English Heritage, 'unisex' toilets with main door removed.

[OneOfThoseOldFashionedWomen]

mobile.twitter.com/EnglishHeritage/status/1531548633744670721

This is not a unisex toilet, despite the weird sign.

Why have they taken the main door off?

These are not enclosed toilets, these breach the equality act.

Fwiw taking the main door off does actually make it a bit less awful. I've mentioned this before, but we have mixed sex toilets at work, and the tiny, closed off, sink area (two toilets, one sink) is the bit I hate the most (and that's sharing with only 20-25 colleagues, only half of whom are men, and all of whom I know and trust).

The marketing people at EH might want to take note. Memberships if these types of organisations is generally thought of and purchased by women. There are lots of other choices out for them, lots if £££ being spent in advertising. The more women push back on this and make other women/families aware the better as hopefully it will affect their bottom line. After all who wants to send their DC into a mixed sex toilet on their own.

I’ve emailed and cancelled my membership. I’ve clearly stated that while they do not prioritise the safety and dignity of females, I cannot support them with my membership.

I posted this a year ago.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4284745-English-Heritage

I absolutely despise those type of signs. People with any kind of processing difficulty can often struggle to understand picture signs (much better to also have ladies / gents etc). These potentially make toilets inaccessible to a large group of people simply because they can't work out if they should be in there or not.

I don't agree, it makes it differently awful. Feel less enclosed with males, but feel more exposed and less dignity. Especially if sharing sinks.

So it is overall policy then. I haven't yet had a reply about my email.

Taking the main door off might discourage people from looking over the top of cubicles but does nothing to decrease the risk of a mobile being slid underneath, as has happened before in mixed sex facilities.

Also what about your milder perv that gets a kick out of hearing a woman use the toilet.

This is what I'd be thinking about and why should I play a part in that?

Are we set for a big increase in toxic shock syndrome when girls are too embarrassed to change their tampons in mixed sex toilets springing up at schools and everywhere?

In newer toilets where I live, quite a lot no longer have outer doors. So very much like in the pictures, cubicals inside, but they are single sex.

What is typically different is that the way the entrance is set up you can't see right in as easily. THis looks like a standard set up where they have just taken the door away.

But as far as I understand it, the reasoning for the door is that it is easier for people and employees to hear if something nefarious is going on, typically vandalism. And also they can avoid dealing with automatic doors which are problematic if they are not glass.

Maybe the reasoning was the same here, and the all gender idea was a seperate thing? Or, they thought it would be safer for an all gender toilet to be more open to the hall. Which might be true though I'd really rather just mens and ladies.

Pickering castle is this? That explains something then. We were there today and the garderobe tower stinks of piss and is obviously being used for what it was originally intended. Seems people would rather trust 13th century facilities and piss in the moat than use these.

But as far as I understand it, the reasoning for the door is that it is easier for people and employees to hear if something nefarious is going on, typically vandalism.

The would be hearing my explosive (not to mention stinky) poo-splosions then. Or not because i wouldn't go somewhere with these types of toilet.

To the EH Chief Exec:

Dear Ms Mavor

As an EH family member I was alarmed to read reports that at an EH site - I believe Pickering Castle - the women’s toilets had been replaced with a mixed sex toilet facility which clearly does not provide the privacy, safety or dignity that women and girls clearly require. I attach below a photo of the facility in question.

Please can you confirm the reasoning behind this decision and also detail the risk assessment you undertook? In particular:

a) the risk assessment relating to safety given that women and girls have been shown to be at greater risk of sexual assault in unisex/mixed sex facilities: www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

See also p47-66 of “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado Pérez in which she outlines the risk of assault by males in mixed sex facilities and the rise in the use of spy cameras.

Perhaps most alarmingly of all, EH have removed the outer door to the toilets suggesting that they are fully aware of the increased risks which mixed sex toilets present but consider this risk to be adequately mitigated by removing the door!

b) I presume that a disabled toilet is now the only facility on the site where women can go to the toilet/deal with diarrhoea and other embarrassing continence issues/wash out moon cups/deal with other menstruation issues or even miscarriages in privacy - none of which is clearly possible in the EH facilities pictured below. What assessment have you conducted in relation to your disabled visitors of the inevitable increased use of the disabled facility by non-disabled visitors?

You will no doubt be aware of the battles that women have had to fight to be afforded public toilet facilities, and of the way in which men attempted to subjugate women and restrict their ability to participate in public life by resisting providing women’s toilets:

www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-of-Womens-Public-Toilets-in-Britain/

How bitterly ironic it is that EH has taken such a retrograde step and is once again denying women a right to safe and private toilet facilities.

In addition to providing specific answers to my queries above, please can you confirm if English Heritage will now revert to offering single sex toilet facilities, or if we can expect to see an increase in mixed sex facilities such as the one below?

It appears that English Heritage is treating the needs of its female visitors with contempt, and as such a number of your members have already cancelled their membership.

I await your response so I can decide whether I too will cancel our family membership.

Yours sincerely

Just to point out EH is now a charity and I don't think it receives government funding any more. The split from the govt was announced in 2013 and govt funding reduced over a number of years, I think the idea is that they should be entirely self-funded by now. Although covid could have messed things up of course.

I used to work at EH and I suspect that if they could have separate toilets at Pickering then they probably would do, but in fairness working within the constraints of historic properties can be difficult. We had separate male/female/accessible toilets at most of the properties I worked with, but a few where there was only room for one toilet or set of toilets because of the nature of the site.

And a couple of sites where there was no toilet at all, one of the sites was unmanned and quite remote so your toilet option was literally a bush in that case!

Seems people would rather trust 13th century facilities and piss in the moat than use these.

Well, quite. Even if there's no legal requirement to provide toilets, a lot of places do simply because the alternative would be a lot messier and smellier.

If you're not providing toilets people want to use, they will go somewhere else. And you may not like where that is.

I can certainly imagine some men would rather have a piss in a quiet corner with no-one around than in an exposed room full of women.

Not quite meaningless.

Mixed-sex refers to a multi-entry facility which can be used by males and females at the same time.

Unisex refers to a single-entry facility which can be used by either males or females going one after the other.

There are separate building regulations for each type of sanitary facility and a place like Pickering Castle is most likely in breach of those with this toilet, because the number of toilets provided for male and female visitors is strictly regulated according to a given formula based on type of venue and expected visitor numbers. These calculations go awry when single-sex, multi-entry facilities are turned into mixed-sex ones.

(Almost all accessible toilets are unisex facilities.)

These calculations go awry when single-sex, multi-entry facilities are turned into mixed-sex ones.

Which is presumably a large part of the point - gender bollocks is the excuse, not the real motivation?

If you can claim all your toilets are usable by both sexes, then the claimed number of toilets for each sexes immediately doubles, so you meet your requirement with half the total number of toilets.

strictly regulated according to a given formula based on type of venue and expected visitor numbers

Actually, do you have a link to a source for what would be applying here?

Is it as simple as loose formulation - something like "0.3n male", "0.4n female", "0.01n accessible" toilets?

So they think they can get away with counting toilets under both "male" and "female", so only provide "0.4n" rather than "0.7n" total by just waving a "mixed-sex" wand?

Very surprising that English Heritage would do this. Not a bit surprising that women are so upset on Twitter.

Yup, that is a downside, both for the user and the people outside. Though I guess toilets with stalls aren't great for privacy either.

In general trying to do conversions without making things up to the standard the conversion requires isn't all that effective in most cases.

That's a great letter @girasol