible for anyway). The guy that ran ancillary services was totally focused on the bottom line, and in almost permanent battle with the student union to provide more of everything for less. Student union reps are usually elected on incredibly low turnouts but I can't imagine students wanting bins that no one will use vs (eg) more expensive food.

Really wish I hadn't clicked on that link while eating breakfast.

Tbh I don't think this is hurting anyone. Seeing as transmen get much less awareness I think this will help them a lot. And I'm pretty sure that the gross reused thing is only a small minority.