WIBU to hang about the toilets?

[Samaranian]

I am not a poster who usually posts here but I lurk, and read and for the most part agree with the sentiments on this board.

To keep in brief, I am enjoying a lovely week in Edinburgh at the festival. Whilst at a venue yesterday waiting for a show to start, me and (male) DP went off to find the toilets. Turns out all the toilets in this venue were labelled "Gender Neutral". Just to be clear - there were two rooms I guess each with three cubicles inside and then the sinks outside the cubicles. So I guess at one point one was male and one was female? Anyway.

I made a cats bum face and huffed to DP a bit but we both went and used the toilet. When I was washing my hands several men came in to use the toilet and were standing waiting by the sinks as all the cubicles were full.

Three young girls came in and stood waiting, if I had to guess their ages I would say about 6, 8 and 11?

I was the only other woman in there and I just felt like the girls were so vulnerable in there with all the men (and again, to be clear, I am speaking about men) so I waited at the mirrors and pretended to be sorting out my make up etc until they had left.

I know the chances of anything happening are very slim but it just didn't feel right to me. DP thinks I was being silly in waiting but does agree that something about it isn't right and he actually felt uncomfortable standing washing his hands etc next to female children in an enclosed space.

So I know this isn't AIBU by any stretch of the imagination, but was IBU to wait until the girls had left the toilets before leaving myself?

Two stories stick in my mind

One is a boy being killed in an american toilet while his aunt waited outside

And the other is of a child raped in a restaurant loo while his parents where outside

I should probably stop reading newspapers...though they were quite a few years ago

The answer is still not making toilets multi sex

SimplySteveRedux Boys freeze exactly the way girls do in these situations, and paedophiles choose their victims carefully.

Yes. Comparing my then 15 year-old DS and his now 15 year-old girlfriend, any predator would have thought twice about targeting my boy. But his girlfriend is no match even for a 15 year-old boy, let alone an adult male. That's why she is at higher risk in a mixed-sex toilet than he is in either the gents or a mixed-sex facility.

And I was specifically talking about the difference between boys and girls in their mid-teens because boys at that age are no longer at the same risk in the gents as younger ones are whereas girls that age are at considerably higher risk in a mixed-sex facility than their male peers.

Considering that younger children are often accompanied by an adult or encouraged to go together, I don't know exactly what the risk is for younger children, but I would guess it is more even between the sexes.

The irony is that loos could be Gender Neutral and still sex specific.

Some interesting points.

Especially about the young boys in male toilets as well. To be honest, I have never even thought about it. I don't have any children myself so it had honestly never even entered my mind.

Then again, I wouldn't have expected to have felt so nervous about these young girls in this toilet block surrounded by men until I was in the situation.

I didn't have to hang around for a suspiciously long period of time! Just enough to wash and dry hands, fixed my foundation that had sunk into my wrinkles and a bit of lip balm so doubt I looked suspicious but even if I did, if it scared someone off of attempting anything then good.

I can't see ANY benefits to gender neutral toilets to be honest, for either sex?

DP said if the girls had been in there when he went in he would had left again immediately so he didn't make them uncomfortable but he was already in a cubicle when they entered.

I very much disliked the unisex toilets at Cliffs of Moher in Ireland recently. It just didn't feel right to have male and female mingling with kids there too. I used them once, then used the upstairs toilets after that which were thankfully single sex.

I totally understand you keeping an eye on those young girls OP, I'd have done the same. There's no way to distinguish predators from non-predators.

So men saying they'd leave immediately out of concern for children/girls and self if they'd entered and seen them

Women hovering with care for vulnerable people, also aware of the possibilities of what could go wrong and trying to prevent it

Children in vulnerable situations....

Who is actually benefitting from this, and what proportion of the population has just had life made a whole lot more unnecessarily complicated, is having to put in more labour and thought and inconvenience (just want to pee!) while bracing themselves for the inevitable eventual disasters? Not winning many hearts and minds on the whole.

Anyone want to take a bet on what White Van Man or Man on the Clapham Omnibus is going to do the first time their wife or child finds themselves on the wrong side of this Gender Neutral Is Better policy? Because that's when this is going to get really bad, and GC women will be able to demonstrate there too how they warned and warned and warned about this.

It was a good thing you did op

Was just hearing on news about a huge amount of female performers saying that the level of sexual harassment at the fring in places like the royal mile is epidemic rate and was getting worse year on year

One woman said it was like Wild West out on the streets fro level of sexual harassment women received

Police Scotland said no body had complained 🤷‍♀️

DD is at Edinburgh uni. 2 years ago she worked the festival flyering and promoting comedy shows. She had a great time.
She missed it last year but this year has seen a change.

She handed a guy a flyer for a crime related comedy show and as she started talking about it he went off in a rant about rape not being a crime as all women love it.
She kept her cool and told him he was a horrible person who deserved to die in a grease fire. But it really upset her. Her first taste of MRA/incel type male rage.

She also says there's just generally a lot more aggression and rudeness on the streets and she hasn't enjoyed herself like she did the previous time.

There's no way to distinguish predators from non-predators

YY. Just this. Everyone needs to keep shouting this absolute fact-of-life truth, loudly.
It’s common sense.
This is the reason why each of the two sexes need to be able to toilet, shower, be given places to change, to sleep etc separately.

This is a known fact of safeguarding, the whole world over. Women need safety, dignity and privacy and to allow men into the spaces in which women can’t avoid being vulnerable puts them at risk. To argue otherwise, as TRAs do, is massively sexist. Gender neutral toilets are no better and still undermine women’s privacy and culture. We need single sex toilets (and obviously disabled toilets too) plus a third space for people who don’t want to use single sex toilets. Job done.
Keep your penis out of the Ladies’!

Good/decent men understand that sex segregation works and why.

So that should illustrate the motives of some of the men trying to force their way in.

Police Scotland said no body had complained

Perhaps we should have a day of action. Every woman complain to the police about every single bit of sexual harassment. From ‘cheer up love’ upwards.

Perhaps we should have a day of action. Every woman complain to the police about every single bit of sexual harassment. From ‘cheer up love’ upwards

Can I just say that this is a brilliant idea.

Can you get the details of that sorted that out for us love?

Out of interest- did any of the girls look worried (or perhaps not because you were there). At their ages if this nonsense had been around I would have walked out of the toilet (with wet legs presumably!)

To be honest the girls did look a little apprehensive - one of them asked me if I was in the queue when they came in and sounded like a shy little mouse but maybe she was just shy. The older one looked as thiugh she was scanning the room as she waited and they practically flattened themselves against the wall to stay out of everyone's way.

I didn't want to read too much into it as I don't spend much time around children so I'm not too sure how much of that would be "normal" behaviour if that makes sense as opposed to feeling intimidated specifically by the male presence.