The case for retaining single-sex mass toilets alongside any unisex provision **Title edited by MNHQ at the request of the OP**

[haXXor]

On the upskirting thread, I mentioned that I had googled for shoe cameras and found a vendor. The vendor's website was a real eyeopener. They are based in Shenzen in China, the electronics manufacturing capital of the world, so they have easy access to the manufacturing facilities needed to make microelectronic devices.

Amongst their range of products, I found two toilet brushes with hidden cameras in, from as little as US$212 (~£160 at time of writing). That's a pretty low barrier to acquisition. There are dozens of convincing shower gel and shampoo bottles to leave in gym or workplace showers or to film showering flatmates.

They also have a range of shoe cameras, including one that shows, in the illustrative image, a man looking a picture of a woman's knicker-clad vulva on a computer screen. Many of the item descriptions have "we are not responsible if this camera is used for illegal activities, this is a home security camera and should be treated as such, with responsibility" appended: these arseholes know exactly what the buyers of their wares are going to do with them, otherwise they wouldn't try to claim innocence with their pathetic figleaf disclaimer.

That the owners of this website will so brazenly monetise female objectification is proof that patriarchy and misogyny are real.

Anyway, on to why this makes me demand that single-sex mass toilets are retained alongside any unisex provision installed for non-binary and trans people.

On another thread, we discussed criminology and security theory models for keeping women safe and I outlined the Swiss Cheese model to explain why we need multiple layers of defence against predatory males attacking females. Filming a woman or girl in a place where they reasonably expected privacy is an attack on her privacy and dignity, and the Sexual Offences Act 2006 agrees with me here, voyeurism is a crime.

Assume that we have a male who has bought a toilet brush camera, or a door hook camera, or a cross-head screw camera, and wishes to place it into a toilet that women will use. He will put his camera into a suitable pocket or bag and go to his chosen women's loo.

• If the toilet is a mass toilet and designated women-only, a man walking in will attract attention and he may be challenged by passersby and stopped from entering. If he manages to get in unspotted, he may find women in the toilet, who will challenge him and call for management or the police. Even if the mass female-only toilet is unoccupied when he enters, he could be walked in on whilst setting his camera up and be stopped that way. That's two cheese layers, plus the deterrent effect of the fear of being caught in the act.
• If the toilet is a single occupant female toilet, he might get challenged on the way in or out, but once he is inside, he locks the door, and he has all the time he wants to set his camera up without anyone catching him in the act. That's one cheese layer.
• If the toilet is a single occupant unisex toilet, he walks right in unchallenged, he locks the door, and he has all the time he wants to set his camera up without anyone catching him in the act. That's zero cheese layers.

There ought to be, and isn't in many cases, another layer of cheese: cleaners spotting the toilet brush/hook/extra screw and investigating and reporting. This assumes that the same cleaners are cleaning the loos every day and learning what "right" looks like for that loo. With cleaners increasingly being temps, they might not have that consistent exposure, and they may not have a clear reporting line for that kind of anomaly. Plus, if they have no stability, they will have no sense of pride in their work and hence not care. I know that when I was a temp minwage cleaner, I didn't care. When I was a permanant and reasonably well-paid computer operator, I learned what "right" looked like in my machine room and flagged anomalies quickly.

Other than fighting for single-sex spaces as a right (not a service provider option) and for stability of employment for cleaners, what else can we do to prevent men from invading our privacy like this?

No pasaran!

When you say woman snap what do you mean.

Why do reputable international organisations campaign for single sex toilets in order to increase the safety of women and girls and allow them to participate in public life? Why do those arguments hold no water in the UK?

tl;dr: Single-sex toilets are about reducing the attack surface for males to exploit females, not making a perfect system.

Op, this is no evidence against unisex toilets at all. Sadly, women and children (!!!) are already being filmed (very rarely fortunately in single sex spaces.

A thought: it might be rare because its harder for males to gain access?

It is easy enough for men to gain access to these spaces when nobody is there

I covered this: they might get caught, which deters.

if they are the cleaner or caretaker or pretend to be such person.

The need to pretend is a barrier to perving, unlike if the facility is one that they can walk into brazenly by right. There's always a risk that the real cleaner might come. The actual cleaner doing this would be the first

Single sex toilets isn’t going to prevent this sick habit,

No, but it will make harder. Single-sex toilets reduce the attack surface available for males to exploit.

and there is no evidence that having unisex toilets will encourage it.

I concede that no one has bothered to do any well-designed studies of this particular problem. There's probably a PhD in it somewhere for someone.

We do already however have males raiding the sanpro bins in unisex toilets to steal and misuse the used sanpro. Consider that orgs like UNESCO are pushing for single-sex school toilets to enable girls in developing countries to stay in education. Consider that women in refugee camps are raped and spied on when trying to use the toilet. Having single-sex toilets is one of those things that is so blatantly obviously needed that no one has considered it necessary to carry out academic studies to justify having them. Only in the West, very recently, are people thinking otherwise. I can't help but suspect there's racism in that somewhere, that pomo-addled woke kids think white men are somehow safer than brown men and so Western women are deemed not to need protection. The reality is that male entitlement is universal.

@ifonlyus: given the risk of a male cleaner placing a spy device, it could be argued that it is now a genuine occupational requirement for cleaners of women's toilets to be women.

@SarahAr: FWIW I am currently in France and all the toilets are multi-occupancy unisex. The last toilet I went in had an unshielded urinal as well - which I thought was a bit much.

This would be the same France that had 100 of its female actors, authors, etc co-sign an open letter saying that #MeToo was misandrist and that men have a "right to pester"? I would not hold France up as a place where women's rights are delivered on as they should be.

@snappity: oh ffs, it is males that commit these crimes, 50:1 compared to females. Bleating TWAW won't ever change that.

The person upthread who said "sometimes women plant cameras" or words to that effect: it is males that commit these crimes, 50:1 compared to females. Keeping the men out reduces the chance of a toilet being bugged by 98%.

given the risk of a male cleaner placing a spy device, it could be argued that it is now a genuine occupational requirement for cleaners of women's toilets to be women

This would seem to be a proportional response to achieving a legitimate aim. If you think reducing sex crime is a legitimate aim, of course!

@ifonlyus: given the risk of a male cleaner placing a spy device, it could be argued that it is now a genuine occupational requirement for cleaners of women's toilets to be women Yes - good point

@OlennasWimple: Why do reputable international organisations campaign for single sex toilets in order to increase the safety of women and girls and allow them to participate in public life? Why do those arguments hold no water in the UK?

For the same reason that the papers harp on about "Muslim/Asian grooming gangs" but never talk about "christian grooming gangs" or "white grooming gangs" even though white grooming gangs are a thing and so are christian ones: racism.

haXXor - I hadn't thought of it like that, but you're so right.

"Those nasty brown men can't control themselves around women but us white men behave better than that"-type delusion

haxxor I don't think it is as simple as racism alone. A key reason why the case being made for sex segregated toilets in poorer countries isn't taken into account in the UK is because we have benefited from them, so the need for them has become invisible - 'you don't know what you've got til it's gone', and the plight of 'others' is just pushed out of mind along with, as you say, the 'it doesn't apply to us' mentality.

However the Catholic Church is now pretty much synonymous with kiddy fiddlers isn't it? And Jimmy Savile being on personal terms with the Pope didn't do their image much good either. The silence has been well and truly broken and they will never truly recover. However people are still silenced with accusations of racism and Islamophobia if they rant about or ridicule the grooming gangs following the muslim faith.

@snappity I wasn't sure what you meant by your response to me but as I said, my views are very far from black and white and I work very hard to see all viewpoints. I accept that trans and many non trans people experience gender as internal for example. And I don't think toilets should be the real battleground. And yet TRAs continually disengage from my line of thinking, despite it being one of the most empathetic to be found here.

Having seen the amended thread name I agree. One set of combined female single sex toilets and a decent number of private unisex facilities would be a great solution. I can't see a need for gents so that would free up space. I would use the unisex.

" @snappity I wasn't sure what you meant by your response to me but as I said, my views are very far from black and white and I work very hard to see all viewpoints. I accept that trans and many non trans people experience gender as internal for example. And I don't think toilets should be the real battleground. And yet TRAs continually disengage from my line of thinking, despite it being one of the most empathetic to be found here. "

@SarahCarer, I was agreeing with you that there's a lot of grey but it's impossible to go there while people refuse to accept that trans women are women. That's such foundational that it's impossible to make progress until that it accepted.

@snappity This is what I mean about toilets not being the real battleground. The real battleground is the insistence that we must redefine the word woman to mean feminine gender instead of having a female body. This changes EVERYTHING. The control of language is totalitarian.

Women for the most part will never accept the idea that women are a costume that men like to wear sometimes, and not the female half of the human population.

And the idea of a female brain that determines us (and transwomen) to be feminine. If we give in to this idea then it sets feminism and women's rights back decades.

"And the idea of a female brain that determines us (and transwomen) to be feminine. If we give in to this idea then it sets feminism and women's rights back decades."

On the contrary, what sets feminism back is biological elitism which seeks to exclude trans women

How many fingers am I holding up Winston?

biological elitism

Well blow me down, I am an elite.

I wonder how those women who die so their uterus' can be implanted into people who present as opposite to their birth sex feel about being elite?

Eventually it becomes obvious that it is an exercise in obedience training.

Eventually it becomes obvious that it is an exercise in obedience training.

Indeed. To which the only answer is no pasaran.

Well there is one female body part I can think to call Snappity

Women for the most part will never accept the idea that women are a costume that men like to wear sometimes, and not the female half of the human population.

Love this

Gosh, it's such a privilege to own a body part that makes us vulnerable to sexual assault whilst also enjoying the physical attributes that make us unlikely to be as strong as our attacker and therefore unable to defend ourselves