"Girls are skipping school to avoid sharing gender neutral toilets with boys" - Mail on Sunday article

[Sunkisses]

Great article in the Mail on Sunday today about the awful impacts on girls of being forced to share loos with boys at school. With quotes from a female GP about the health and psychological impacts of girls not having single-sex loos, Stephanie Davies-Arai from Transgender Trend, and David Davies MP

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7542005/Girls-skipping-school-avoid-sharing-gender-neutral-toilets-boys.html

youve been annoyed at people having a pop at you for not reading the article

Fact is Rufus, that I had read the article. Therefore I was commenting on what had been written.

How can you comment on the content of an article without having read the article?

I haven’t commented on the article...i dont think lord has either

If i was commenting on the article i would read it first...like you did

RufusthebewiIderedreindeer

But how can you discuss the toilets that the article refers to if you haven't read the article? How can you know what type of toilet they are talking about?

The toilets that I know about are mixed sex in that boys and girls can use them but they aren't hidden away and are in full view of staff so bullying is not possible.

They are entirely different to re designated single sex toilets.

Surely the type of toilet is important when discussing this?

Well theres a picture in one of the other articles linked above that show what many are looking like.

I very much doubt many would complain.about the set up you describe tequila and if the did well it's more likely to be about the fact that these cubicles which are more like rooms could provide opportunities for kids to be pushed/dragged in and assaulted with less chance of being noticed due to no gaps.

The toilets that I know about are mixed sex in that boys and girls can use them but they aren't hidden away and are in full view of staff so bullying is not possible.

Are they like the ones in the Welsh schools in the articles I posted? If so, they are still hated by children and parents. The sinks are in the communal area, so not like the toilets you described. But even those have other potential problems as Sarah has mentioned.

And 'bullying is not possible' is just ridiculous. Do you think schools have staff members everywhere at all times?

When that article was in the paper with the stories of primary school children as young as 6 being sexually assaulted, one.of those was in plain.sight in the play ground. The midday supervisor told the victim for having her skirt lifted up/pulled down.

If that can happen in.plain.sight instead to think.what happens.out of view. And I'd be wary of anything someone.so.naive as to think that it isnt possible or doesnt happen, says.

I dread to think

This is an interesting article from a solicitor commenting on the incident where the 6 year old girl repeatedly sexually assaulted by two boys - the primary school paid out significant compensation:
schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-must-be-prepared-for-pupil-on-pupil-sexual-assault/
She comments that schools must be able to evidence what the school has done to minimise the risk of such assaults

Schools with bullying / sexual assault issues would be foolish to introduce mixed sex toilets and remove one layer of protection for girls. Those of us who actually deal with bullying and sexual assaults in schools (as opposed to self identified experts) know that retreating to the girls toilets in the face of harassment is one option for girls in a school. Schools will challenge and often sanction boys who attempt to invade girls toilets.
Tackling bullying and sexual harassment in schools is never achieved by introducing mixed sex toilets. Redesigning them, improved supervision, high quality provision that encourages pupils to treat them with care - yes. Forcing the sexes to share toilets - no.

Redesigning them, improved supervision, high quality provision that encourages pupils to treat them with care - yes. Forcing the sexes to share toilets - no

One has to wonder why there are suddenly extra staff to provide this increased supervision and why they suddenly feel the need to do it when these mixed sex facilities are provided. Surely this increased supervision could have also have been.provided with single.sex facilities?

I have a hobby that takes place in hired halls, anything from village halls to theatres to school halls. I travel and see a lot of venues. Maybe 50-60% now have a unisex (or "m/f/trans" sign, or tweely named such as "whatever you are you can pee here!!") facility. Maybe 10% of those are fully private individual stalls, the rest are a new sign on stalls with holes at the top and the bottom. This is happening in schools in this country I promise you.

One venue I have ever visited was as tequila described. New toilets, floor to ceiling cubicles, designated unisex, frosted glass behind the sinks overlooking the reception area. Allegedly to stop bullying.

All I can say is my personal experience, that I felt very vulnerable using them, I drank less water to try to use them less and i left my hobby early to get back to the hotel to use a better loo. I'm not easily scared, but it would have been very easy for an opportunist to hang around there (and many men did hang around the hand basins chatting or taking their time to dry their hands. After all, men tend to feel less threatened by unisex spaces than women.) and push me into a cubicle with them if nobody else was around. I would have hoped that I'd have screamed blue murder but a common distress response, particularly in women is to freeze. It's a threat and opportunity that isn't present in single sex loos. Very few women fear sexual assault from other women. We do fear it from men.

Part of the benefit of single sex toilets and the reason women use them as a refuge from men is that the presence of other women provides both a buffer between the threatened individual woman and the man/men threatening her and a second pair of eyes and hands that will notice something untoward happening and be able to call for help. This is not just the absence of a bad thing, it's the presence of a good thing and something that will be lost if even the best designed unisex space is implemented.

I've seen the enclosed room single stalls with integral sinks that the one person keeps banging on about and although I was OK with the in the context of a high end restaurant during a crowded time I would be much less OK with them in a less high traffic area. The main reason I was OK with them was that there were other women hanging around in the corridor leading to and off of which the individual enclosed rooms were. If no other women had been present I would have felt a lot less safe.

Also the restaurant I'm thinking of cleverly located the corridor off of which the toilets are in such a way that staff are constantly going back and forth, so even if no other female customers were around female staff members would be. Also, half wall on the non-toilets side of the corridor with a sort of lattice effect on top, so diners on the other side can see people going to and fro. It was basically designed so that the rooms themselves were private but it would be very difficult to bundle an unwilling person into one without anyone noticing, and anyone calling for help would likely be heard by staff members walking past. The other women in my party and I had a conversation in which we all agreed that a woman must have been involved in a design, because I've seen the same corridor with individual rooms off it design implemented in ways that don't feel safe at all from a woman's perspective.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3598546-Toilets-again-desire-for-privacy-is-transphobic-apparently?pg=1&order=

This was an interesting thread.

Turns Out that some believe that despite having all these mixed sex "inclusive" toilets that its still wrong because they have floor to ceiling cubicles.

So all this money schools are wasting on trying to be woke, Some still arent happy

So basically the people complaining want to be able to see over the partitions, have it be possibly to wriggle under doors, etc?

Well that's reassuring.

That aspect is something thst struck me in the discussions of single-sex versus single-gender YHA accommodation.

In response to a woman who had previously suffered assault requesting a definitely female-only dorm, the hostel offered to block any other booking of that dorm so that she would be alone there.

That's not as safe as being amongst other women, though, is it?

No, it's not, and it feels like a wilful misunderstanding of what the customer asked for to the point where I'm wondering if the term malicious obedience applies or if that's simply the only option the hostel's stupid policies leave them with.

Also! Hopefully this won't apply in schools, but I've been in multiple situations where obviously far too drunk to consent to sex woman staggers into loo and the other women then realize that a man is attempting to take advantage of her being too drunk to fight back and proceed to protect her (often a complete stranger to them) and either include her in their own party or put her in a taxi home (or drop her off when they get one, or let her crash at one of their homes).

IME it's not unusual for women to go out of their way to look out for complete strangers encountered in the loos, or to steer a woman who's being targeted by a male predator into one so they can figure out what's going on and if she really wants to go home with the man who's trying to pick her up. I've been on both sides of that interaction and, being grateful to the women who've looked after me in the past, will always do the same for others if and when needed.

(Waits for yet another rant about most women in toilets being evil bullies who pee all over everything in fling sanpro around with gleeful abandon.)

kittens

Yes you are so right. I've called ambulances and stayed with young girls who are plastered. Popped them.in taxis home. Literally picked them up off the ground. God I've leant them.money to get home . Waited outside in the freezing cold with barely anything on to see them into taxis.

The idea they could be alone in that toilet with a man is terrifying.

One of my best mates from back in the day I met that way - she was drunk, creepy bloke was pestering her, I had a conversation with her in the loos and realized she'd never met him before in her life and wanted him to piss off but he wouldn't leave her alone. So I pulled her over to sit with my friends and we scared the creep off and then she ended up sleeping on my sofa. Creep glared at me every time he saw me for months afterwards.

You clearly foiled his plans.

There are tons.of pubs near where I work. I've lost count of the amount of drunk people I see. Some.literally lying on the ground

There have been times I've worried for my own.safety whilst approaching people to make sure they are ok.

Because I work.late shifts sometimes I get approached every now and then by people who are drunk who assume I must be drunk too as I'm.out at that time. It's like vultures at times...

You can see them circling like lions looking for the most vulnerable member of the herd to pick off, the predatory blokes. Happens in every bar or club in the world.

Urgh yes I've saved a few girls like that too. Ive also used a trip to the ladies loos to check in with a friend about something we don't want men to hear - sometimes as simple as have you got any sanpro, once a friend was misscarrying, and countless times to see if they or I were really okay with the guy who was leering over them or if they wanted help. Quite often i've gone to the loo to get away from a pestering bloke. That option is gone if he can go to the same loo too.

Massive love to the male friends I've been out with who have been protective too, of course. Contrary to some opinions we don't hate men. We just want to be safe.

I think we've all probably done the pretend your male friend is your boyfriend until the creep goes away too.

Massive love to the male friends I've been out with who have been protective too, of course. Contrary to some opinions we don't hate men. We just want to be safe

Yes. These are the men who dont want this either.

This is why men dont trust other men most the time. Because they know...

When I was 16 I was on an ocean liner with my best friend. We shared a table with two men... (her dad was also on the ship but we deliberately didn't want to sit with him, as teens do). The two men were not romantic interests in any way -- much older, and we had our eyes on a couple of boys. I stood up to go to the loo - and saw to my horror that the whole chair seat was covered in blood. I hadn't noticed while sitting.
Well, somehow we managed it so that my friend walked behind me to the ladies, where I could hide, and she ran away to fetch clothes from our cabin. Imagine if there'd been men in there!
The two men at our table did notice, but they were well mannered and pretended it never happened. They were even more embarrassed, probably!