How do I go about complaining about gender neutral toilets?

[Coconutmeg]

My young daughter felt uncomfortable to find herself waiting alone with 2 men at gender neutral toilets. I feel the venue has gone about the layout all wrong with the waiting area not being public. It’s a popular country park tourist destination. I want to make noise on say Twitter, trip advisor etc but at the same time think it would be reckless to point out unsafe places. And I just think if I email the country park it’ll be totally ignored.

Call them what they are "mixed sex toilets" - it makes the problem more apparent to people unfamiliar with the issues.

https://sex-matters.org/

Wouldn’t the men have been there anyway? The men & women’s toilets are usually side by side when the toilets are not unisex. How old is your DD? Perhaps she is too young to be going by herself.

I don't see how. Usually the men would wait in the men's toilets and the DD in the women's.

She’s 10. I didn’t know they’d changed the toilets since we’d last visited or I’d’ve made her wait til I could go with her.

Usually in country parks where they have uni sex toilets, the toilets don’t have an indoor waiting area within them. Everyone is sort of outside and the toilets are self-contained locking toilet plus sink room with an exterior door to the outside.

I’ve not ever seen unisex toilets done where it’s a large room with multiple cubicles and sinks where both sexes wait indoors in that one large toilet room for a free cubicle.

Yeah, this one has an indoor waiting area.

And they’ve obviously recently spent a big load of money making them like that (as I say, they weren’t like that last time), so possibly more will go that way

Please tell your dd that she never needs to feel she must tolerate her instinctive discomfort. If anything like this ever happens again, she should turn around and come straight back out to you.

Don't worry about publicising the location of this perv's palace. Pervs will find it quickly enough, and it's far better that other women and parents are warned about it.

So you want to complain about something that didn’t happen?

It did happen - did you miss that bit?

Sex Matters might be able to help - there absolutely needs to be a push back on mixed sex toilets.

The kid said she “felt uncomfortable” due to the presence of men. Next time she’s in a multisex bog she’ll probs be fine as it won’t be a surprise, no?

Seems a bit obtuse to ignore the vulnerability of the girl waiting by herself with two men, out of sight of anybody else.

One only has to engage one’s brain to realise the potential.

That’s right - she felt uncomfortable. No 10 year girl should ever feel uncomfortable using toilets because she’s been forced to share the space with grown males.

HTH.

Why would not being surprised equate to the 10 year old girl no longer being uncomfortable?

This is one of the many problems with unisex toilets. It’s horrendous and you should absolutely make a fuss. Try the local newspaper?

Maybe you should teach your DD some reality and resilience. most places have unisex toilets now and will only increase. And that the vast vast majority of men are normal people.

Most mixed sex toilets don’t have a waiting area out of public view though. Maybe you missed that part.

No, it’s not up to girls to be made to feel they lack resilience if they feel uncomfortable/unsafe/whatever - that’s an outdated, misogynistic view that needs stamped out. The more people raise this and push back about the dismantling of female spaces the better. Let’s not force women and girls to accept discomfort to accommodate males.

@PinkRoses1245 maybe the gender addled grievance gerbils driving the elimination of safety and privacy for women and girls could get some resilience and use the toilets of their sex?

Please name the place, OP. Then I shall email to complain as well.

I assume you leave your front door wide open when you leave your house? Most passers by are normal non-thieving people.

One of the visitor centres at Galloway forest is a room with two or three toilet cubicles, its mixed sex, so yes you all wait in the room until a cubicle is free.
I was not impressed when I found that out and the loo I used was covered in piss. I've not been back. Which is a shame, it's a really pretty centre.

Ugh that is a shame. Thankfully we don’t have any like that around here. It’s only self contained one toilet and sink per locking room that are gender neutral. The shitty thing is that in some places they used one of the disabled toilets to create them.

"I’ve not ever seen unisex toilets done where it’s a large room with multiple cubicles and sinks where both sexes wait indoors in that one large toilet room for a free cubicle."

I have. Aviva Studios, home of the Factory International art studio in Manchester.