Article in today’s Guardian about toilets and trans users.

[SausageOnAFork]

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/03/public-bathrooms-are-gender-identity-battlefields-what-if-we-just-do-it-right?__twitter_impression=true

I post without comment.

Disregarding the utter bollocks contained within, the article is badly written. Like reading a GCSE English Language essay. I suppose the Guardian have to get their nonsense-pedlars from somewhere.

I don't think the toilet/cubicle sign resolves anything. Except gives males a room segregated by sex... after all, the point of a cubicle is that you can't see what happens within. So you will have a male bathroom for peeing and then a room of cubicles for everything else...

I was in Cardiff yesterday ( a man was in the ladies loo obviously waiting for a young child/disabled relative or whatever l don't know). I really didn't like it at all. I didn't realise how unsettling it would be . I always thought l would be cool about shared Loos but am amazed how l felt. I wonder if anyone has ever had this happen to them and how they felt. It was a huge toilet too , l went to the one the furthest away from the man. I am astonished at my reaction tbh.

Although if it had been a trans person l think l would have been fine about it. Very odd behaviour from me and l am really puzzled by it tbh.

The public restroom is not only a place to empty one’s bladder or bowel, change a tampon or clothes, wash hands or reapply lippy; it’s an arbiter of gender, with its mostly cisnormative inhabitants to police it.

Oh, do fuck off you self-obsessed, navel-gazing tosspot.

If people like you are going to colonise the ladies and do my fucking head in with your endless self-regarding onanism, I'm going to start using the gents. You can force your way in, dear, but you can't stop me leaving.

Why can't we have gender neutral loos? They do in France and it's fine. I did not feel threatened at all. I do not understand the resistance to this or the panic it seems to create.

So you are sitting in Pizza Express and your 8 year old daughter needs the loo. You are midway through your second glass of their (rather rough) house red. You decide she is old enough to go on her own.

Actually no you dont. Not any more. As you don't know whether any of the blokes sitting elsewhere identify as women and will choose to use the womens loo. And even less so if the loos might be gender neutral with a urinal near the wash basins.

I wonder whether the write is female. And if she has children. I thought it was normal in journalism to declare your interest, especially if you are telling other people what they should think. She seems to have no idea about the level to which women are conditioned to think about personal safety.

I don't normally get involved in these threads, but ffs. One of the comments on the article is along the lines of 'we all have gender-neutral bathrooms in our homes!' I mean, I don't know about that person's home, but my loo in my house doesn't have a row of stalls with rickety partitions and half the doors without locks, and I don't let any random member of the public wander in to use them either. (Is this going to be the next Grand Designs trend, I wonder...?)

I have felt vulnerable in the women's loos at times though, travelling alone late at night and stopping at service stations, for example. I suddenly feel very aware of how empty these spaces are when you're ostensibly the only one in there, and how you can't be sure who might be lurking round the corner. I don't think I'm especially paranoid either. Do you think the 'gender-neutral bathroom in your house' sneery woke fucker has ever felt like that? I'm going to guess not.

You think "Simona Castricum" could possibly have been born female?

Why can't we have gender neutral loos? They do in France and it's fine.

They have squatting toilets in France as well. Plus a tradition of men pissing by the road side. (Though French friends confirmed that it is normal to honk your horn when you pass.) I think there is an element of Vive la Difference.

The thing about French loos is that if any innappropriate behaviour started the men in there would pile in and eject the perpetrator very smartly.
I don't find French mixed loos threatening either.

They don't have gender neutral toilets in France. Some small restaurants will just have one toilet so obviously that's for everyone, but if only one person is in there and the rest are waiting outside there is no problem. When there is more than one toilet it is divided by sex.

Toilets are divided by sex not gender, the writer of this article seems very confused.

Your average man on the street will not like this either, imagine in busy places when there are queues coming out of the men's and the women's toilets. They'll have to provide sanitary bins in both sets of toilets as well. Will your average (non pervy man) feel comfortable with mothers sorting out their children (washing hands, getting changed etc) whilst trying to wee into a urinal. I don't think they will.

Also I really do not want willy owners weeing on the toilet seat or even leaving the seat up. That will peak trans pretty much the entire female population.

@Needmoresleep There was an incident in South Africa last week that just reinforces for me the need to ensure toilets are segregated - a man took a 6 year old out of the female toilets, took her into the mens toilets and raped her. I know, not all men are violent, blah blah blah, but the threat some men can pose to vulnerable people doesn't make me want to have anyone with a penis in the women's toilets. Look at the extent peadophiles and sex offenders go to convince children that they are children themselves when online - why would the possibility of being able to pretend they are a self identifying female so they have easy access to females / children in the ladies loos not be tempting to them?

"We then had bathrooms with no reference to gender, just one marked “toilet” and another marked “urinal”."

They did this in the barbican and it was a disaster.
The men took both options to mean for them.
The women didn't obv.

So the men could use any, the women had less, teh queues for the ones the women could use were even longer as there were now men in them as well.

They changed it back.

'Why can't we have gender neutral loos? They do in France and it's fine. I did not feel threatened at all. I do not understand the resistance to this or the panic it seems to create.'

Since the Strauss Kahn affair and whatever else it brought up a, we all know they do a lot in France. Much of it to the detriment of women.

Utterly exasperating that, while there are a number of comments taking issue with the article, the Guardian "picks" are all comments agreeing with it. What is wrong with the Guardian? Can't they see how much they're out of kilter with their readers?

"The common assertion that gender non-conforming people who use bathrooms present a threat to the personal safety of cisgender people is rubbish"

These people don't seem to understand that massive numbers of the general public are gender nonconforming.

It's the "teenagers inventing sex" phenomenon.

The article is very confused as it seems to be saying that for "Non Binary" people (aka most of the human race) toilets should be labelled for function not form ie BIOLOGY. Has this person checked with their trans friends on this? As the idea most trans actvisists have is that biology should be ignored and the labellig should be taken to mean GENDER (sex role / whether you dress feminine or masculine).

These two ideas are in total conflict.

Interesting.

I got deleted for saying males carry out most violence and sexual assault.
That’s it.
You could make it up. Particularly the name of the writer. A women would just never ever come up with that.

From the author's twitter feed:

"Transmisogyny is when only the ciswomen are doing one of those women only ‘cake things’ in the work kitchen and you weren’t invited, and then you walk in for a glass of water as you do, and at best one person says hello."

Sounds like those women have got the measure of you, love.

twitter.com/simonacastricum

At DH's workplace they now have male, female and gender neutral toilets. He has yet to see anyone use the gender neutral toilet. Perhaps better if they had used the money to upgrade disabled facilities with an understanding that these were gender neutral and could be used by anyone who wanted such facilities.

"The public restroom is not only a place to empty one’s bladder or bowel, change a tampon or clothes, wash hands or reapply lippy; it’s an arbiter of gender, with its mostly cisnormative inhabitants to police it."

Oh, do fuck off you self-obsessed, navel-gazing tosspot.

Lang, this author (use that term loosely!) seems to have come from the Dan Brown school of massively overwriting. Can you imagine their perception of what, say, a girls sleepover would be?!

(Exclusive preview: "...as she loosed her waist length flaxen locks and looked suggestively over a shoulder, Beatrice-Ashlynn pouted, her berry red lips glistening as a bra strap slipped off a shoulder..."oops!" she whispered to Genevieve-Lauren..."could you help me here?")

Thanks, CAAKE, that fits exactly with my interpretation of "visibly trans-feminine".

I've never really thought that which toilet I use says anything about me beyond I am a woman who needed a piss or a shit. Am I womaning wrong, again?

Urinoirs are causing quite a stir in Paris:

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/13/urinoir-furore-paris-residents-peeved-at-public-eco-friendly-urinals

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/29/protesters-damage-sexist-open-air-urinals-in-paris

Those comments include ones from poeople saying they are not keen!

This one is hilarious:
"One interesting discovery from coming to live in France from the UK is the difference in toilet culture - and the irrelevance of the anglo-saxon male/female/transgender debate to most public, cafe, etc toilets in France: most are mixed, and culturally there is a much greater acceptance of going to the toilet as something perfectly natural, not anything slightly dirty, shameful or sexualised."

I have been to France, a few times, and they have mens and womens toilets the same as they do here. Maybe it's different parts of France? This is like the USA TA statement that "In Europe" toilets are mixed sex loads. Really? I've never spotted this phenomen.

That person also says going to the toilet is "sexualised" which is frankly just weird as all fuck.

I don't think they are being entirely honest in who they are or where they are

Thanks OP, you've just reminded me I have to cancel my subscription to the Guardian!