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

@rwalker
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.

Clearly the drunk male had a reason to stand in a line with females when he could have taken less time by using the male sex neutral toilets.

His choice had a negitive consequences for the female in the line behind him as it limited their ability to access the toilet.

The social contract we all have with each other allows us to question the motivation of a male would choose to act in a way which was detrimental to himself and also detrimental to female toilet users.

The social contract also allows any female, who is negatively impacted by the males choice, to politely point that out.

"whatever reason" has never applied to public toilets.

@SolasAnla

The issue is with the set up not the individuals

@rwalker

The issue is with both the individual and the venue.

Its an ignorant decision by the male.
The mens is empty or near empty and the male decided to ignore this and opt to use the toilets females are wait to use.
Just because he can does not mean he had to.
His choice. his action.

[quote rwalker]@SolasAnla

The issue is with the set up not the individuals[/quote]
The issue is, as has been pointed out nearly as nauseum, with both.

You can't absilve the man from his choice. I can't imagine DH, or any other man I know, choosing to do that.

It is not a normal choice.

Gender neutral
Sign means anyone can use them - I would have gone to the men’s and quite often do in venues like these.

So what? It doesn’t matter what you would have gone here.

The issue is with the set up not the individuals

This very same argument was being made by the ex boxing promoter Maloney when asked if it was fair for women to have to compete against male athletes. Maloney acknowledged the advantages to the male athlete but excused it by saying they were just following the rules and therefore they could choose to compete even when they knew it was unfair. So much for a moral compass.

I've had a response from the venue to my enquiry asking them what single and multi sex toilet facilities they provide. Here is the response below, it seems that there is no single sex provision.

We have:

he/them/they 2 x cubicles, 4 x urinals

she/them/they 4 x cubicles

1 x baby-change + toilet (gender neutral)

1 x accessible toilet (gender neutral)

As mentioned up thread, what was ladies is the traditional set up of stalls and shared wash basins. So with the urinals, men have 4 extra opportunities to relieve themselves more than women.

I think this means - and I appreciate clarity on this - that for this bloke to rightfully be in the queue, that he should ID as she / they / them?

Would you challenge this further with the venue?

Sorry mixed sex, not multi!

"Back again to slag off women who don't want men in their loos"

The OP did say the facilities were gender neutral, right?

Would you challenge this further with the venue?

Yes.

Where is their provision for females unable to access mixed sex facilities and are protected by the Equality Act? Due to culture, faith, disability, race? They're not discriminating against those females are they?

And the duty is to be proactive under the Equality Act - not just assume because no orthodox Muslim woman, orthodox Jewish woman, Gypsy, Roma or Traveller woman, Autistic woman, disabled woman, woman who is a survivor of CSA or DV, woman with mental health challenges or PTSD has actually gone up to them, disclosed incredibly sensitive, distressing information to them and questioned their policy that it's fine. Those women will just mostly quietly walk away and be excluded.

They have a duty. They have a responsibility. Inclusiveness is not a trans or male-specific thing.

So, women have to have males in the former 'ladies', which is now mixed sex. Now we know there are a multitude of reasons men wish to use the female spaces. Or, if women don't want to be in that mixed sex space, they can have more mixed sex space of the former 'gents'. With rows of exposed males urinating, and their penis on view. It is great, isn't it?

The urinals need to be whipped out of the he/they/them toilet. They/them could be female and should not have to be exposed to men who are exposed. Also sanitary bins need to go into each cubicle.

Gender taking precedence over biology with women forced to accept men in their spaces. Again.

Yes I’d challenge the venue.

You're already able to give the venue evidence that you witnessed anger, concern and discomfort on the part of women who wanted single sex provision and the conflict of need with a male's.

It's one of the biggest reasons I am prepared to go to front desks and ask for single sex provision. Because I have the confidence, I'm old enough, I'm tough enough, and I know enough about the law and the system. I'm a hell of a lot tougher to exclude than the vulnerable female people who aren't able to stand up for what they need too alongside male people having their needs met. That gives me a responsibility to be a PITA on their behalf until we have answers that work for everyone.

Not just the successful exclusion and silencing of women in a zero sum game.

@logsonlogsoff

Gender neutral Sign means anyone can use them - I would have gone to the men’s and quite often do in venues like these.

I wouldn't have as it would have felt intrusive, and an unfair imposition on any man currently using the urinals.

So mixed sex or urinals for women?

Doesn’t sound good enough to me

Fact: Many female people (let's face it, the group that women's facilities were designed for and 99% of the users) do not like using mixed sex facilities

Fact: female people have never been asked for their views on this, or how this massive change in their daily life meets their needs

There are some who believe that it's important that females must accept and tolerate the discomfort of having their facilities turned forcibly mixed sex. It's like some kind of noble suffering that good and righteous women will offer to others in self sacrifice. This is a sexist as all hell and involves really poor boundaries.

Fact: Female people are told to 'reframe their trauma', to 'learn to cope', to accept their loss of privacy and dignity, and to accept that females being the victims of increased voyeuristic crime, sexual assault and worse is necessary for the benefit of male people. If they cannot do this, or if their needs are incompatible with mixed sex spaces, they must accept that they are excluded from the only space that was available to them, and this is pretty much their fault for having their minority faith/disability/having been abused etc.

Fact: Male people who have uncomfortable feelings ,distress, fears around dignity, privacy and their safety in male single sex facilities are absolutely justified and should never be asked to 'learn to cope' or 'reframe' anything at all. This is just flat out sexism where male born people matter and females don't, and the joke is that this comes from politics insisting that sex isn't a binary thing and isn't important when it's fundamental to the politics.

Why are we still debating that gender neutral is a good idea that is going to work inclusively for everyone, particularly females? It obviously isn't. The obvious answer is gender neutral AND single sex.

So what is the problem?

@MakeTeaNotWar

he/them/they: 2 x cubicles, 4 x urinals
she/them/they: 4 x cubicles
1 x baby-change + toilet (gender neutral) ¥
1 x accessible toilet (gender neutral) ¥¥

¥ social contract that a baby would go to the top of any line as a priority user.
¥¥ social contract that these are only used as accessible toilet.

I would say men have 4 6 extra opportunities to relieve themselves more than women.

The male toilet with a urinal would not meet the regulation for a female use toilet.

male "they"
2+4+4+1+1= 12 units

Female "they"
4+1+1=6 units

So 12-6= 6 additional units for males

Put in a complaint to Licensing Board as their toilets don't appear to conform to building regulations.

Query considering the reframing of men's toilets as "gender-neutral" toilets.

I've been thinking about this. I really don't want to go into an area with urinals because there may be male children unrelated to me, who are currently using the urinals. This isn't appropriate.

Given that, I would doubly want to use the women's, however it's presently labelled. Which means I have more limited access to the toilet than the man the OP encountered.

@HoardingSamphireSaurus

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

Why might that be?

There's no reason to insinuate bullshit. Disagreeing with you does not mean I have some kind of ulterior motive and it's pretty shit to suggest that. It's a manipulative way to interact.

I have no idea what this man's motive was, and neither do you.

But it's pretty irrelevant in the end. As long as places are putting up signs like this, you will have all kinds of people using them like mixed sex spaces, and those people will have a a variety of different motives. Some won't think about it, some will do it because they want to get off being in a woman's toilet, some will do it to virtue signal, some might just because it's the closer space. And probably other things as well.

The problem is making them a mixed sex space. If that happens, people will treat it like a mixed sex space.

If you call peole out for doing what they are being told officially is the right thing to do, nine times out of ten you just piss them off even if the right thing is a stupid idea. And you don't change anything. All that's happened here is a few women now think that people who object to mixed toilets are cranks. Which might feel good but big picture, isn't that helpful.

Hogwash!

[quote MakeTeaNotWar]**@FrancescaContini* @brokenbiscuitsx* Hove, actually! [/quote]
I'm in East Sussex too and I've noticed that several places which are now under new management, have reverted back to single-sex provisions. Apparently, there were 'issues' with gender-neutral loos.

I'm not sure what type of man would want to make any women uncomfortable like that.

At a busy venue, it was likely that some women would feel uncomfortable with males in the toilets.

MakeTeaNotWar it looks like the whole thing is based on identity so that man should have been identifying as she or they, to use that toilet. (which is a ridiculous idea)
It's understandable, tho, that the general public interprets those categories as free-for-all mixed sex.

A man who prefers to join a queue of women, rather than get his toilet visit over quickly in the 'he' toilet, seems a bit dodgy.