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.

Fucking disgusting. This gender neutral stuff is eroding women's rights.

I was dreading going back to uni (a MN-horror inducing ex-polytechnic) for these kind of reasons but, while ours has gone down the "gender neutral" line somewhat - they've done so by continuing to provide single sex spaces for both males and females as well - thankfully! Think the high percentage of students who wear hijab is a large factor.

l was in a toilet attached to a Library and supermarket they have male, female, Disability and a parents room l saw a man come out of the cubical in the female toilets told a male attendant cleaning in the entrance to all these rooms who just said SO,my partner has seen a male coming out of these female toilets and another acquaintance has been in these toilets when a male came out of a cubical and gave her a dirty look.
It seems men just use whatever toilet they want.

Part of this keeping the mens and turning the female spaces into unisex (so males possess everything, own both spaces, female people are allowed to share a bit of it if they're good and don't want to adhere to an inconvenient space or have a disability or want an experience free of humiliation and fear, stuff like that) is

a) it's the cheapest solution - no money spent, just change labels and the political lobby stops harassing you.

b) it acknowledges that to add a third space and keep a female only space would mean presenting a boundary and policing it against males insisting that they are female/expect to be recognised as female at all times in all spaces and fuck the impact on female people around them/see anyone mentioning female people or the needs of female people as an act of aggression. And standing up to the screaming rages that this would involve.

Increasingly, female people equally possessing and commandeering male spaces seems the only way to me to cause enough discomfort to the establishment to force a change.

Think the high percentage of students who wear hijab is a large factor

They'll do it for religious reasons but not for a western female's personal reasons. How grossly unfair is that?

But in my first term there a male 'mature' undergraduate student forced himself on me sexually

First,

Second, the words you are looking for are rape and sexual assault. You don't benefit from minimising his criminal acts, but he and men like him do.

Third,

Second, the words you are looking for are rape and sexual assault.

Reading that back, it's not coming across the way I meant it to.

What I was trying to say is that what he's done is serious and should not be minimised, and that we have words to convey that seriousness and should use those words.

I was not trying to be sarcastic and I'm sorry for being careless with my choice of words in a way that may cause distress.

I was sad to see a young female illustrator post something about 'being educated' and 'we all have to learn sometime' and the sort. What had she done in order to be 'educated'? She'd received messages because she had done an illustration of female anatomy - boobs, periods, womb ect, but this was excluding certain people and not all women have those things...apparently.

Thanks wacademia. I think there is such a gap between the way I framed/understood/did not understand experiences at the time and how I came to see things later, it is not easy to find the right words. It was only when volunteered for a charity that supported survivors of rape and abuse that I was able to get a sense of my own history.

Nothing for it but for women to speak up and complain to have this changed. There have to be EQUAL facilities for both sexes so you either have all gender neutral toilets or you have equal male and equal female with additional gender neutral. I can't believe how quickly this is changing in the UK! I live in one of the wokest places in the USA and I've only ever seen bathrooms here that are either all gender neutral or else the usual male / female options.