‘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.

I posted about gender neutral loos I went in being COVERED in piss, so much so that women couldn't sit down.

MN told me it was probably the women who pissed everywhere 🤨

He told me he didn’t feel comfortable using the urinals with women walking past. We didn’t discuss why he didn’t use or wait for the cubicle (I don’t know how many cubicles there were but someone else on this thread has mentioned there was only one).

I do understand why women might not have felt comfortable with him in the ‘gender neutral’ (formerly ladies) toilets either and ideally he would have put women’s feelings first. But that’s how the toilets were labelled and he’s a self conscious teenager so I’m cutting him some slack on that (I also understand other people might not). And fundamentally the whole set up wasn’t his fault.

When we had more time at the interval he sought out the men only toilets in another part of the building, without any prompting by me - those are the toilets he much preferred to use. And by some miracle my middle aged woman’s bladder was stronger than his so I can’t report on the women only toilets.

I don't think he did anything wrong at all and agree it's the set up at fault.

I did assume he (male) likely had more choices to get what he needed than, for example, you (female), but perhaps that's not the case.

Theatres are particularly crap for this. So many are male/alien or female/alien signs.

Most men are used to being able to use a urinal without often having to queue, and would not want to queue for a cubical. Not the biggest problem in life, but still unnecessary. Urinals aren't particularly pleasant but they are very efficient. And you don't have to clean the toilet before using it, a big plus for many men!

... and in (formerly) men's facilities there is often only one cubicle, which may be occupied for several minutes by one person, not to mention stinking to high heaven - there are a lot of men with bowel problems.

@ArchMemory I can fully understand why your son wouldn't have wanted to use the urinals and risk having a female walk past to get to the cubicle.
We were there with a female teenage friend, and my husband commented that he wouldn't have wanted to use a urinal and risk her walking past (for clarity, you HAVE to walk past the urinals at the Lyric to get to the cubicle. And presumably if it's occupied you are then stood waiting beside the urinals for it to be available - I mean, even just writing that out makes it clear nobody thought through any of this... or if they did, nobody cared).

With hindsight it probably wasn't fair of me to be fuming at all the men using the so-called gender neutral loos, even though they were clearly the former women's loos. It just seemed nuts to see them taking up queue space and time when there was an empty (essentially men's) loo right next door. But I can see why some would have been scared off using that too.
It's clear to me that nobody (male or female) wants gender neutral loos only.

We’ve stopped going to the lyric for this reason (used to go a couple of times a year before - family of five). Had a bad experience two years ago.

I've used and seen that example of a toilet at my local hospital (floor-to-ceiling doors on each cubicle with a sink and bin). You also only access the toilet from a side corridor, so you don't walk into a separate toilet/bathroom and stand in a queue with men. You feel safe and secure, as everyone can see people going in and out of the separate toilet cubicles. Some universities have the same setup.

This is the correct way to implement 'gender-neutral loos'. I'm afraid it's up to women to complain and stop putting up with this nonsense.

I've used and seen that example of a toilet at my local hospital (floor-to-ceiling doors on each cubicle with a sink and bin).

A hospital is one of the last places cubicles with floor to ceiling doors are safe. It's an environment with a higher than normal chance of someone fainting or otherwise losing consciousness unseen and undetected.

Unless there's a system which sounds an an alarm if the door is locked for a longer than a certain of time. And enough staff to react immediately to the alarm. Presumably by hammering on the door and calling to the occupant, then having the means to unlock and open the door if there is no reply.

It would be informative to know the location of the huge number of sexual assaults that happen in hospitals too. Any public place that is private and enclosed is more dangerous as there are no witnesses. If it is unisex - so that there’s no suspicion if a man is in the area - that’s a factor. Which is what has happened in stations and shopping centres, where people are pushed/persuaded into these toilets. Or in nightclubs where women feel ill and are followed in.

There needs to be floor to door gaps so people can see if anyone is in trouble or collapsed and get help. I saved a young woman because of the door gap.

What the point of having defibrillators in public places but then having enclosed toilets? The place that paramedics often are called to is bathrooms/toilets as that’s where people go when they feel ill. The process of elimination puts physiological strain on the body too. On average every five minutes someone has a stroke and someone has a heart attack in this country. There’s a window of opportunity to save people. In the new public toilet designs, enclosed toilets have to have a safety mechanism whereby an inwards opening door can be opened outwards from the outside precisely because bodies stop the door opening. But it also means that someone can let themselves in when you don’t want them to (and you wouldn’t have warning that they are there).
@ThePure @GentleScroller people are not safer and healthier in enclosed toilets. Safe toilets are ones that have been designed with health and safety in mind, rather than these being overridden by privacy.
All the real world evidence shows those toilet designs are dangerous.

The two hospitals in my local area have emergency cords in each toilet and you can unlock the door from the outside. I don't think this arrangement is anything new in regards of floor to ceiling toilet doors or emergency cords in NHS toilets on the wards or in outpatient departments.

When people are having a seizure, stroke or heart attack they do not have the capacity to pull a cord, if they are fitted. Most of the new style enclosed toilet cubicles - such as those in schools- do not have cords.
For those toilets that do have cords, I know of no incidents in my research where someone being assaulted has managed to pull a cord to sound an alarm.

Just to clarify I'm referring to toilet cubicles that aren't within a bathroom. You enter the toilet directly from a corridor. As soon as you open the door you would see if it's occupied, so obviously wouldn't step in. As I've said previously each toilet has an emergency cord and can be unlocked from the outside in case of an emergency. I do agree that gender neutral toilets should not be within a bathroom situation unless all the cubicles are in full sight.

But unfortunately women have been attacked in female only bathrooms because the cubicles are isolated within a bathroom.

A child was assaulted at my local supermarket in this exact way. A man entered the women's toilet and hid in a cubicle waiting for a female to use the other toilet next to him. He kicked the door in and assaulted the girl whilst her mother was in the store.

This discussion is about gender neutral toilets.

If we have to use gender neutral toilets then I would prefer some privacy with floor to ceiling doors, a sink and a bin. I would feel more comfortable and secure if these toilets weren't placed in a bathroom but in plain sight along a corridor.

Regarding toilet door designs, I'm not getting into that discussion that for another thread.

The main safety feature is visibility. The floor to door gap is the major feature to prevent assaults a potential perpetrator wouldn’t risk it. Children have been led into disabled toilets and raped with hundreds of people walking by, metres away but unaware. To be blunt enclosed toilet cubicles have been described as ‘rape cubicles’. We should be reducing the number of them, not increasing them.

@GentleScroller healthwise, unfortunately my previously healthy family member was not so lucky. Privacy cost her. With respect, if you had my experience, you would know it is not a discussion to be dismissed for another thread. I am trying to prevent it happening to anyone else.

As usual it is the most vulnerable who suffer most from these enclosed designs. As I know from experience, that could be any of us at our most vulnerable.

This post is about gender neutral toilets. Whether we like it or not hundreds of private and public institutions have them. I'm discussing how they can be introduced without making people feel uncomfortable. The solutions I've come across at my local hospital and university work.

It's not true that the most vulnerable suffer from these designs. A member of my family has a medical condition that requires them to go to the toilet frequently. They feel less stressed using the toilet in our local hospital, because the cubicle is totally private and has a sink & bin to allow them to clean themselves up. They can take as long as they like, with no interruption or feeling self conscious. This affords them the dignity they need living with this condition and they never have to wait for a female toilet to be available. They use any toilet on the ward.

I won’t return to Manchester natural history museum for this reason. Just one lot of gender neutral toilets without urinals but I was very uncomfortable and so was my teen dd - large queue of men & women for 4 or 5 cubicles. Knowing you have to go in and do your business/change a tampon or whatever with random men standing right outside the door is just wrong. Also pee-covered seats from the men who don’t bother to lift the seat.

Gives me the fucking rage actually.

A shame as we would usually visit once or twice a year and make donations/spend money in the cafe/gift shop.

Vote with your feet!

I do see the safety points, though it's not something I've given much thought to previously.

I have a tendency to faint when unwell - it's only happened 4 or 5 times in my life but two of those times have been in my bathroom at home - I've cracked my head off the door and off the towel rail. I would very much not like this to happen in an enclosed public loo, should illness suddenly strike, but as said above, that is often where you go when feeling ill.

@GentleScroller The design of toilets around the world has had gaps at the bottom of the doors for safety and health (hygiene) as standard. In America they make the gaps bigger and sometimes lengthways, but in this country we traditionally have gaps at the top and the bottom of the door. This is why, when I saw the blue hand through the gap on the cubicle floor - a young woman who had choked on her own vomit in a nightclub, my friends and I were able to get over the door, drag her out and take the vomit from her mouth and get her breathing again. I believe we saved her life. There is examples where men are spiking women in nightclubs, the women feel unwell and go to the loo and are followed.

If you really want I can give you a depressing list of incidents (deaths and assaults) that have happened around the country recently, including hospitals. It is because enclosed toilets are in increasing numbers in total. It is true that the most vulnerable suffer from these designs. People with conditions that lead them to collapse in toilet cubicles include the 1in 100 with epilepsy, those with pots, brain injuries, heart conditions, diabetes etc etc. often for the first time eg. With Emilia Clarke it was a brain anaerysm. You are not going to be seen in time if the toilet is enclosed, and less likely to be heard if you are even able to cry for help. It’s common sense.

It is precisely because privacy has increased in this design of toilets that there are major problems. There is no safety and health justification for their design. In fact when you look at government school design documents, the words ‘safety’ and ‘health’ don’t appear in the toilet design section for secondary schools. It is replaced with ‘privacy’ because they are enclosing secondary school toilets. So, taking one condition for example, the 9-12 pupils in an average secondary school with epilepsy are now at a much greater risk.

Recently there was a University of Bath study on children smoking spiked vapes where a headteacher raised his fear of children having seizures in school ‘bathrooms’, out of sight, where staff couldn't know in order to call an ambulance. ‘Luckily’ ones that had had seizures so far were in the playground.

The government, in their response to enclosing secondary school toilets, have said its governors’ ultimate responsibility to know their cohort (and presumably future cohort) and plan accordingly. I bet parents and doctors would love to be able to have the ability to predict when their children/patients are going to have a seizure/heart attack/stroke. I bet the children would too.

The problem is that policy makers have ignored safety and health. For example, this is the only justification listed for enclosing toilets in the 171page long document the government commissioned to look at toilet design for long term health conditions (relevant quote from an American opinion article referenced): ‘A better solution, supported by many trans activists, and increasingly found in trendy urban nightclubs and restaurants, is to eliminate gender- segregated facilities entirely and treat the public restroom as one single open space with fully enclosed stalls.’

Attached is an example of what happens when designs go wrong:
Unsafe and unhygienic toilets

Horrendous IMO and just outrageous that womens needs are being bypassed, and actually causing at best discomfort and at worst harm or exclusion from going.to places. I am sure there are women who won't wish to visit this venue again after that experience.

Yes that seems to be the line. I got a response like that when I complained about not having access to even a single women only toilet at a town hall event I attended. So basically I haven't been to any events there since, maybe other women are doing the same.

I’m guessing that most of these places have as a condition of their funding by the government or a charity, and/or in their original charter or trust deed, that they
must not discriminate. And yet …

But discrimnination is not always a negative. In order to achieve certain aims ( such as 'dignity and privacy', for example) then it is necessary to discriminate.
'Discriminate' simply means to be able to differentiate between one type of thing and another.

But the negative discrimination against religious women, women who have suffered sexual abuse, and anyone who feels uncomfortable in intimate spaces with members of the opposite sex, seems to me to totally outweigh the impact of ‘positive’ discrimination in favour of a tiny, tiny number of gender-non conforming people that we see happeni g in public spaces everywhere