No Female toilets!

[EmmaGrundyForPM]

I was in Kings College in Cambridge earlier and needed the loo. I followed the sign to "toilets" to find two doors, one saying "Males" and the other saying "Cubicles". In the "cubicles" room were 4 cubicles and a sink area. Dh used the Male toilets and said there were 3/4 cubicles and about 6 urinals.

So men can use either set of loos - their own segregated ones or the mixed cubicles. Women have no segregated loos and have to share with men.

I've never come across this IRL. Apart from.the logistical aspect of men having access to 8 cubicles and 6 urinals where women can only access 4 cubicles, there is the marginalisation of women and denying us a space of our own.

I am very taken aback that this has been allowed. I'm alo surprised that students htbe not protested about this as it seems crazy.

”Every one of us who experiences this should complain, there and then if possible.”

I haven’t come across it yet but I certainly will if/when I do.

When DH was at university it was known as the People's Republic of Kings for its student politics.

Seems nothing has changed.

Yep. My alma mater, I was there for an event in Nov and noticed and was pretty unimpressed. Spoke to a few others who were equally unimpressed, but one did point out how the college can be a bit competitively woke.

Also the CUSU position on gender ideology is pretty clear ("how to spot terf ideology" being one of their handouts) as several of us wrote to the CUSU women's officer who basically just ignored and shouted down anything that dared challenge their position.

The Provost is a decent chap - might help. Don't know.

To be fair, Kings has always been a special brand of batshit wokery.

Homerton has Women and Gender Neutral toilets.

I live in the Netherlands and went out to a brewery/bar near utrecht. 2 loos - one mixed, one ladies. If you’re going to do it, that’s the way - though completely pointless because of course everyone just divided into the 2 sexes anyway.

Homerton has Women and Gender Neutral toilets.

That makes far more sense, just from the POV of numbers.

Except they make the women's mixed sex , so any vile aggressive male wanting to beat any TW up would just follow them in. So what problem is being solved exactly?

And here is all the proof that you need that TAs aren't demanding these changes for their safety, they're demanding them to gain access to women and girls. If they wanted safety, they'd join Miranda and Fionne's campaign for single-occupant third spaces.

It was definitely 'cubicles' and 'urinals' when they first did it, so it's interesting that they changed it since. I remember because I was heavily pregnant (so it was summer 2018) and needed to pop to the loo on my way from town to the library and went there to find a coachload of very baffled looking elderly tourists in front of the loos, staring at the sign in confusion. I went to 'cubicles' (or, 'women', as it had been the week before) and they looked so relieved that this very clearly female person had solved the issue for them!

a coachload of very baffled looking elderly tourists in front of the loos, staring at the sign in confusion

This is the other issue that really gets on my norks: there are eight other protected characteristics in the Equality Act and six of these get stomped all over for the sake of trans folk.

• age: older people are going to be puzzled by these unconventionally-labelled toilets, and boy children who, up until about eightish, are tolerated in the female loos for their safety because they pose no risk to women, lose out on the safety afforded by a space free of adult males.
• disability: anyone with a learning disability may struggle to understand which loo to use. Visually-impaired people will struggle to read "cubicles" but can make out the "woman in a dress" sign, and will also be alarmed if they hear an opposite-sex voice in a space they thought was single-sex.
• race: includes people from another country who may not read enough english to know what "cubicles" means, but will know what the "woman in a dress" sign means.
• religion or belief: hijabi women and orthodox jewish women need visual privacy from males.
• pregnancy and maternity: pregnant women being forced to queue for longer with a foetus clog-dancing on her bladder, miscarrying women not having a female-only toilet to manage their miscarriage in, no female-only space for a lactating mother to remove her top at the sink and rinse out milk stains caused by involuntary let-down, nowhere female-only to breastfeed or express milk (especially at work where parent and baby rooms aren't provided and a mother may have returned to work whilst still lactating).
• sex: managing periods etc is done to death on this board already, but I'd like to highlight the need of female victims of male sexual violence, who outnumber all other victims of sexual violence, to have female-only spaces when naked from the waist down. I don't know about anyone else, but when Aunt Flo turns up, my swollen uterus presses on my bladder and I need to pee more urgently. Being menstruation-related, this is a female-only problem, and making women queue for even longer makes this worse.

@wacademia this is absolutely spot on!

Illegal discrimination against women on the basis of sex is how they are "getting out in front of the laws".

Being menstruation-related, this is a female-only problem

Oh but don’t be so transphobic. It’s not just women who menstruate you know. You bigot.

/sarcasm font off.

But seriously, the attitude “You’re a bigot to talk about women’s biology” is becoming scarily accepted.

My post is a parody btw. I know it’s difficult to tell nowadays ...

I will be writing to King's. I know it's a private rather than public building so I have no "say" as I'm not a college member but I'll write anyway.

I know Kings likes to think of itself as the most "right-on" college but I'm still amazed that the staff and students are ok with this. It is blatant discrimination.

Just need to ask..
We have yet another new coffee shop in my town,
They have two separate loos, (own doors, presume sink inside didnt go in) both marked. Unisex.
Is this allowed ? Why not have male and female.
Unisex to me means a loo that is just as filthy as a male only one

Can I check with those who have used the 'Cubicles' whether they are the loos that you'd reach by turning left after the porters lodge, so you have the facade/Kings Parade to your left, the Gibbs Building to the right and the chapel behind you? You'd then go in at the first door immediately ahead of you. There's a student bar to the right, but you go on a little further and both sets of toilets are to the left?

I suppose the loos which are student only can be 'woke' if that's what the students want. Even so, they should obviously be aware of the potential negative impacts in terms of the Equalities Act, have done a proper assessment - and if they had failed to do this, then the College itself should have required it to be done.

But it these are the toilets which are to be used by all visitors to the Chapel as well, the situation strikes me as even more serious....

@HarrietSmith. yes those ones. We were queuing for the Carol service on Christmas Eve and those steps the ones the Porter directed everyone to.

I've been at other events at Kings although not for a while, and also used those loos then so I imagine they are the ones visitors are always directed to.

I think when the festivities have died down, I should draft a letter to Kings. (I studied there) I'll aim to find out who the best person is to direct it to - there maybe someone like a facilities/visitor services manager at the College, though I'd also want to cc it to the Provost and whoever's in charge of operations at the Chapel . I might also include a link to this thread. If people are interested in signing, do DM me and let me know if you're a regular visitor, former student, Chapel-goer/ person who goes to the College on business, parent of student whatever. Would also be interested to know any other relevant info people are happy to disclose. (eg health issues). My feeling is that would be in the interest of the college to try and resolve this matter - at the absolute minimum by making visitors aware of alternative male and female loos.The high profile nature of the place, means that if they have any sense, they should be aware that press coverage could have negative impact.

I just can’t imagine what objective justification they can possibly think there is for such blatant discrimination. Both sexes and unisex - fine. Just unisex, not my preference but fine. Male and unisex but no female, WTAF?!

Had to be bloody King's, didn't it? Woke before woke was a term.

Next time I'm up there, I'm checking out my own college. Much less woke back in my young day...

Why is always WOMEN who have to back up and make room?

It’s sad though- woke should be a good thing. It should be genuinely inclusive, not discriminatory, not excluding.

I feel sad.

The college was one of the first to admit women.

When I was there the great majority of the teaching staff were male, so though the undergraduate intake was genuinely mixed sex, the place itself was obviously moulded by male tradition, and there was a real lack of female academic role model and older women to go to for support.
The choir continues to be all male to this day. The first and only female Provost departed after a very short time indeed.

I know that many young female university students in such place - and perhaps even some female academics? - find it important to believe that TWAW and that all gender critical feminists are motivated by ignorance/fear/hate/reluctance to sacrifice their 'cishet' privilege.

But in my first term there a male 'mature' undergraduate student forced himself on me sexually when I was very inexperienced and assumed that anyone who was clever enough to be there had the intelligence and good manners to take no for an answer..

Later on in my three years there, a postgraduate male student 'flipped' and hit me hard across the face - apparently some everyday remark of mine meant that I 'deserved' this.

Some male tutors - one with pastoral responsibility towards me, two who were academic supervisors - behaved towards me in ways which I can now see were unboundaried, unprofessional, inappropriate.

It was never a safe, genuinely inclusive space - but I had hoped that it was making moves in the right direction.

King's was the first place I ever encountered 'gender-neutral' toilets, and that was several years ago now. I was visiting with DH, who studied there.

I found it an extremely unnerving sensation going into a loo that should have been for women, but wasn't any more. Now they're all over the place, depressingly so, but I haven't forgotten that initial shock. DH was astounded too.

And I'm very sad to hear what happened to you there, Harriet

Thanks Zeugma. And it was a long time ago. I'd come from an abusive family background so had no idea how to look after myself. I suppose despite the fact we now are supposed to know about abuse and safeguarding and all sorts of rights which nobody thought about back in the wicked late 1970s, the general cluelessness and indifference remains...