I was mildly GC in front of my mates today. Holy moley, this has gone further than I realised.

[LeesPostersAreInFrames]

I have a hobby group of friends, we met up today. The hobby attracts left wing types, of which I am one.

The subject of LGBT+ came up, and after a bit the subject of gendered toilets and changing rooms came up. I expressed that I felt women's spaces should be strictly for women only.

One friend said that the toilets in almost all of the schools, colleges and universities in the area had been changed to non-gender specific.

Another said that their training in several fashion retail spaces had been to allow a person to use the gendered changing room of their choice. There was a "larger" changing area (not allowed to say disabled), which they could offer to trans people, but they could go in the gendered room they felt most comfortable in. I asked what happened if anybody ever complained; they were trained to say they were sorry but policy was to allow people to use the space they felt most comfortable in. These spaces had curtains but they'd had problems previously with mobile phone cameras being used.

The girls in the schools had expressed discomfort at boys being able to hear the rustle of sanitary wear wraps as they used them.

My friends seemed surprised at my views, and I didn't go any further. I'm not really sure how to have these conversations, but it seems utterly essential and urgent.

It's in the UK, and it's much more widespread than I had thought.

Help. How do I get people questioning this stuff?

No evangelising going on from me!

You said your friends seemed surprised at your views. That to me says they don't have an issue with it like you do. But then later you said 'help, how do I get people questioning this stuff?' If they are ok with it, then that's it. But you want them to question it and presumably come to the same conclusion you have.

The room within a room thing is iffy as well.

As it's away from where most people are.

The shops I've been in with unisex changing have had proper doors and have opened out onto shop floor, which is better.

The changes do seem to erode the opportunity for girls to do the sort of shopping as a group and trying stuff on together looking in communal mirrors that used to go on, which was fun when I was a girl.

And you can ask your mates why the un say that sex segregated toilet spaces is safer for women and girls

Yet in this country it’s cool for us to have men and boys in our toilets

So it seems that men in other countries are unsafe to be around women and girls when they are in the toilet

How does that work ?

Mind you when I was a girl there were still communal changing rooms.

Maybe still are somewhere

I mean in the shops

Obviuosly still in schools etc

I'd rather be engaged in critical thinking rather than be suffering from insomnia, surviving on autopilot. Which is "woke".

Good answer

Gently getting your friends to think about why they have a certain position on something, and getting them to think about questions they might not have done so yet, is not evangelising in my book.

If they have thought about it and are well informed and of another conclusion to me, that's fine. It could be much more than fine, because I'd love to have my mind changed so I can stop worrying about the impact on young people of the erosion of women's spaces. At the moment, I'm concerned that a massive regressive problem is being sleep walked into, because not many people have really thought it through.

*Yet in this country it’s cool for us to have men and boys in our toilets

So it seems that men in other countries are unsafe to be around women and girls when they are in the toilet*

Is that not called ‘racism’

One friend sai£ the toilets was unisex in most schools and colleges

Naming these correctly as mixed sex is helpful.

(language matters)

Yes it is

My yes it is was to racism

Thanks, and fair point on the language (normally something I pride myself on! )

I work in a school and the idea of mixed loos is very scary but I dont know if I would be able to speak out. The school has a staff member who is very activly pushing 'inclusivity' in the Gires vein and no one will openly challange it.
There are probably more than average number of kids with complex issues. The school has already had to make the main wall seperating the boys loos from the rest of the school half glass (I very strongly suspect to stop them assulting each other) so the idea that young girls will be forced to share their loos is very concerning.

Chiochan

Check out your whistle blowing policy. Then whistleblow, it’s a safeguarding issue.

LeesPostersAreInFrames bravo for stating your opinions so clearly. That sounds like a very good first conversation, especially since the others volunteered some of the issues themselves. That's often something you first have to explain.

You did well there. Judging from my experience, your fellow hobbyists will pay a little more attention to certain issues over the next few weeks. Give them a little time and if you want to, you could talk about sports. The policy of allowing males to compete against females in female-only sports is almost universally rejected.

I've been doing this for about a year now and with one exception every single person I've spoken to shares our views. It's a nice bit of gaslighting that ours is a minority view. You start to feel really unsure when people keep saying that. But the claim is actually an incorrect extrapolation from the fact that there is wide support for equal rights for trans people. This support is then simply assumed or claimed to also extend to wholehearted support for gender ideology.

We all support equal rights for trans people, of course. We simply don't agree that the rights of female people are superseded by the rights of males who identify as trans or that such males actually are women or that a woman is whoever identifies as one.

And according to a number of polls, we know that the vast majority of people reject legal sex self-identification. People simply do not agree with the idea of giving intact males access to female-only spaces. Most people of course are still unaware that the self-id campaign is not about post-op transsexuals but crossdressers and others who do not medically transition. Once they find that out, they are frequently quite angry about that.

I have two kids and one income (so REALLY dont want to lose my job) but if it really comes down to it, I will.

Chiochan

You can’t lose your job for whistle blowing.

Actually I think you can whistleblow anonymously online to DfE.

Here you go:

form.education.gov.uk/en/AchieveForms/?form_uri=sandbox-publish:AF-Process-f1453496-7d8a-463f-9f33-1da2ac47ed76/AF-Stage-1e64d4cc-25fb-499a-a8d7-74e98203ac00/definition.json&redirectlink=%2Fen&cancelRedirectLink=%2Fen

Make a disclosure in the public interest. You can do it anonymously, use a throway email address if necessary.

Seriously. The gender neutral toilets being more common now in schools has floored me. I thought we were some way off that.

Just thinking about this from LeesPostersAreInFrames and I wondered if there was a Mermaid/Stonewall policy to target schools and colleges. As an adult, I avoid changing rooms and loos I don't like. Nothing to do with what sex is using them, I mean nasty and grubby or lacking privacy. If I'm out I might even wait until I got home. I don't think I would get through a school day not needing to use the loo. Do they hope any resistence will be worn down eventually? I do think the 'nasty terf' debate tries to pretend it is only older women who are concerned. Not normally a conspiracy theorist!

The trans women I know bang on endlessly about how it's so very important to be allowed in the women's loos because men's lips are nasty violent places (paraphrasing). If that's so, I don't see how mixed loos is going to help anyone.

And I'm not especially into toilet policing, particularly since I know quite a few women who are Not Very Feminine At All and would likely get toilet-policed out of the ladies', but I'm fed up with trans women taking up all the space and would like it to be ok to tell people to sod off.

I was making that point

Other countries men unsafe in toilets.

Woke countries no problem

So why are the United Nations seeing that single sex toilets would encourage girls and women to get into,education and work safely

Yet here the men here are oh so much safer and hey we don’t need that sort o& stuff cos our men and the men who think they are women are so much better than men in other countries

We need single sex toilets. The United Nations recognise this

Yet this country doesn’t

Why ?

LOOS not lips bloody autocorrect

Insisting that girls and women must be inclusive of males in private space, even if they are uncomfortable, and that the girls and women have no right to object, is rape culture.