Idea to solve the toilet/changing room 'problem'

[VoodooQualities]

1. Government consults special interest groups (women, trans, disabled, religious etc.)

2. Guidance is issued on best practices for designing and building mixed sex, inclusive facilities that work, as best as possible, for all the interest groups. (So you know, that'd likely be wall to floor lockable doors, no steps or narrow spaces, sinks and showers inside the cubicles), cleaners and other staff (or CCTV?) highly visible in shared areas etc etc.)

3. Organisations when doing refurb or new builds, can choose to (a) implement the guidance, or (b) go for traditional sex-segregated, or (3) gender-segregated facilities depending on their beliefs.

4. Customers and service users can vote with their feet. (Perhaps there's a register so potential patrons can check in advance what the facilities are like.)

5. Organisations are allowed to challenge customers who transgress boundaries, and customers who do so should expect to be challenged.

I would assume that publicly run facilities like pools and council buildings etc should go for the mixed sex option, done in line with the guidance.

Can I have your thoughts?

No, it doesn't. What about the female employees at such businesses, do they have to submit to the owner's personal belief system? Not everyone is in a position to pick and choose their workplace. We have single sex spaces for a good reason and that reason still exists.

We need established guidelines, you cannot leave it to individuals. And furthermore do you really think businesses and organisations need the headache of policing such spaces on top of their everyday business demands?
i think not!

What we have is not broken.

You are trying to fix a problem that has already been fixed. We don't need to see if mixed spaces work. They don't. That's why we have the current provision, and that is why women who don't have access to single sex spaces are excluded.

And as we are seeing already, businesses and organisations are already not providing the single sex services that they can legally provide, leading to women self excluding from services they need because -

1. they are being advised incorrectly by political lobby groups with an agenda
2. they are setting policies from a 'before the law' stance
3. their funding is contingent on them excluding women who require single sex spaces
4. they are threatened and intimidated by TRA's when they do choose to offer single sex services as allowed under the EQA2010.

I'm now personally of the opinion that services should be obliged, under new legislation, to provide single sex services alongside mixed sex services.

That is the obvious solution but transwomen don't just want to pee, they want to be validated (and possibly get off) by being in a woman's space. So making male lavatories mixed sex won't wash - if it's mixed sex it has to be the women's. Problem is the EA2010 gave out gender reassignment rights without thinking about women and then tacked on a right to exclude TWs if the need was proportionate, instead of working from the opposite position, that TWs were excluded and some places might be designated mixed sex (I suppose?) as long as it did not adversely affect women.

I'm now personally of the opinion that services should be obliged, under new legislation, to provide single sex services alongside mixed sex services.

Absolutely this, Waitwhat.

Haven't time to RTFT but it's not always possible to vote with your feet if you want to access a service. I live fairly rurally and the two nearest public pools are both about ten miles away. If both went for 'gender' changing, that reduces choice to nothing.

The university I go to the gym at has 3 change rooms: men, women, and universal. In the universal room, nobody is allowed to change in the open and you have to use cubicles. This would be a great solution as a third space, except its existence doesn’t stop “penis-havers” from using the women’s.

I hate mixed sex floor to ceiling cubicles - they're always smelly (men don't want to aim), men often don't shut the door, just wander in and wee, and I just don't feel very safe, knowing there's massive, lockable rooms to shove people in all around me.

I think what should be pushed is tolerance - men need to welcome other members of their sex into their toilets - 'you can pee next to me' etc. rather than expecting women to put themselves at risk of additional male violence so that some males can avoid weeing in the mens.

A YouGov poll on 27th January 2022
showed that 87% of people wanted separate toilets for men and women.

52% of people wanted separate toilets for men and women

35% of people wanted separate toilets for men and women and a unisex toilet as well

only 7% wanted to just have mixed-sex or “gender neutral” toilets.

45% of people say they feel uncomfortable using a gender-neutral toilet in a public place.

(Source: yougov.co.uk/topics/philosophy/trackers/how-comfortable-brits-feel-using-gender-neutral-toilets-in-public-spaces)

The 2021 Census for England and Wales included a voluntary question “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”. Overall, 45.7 million (94.0% of the population aged 16 years and over) answered the question. In total, 45.4 million (93.5%) answered “Yes” and 262,000 (0.5%) answered “No”.

As the vast majority of over 16s stated their gender is the same as their biological sex making sweeping changes facilities is not a proportionate response. We already have disabled toilets which are unisex.

(Source: www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/genderidentity/bulletins/genderidentityenglandandwales/census2021)

Let’s not waste any more money trying to solve this non-issue.

Agree, especially about the lockable spaces (CCTV in the open area won't pick an incident up immediately because no-one is watching the monitor 100%, or at all) but neither the lockable cubicles in unisex lavatories nor acceptance by men will satisfy TWs as they want to use the ladies for validation and (if they are that term I am not supposed to use, begins with 'a') also because it gives them a kick. But as CowboyHat says there are only c. 200,000, so why all this disruption?

As a poster called lemmein commented on another thread back in October:
If these magic locks on toilet doors prevent sexual assault and intimidation why can't TW just use the locks in the male toilets? 🤔

God the entitlement of these males makes me sick.

It's nothing to do with peeing or being safe but everything to do with power and control over women.

I'm now personally of the opinion that services should be obliged, under new legislation, to provide single sex services alongside mixed sex services.

Yep. Ideally, proper primary legislation rather than a watered-down "guidance" document or even "statutory guidance". That way there is no chance of it being overturned by court cases. Single sex toilets are necessary, and recognised as such by the vast majority of people. If they want to shoe-horn in an additional requirement of new builds having at least one additional mixed sex toilet facility then fair enough. But it must be additional, rather than taking anything away from women.