Women win guarantee over female only public lavatories - the Times

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www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7355c886-1aea-11eb-8493-5b46eb56a071?shareToken=4752a364029a4a557a2ba26a99d985d4

@WhataFarce76

But why is it not enough that we DON'T WANT to share these spaces with males? Laying aside the risks / statistics / lack thereof, why can't you just accept that we want and are entitled to our own spaces? Even if there was no risk of assault etc, why is it not enough that it makes women uncomfortable or embarrassed, or anxious, nervous, unsettled? Why should we have to further justify it more than this?

Because the changes you want would not just devastate trans lives but also are opposed by many gender nonconforming women, could only in practice be ridiculously authoritarian and would serve to socially punish gender nonconformity. And only a tiny number of people are calling for it. If a gender critical demo has more than 50 people its a huge success. It's a very niche political movement albeit with some high profile names. The public simply doesn't want the changes you are demanding, not even the Tories with a huge majority dare push it through. That's democracy unfortunately. If this was something that most women really wanted you'd have scenes on the street similar to Poland right now, where incidentally trans women and women are fighting back together against a misogynist and transphobic government.

Not as a job. She was suggested in an informal context - Karen being female, and known to me were why the third party suggested them (as I said, the third party didn't know I had become aware of Karen's history in the time since we'd last spoken).

It wasn't that Karen was asked to do anything as a professional chaperone, more "I know you know Karen, who is female and lives locally, so you can ask them to pop round and sit with you?".

I did not ask Karen. In the end I did not need a chaperone as I got a same sex worker, so...

@testing987654321

Apparently men have been using ladies loos for decades with zero problems. Presumably the women who want to have been using men's as well with absolutely no problems whatsoever. All based on gender presentation apparently.

So what on earth caused organisations like the BBC, the civil service, universities, the old vic etc create "gender neutral" toilets instead of ones for men and women?
It's a complete mystery isn't it?

No mystery, saving money for a start and in the case of the Old Vic I think they said it was to do with maximising flowthrough rates and cutting queues. I expect this is the kind of thing that will be discussed in the review which will be more about plumbing, architecture and flow through rates rather than trans people.

Re the unfeminine women thing...
Going by when I was butch (putwardly speaking, in dress/hair), I got mistaken for a man by men, women and children. As did my very butch female partners. We got abuse from kids asking if we were men or women, we got abuse from men for looking like men and/or lesbians, and very occasionally the same from (presumably) straight women in the street. There was usually a homophobic undercurrent if we weren't assumed to be men

We never got it in toilets (but then we never really went out anywhere other than the local gay scene in the mid to late '00s).

jj Still waiting for your definition of gender. Also where is that evidence that male people who identify as women are a lesser risk to women than other males?

Does anyone else find that the more they're told the must accept men in the women's loos, the more inclined they are to take a defensive position of resistance?

No, no, no.

No mystery, saving money for a start and in the case of the Old Vic I think they said it was to do with maximising flowthrough rates and cutting queues.

Many of these 'gender neutral' loos were 'created' by sticking signs on existing single sex ones so no saving of money. I don't know the details of the old vic, but the Barbican instance where it was with or without urinals clearly was nowt to do with flow though and queue cutting - you surely don't need us to explain that to you?

Oh, and I went buzz cut again a couple of years ago, and usually just got told by randoms that I looked like I had cancer, which made a change from being presumed male, I guess.

Maybe I've misunderstood what you meant, @jj1968 and you're saying that Karen jones shouldn't be allowed to be alone in a room with a (vulnerable or otherwise) woman full stop, in a paid capacity, because of her probation conditions? Good position, but that wasn't what happened.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you.

Is it ok that they were suggested simply by virtue of being known to me and female, and as a supportive member of my community to reach out to for informal help, rather than in a professional capacity?

I had previously spent time alone with them in their being encouraged to get drunk with them, before having a huge PTSD relapse around the same time I discovered they weren't quite the self described natal butch lesbian DV victim they presented as. Was that against their probation do you think?

If it's fine for me to object to them being in my living room, why can't I object to them potentially being in female toilets and changing rooms, or seeing them again in future in a refuge or a rape crisis centre or a hostel as a fellow service user?

They did, however, frequently get manager roles supervising night shifts at different 24h fast food chains for a while. I'd have thought being in a managerial position where they could feasibly be working alone (eg 1-2-1s in the office) with women would be a bit risky with probation too, but there you go.

*I had previously spent time alone with them in their home

No mystery, saving money for a start and in the case of the Old Vic I think they said it was to do with maximising flowthrough rates and cutting queues.

So they saved money by replacing signs. And decided to create mixed-sex toilets to improve flow-through. Absolutely nothing to do with gender identity ideology.

Well, I'm convinced.

80% of people in this survey say that transwomen should not be allowed to use women's changing rooms.

wingsoverscotland.com/abolishing-women/

Another poll commissioned shows that 50% of people think sex and gender are the same thing.

wingsoverscotland.com/the-rights-of-women/

jj1968 said:

I expect this is the kind of thing that will be discussed in the review which will be more about plumbing, architecture and flow through rates rather than trans people.

Thanks JJ you’ve done us a good turn here by pointing out something important. You’re right- Its not just about trans people. This is about the sexed category of women. Our interest here is women. We respectfully include transmen as a self-defined subset in the category of women.

You’re wrong to suggest everyone isn’t welcome to respond with view though. They are. If the government get a significant number of responses raising questions outside the brief, then they will raise that in the final report. They will then recommend the relevant government areas examine these issues. This would be a good thing.

Everyone with an interest is free to respond as they see fit. This review’s call for responses has no specified word length, no required format, and refreshingly, it asks no required list of leading questions (unlike the Women and Equalities Committee call for evidence which seems highly selective in what they ask for responses about ).

It just gives an email address to send views to. We can all do that If we wish. They also don’t suggest publishing names of respondents, so in our responses for avoidance of doubt, we can say we don’t want to be identified by name in any published response (if that is an issue). Fine.

So rather than try to present this as a review that we should leave to the professionals, I would say this is one review where women should directly give their views to government on single sex toilet provision as it is intended, for then as women. We are experts here.

This review is about England only, unfortunately, but with the direction of travel in Scotland, it’s particularly important that we demand that UK women are centred in questions about public toilet provision for women. This is our best opportunity yet to make views known on this very specific issue of public toilet provision. There’s no restriction on responding regardless of where you live. (The convention is usually to include a correspondence address as part of your response, wherever that is.)

A key point to stress is that gender neutral toilets are not a suitable alternative for women, to single sex women’s toilets.

They’re also asking about male toilet provision too, so if anyone feels unsafe using the men’s single sex toilets, or as parents sending their boy children in to use the male toilets, they can make that point here too. Self contained gender neutral toilets maybe useful for allowing parents of either sex to help children who need it.

But it would be vital to raise, although this review didn’t ask specifically about this, that the answer to men using men’s toilets not feeling safe, is absolutely not welcoming men into women’s toilets. (Regardless of men’s reasons for wanting to get in to women’s toilets)

Government needs to understand that single sex toilet provision is essential, but the use of these facilities for personal gender validation by male-bodied people is not the duty of women to accommodate and provide to men. Women’s and girls’ safety, privacy and dignity are very highly at risk if men are also using that facility.

We need to be able to challenge men in women’s toilets for our own safety. Men’s feelings (regardless of how they identify) do not trump women’s safety, privacy, dignity.
In my own experience it’s been frightening and demeaning sharing single sex cubicle toilets with men, in a professional workplace environment. In a public toilet I would feel even more uncomfortable. I do my best to avoid any toilet provision if I think there could be men in there, regardless of those men’s gender feelings or legal sex status. Male pattern sexual or other violence against women does not go away because of gender transition.

It is a flaw that this review does not directly ask about whether women’s use of single sex women’s toilets is affected negatively, by having men being in there. Government can’t have a conversation with women about adequate public toilet provision without looking at everything which could affect women using public toilets including basic safeguarding norms. So let’s raise it with them.

More info and how to respond:
www.gov.uk/government/consultations/toilet-provision-for-men-and-women-call-for-evidence

WPUK has some resources here for letter writing:
womansplaceuk.org/toilets/

In a country in which 35 million women and girls use women's toilets probably most days there has just been one recorded assault on a woman by a trans woman, and it's doubtful toilets policed by birth sex would have prevented it.

Sure. What about the stats for people of the male sex assaulting women and children in the women’s toilets? And voyeurism? And ... please point to statistics where females have a higher propensity to access child sex abuse too.... and post and share it. Some of it taken in single sex facilities. Because I have noticed quite a number of cases involving males who identify as women going through court for csa access too.

Or do you think it this has no relevance to women and children’s safety in the toilets?

I recently saw a video of a transwoman who was challenged by teenaged girls for being in their toilets who then, while videoing, chased these girls down the street yelling at them. And yes, it was in London if I remember correctly. So, while we are telling them to have boundaries for their own safety, you think we should erode those about men being in facilties that they should not be in to accommodate those males needs of validation. That is exactly what that video was about, that males validation and ‘coming out’. Chasing teenaged girls down the street out of the toilet and yelling at them.

So, please don’t continue to fucking hand wave our safety with ‘only one’. It was children in that Morrison’s toilet and that was enough. Why are you NOT outraged?

Do you think the stats for crimes that are not direct sex assault don’t matter for the purposes of males having access to provisions set aside for women and children’s safety?

Because as the saying goes, tell us how we can tell who is who please.

Sure. What about the stats for people of the male sex assaulting women and children in the women’s toilets? And voyeurism?

This is what jj doesn't seem to understand (or pretends not to). If we allow men who identify as 'transwomen' into the women's toilets, how do we tell the difference between a man who genuinely identifies as a 'transwoman' and a man who is pretending to identify as a 'transwoman', and someone who is just a man, not pretending to be anything else? I asked jj how we could tell the difference, and jj said to 'Ask them'.

How can we ask them when asking is 'literal violence' and could result either in physical violence towards the person asking or a criminal record? An autistic man was prosecuted for asking a transgender police officer if they were male or female.

15 pages of hectoring.

A review is announced with Lord Jenrick saying "we have listened to women" and the response to that here is 15 pages of gaslighting about how illegal, awful, unsupported, unpopular and expensive female only toilets are.

Unbelievable.

Lots of gender nonconforming women have told you they don't want this. One on this thread.

Don't want what? You don't specify.

Why don't those women count?

If you're meaning here, why don't the alleged desire of supposedly gender non conforming female people to have all female only facilities removed from all females count? Well obviously, because they're not the females who want and need them, and they don't get to give other female people's rights away and then leave those females without access to public facilities. But the only females I've seen vigorously campaigning to remove female facilities from females are privileged and male centric females who are doing this because they see it as better for the men they feel protective of, and are busily enacting quite profound sexism and betrayal of less privileged females in the process.

If you're referring here to TW, then please don't force team female people and TW when looking at single sex facilities. No, male born people do not count when looking at what is required for the access and inclusion of female people in public life, because male born people are not a part of that sex class. Female people have their own needs here, and those needs have not gone away. Female people's access to needed facilities should not ever be predicated on the feelings and politics of male people about females having them, because it's sexist and reduces females to a subordinate class. That's indefensible.

I'm bewildered here. I honestly can't follow this argument anywhere.

Gender neutral facilities should be provided and replace all provisions.
Gender neutral facilities however are too unsafe for TW because males will access them and harm TW, so any male who wants will access the female facilities and nothing females can say or what laws are passed will stop them, and this is apparently a good thing in your opinion.

This is completely incoherent. Why are the men making TW unsafe any more excluded from the female facilities therefore than the gender neutral ones? You're quite clear that males will do what males want regardless of anyone else, and don't respect anyone's boundaries, and apparently ok with this.

And you're repeatedly telling females that all evidence of harm happening due to mixed sex facilities is wrong, insufficient, proves nothing or was just bad luck and means nothing at all (likewise their feelings, dignity, privacy etc). So why if it's all hunky dory and privacy, feelings, safety etc doesn't matter and people should just get over it, would it not be perfectly appropriate for TW to use male facilities? Or is it just females who have to get over it? Where's the newspaper reports and evidence on how dangerous the male facilities are? And why are gender neutral facilities too dangerous for TW when apparently mixed sex facilities are absolutely fine and the statistics are just a lot of rubbish?

At this point I honestly have no idea what you're trying to argue.

OldCrone Yes. I find myself just repeating the same things (and the same things that many other women have said to them previously) on different threads to a the same posters.

It is more to make sure that any people reading these threads don't fall in to jj's trap of magically thinking that becoming a transwoman magically changes those male's propensity to commit the sex crimes and crimes of violence.

Just like not all males will commit these crimes, so too not all transwomen. However, some will and people are currently telling us and our children, that the rate of risk is so low that it doesn't bear thinking about. Pure gaslighting!

However, there is no getting away from the current UK prison statistics which jj never seems to address.

jj has also failed to address the issues of dignity and privacy for women on this thread. Including those of a religion that are then excluded. Although there has been posters who have reminded us that these women should sort their shit out and stop belonging to that religion. (Hint: there is probably a larger proportion of these women than we think that cannot just magically leave these religions.)

Just like many other posts on threads, it always becomes quite clear that this poster has no depth of knowledge of what being a woman means in reality. The examples they put up here on this thread seem to be superficial with no actual experience behind them.

It never ceases to amaze me that women are expected to come up with a solution for men who don't want to use the men's toilets.
Have we been asked to sort out International Men's Day yet?

19th November beckons...

Have we been asked to sort out International Men's Day yet?

That would be a fair trade, I suppose, given that there seem to be plenty of males taking over IWD of late.

Who's going to respond? to gov.uk/government/consultations/toilet-provision-for-men-and-women-call-for-evidence/toilet-provision-for-men-and-women-call-for-evidence

A decent level of response will help