Sainsbury's and gender neutral toilets

[McDuffy]

So, Ocado's knee jerk reaction to Posie's AHF poster is what brought me over here almost three years ago. I had been a loyal customer for so long that I was on their freebies panel and still ditched them over this (I miss them, great service but my principles on this trumped that).
We switched to Sainsbury's and I've got a delivery pass with them. Just seen (Jean Hatchet on Twitter) that they're introducing "gender neutral" loos and I'm going to leave to make a point. DH does the food shop but is a big ally to women and will agree to switch.

Who's left to use? Tesco and Waitrose are captured too. Are Asda or Morrisons in the cult? I can shop locally to an extent but both of us work full time and have two small kids so need a delivery at the moment.

The jean Hatchet thread if anyone is interested:

twitter.com/JeanHatchet/status/1409425611051909121

thinking I might print it out and send to the manger of a couple of local stores.

As to which stores are less woke? I think probably Morrisons. Woke memos take longer to reach parts of Yorkshire. Also Booths if you're in Lancashire or the Lakes. Morrisons are on the same curve just further back - maybe with all the recent push back on Stonewall-law they'll never get to the dizzy misogynistic heights of Ocado and Sainsbury's.

I might actually print the Jean Hatchet thread and send to Morrisons too and say this is why I now shop with you!

@McDuffy

So, Ocado's knee jerk reaction to Posie's AHF poster is what brought me over here almost three years ago. I had been a loyal customer for so long that I was on their freebies panel and still ditched them over this (I miss them, great service but my principles on this trumped that). We switched to Sainsbury's and I've got a delivery pass with them. Just seen (Jean Hatchet on Twitter) that they're introducing "gender neutral" loos and I'm going to leave to make a point. DH does the food shop but is a big ally to women and will agree to switch.

Who's left to use? Tesco and Waitrose are captured too. Are Asda or Morrisons in the cult? I can shop locally to an extent but both of us work full time and have two small kids so need a delivery at the moment.

If you mean supermarkets that recognise progressive society rather than regressive segregation. No - they are all captured. And bravo to them. Moving forward, not back.

Perhaps grab a local allotment to grow your own?

I seriously don’t get the angst. A few places around here have done this including shopping centre and cinema and it’s been a really positive change. No more queuing for ladies while there is no queue for the men’s. If there is a queue it’s shorter and moves quicker! They all have cubicles, it’s not like men hanging it out at a urinal as you walk past them and the majority here have handbasin and dryer within the cubicle, so convenient.

I’ve always had unisex toilets at work for decades - usually a single toilet room pretty much like at home just larger and with paper towel in it, not a huge room with many stalls, so maybe I’m well used to it? There was never a problem with it.

Haha thanks Mishy, we do grow our own! Massive bowl of strawberries yesterday that fed six of us with lots left over. Unfortunately the only livestock we have is my daughter's pony. Might ask if he wouldn't mind identifying as a mare and sorting some milk out for us.

I'll have a look at Booth's and Morrisons, thanks Christina.

@HoppingPavlova

I seriously don’t get the angst. A few places around here have done this including shopping centre and cinema and it’s been a really positive change. No more queuing for ladies while there is no queue for the men’s. If there is a queue it’s shorter and moves quicker! They all have cubicles, it’s not like men hanging it out at a urinal as you walk past them and the majority here have handbasin and dryer within the cubicle, so convenient.

I’ve always had unisex toilets at work for decades - usually a single toilet room pretty much like at home just larger and with paper towel in it, not a huge room with many stalls, so maybe I’m well used to it? There was never a problem with it.

I'm not asking whether I should be fussed by it, because I am.

It’s not regressive to want women and children to be safe in toilets. No-one wants more of Katie Dolatowski or cases like this: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/4954136.stm Sex-segregated spaces are not foolproof but provide a degree of protection for women, girls and young male children using them. We’ll see a lot more cases like the one above if we go down the mixed sex facilities route. There are other ways of accommodating trans people’s desire for safe toileting that don’t involve increasing risks for others.

Do you a link or information on what Sainsbury's are actually planning to do? Does this affect customers, staff or both? Are they planning to say all current toilets & changing rooms are now unisex or are they refitting them to be individual enclosed stalls?

Having a male toilet and a female toilet is regressive segregation?

Alrighty 😳

(Ive no comment as to which toilets should be used by transgender people…its just the blanket all sex segregation is regressive comment im gobsmacked by)

@APurpleSquirrel

Do you a link or information on what Sainsbury's are actually planning to do? Does this affect customers, staff or both? Are they planning to say all current toilets & changing rooms are now unisex or are they refitting them to be individual enclosed stalls?

Link in second post above twitter.com/JeanHatchet/status/1409425611051909121

Don't service providers have to provide either single use or single sex toilets by law?

If you mean supermarkets that recognise progressive society rather than regressive segregation

😂😂😂 yeah all segregation is regressive isn’t it? I don’t think you’ve thought that through. Should child offenders be in adult prisons too?

And please do explain why exposing women to a higher risk of assault is progressive. You do understand that males commit the vast majority of violent crime against women, right?

@HoppingPavlova

I seriously don’t get the angst. A few places around here have done this including shopping centre and cinema and it’s been a really positive change. No more queuing for ladies while there is no queue for the men’s. If there is a queue it’s shorter and moves quicker! They all have cubicles, it’s not like men hanging it out at a urinal as you walk past them and the majority here have handbasin and dryer within the cubicle, so convenient.

I’ve always had unisex toilets at work for decades - usually a single toilet room pretty much like at home just larger and with paper towel in it, not a huge room with many stalls, so maybe I’m well used to it? There was never a problem with it.

Oh, here’s why., it puts women in more danger. Happy to help.

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jul/22/ukcrime.jeevanvasagar

How quickly they forget.

I seriously don’t get the angst

In the supermarket I shop in fairly often a male transgender individual committed a sexual assault in the ladies. Attacking a child. If single-sex provisions for females had been respected, that wouldn't have happened. In a local swimming pool, another male transgender person secretly filmed young girls changing in the mixed-sex changing rooms. The same happened in the women's toilet in another supermarket (different perpetrator, also male transgender individual).

All leaving behind deeply traumatised young girls whose lives have been irrevocably changed.

There are many more cases like that across the country. And that's in addition to countless cases where other male predators transgress women's and children's boundaries.

That's why we have single-sex toilets.

If you want to remove a safeguard you must first show that the reason the safeguard was put in place for no longer exists.

Male violence against women and girls remains endemic. Female-only toilets where a strong social taboo used to keep out all but the most brazen of predators, exist for a reason.

Together with many aid organisations the UN is spending lots of money and effort building single-sex toilets for women and girls in developing countries, because their lack is severely impacting on women and girls' health and safety, leading to illness and many rapes and murders.

Do you believe our men are so much more civilised than the men in those countries so that we no longer have to fear male violence?

The answer is no. They are no more civilised, they just have fewer opportunities. And that is what mixed-sex toilets represent. More opportunities for sexual predators.

So, do you get the angst now?

Perfectly put Charley

Of course, it’s sooo regressive to provide single toilets for women . Let’s tell the women in Ho Chi Minh City that they should be getting a load of unisex toilets instead:

asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/news-and-events/stories/2020/10/un-women-encourages-modified-budgeting-to-make-public-toilets-safer-for-women

And let’s tell Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General of the UN, that he was sooo old fashioned to call access to safe toilets for women a “moral imperative” because MishyJDI says so.

news.un.org/en/story/2014/11/484042-ensuring-womens-access-safe-toilets-moral-imperative-says-ban-marking-world-day

This is concerning.

I often shop at Sainsbury’s, I’ve used their toilets before.

The Sainsbury’s nearest me has the toilets down the end of a long L-shaped corridor near the cafe - it feels very isolated once you’re round the corner of the corridor - and the toilets are the sort where there’s several cubicles (with the walls starting several inches off the floor) and a shared hand washing area.

I wouldn’t feel at all comfortable sharing the toilet area with any random man. I’ve come across enough creepy boundary pushing men to feel confident that all the male customers would behave in a safe and respectful way.

CharlieParley very well put.

Thanks Charlie, great post. You always articulate things so well...

I've called Sainsbury's, cancelled my delivery pass and told them why. The nice lady on the phone sighed "oh, right, gender".

Morrisons have a new customer!

Charlie 👏👏👏

Has Waitrose been captured? I haven't been in a supermarket since lockdown started last year, but one Waitrose I used to use was vigorously protecting its women's toilets about four years ago.

The sign on the doors were 'Men' & 'Women'. Then one day I noticed a piece of paper taped to the door of the women's loo saying 'Please note: only women & children may use this toilet'. I remember going back to DH who was waiting in the checkout queue, telling him & saying, "Well, who else would be trying to use the Ladies, haha?". At this, the checkout operator gave me a look. I didn't understand what was going on, as I hadn't heard of gender ideology.

Soon after, I did hear about it & so I understood the next development, which was that the 'Women' sign was overlaid with one saying 'Female', though the 'Men' sign was left as it was. Not long after that, the 'Female' toilets were repeatedly out of order & seemed to take a long time to put right.

I was quite shocked at the time, because although I'd immediately seen the danger to women & children from gender ideology, I'd comforted myself with the somewhat 'do it to Julia' thought that these things would only take hold in London & maybe places like Brighton - but here they were in my little patch of Nowheresville! The gender wars were being fought in Waitrose toilets.

@CharlieParley
*If you want to remove a safeguard you must first show that the reason the safeguard was put in place for no longer exists.

Male violence against women and girls remains endemic. Female-only toilets where a strong social taboo used to keep out all but the most brazen of predators, exist for a reason.*

Brilliantly put.

Somewhere yesterday I read the suggestion that women's toilets should remain single-sex/female only, & all the women who say, "Oh, but I don't mind who comes into the toilets with me," should use the men's toilets because they don't mind sharing with males.

I know it's been said before, but it really makes sense, stated like that. Also, queues in the ladies would go down, TW would be validated & not outed (females use those toilets too), & if (God forbid) there were to be an attack on a TW, female allies would be on hand to protect the TW & fight off male attackers - because that's what we're told should happen in women's toilets.