Civil Service Toilet Conversion - Gender-neutral.

[HedgehogsRock]

Posting for a friend (honestly!) who can't afford to be identified as she could lose her job. Apologies for the lack of details, but this is necessary unfortunately.

My friend is a Civil Servant and works in a very big office area. There has been a major works project carried out, spending an obscene sum on converting most of the toilet facilities to gender-neutral, a.k.a. mixed-sex, a.k.a. don't give a flying feck about women. There was no necessity to undertake any modernisation at all of the facilities as they are all relatively new and fairly pristine and no-one was consulted about whether or not they were happy to share facilities with the opposite sex.

The majority of women are not using these shared facilities and are walking to different areas of the buildings, to use the few toilets that are still 'women only', which of course wastes more time while clocked in at work. There are also longer queues at times, as there are so many women using fewer facilities.

None of the women feel able to complain about it as this is heresy and anyone who does, is very aware that they will be in deep doo-doo with the Woke management there. My friend's manager is very enthusiastic about the whole concept and how progressive it all is . The union have glugged much of the Kool-Aid too and will not help the women there either. To be fair though, nobody seems to have complained to the Union so far, but this is because they feel they would be viewed as the problem rather than having a legitimate concern.

There are only a few women who have been able to talk in whispers about this and are even afraid to ask others how they feel, in case Big Brother is watching and they will be reported to management. Resistance is futile and dangerous.

How did we get to this ridiculous position, where a few people could make a decision that would affect so many women, so negatively, without even giving women's requirements and opinions a second thought?

Are all of the Civil Service facilities being converted similarly and do management really have no concept that women require privacy and dignity, as well as safety?

What do we have to do before anyone listens to us and our very real concerns and how did women suddenly become so powerless?

These are not being shared with random strangers, they are friends and colleagues.

Where I work, anyone can walk into the buildings and access our toilets.

I wonder what the men working there think about it? This isn't just a women's issue, a lot of men are uncomfortable about sharing loos.

I wonder what the men working there think about it? This isn't just a women's issue, a lot of men are uncomfortable about sharing loos.

The problem is that women don't make a fuss, they just quietly start going elsewhere (as OP says), so the men remain largely unaffected. We need some strident women to go in there and take up space so the men notice (much like Man Friday did at the ponds, with written confirmation that they could, yet still the police were called and they were escorted out).

Think of it as political Judo - using the men's entitlement to pivot the situation.

It's a lot of magical thinking going on as well. They are my colleagues so they are safe. As I have posted before in my local authority the lovely colleague was installing cameras in the toilets.

When we moved into a new office block with unisex (self contained) loos, one of the young women just sent an email round the floor saying after chatting to some of the other staff they’d agreed they’d prefer single sex loos, so how about informally designating the ones on the left as the ladies, and the right for the lads. A couple of people replied saying it was a good idea, so we went with it.

I can’t imagine working in an environment where you can’t discuss this openly.

Have a look on your intranet for the equality impact assessment - these should be done for all projects and published for all to see.

If there isn't one, email HR, you can't get in trouble for requesting to see it.

The thing to do is to keep taking more time out for loo trips and casually telling any management who asks that it’s because of needing a single-sex loo and having to wait or walk farther. Keep doing this for long enough and they’ll realise this policy doesn’t make business sense.

If everyone stops using the unisex loos and goes to another floor to find single sex ones will they conclude;
a) the policy is unpopular and should be reversed or
b) they need to convert all the toilets to unisex.

My money is on b).

Just stick a 'women' sticker on the toilet doors.
And keep complaining to facilities dept when the toilets are smelly or urine needs to be wiped of the seats/floor.

I'm in HMRC. All our newly built regional centres will have gender neutral toilets.

I’m a member of PCS and have actually been shouted down on the Facebook group for standing up for women’s issues. They have a completely anti-women approach and a die-hard pro trans agenda.

I wish I could leave the union as I feel abandoned by them.

I'm dreading my 'new and wonderful' office for this reason. I absolutely do not want gender neutral facilities and have spoken to only one person that didn't mind them (he's now left).

There's no separate sink area so now all the women who congregate around the sinks for whatever reason (hair/makeup etc) will now be taking up a contained toilet/sink cubicle while the rest of us queue outside. You can't just go and wash your hands without going into a cubicle which I find ridiculous.

The toilets in Croydon office for my department are already looking old and dirty/tired - they're almost new, so how will they look in 5yrs?
I went for a training event and the queues were horrendous, the women were complaining about the left-up lids and pee on the seats, and the men were complaining about having to queue.

What the hell was wrong with having separate toilets? I've worked with some seriously creepy men and the thought of them following me to the toilet fills me with dread.
(I also know a fair few guys who wank at work so maybe it'll make that issue worse).

The more of these comments I'm reading and passing on to my friend, the worse this is appearing.

@Skippy67 - that's a disgrace. How much money is being spent on toilets that make women feel uncomfortable?

@EverardDigby - I used to work with a young man who had been in court twice on charges of rape and had won both cases. There used to be some seriously creepy men there too. I have many friends who work / used to work in the Civil Service and they used to be aghast at how many incel-types worked there.

What a shit-show.
Thanks for your comments everyone, they are appreciated.

As someone has messaged me via a DM, we need to stop calling them 'Gender-Neutral' or 'Unisex' too and call them what they are - 'Mixed-sex', which is the truth and removes the element of neutral, safe and fluffy spin in the wording.

I've had a rather hilarious mental image of women positioning buckets in broom cupboards and using those instead of the mixed-sex toilets. A dirty protest.

Of course, CCTV would be installed to squash those horrible wimmin.

Most places i have worked have gender neutral toilets - what an odd thing to be worried about?
Is it a bathroom with cubicles or smaller private bathrooms with a sink and loo in each one?

No, it's not an odd thing to be worried about. Have you read the comments above, listing the experiences that some women have endured or of which they have knowledge?

Sinks are along the walls but of course many of the men don't bother to wash their hands. Ewww.

I've never worked anywhere with MIXED-SEX toilets and would refuse to use them although of course I have had to use shared facilities in locations where there is only one toilet and there is no other option. I am used to leaving the cubicle and finding a woman waiting outside but find it very uncomfortable when leaving and finding a man standing there. I have discussed this with my friend and she feels exactly the same about it.

Someone else has PM'd me and suggested that women ask for a chaperone each time they need to use the toilet as they feel unsafe and uncomfortable. This is a great idea if anyone feels confident about doing this, but not everyone will feel that they can speak up to that degree. It's something that I am definitely going to do though!

Butters I’m pleased it doesn’t bother you. But there are women who are bothered, some of whom have protected characteristics like disability and religion. So, even if you think they should not feel that way (and I personally would be wary of dictating how someone else should feel), the civil service has a legal duty to assess the impact on them and show either how any detrimental impact will be mitigated or why it can’t / won’t be.

It's probably "a:gender" who are behind this.

twitter.com/onlyobjectivity/status/1150370972995870721?s=21

what an odd thing to be worried about?

Translation: I'm so superior

I don't really understand what the point is of having gender-neutral loos - surely people who support GN loos also support trans people using the loos for the sex they identify with. Are they just for non-binary people - who can't be more than 0.1% of the civil service workforce?

Do you ever get a chance to chat to the cleaning people responsible for the loos - they should know approximately how many rolls of loo paper are needed in each set of loos (or might be the frequency with which they change the massive rolls) - ask them to monitor that for a few weeks and I bet there will have been a change after the conversion to mixed sex.

Might provide a different statistic for your friend to use to show that this change has introduced different behaviour patterns ‘that people aren’t even explicitly aware of, they’re still motivated to go to use the facilities that feel most comfortable/appropriate to them, (ie nearness is not the only factor when choosing a loo), and look at the knock on effect it is having on more work time being used to go to the loo. And that they need to find out using an anonymous questionnaire what people think of the new set up before more changes are made, because it is causing an effect that they weren’t expecting so they need more info.

Has your friend seen the article(s) about the effects of introducing ‘gender neutral’ loos at the Home Office - caused major ructions within weeks - not least because men and women use the loos very differently and assume that their way is the ‘correct’ way - so women getting upset by the unflushed loos, pee on seats, men not shutting doors to pee in cubicles, etc etc while men hated the doors, lack of urinals, time taken and so on. Definitely worth a read (it’s been mentioned lots in the feminism section!) - maybe your friend could use it to send around in a ‘ooh look these folk are ahead of us on this experiment - maybe we could learn from their mistakes —and revert back — to introduce rules to make it better for everyone...

Ah ok I apologise I thought this was about the type of loos that are all like mini private bathrooms with their own sink and bin behind a locked door. I have worked lots of places where these are mixed gender and honestly you wouldn’t notice - the same way you wouldn’t notice or necessarily care in a disabled toilet or airplane toilet. I have found additionally that women are just as disgusting hygiene wise as men.
However if it’s a case of a large bathroom with toilet cubicles and shared sinks I can approximate the discomfort and would probably raise ghat as an issue as well.

What they need is for a number of the more direct women to start washing mooncups in the sinks in front of the men.

But they shouldn't have to do this.

The gender neutral loos in my place of work are self contained units. so behind each individual door there's a loo, sink, mirror, bin etc. So very private., no mooncup washing in front of anyone. i actually prefer them! there's 12 cubicles on each floor.