‘Gender neutral’ / ‘gender neutral with urinals’ toilets at Lyric Hammersmith

[ArchMemory]

I know there have been many discussions here about sex / gender and toilets. But I wanted to share my recent experience. Of course scroll on by if this isn’t of interest.

My teenage son and I recently went to see a play at the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith. I should have left more time for the journey and we were in a rush when we arrived and both wanted to visit the loo before the performance started.

The loos we found were near the bar and there were two sets: ‘gender neutral’ and ‘gender neutral with urinals’, so clearly what used to be women’s and men’s. There was a sign saying where you could find alternative non gender neutral toilets but we didn’t have time to go looking.

There was a long queue for ‘gender neutral’ (mainly women in the queue) and no queue for ‘gender neutral with urinals’. My son and I stood there hesitating. A man came out of ‘gender neutral with urinals’ and said to my son something like “go in there and the women will leave”. I joined the queue for ‘gender neutral’ and after hesitating a bit longer my son did go into ‘gender neutral with urinals’ but then left again and joined the queue for ‘gender neutral’. He told me later that he didn’t feel comfortable using the urinal with women walking past.

This set up just seemed to be the worst of all worlds for everyone except a very small number of people who wouldn’t feel comfortable using toilets marked men’s or women’s. Very few people (men or women) wanted to use ‘gender neutral with urinals’ and the queue for ‘gender neutral’ was longer than it even usually is for the ladies at the theatre. I was also conscious that women might not have been comfortable with him in those toilets, but he wasn’t comfortable in the other toilets which I could understand and he used toilets he was entitled to based on the signage.

At the interval my son found the men’s toilet and used that for preference.

I wanted to share because it was actually my first time experiencing toilets with this set up (converted from men’s and ladies rather than truly gender neutral single cubicles) and it just struck me how totally unsatisfactory it was.

Perhaps thats what needs to happen. All the time. These places clearly prefer any male voice, over actual women's voices, so perhaps making men unable to pee might make the places stop and think again.

Another small issue is that it is very confusing, particularly if they use symbols which aren’t clear. Every time I have been in a gender neutral toilet (floor to ceiling cubicles with a space for waiting outside) men and women have wandered in and out and not known where to go or if they were in the right place. One man turned on his tail seeing the setup and a bunch of women in the toilets. My friend says she hates coming out of the loo at work to see her male colleague just outside (not in a creepy way, he doesn’t have much of a choice either).

That sounds a bit like the loos at a Eurocamp site in the south of France that I stayed at in the 1990s. All the toilet blocks were non-gendered. I went in to use the loo and there were men in there peeing into urinals and a woman standing topless and having a strip wash at one of the basins, all in full view of each other. Nobody seemed to bat an eyelid except for me!

I was going to say it's like the Royal Court. When I was there, there were males in the non-urinal toilets, but no females in the urinal-toilets. Fucking awful.

I would do this too, and tell the men this has happened because nearly all of them stayed silent when women were complaining about loss of single sex spaces, and that they need to start complaining too.

There’s a cafe near me with a gender neutral toilet, you can see through the window of a man is waiting there and they look no more pleased to see me than I am to see them.

Well it'll make it seem like France anyway! In Vichy, we queued for the "Madames" IN the "Monsieurs" and - being France - none of the men and boys happily using the urinals seemed in the least concerned!

Leaving aside the privacy aspect, toilets that men (1) use (yes, including those traditional European ones) are usually(2) also a bit grimier and grimmer than ones used exclusively by women (1)

For this reason I dislike and avoid mixed-sex facilities even when fully private and enclosed.

I don't know if it's because most men (1) don't have to sit/hover every time they pee, or because they don't need to remove parts of clothing in a way that risks contact with seat or floor, that means they don't really think about cleanliness, or if it's because they spend less time in general in there, or just because it's never occured to them toilets can be clean and pleasant if everyone takes a bit of care, but it feels like a little F-U(2) from the men(1) who use it to the women. (1)

(1) sex-based meaning of the word
(2) overall and in general across the cohort - there will of course from time to time be exceptions at the individual level

I was being rhetorical, but totally agree with you.

I have made it my life’s work to complain every single time. Tonight I was told the venue needed to take account of people who might feel uncomfortable. Clearly my feelings on the matter were not important. But the lovely dyke on the door agreed with me in hating these arrangements too.

The Old Vic theatre in Waterloo has done exactly the same. I complained and never received a response. I haven’t been back.

Under these circumstances I'd make an extra special point of using the gents every single time. Men need to be made uncomfortable to the point of squealing about this.

Anyone submitting complaints should also specifically point out that 1. potty parity (equal provision between the sexes as is mandated by law in many U.S. states) requires a ratio of at least 1:2 if not 1:3 stalls in favour of women to equalize wait times. And 2. quite obviously their idiotic arrangement achieves the opposite and hence constitutes open and direct sex discrimination.

Wankers.

Very similar set up in the old vic. Awful. I complained. "Oh we did a survey" I told them if they did an actual survey of the actual audience that evening 99% of the audience would say single sex loos is safer and better. People around me were moaning about it. Definitely puts me off going to the theatre. Funnily enough the Harry Potter play theatre had single sex loos.

If they are going to convert to all gender neutral loos they need to do it properly with floor to ceiling doors on each cubicle and ideally a sink and bin too. That's the only time I ever feel at all comfortable with gender neutral loos.
@Grammarnut @RVEllacott @ThePure and all those who are advocating for enclosed toilets:

I saved the life of someone who had collapsed inside the cubicle of a toilet because I could see their blue hand through the floor to door gap. A person has a stroke in this country every five minutes. Same with a heart attack. One percent has epilepsy. Then you have diabetes etc all the conditions where you are potentially more vulnerable to collapse. Toilet doors have gaps for health and safety reasons.
In addition, enclosed toilets provide the ideal conditions for a no-witness crime. That’s a reason why mix sex toilets are more likely to have a greater rate of sexual assaults. Particularly (because bodies block doors opening inwards) as the safety feature of most enclosed toilets is that the door can be altered so it can be opened from the outside easily.
They are the worst solution for everyone except able bodied people who go to a well supervised public toilet with another person.
By the way the Old Vic ones - I was told they didn’t know how to open them outwards from the outside. So if there was someone in there having a medical emergency there would be know way of knowing or getting to them. You’d have to get special tools to dismantle the frame. Ironic as there’s a famous young theatre/tv actress who collapsed in public toilets from a brain injury but was saved by a lady who noticed who was in the next cubicle - obviously these were a different set of toilets.

Excellent explanation. However, I don't advocate for gender-neutral toilets or totally enclosed toilets, for much the reasons you give, I said that fully enclosed toilets were better than gender neutral but that they had problems, such as that fully enclosed toilets allow for cameras to be inserted and for people to hide in them, as you say. Floor-to-ceiling doors are dangerous because no-one can see a person has collapsed. I fully agree with you and was pointing out that gender neutral totally enclosed toilets are a hazard.

It seems utterly bizarre that the public are having this system foisted upon them, when clearly the vast majority of both men and women don't want it.

I've said this so often I've bored myself 😂 but....
No women anywhere in the world ever campaigned for men to be allowed into women only spaces. The only challenge has been for parents to manage opposite sex children safely in public facilities.
This is a completely male led demand - now aided and abetted by privileged women who will never face the challenge of being alongside predatory men when they're undressed along with some with limited empathy / insight into VAWG.

Don't disagree at all, MrsO.

Yes understand that you are aware of the risks but I think fully enclosed toilets are never a good idea for public, or schools. I would go further and say hospital toilets and disabled toilets also should have a floor to door gap but I know this would be a step too far for most. This is because of the instances of people being pushed or frog marched into these areas. Kings Cross for example, to a poor young girl, where you thought it couldn’t happen with the sheer volume of people just outside the door. Or a young lad in a northern shopping centre. Also, before people collapse they are often confused and don’t have the ability to pull an alarm cord. That’s why people are found quite a while later in disabled toilets or portoloos, a day later in some cases as like a supermarket near me.
We should be trying to reduce the number of private areas by default. Inside schools, the BBC (2015) found there was one rape per school day - the incident quoted was from a broom cupboard. It’s prevention and safeguarding. But now the DfE (Dec 2023) have stated that secondary schools should have enclosed toilets. This is unfair on medically vulnerable children and particularly girls.

Yeah, I probably didn't express myself very well there. Rather than saying, "clearly the vast majority of both men and women don't want it.", it might be more accurate to say, there's is no groundswell of opinion whatsoever to demand change from the traditional system from the vast majority of the public. However, gender-neutral toilets are clearly a bad idea for women. Some men may take the view that GN loos 'give them another option', so may not care. But it's obvious that the impetus for change has come from a small cohort of men.

I can only talk about ppl of my age (20) but I don't think men want this system either.
They joke of course about standing at a urinal and finding someone like me standing next to them, but when questioned seriously they don't want that "possibility" because they fear that I'd call all the other women in to watch.
Yes, that's a simplistic 'take' on the problem, but any argument against such changes is good.

Maybe we should form into groups and have a good laugh and a chat right by the urinals.

I totally understand your son’s discomfort @ArchMemory

Maybe if enough women brave the smell of men’s lavatories there will be a groundswell of complaints from men - enough for theatre managements to reinstate the signs “Men” and “Women.”

Because most theatres haven’t “converted” lavatories to unisex. They’ve simply changed the signs.

Also, there's not the justification there is in (some) pubs, that men are 80% of their customers. In theatres, I'd imagine women are likely to be a majority in the audience.

I don't advocate for mixed sex toilets - I think they're a really crap idea but the toilets I mentioned are, perhaps, marginally better that expecting women to talk past men with their dicks out.

Unfortunately lots of single sex toilets are being designed as fully enclosed now. All the diagrams on the new public toilet designs that come into force this month do not show gaps in the doors or partitions. It is actually specified in secondary schools (since Dec 23) that they are enclosed. When I questioned the DfE on why safety and safeguarding was omitted, they said if any child did die or came to harm due to the DfE specified new enclosed toilet design, it would be the governors that were responsible because the school should know their cohort and design facilities accordingly so that would give them the remit to deviate from the standard. How wonderful to have the ability to predict who and exact time of medical emergencies or assaults inside a private cubicle.

Every minute of not being resuscitated means the chances of surviving go down rapidly. And before strokes/heart attacks/hypos/seizures people can get nauseous and confused so a toilet cubicle is often where they end up.

My repeated messaging about this is because my family experiences mean it’s a cause I am going to keep on fighting, so less people suffer in future. The feeling of regret and powerlessness is overwhelming so I want to do something positive about it. I certainly don’t mean to have a go at individual posters but I just need to get as many people to understand as possible. Enclosing toilets is not the answer - it is a dangerous ‘quick fix’. Door gaps save lives and prevent assaults.