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?