Posting another excerpt from my link above as I am still wondering why Petrol thinks transpeople advocating for a third space (ie toilet) is impractical when women had to fight so hard for their own sex segregated spaces (and did even have a legal right to a
women’s toilet until 1992). Why is Petrol so eager to give over what women fought for for 150 years back to males?:
Then a second group emerged called the Union of Women’s Liberal and Radical Associations, which campaigned for working class women to have public toilets in Camden. In 1898 the members wrote to The Vestry in Camden for toilet access for women in the already existing men’s toilets. However, the plans for a women’s toilet were set back by several years as men opposed the women’s toilets being situated next to the men’s.
In some cases, plans for women’s toilets were deliberately sabotaged. When a model of a women’s toilet was set up on the pavement in Camden High Street, hansom cabs (driven by men) deliberately drove into the model toilet to demonstrate that it was situated in a most inconvenient position!
Suffragettes are famous for campaigning for the right to vote but they also campaigned for the right to serve, achieved in 1915. By the end of World War One, over 700,000 to 1 million women had become ‘munitionettes’, slang for women who had gone into munition factory work to support the war effort.
However, as women were now entering previously male-dominated professions, they began to campaign for better facilities such as changing rooms and toilets. Some employers did not want to install women’s toilets, especially after the war, as they believed that women were stealing men’s employment: quite legal at the time, as there were only limited protections for workers.
Nowadays however, under the 1992 Workplace Regulations, not ensuring that men and women have separate toilet facilities is illegal for employers.
www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-of-Womens-Public-Toilets-in-Britain/