Man in women's loos - did o overreact?

[MakeTeaNotWar]

Went to a live music venue last night. In a very woke seaside town on the south coast for context. At the end of the night, I popped to the loo before leaving for home. As so often happens, the queue for ladies was lengthy, no real queue for the gents.

I joined the queue and noticed the person in front of me wasn't a man just keeping his partner company while she waited as I first thought, but a man waiting to use the toilet. He was not a trans woman, he was a man and a drunk one at that.

I told him he was in the wrong queue and pointed to the gents. He said he wanted to use these toilets. I asked why, he said they are gender neutral so he can. (I don't know if they are - they probably are as they had a multitude of arrows on the door.)

I said I am a woman needing to use the woman's facilities and I would do so, ahead of him.

The queue of women turned on me and said I couldn't block him, repeating these are gender neutral toilets. I said I cannot use a urinal and indeed went in front of him to use the loo first. When I had finished, I called the woman behind him to come forward and use the loo, which she did.

The other women very cross with me for blocking him and asserted he was perfectly entitled to use these toilets.

Did I do the wrong thing? I've thought about contacting the venue to understand what their loo provision is and asking was it right to have a man in the ladies (or are they gender neutral? Can anyone use the "gents")?

Thanks for reading long post

@GreyhoundG1rl

Yeah, but it pretty disingenuous to claim he was just following the "rules". Op pointed out that the gents loo was over there and had no queue and he insisted he wanted this one. The one which did have a long queue; of women.

The sign was for an all gender/sex toilet, and so he's entitled to use it. It's not normally a thing to query why a stranger chooses one facility over another. Who knows what his reasons were, I agree they were very possibly in bad faith, however if they weren't and he's just clueless, this interaction isn't likely to make him rethink. It also clearly didn't make the other women in the line rethink.

The fault really lies with the idiots who put the sign there, and they are the ones who should be challenged.

So, they only put this 'gender neutral' sign on the women's toilets? The only single sex toilet lost was the women's? To allow males, for whatever reasons, to access it.

While the chappies kept their space, with a line of urinals in the public area to avoid queues for the guys. Innocent inclusive motive for the women's sign change, my foot.

I don't think toilets should be mixed, I think it makes women even more vulnerable, you might end up with a rapist in there hanging around until most people have gone.

I notice @LobsterNapkin is studiously ignoring the motivation behind the man's actions.

Why might that be?

Can't believe the other women didn't support you

So basically you were telling someone they couldn't use a gender neutral toilet .

Ha! 😆

Yes, you do understand OP correctly. The whole thread has been about just that!

The thing is, he shouldn't NEED telling.

Even if you think "gender neutral" toilets are acceptable, basic concepts of "be kind" and "inclusivity" should mean that a man wouldn't dream of increasing the queues for the only facility provided for women when he can perfectly well use the other facility provided specifically for him.

The guy's a fucking asshole, at best.

@rwalker

So basically you were telling someone they couldn't use a gender neutral toilet .

Nope, she was in the line for the female sex neutral toilets. She told the male that there was no line at the male sex neutral toilets and that he could use them.

Good for you OP! I'd have done the same too. Men do not belong in the ladies toilets.

Is there not a requirement for sex segregated spaces? Are gender neutral loos not meant to be fully enclosed

Good for you OP

We all need to be a bit braver and stand up against this misogynistic nonsense.

Women need single sex spaces for their safety and are entitled to them under UK law.

'Gender neutral' is a meaningless term but if organisations want to use it they can make the mens loos 'gender neutral' and therefore not force anyone to be in an unsafe space.

@iguanadonna

Can't believe the other women didn't support you

A lot of women are absolutely lost, and being really damaging to other women, for all sorts of reasons.

The patriarchy loves gender identity ideology. Many women are buying into it because:

Fear and compulsion
Social contagion via social media
Internalised misogyny
They've been educated to, in schools, colleges and universities
They have 'had the training' at work which misrepresents the actual law
They have been socialised to try to 'be kind'
Some want to be edgy
Some are socially lost and see a route to specialness through this ideology
It's basically fashionable
Naked self-interest in some circles
And a few are just arseholes

And many other reasons.

Agree @TrevorFountain

Look at the conditioning of the women formed a single line while there were 2 toilets blocks available.

If they truly believed that both toilets were mixed sex

• they would have never got into the longer line to begin with *stepped out of the line and used the mens/ mixed sex toilets as the wait time was shorter.

At a guess the womens were gender neutral due to the cubicals so you still have privacy. The mens have cubicals so are not afforded the same privacy.

Still I think toilets need to be either male or female. No inbetween nonsense.

"At a guess" is good enough for us, Jo Public. But not for any organisation choosing to take this step.

They can't guess, they have laws and guidelines to follow. Like many others the setup OP described doesn't seem to adhere to them.

That isn't good enough and needs to be challenged.

Men’s toilets usually have cubicles and urinals for obvious reasons - unless this is a very unusual set up when men go into the women’s toilets to use the gender neutral cubicles if they want to pop (or whatever else they decide to do )

It appears here that women are expected to give up their space for men (of all genders) - no surprise there.

Pop? Poo

Question for the people using gender neutral toilet rather than mixed sex toilet

Why do you decide on which term to use?

I’ve seen people comment previously saying that there’s a difference between unisex, mixed sex and gender neutral but I can’t remember it, does anyone have it handy, please?

@SolasAnla
So basically you were telling someone they couldn't use a gender neutral toilet .
Nope, she was in the line for the female sex neutral toilets.
She told the male that there was no line at the male sex neutral toilets and that he could use them.

If there labeled as gender neutral the anyone for whatever reason can choose to use them .
If you don't like it complain to the people who organised it not the people doing nothing wrong .

If they were gender neutral then you had no right whatsoever to ban someone from them.

Rosa Parks had no “right” to remain in her seat… but look how that instance of a woman saying “no” turned out.
It’s a very gentle but powerful political stance.

No, keep standing up to men who think they can take over women’s spaces for whatever power trip they’re on or spurious reasons they putting forward.

It’s the only way the people who organise this nonsense will take note.

If there labeled as gender neutral the anyone for whatever reason can choose to use them

Yes. All fine and dandy until you come to your senses and remember why single sex provision exists in the first place.

Or do you have no issue whatsoever with the discomfort of women and girls? Let alone the increasing number of incidents of those 'things that never happen'?

See the current news about a school in Brazil...