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.

I rang the Barbican at the end of last year to check because someone was taking me there and I was anxious about the toilets. They said that they have single sex toilets and I shouldn't believe everything I see on social media. I had seen photos on twitter. Apparently the Barbican cinema has gender neutral toilets so either the photos were from there or they made changes.

Somerset House has mixed sex toilets which I felt very unsafe in. They were empty which didn't help.

All of these places rely on grants which probably require them to sign up to a raft of conditions, such as that they won't discriminate against various groups. And yet they are.

I've never seen a murder, does that mean it never happens?

I see this argument a lot ('rapists don't need a sign on a toilet door to rape!'). It's asinine and easily disproved. It relies on the assumption that 1) the only thing to worry about is rape and 2) all rapists are easily identified pillaging monsters who care nothing for consequence, marching through the world raping everyone in their wake.

There are a huge number of offences that gender neutral toilets enable at very low risk to the offender: upskirting, voyeurism, flashing, public masturbation, threatening behaviour, harassment, assault etc. No woman can take sanctuary from her attacker in a public toilet and no-one is empowered to remove the offender from a place he is entitled to be.

Sex offenders aren't stupid or lacking social skills- if they were far more than 1% of them would be convicted. They groom, gaslight, manipulate, exploit opportunities and find loopholes and ambiguities. ("Me? I wasn't flashing, I was just using the toilet, is that a crime now?") Gender neutral toilets provide a safe space for these men - they can invade the privacy of women and children, get off on being next to women using the toilet and have a cloak of normalcy / respectability.

🙄

the poster asked me when did this happen

i asked “what”? Because I’d never seen or referenced I’d seen anything happen

A friend and I thankfully found the nearest loo when visiting a hospital recently. A guy was in there washing his hands but lots of cubicles and we were desperate. On leaving, whilst pondering aloud on the modern world, I noticed on the door that we'd actually used the mens lavatories. Quite glad he didnt kick up a fuss about us.

Thanks Timefortea4, I'll go to the Barbican & check it out. I always felt 100 safe in their basement women's toilet as it's so huge - always packed.

@Whatislove82

• A girl leaves the queue in a mixed sex toilet.
• A woman opens a mixed sex toilet's door, does not enter and closes the door again.

How would you identify their reasons? Just because nothing striking happened, doesn't mean nothing happened. The girl in the first sentence was a survivor of sexual abuse who got overwhelmed by anxiety due to having to queue with men. In the second scenario, the woman had an experience where she was in a cubicle and upon looking up saw a man looking over. She can no longer use mixed toilets due to that. Both scenarios are based on real life experiences of women and girls I know.

My teenage daughter went to a mixed sex toilet yesterday and a man left his cubicle door open while urinating. My daughter was scared and shocked. Both she and my husband were to embarrassed to confront that man and also prevented me from doing so. From that man's point of view nothing happened. Do you agree?

Around the corner from where I live, a hidden camera was found in a toilet cubicle. Hidden cameras are difficult to identify (have a look on Amazon). Mixed sex toilets mean that men so inclined can just go into a cubicle, install a camera, come back two hours later, pick up the camera and upload images to the internet - and nobody will ever know. But something happened.

As above. Twice men have left the cubicle door open. Once when I was with my children. When I went to complain to staff they said it was always happening.

This

But the invites help. A burglar doesn’t need a key to do burglaries, but if you hand out copies of your front door key to everyone in town, you will get burgled a lot more.

Gender-neutral toilets facilitate sexual assault and rape. That is why women don’t like them. This isn’t complicated.

Look at what happened to Scott Smith’s daughter, and in particular, look at the way after the rape her school and the authorities ignored and abandoned the 15 yr old rape victim because of the influence of transactivism. Thank god that Judges are still aware of the law, shame that schools aren’t.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11208597/amp/Judge-removes-DA-case-dad-daughter-raped-trans-boy-school.html

Yes but that’s suggesting there are many people out there who would burgle but the only thing that is stopping them is not having a key. And I don’t think that.

I think that the overwhelming and badly majority of burglars would burgle irrespective of weather given a key. And I suspect the same in this scenario. Any man wanting to rape or abuse a woman in theatre toilets is someone who was going to do that with or without a key

I work in theatre, and would say to anyone who isn't happy - let theatres know! Tell them if it is deterring you from coming, or if you do go provide feedback afterwards, and tell them that your visit is spoiled and it will stop you coming again. In some theatres (and the Lyric Hammersmith is one) there are some single sex toilets, but they're not as easy to find and there aren't enough of them - so provide that feedback as well. Everyone is worrying about audiences at the moment, so its a really good time to make constructive comments about why some sectors of the audience aren't happy!

Thank you, I am actually going to do this today.

What do you and your colleagues think about it?

@Whatislove82 It really depends - there are lots of younger staff who'd be very positive about developments like gender-netural toilets, and many more who, because we're working in an area that has always been very inclusive around gay people, don't look beyond that and just assume anything spun as "anti-trans" is also anti-gay and therefore a Bad Thing. I'm freelance now, so can't be too direct or I wouldn't get work.

This is a bonhers post. You are no more at risk of a being acousted by a man in a cubicle than anywhere else. The sinks are outside you have a private cubicle.

You also have femaje only ones to choose from you are just looking for things to be outraged at. Just use the toilet you feel most comfortable in.

It's not just about being 'acousted' though. When i was growing up the local swimming pool had a change village with cubicles. The boys used to climb on the seat and look over the top, or try and peer under the bottom to watch us get changed.
Imagine how much easier that would be now, just slide your mobile under a bit, et voila. A photo/ video.

That's not going to happen is it? There are queues of people outside. I'm fairly sure someone would see someone bending down taking photos. ....
The doors are to the floor. Even if they could get a phone underneath. How would they take a photo. It's tricky enough doing a selfie pressing the button while aiming it right.

You are imagining a problem thats unlikely to exist.

You have the option of the female only one ...go to that if you are worried.

I

Have you been to all the theatres in the world to know they have an option of v female only, and doors that go to the floor? My local theatre toilets, have gaps top and bottom.
And if they decide to make the toilets 'gender neutral' there won't be any female only ones.
You're Betty naive if you think things like that don't/ won't happen.

millicent

a friend had someone put their head and phone underneath the door at a changing village a few years ago, ive seen male teenagers looking over the tops of the cubicles as well

and the doors at the theatre in our local city don’t go all the way to the bottom either, or the local towns shopping area (shopping village has awesome toilets i gotta say)

Oh and obviously the man taking pictures of my friend was in the other cubicle…so noone outside could see what he was doing

Hope Mill in Manchester has gender neutral toilets but it was a pointless exercise because women and girls all went to one while men and boys went to the other - I find the two sexes tend to naturally segregate anyway, it wouldn't cross most men's minds to go into women's spaces. What was really problematic though was the presence of teenage schoolchildren attending the show because the venue was exposing them to known risk given the widely publicised massively increased risk of danger in mixed-sex spaces.

I prefer toilets that have gaps on the bottom of the doors. It’s for safety and hygiene. However, it seems universally excepted that you can’t have unisex toilets with them. Even mix sexed toilet enthusiasts realise males could abuse that.

Oh the County Hall loos are really annoying.

When we went to the play in the summer, there was a huge queue for the ladies, no obvious queue for the gents and a fair-sized queue for the "mixed".

I just happened to mention that there wasn't a queue for the gents downstairs and the (middle-aged) blokes all looked a bit sheepish and went down to the gents.

Lots were late returning after the interval (presumably because the women still needed a wee when the bell sounded).