Theatres

[Timefortea4]

The toilet situation is really putting me off going to the theatre. County Hall, for example, have 3 options. One women's toilet, massive queue. One "gender neutral toilet" which has 2 cubicles with sinks outside, so not safe to use, and one women's toilet at the end of a very long corridor behind 2 sets of fire doors. If a man followed you in and attacked no one would hear. I complained about the gender neutral toilets and they said no one had ever commented on them.

Nothing would stop me from strolling in to the gender neutral toilets!

I'd look for a theatre who want women to be part of their customer base & doesn't regard them as props in a mans fantasy.

Toilets in theatres are always lacking, well in older ones. Long queues are the order of the day. Safety is irrelevant, there will be a queue!

There was nothing from stopping a man doing this before now

I think there was an expectation that the women's toilets were for women, and that if a man went in he would be challenged. Now I am both more aware of the men who enjoy/get a thrill out of making women uncomfortable in their spaces, and of men who become violent when challenged in women's spaces. Which all makes it feel much less safe to me that it would have a few years ago.

And a few years ago toilets designed for single sex use were absolutely not labelled "gender neutral".

But they rarely did

and now theyve been invited in

I was at the theatre the other day and theyve changed the loos to unisex, or rather just repurposed the existing rooms

i might write to them and ask the cubicle to urinal ratio

This reminds me of the mass murder case in some US state, possibly Colorado, where the murderer walked down a street with his weapon visible to all. Several people called the police, but the state had passed an open-carry law which allowed a person to carry a gun where others could see it, so the police could not intervene at that point.

They had to wait until he started killing people. It is that time lag which matters in the present context, too. It's not about something as final and awful as murders, and that is not the similarity I see, but the fact that if women are told that raising alarm about a possible male intruder in the toilets is bigotry etc., then alarm will be raised later.

Yes, some men will always want to violate women's boundaries.

The difference is how to deal with it: make it easier for them, or harder. I vote for the latter.

A man with depraved motives and serious intent didn’t need an invite then and he doesn’t need it now

Don’t get me wrong… I think it is utterly farcical this entire nonsense.

but I’m scornful rather than fearful

im not talking about depraved men, im talking about men in general who have now been invited in

there already was a lack of toilets in theatres (mainly for women) before saying that men could join the queue

ive got no problem per se with multi sex, i have with repurposed

so your point is the inconvenience factor? Fair dos.

Ugh. I was at the local theatre recently and whilst queueing for the toilets a few ladies were taking about how much better it will be when the toilets are gender neutral because we won't have to queue any more. <sigh>
I'm not sure how queues will be shorter because surely they'll need to remove the urinals from the mens and replace them with cubicles. There'll be less cubicles than urinals, so less overall. So longer queues surely?

I don't feel comfortable with men in toilets OP. And my 9yo DD often goes on her own these days but I wouldn't allow it in a gender neutral toilet. It's not even just for safety (although that's definitely part of it); men's toilets tend to be filthy as they piss all over the floor!

That said I'm up north and it seems less of a thing here. Recently been to Newcastle Theatre Royal, Sunderland Empire Theatre & Darlington Hippodrome and they all had a decent number of women's toilets (and no gender neutral ones bar the accessible one).

I've noticed it more and more when I'm in London for work though. One co-working space in particular springs to mind - 3 toilets, sinks shared, and the toilets were all filthy. No thank you.

I went to my local theatre last week with a pal.

Yup, gender neutral toilets on our floor - I went up one floor to use the slightly safer single occupancy loos to fibd loads of women there queuing rather than use the gender neutral loos.....

Anyway my pal came back saying she had used the gender neutral loos.... She said she didn't have a problem with tjrm, she was all for tjrm, it was fine, but she did feel as though she had to wash her hands more thoroughly afterwards and she would not have been comfortable with children going in there alone,or teenage girls.

I said, oh right. That does actually sound as though you had a problem, then?

She said erm...... Yes.

The Lyric Hammersmith have only renamed their toilets from gents and ladies to unisex. That means you might walk into a room with open urinals, which is almost an invitation to flashers. No safeguarding. Besides, in their set up women and children are expected to queue behind urinating men, because the only cubicle is that the end of the room. My friend's daughter could also not use the Lyric's (former ladies now) unisex toilets, because she has suffered sexual abuse and is severely traumatised and got too anxious due to the men in the queue.

None of this is compatible with rights to privacy and dignity (also of men who are expected to urinate in front of women and children). There is zero consideration for the needs of traumatised and religious women.

only

i was there in the summer, only went to the ladies as did most men because that was the first door

i was at 7 dials theatre not long after that and joined the big queue for the ladies (ladies and gents both marked as gender neutral) there was a lad behind me and my dad started to join the queue. I said ‘ not this one daddy, the urinals are through the other door’ my dad left swiftly followed by the lad who obviously didnt want to share the loo with a bunch of women

It winds me right up

the signs on the doors at the lyric said (paraphrasing)

gender neutral….8 cubicles

gender neutral…..8 urinals, 1 cubicle

obviously a urinal is of no use or ornament to me and now im in a longer fucking queue cos its full of sodding men

OP you haven't mentioned a men's toilet? Isn't there one?

I went to the theatre recently. Massive queue for both sets of loos at interval.

Staff helpfully shouted that the loos were all "gender neutral". Most but not all the women stayed in my queue, some joined the "other" shorter queue mostly made up of men.

Staying turned out to be the correct choice, since the other "gender neutral" loos, formerly the men's, had urinals, which wasn't made clear. What a treat for everyone, including the women who politely joined the other queue and my male friends who were already in the other queue and also don't want mixed sex facilities.

@RufustheFloralmissingreindeer That is interesting. When I was there, I left the former mens' toilets and went to the former women's toilets. There was a queue with 2 men in it. I told them there were urinals next door. Both smiled, thanked me and left. One of them was gender non-conforming!

It is a myth that mixed sex toilets will cut queues. The Lyric's set up makes queuing longer, because men who could use urinals are now in the queue for (formerly women's) cubicles.

I have experienced men using cubicles in gender neutral lavatories leaving the door open.

and the point about keeping men out of womens toilets is that a man who approaches or goes into women’s toilets can be challenged. If the tpilets are gender neutral there is no way of doing this. Women spend enough time trying to work out which men pose a danger as it is. They absolutely need protected spaces.

So did anyone complain? It's getting madder by the minute.

I have also experienced linger queues at the Barbican because - guess what - men now use the ladies cubicles whereas women don’t want to use the cubicals next to the urinals. It is discriminatory and revolting.