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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

DM: Women avoiding new gender neutral toilets in the home office because men can't close the door

162 replies

miri1985 · 16/08/2018 02:17

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6065075/Female-Home-Office-employees-refusing-use-new-36-000-gender-neutral-toilets.html

Great job wasting money as usual!

OP posts:
LighthouseSouth · 16/08/2018 14:08

@NameChangedAgain18

I thought there was something in the current law that allowed for us to have sex segregated basin areas as well?

obviously it depends on the total provision - my workplace has separate facilities and and facilities like the ones you describe. there's always a queue at the separate facilities. So annoying.

NameChangedAgain18 · 16/08/2018 14:30

Lighthouse - the gender neutral toilets I used in a local art gallery definitely did not have wash basins that were sex-segregated or situated within the cubicle, so I assume that is not a requirement.

Ereshkigal · 16/08/2018 14:36

I think that's a workplace thing not a general thing

www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/toilets.htm

CesiraAndEnrico · 16/08/2018 14:39

It costs money to deal with sanitary products bins so I can see an incentive to go along with there are not needed and put onus on women to deal with. Historically I believe employers argued it would cost to much to provide separate female toilets

Which leaves a new fig leaf for women. We won't use your stupid unisex loos if we can't have the dignity and privacy to dispose of sanitary products properly.

Money does motivate.

Loos constantly being bunged up with flushed unflushables is expensive. We don't have to wait until a plumber is needed. We just need to make sure they know the relentless nature of some unintended consequences caused by any hand wafting away of female priorities.

They can be given an endless stream of reasons to start to view this as a really expensive bit of virtue signalling, whose costs can only spiral one way. Just to get to the momentus day where they have the most expensive bogs in the world, but productivity is dropping cos a large chunk of the staff are still sloping off to pee somewhere else instead.

The enemy's biggest strength is on display when people feel they can't say what is really bothering them. It is also the other side's biggest weakness. Because it means them having to deal with raking up a constant flow of fig leaves, which is outrageously expensive in the context of constantly tweaking and refitting facilities. So they need to get sent the message loud and clear.

Autumn Is Coming

.... for the benefit of the managers, and their growing heap of invoices.

iwunderwhy · 16/08/2018 14:42

Gender neutral & unisex loos ... like mixed hospital wards are a nasty nasty nasty idea. Why is cost saving always used as a way to further dehumanise people? Why do we stand for it??!! ... eewwwwwwwwww!!

NameChangedAgain18 · 16/08/2018 14:44

It's not about cost-saving, it's about organisations being too cowardly to say that people with penises can't be women.

IAmInsignificunt · 16/08/2018 14:48

Someone on another thread said that they used the gender neutral loos on a university open day. A group of men, and at least one trans woman, had moved all the sanitary bins out of the cubicles, lined them up, and were standing in front of them. They were demanding that anyone wanting to use the bins showed them what was in her hand. The MNer tried to complain to staff but was told they could do nothing.

Shock
HelenaDove · 16/08/2018 15:03

" They were demanding that anyone wanting to use the bins showed them what was in her hand"

If someone asked me to do that they would get the used sanpro rubbed in their fucking face!! Angry

NameChangedAgain18 · 16/08/2018 15:15

Ditto, Helena. But an 18-year female student is more likely to be intimidated than we are. The poster on that thread said that the prospective applicant decided not to apply to that university because of the incident.

CesiraAndEnrico · 16/08/2018 15:25

Someone on another thread said that they used the gender neutral loos on a university open day. A group of men, and at least one trans woman, had moved all the sanitary bins out of the cubicles, lined them up, and were standing in front of them. They were demanding that anyone wanting to use the bins showed them what was in her hand. The MNer tried to complain to staff but was told they could do nothing

What was their cunning plan ?

Intimidate women into hiding all signs or reminders of periods cos female reproductive organs doing their thing is triggering and transphobic ?

CesiraAndEnrico · 16/08/2018 15:29

And why can't a university do anything about a harassing and intimidating mini-mob ?

Have they suspended British law and declared themselves some kind of independent territory ?

NameChangedAgain18 · 16/08/2018 15:39

Universities are dancing to the tune of Stonewall and the trans agenda. They are happily putting female students in vulnerable positions, including sharing changing rooms and (potentially, when accommodation is oversubscribed) twin bedrooms with self-IDed women (the sort with penises). If you’re unhappy to find yourself sharing a bedroom with a penis-owner, then presumably it’s off to the re-education camp for you. Gender neutral toilets are universities badge of wokeness, and heaven help any transphobic women that complain about them or what goes on in them. Not to mention that harassment of female students is a constant and pervasive aspect of campus culture now, and universities do bugger all about it (unless it ends up in the press).

Ereshkigal · 16/08/2018 15:52

potentially, when accommodation is oversubscribed) twin bedrooms with self-IDed women (the sort with penises). If you’re unhappy to find yourself sharing a bedroom with a penis-owner, then presumably it’s off to the re-education camp for you.

YY. A poster here who was responsible for allocating university accommodation has talked about this in the past.

CesiraAndEnrico · 16/08/2018 16:07

NameChangedAgain18

Jesus.

I suppose not being exposed to that sort of outrageous bullshit is some consolation for DS point blank refusing to go to England for uni.

Does anybody have links to the original thread ? I'm often asked for advice about English unis by a lot of parents (I teach IELTS prep courses). Any specific unis where this issue flourishes ? Or is it everywhere ?

Rosemary46 · 16/08/2018 16:07

Certain men will NOT close the door because it’s their territory. They have never closed the door and they won’t start now just because XX people are there.

Why the hell should they change the habits of a lifetime just to suit women ? Tell me what other area of life that they have done so without a HUGE battle ?

LighthouseSouth · 16/08/2018 16:09

OMD I've only just seen that about the uni

I know unis are being awful at the moment but that's horrific

were they named on social media by any chance?

NameChangedAgain18 · 16/08/2018 16:18

A PP kindly linked to the thread with the poster (Clairetrees1) who mentioned the university open day experience:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3322488-GRC-and-Toilets?msgid=79857003

This crap is going on at all universities. It’s much worse at some (Goldsmith’s is notorious). It’s a very strange time to be working in a university. On the one hand, academics are supposed to have freedom of speech. On the other hand, there isn’t another job I can think of where, if you say that a penis isn’t female or that women need sex-segregated spaces, a mob of activists from the Students’ Union will be instantly mobilising outside your building demanding the burning of the witch, and writing to the Vice Chancellor demanding you’re sacked.

MistressDeeCee · 16/08/2018 16:22

There are men's street urinals put up in Brixton every Friday & Saturday to cater for the hordes of gentrified drunks - no doors on them at all it's just stand up and piss in public. No urinals for women of course I guess they're meant to go squat behind a car somewhere

NothingOnTellyAgain · 16/08/2018 17:01

If I were a bloke I'd be utterly fucked off at losing my urinals and having sanitary disposal stuff blocking the doors.

I mean we put up with it because we need them and because we're socialised to Grin but I think a lot of men won't take this lying down.

Why on earth didn't they make some toilets mixed and leave some single sex? Although - the "mixed" ones would have become male by default and so that would have been precious toilet space lost to the women.

I wonder if lots of men don't see it the same way as us becasue TBH many of them train themselves to only crap at home, and they can piss anywhere they like really. They know about periods and crying and makeup and whatnot but it's all theoretical really isn't it. When confronted with the reality of mixed toilets maybe they would say no thanks. BUT, that's not what happens is it. What happens in the women quietly stop using them (and go and cry in a storage cupboard, pay extra at lunch to have a drink somewhere to use the toilet) and men say well the women aren't complaining there's no issue.

I mean women's toilets are awful, we've been saying for years they don't meet our needs, but nothing happens does it.

Toilets are a big issue for women's ability to be out in the world. Saw a thing yesterday about the councils shutting down the public loos - this has a much larger impact on women than men yet this is never acknowledged.

NothingOnTellyAgain · 16/08/2018 17:02

"No urinals for women of course I guess they're meant to go squat behind a car somewhere"

No I think it's that women are airy, fairylike beings who don't do anything as crass as need to pee.

mostimproved · 16/08/2018 17:57

Re men's apparent need to wee outside: growing up, my brothers were allowed to wee outside when they were little if there was no toilet around whereas I was never given this option and had to hold it in, so I have only associated weeing with toilets. Often little boys are allowed to wee outside when they need it and just never grow out of this. I never let my son do it as I don't want him to openly piss on walls when drunk as an adult!

CesiraAndEnrico · 16/08/2018 18:18

This crap is going on at all universities. It’s much worse at some (Goldsmith’s is notorious). It’s a very strange time to be working in a university. On the one hand, academics are supposed to have freedom of speech. On the other hand, there isn’t another job I can think of where, if you say that a penis isn’t female or that women need sex-segregated spaces, a mob of activists from the Students’ Union will be instantly mobilising outside your building demanding the burning of the witch, and writing to the Vice Chancellor demanding you’re sacked.

Is there no muttering in the halls of uni power about the need to not give an inch cos it becomes a million miles ?

Where the next thing you know you are on the news pathetically begging a bunch of your students to let you go for a wee.

Which recent examples have shown tends not to be fab for enrolment.

Did the bods at the top miss that, or just fail to learn anything from it ?

R0wantrees · 16/08/2018 18:36

May OP WeAreGerbil wrote:

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/dirty-protest-over-somerville-college-oxfords-genderneutral-loos-bf2jk50lc

"A term after an Oxford college introduced gender-neutral lavatories, male students have carried out a “dirty protest” over losing their urinals.

Last week they urinated on the floor of the “gender-neutral” cubicles in the bar at Somerville College, Oxford, and wrote on the wall: “We want our f urinals back”, according to an email sent by the president of the junior common room, Niall Macklin. In a message entitled “I can’t believe I am writing this”, Macklin said: “[Last night] someone took it upon themselves to urinate on the floor of one of the cubicles and inscribe ‘We want our f urinals back’. If you have a problem with the changes please use the democratic process and not dirty protests.

“Otherwise if you could refrain from being a barbaric idiot that would be great.”

Somerville students voted in January to replace “male” and “female” signs with the words “gender-neutral toilets with cubicles”. The lavatories in question no longer feature urinals but have cubicles with male and female symbols.

Somerville, which opened in 1879, was one of Oxford’s first women’s colleges and is Margaret Thatcher’s alma mater. It declares on its website that it was “founded to include the excluded”.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a3241624-dirty-protest-over-somerville-college-oxford-s-gender-neutral-loos

See also 'Gender Neutral toiletgate' at NUS TRans 18 conference:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3237230-NUS-Conference-breaks-down-after-the-UK-Border-Force-Arrive

BarrackerBarmer · 16/08/2018 18:37

Someone help me out.
Why were the men guarding the sanitary bins and forcing women to show them used sanpro?

What reason did they give?
I know the world is nuts and I'm pretty good at guessing motivations usually, but I can't riddle this one out.

scepticalwoman · 16/08/2018 18:46

Always interesting to see that when people (men, women and children) are actually consulted, they don't want gender neutral toilets. But they're never asked. That's the only way this nasty policy has got where it is - via bullying, intimidation and by not asking people what they prefer.