What can I do about gender neutral toilets in college?

[mightbeasillyquestion]

First off, sorry if this has already been asked but most searches seem to be about workplaces or secondary schools and I'm not sure if the legislation is the same, apologies if it is. I am in Wales if that makes it any different. I am attending an FE college and there are no single-sex bathrooms available at all. There is some downstairs where one side is male and one female but the washing area is still communal, all the others are completely mixed. Firstly, I am confused as to whether this is actually legal as most google searches seem to lead to information about secondary schools. If it is illegal then what can I actually do about it, if anything at all? I have spoken to other girls and women there and they also feel uncomfortable with this. The toilets are the kind where the cubicle door touches the floor but the washing area is communal, I am confused as to whether you just need the enclosed room or if you need the sink in there as well.

I don’t give a fuck about ‘actual statistics’. I care about how it makes women - by far the biggest group of victims of sexual assault - feel. If they don’t feel safe and comfortable using the bathroom, it’s a problem

Interestingly, women aren't the biggest group of victims of sexual assault. Proportionally, LGBT+ people are at higher risk of sexual assault/ violence than women.

1 in 5 women have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Rape Crisis)
Around half of LGBT+ people have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Human Rights Campaign).

I'm not saying there's an easy answer - there isn't. But I think it's important to listen to both sides.

My company have got the balance right by having female, male, mixed sex (with sinks and bins inside each toilet) and a large disabled toilet all on one floor. We also have two showers. This caters for everyone. They are all cleaned very regularly too. I understand that I am very lucky to have these options as most don't. This means that no one feels uncomfortable or disadvantaged.

I must add that the one Transwoman who used to work here (now detransitioned and retired) used the mixed sex toilets.

Interestingly, women aren't the biggest group of victims of sexual assault. Proportionally, LGBT+ people are at higher risk of sexual assault/ violence than women.

1 in 5 women have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Rape Crisis)
Around half of LGBT+ people have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Human Rights Campaign).

Given women are ~50% of the population, and LGBT are closer to ~5%, that is still a much bigger number of women.

Interestingly, women aren't the biggest group of victims of sexual assault. Proportionally, LGBT+ people are at higher risk of sexual assault/ violence than women

The perpetrators are predominantly men yes?

So please enlighten me how lgbt people are safer using areas that are mixed?

You wouldn't he suggesting that straight women and lesbian amd bi women and trabsmen who are female so welcome in female facilities provide some kind of buffer fir gay men and transwomen are you ?

Or are you acting on the " if I can't ne safe no one can" train of thought?

@onelittlefrog - lots of women saying no on here - that in itself not enough??

@cookiemonster2468

I don’t give a fuck about ‘actual statistics’. I care about how it makes women - by far the biggest group of victims of sexual assault - feel. If they don’t feel safe and comfortable using the bathroom, it’s a problem

Interestingly, women aren't the biggest group of victims of sexual assault. Proportionally, LGBT+ people are at higher risk of sexual assault/ violence than women.

1 in 5 women have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Rape Crisis)
Around half of LGBT+ people have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Human Rights Campaign).

I'm not saying there's an easy answer - there isn't. But I think it's important to listen to both sides.

You are mixing statistics here. The Rape Crisis one is for the UK, the HRC one for the US. The HRC stats still show that females are disproportionately affected:

“The CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found for LGB people:

44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 35 percent of straight women
26 percent of gay men and 37 percent of bisexual men experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 29 percent of straight men
46 percent of bisexual women have been raped, compared to 17 percent of straight women and 13 percent of lesbians
22 percent of bisexual women have been raped by an intimate partner, compared to 9 percent of straight women
40 percent of gay men and 47 percent of bisexual men have experienced sexual violence other than rape, compared to 21 percent of straight men.”

www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-community

cookie but those numbers of LGBT people must surely also include natal women, i.e. lesbians, trans men?
This doesn't seem to be comparing like with like.
Unless by LGBT you mean only transwomen.

jellyfrizz

onelittlefrog
If a man accesses the single sex women's loos the women already there can challenge him and demand he leaves

What about my experience of coming out of a downstairs ladies’ public lavatory in an outside, city setting, where I was alone quite late at night, only to see a man standing blocking the narrow stairs who had evidently followed me there. He was exposing himself and masturbating.

He was not trans gender. The point is that at least I was able to react instantly within seconds of catching sight of him as a man and knowing he shouldn’t be there. Rather than hesitating even for a second, as I might have if his presence as a male had been normal.

As it was, because of my speed I was able to rush and barge him and got past on the stairs very fast.

As for ‘challenging’ a few months back there was a video from South America posted showing a school girl being beaten up by a trans girl whom the girl had challenged in the school toilets. It was only another young man who was able to pull him off.

@cookiemonster2468

I said I didn’t care about stats, which are distorted and used to push an agenda when it comes to this issue.

Many women and girls don’t feel safe in mixed toilets. If we had a national poll tomorrow, I would lay money on a majority of women saying that they don’t want to pull their knickers down, change their tampon or put their make up on with unknown males in the vicinity.

And why on Earth you think all LGBT women are on board with losing single sex spaces is beyond me. This is a womens issue, not a straight wonens issue.

Okay so again sorry for the late reply. I haven't read through all the responses yet but I just want to say thanks for taking the time to respond. To those asking why it might be unsafe or make women uncomfortable if anyone could just walk in regardless of the sign, you have a point but there is a better case if someone goes to harass you in a wrong toilet. They can't really use the excuse that they were also just using it. As someone who has experienced sexual harassment I feel it is important for women's safety.

@onelittlefrog it's completely fair enough that you are fine with using shared facilities. Lots of people are. It's one of the reasons lots of younger women are so supportive of trans/nb people sharing their spaces - they honestly are not bothered. When I was younger I happily shared, for example, mixed sex dorms in hostels. Every person has different life experiences and things they are comfortable with. But a lot of people (not just women) do prefer single sex facilities and their reasons are equally valid as yours.

Personally I disagree that someone who is hassling a woman isn't deterred by them going into a female bathroom. No it's not a magic solution but in a lot of cases (e.g just someone feeling uncomfortable or wanting to ring a friend or taxi) it can be a good deterrent. Following someone into a place you are not supposed to be is clearly an escalation which can be a warning sign/enough for a bystander to help or at the worst evidence of intent to harm if an issue was investigated by the police.

There have been some really good initiatives recently, for example in pubs/nightclubs that have posters up in the women's loos saying to ask at the bar if "x name" is working as a code to say someone is making her feel uncomfortable - they will then take her to a safe space and call a taxi etc without making a scene. Same in doctors surgeries or hospitals where they've started putting 2 different colour pens in the toilets with advice that when pregant women do their urine sample (just one example) they write their name with the red pen if they are suffering domestic violence or want to discuss something privately and the doctor can then ask their partner to leave the appointment, pretending it is standard practice.

I've seen these initiatives praised online by the same organisations that are gung-ho for shared spaces and am puzzled that they don't realise the incongruity- I.e they won't be able to use them in gender neutral bathrooms as the abuser will know what's going on!

MopHeaded you're right. As of 27th Jan this year, 87% support retention of separate male and female facilities:

yougov.co.uk/topics/philosophy/trackers/support-for-separate-toilets-for-men-and-women-and-gender-neutral-toilets-in-public-spaces

I think we need to stop calling them "Gender neutral" toilets and call them as they are "Mixed Sex" or "Unisex" toilets

Mixed sex and unisex are different things though. Unisex is, I believe, completely self contained facilities to be used by one person at a time with a lockable door, whereas mixed sex means several people can use the facilities at one time - perhaps separate cubicles (of course) but communal sinks.

@onelittlefrog

If a man accesses the single sex women's loos the women already there can challenge him and demand he leaves

Surely if there is someone behaving untoward in a mixed gender facility, people already there can also challeng and demand that they leave?

And in fact if there are men already in there, they may be able to assist.

I don't really see this argument tbh and thought we were talking about times when there is nobody else there, which would be the same whether it is female only or mixed.

In a single sex set-up, a male entering the female toilets is immediately "untoward behaviour" and grounds for throwing him out. Virtually no men would even consider entering, the social taboo is that strong. In your ideal situation however, you are presumably proposing that we wait until he actually assaults someone or is caught peeping over/under the partitions before throwing him out.

In any case, is it not enough for you that the OP feels uncomfortable? Does she not deserve privacy and dignity?

And of course women who for cultural and religious reasons can’t used mixed sex facilities are completely thrown under the bus by this ideology, but who gives a shit about them, right?

@MopHeaded

And why on Earth you think all LGBT women are on board with losing single sex spaces is beyond me. This is a womens issue, not a straight wonens issue.

I don't think I said that

It's such a shame that this is such a difficult conversation to have without people firing accusations at one another.

I wonder if we will ever find a solution.

@Stinkywizzleteets

I’ve been wondering the same thing. In Scotland

My institution has made 50% of the womens toilets gender neutral, you can guess how many mens toilets were allocated to convert to gender neutral… 0

This is awful. Those flippin' urinals need to be ripped out of the gents. Make everyone wait the same amount of time to get a cubicle to relieve themselves. Women have less facilities and wait longer. It is not by accident.

@onelittlefrog

Wow. So the peeing next door to a bloke, washing hands next to a bloke, you have literally no idea why anyone might feel uncomfortable with that...or any sense that someone harassing you can easily follow you to the loo?

Ok, please don't pile on here, but I'm genuinely interested in what the concern is here.

Surely, if someone if harassing you, they can easily follow you to the loo, regardless of whether the sign on the door is male, female or ungendered - if they are harassing someone anyway they are unikely to care about a sign on a door. They can follow you to any quiet place you might go to, not just toilets.

I'm probably just being completely naive but I would genuinely like to understand this. I am female by the way and have been through all of the misogyny, microaggressions, issues with men in the past etc. which I won't go into. But I still wouldn't have an issue with a man peeing in the cubicle next to me or washing his hands in the sink next to me.

I genuinely don't really understand this position and struggle with it when I see there are benefits of gender neutral toilets for so many people. I actually think they make things a lot more straightforward in many ways. But probably this is just me (shrug).

I know someone who was raped in a women's only loo, she was 9yo at the time. In a National Trust place. Obviously nobody saw him enter the toilets. This was back in the 1980s.

But these days even if someone did see a man go into a mixed sex toilets they couldn't challenge him. But if it was a female only toilet and someone saw him then they could challenge him. So it lessens the risk.

Well the solution is men deal with/stop male violence. Unil that happens women including l &b women will continue to need use amd fight fir single sex spaces. As fir transmen they are welcome in womens spaces as they are adult human.females too. If they use the mens that's on men to sort out.

Its incredibly misogynistic the way that men get mens spaces and its all jsuy mens amd anyone ekse who may not be safe in the.mens.

Just no.

@cookiemonster2468

I don’t give a fuck about ‘actual statistics’. I care about how it makes women - by far the biggest group of victims of sexual assault - feel. If they don’t feel safe and comfortable using the bathroom, it’s a problem

Interestingly, women aren't the biggest group of victims of sexual assault. Proportionally, LGBT+ people are at higher risk of sexual assault/ violence than women.

1 in 5 women have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Rape Crisis)
Around half of LGBT+ people have experienced sexual assault or violence (source: Human Rights Campaign).

I'm not saying there's an easy answer - there isn't. But I think it's important to listen to both sides.

So there are women. And nobody who is LGB or T+ is female! Amazing!

Is this all self declared and self identified by the way?

I don't think cookiemonster2468 has any idea what they are talking about. Women are statistically the biggest group that are sexually assaulted and that includes some of the LGBT too because guess what some of them are biological females as well!!

There should have been a call for a third space, why the need to go after women's spaces!!

@mightbeasillyquestion I work in an FE college and I think a lot of students and staff would have concerns about this. I would start by raising it with your tutor if you have one - anyone who is assigned to you as a learning support. Ask them what the best way to make a complaint about this is. If you have a lecturer you trust and get along with, ask for their advice also.

Colleges tend to take complaints quite seriously when they come from students, especially if you are willing to keep pushing on it. Is there a student association or student union at your college? They might help (but they might not - approach with caution!) It would be a good idea to talk to other students so that you have some back up.

Really what they've done here is limit women's ability to access education. If you want to go to college, you have to share loos with males. That is going to put a lot of women off.

Have they considered the needs of muslim students? They will not be able to access the college if there are no single sex facilities.

I don't know about you, but in my college there are many students with mental health problems, and lots of male students who have criminal convictions and anti-social behaviour. It's not fair or appropriate for females to have to share in those circumstances (or any circumstances, imo).

The college probably also has a percentage of students with additional needs, who are particularly vulnerable. What is being done to safeguard them?

It's also very strange if they expect female staff to share with male students, and vice versa. There are many, many safeguarding concerns here.