The lift thing makes me especially angry for a different reason. It reveals Bracknell Forest Borough Council's total and utter ignorance of and/or indifference to women's sex-based reality.
The comparison of mixed-sex toilets with lifts relies* on either 1) the ignorant assumption that women have no issue sharing a lift with a strange man or* 2) the logical fallacy that, just because women sometimes choose to accept the risk of sharing a lift with a strange man, the council is free to remove that choice entirely in another context.
It's remarkable.
To Bracknell Forest Borough Council, if anyone supporting this appalling perspective ever reads this thread...
24 hours ago - just yesterday - I had an unsettling experience with a man in a lift and posted about it right here, in Chat. What are the odds?! you say. Well, quite high, actually. That's the whole point.
I last got into a lift alone with a strange man about three years ago (thinking at the time how silly I was to have been wary for a period)... and he spent the journey enjoying intimidating me to such an extent that I've not done it since. Thankfully, I had the freedom to make the choice not to be put in that position again...
...Until yesterday, when a man forced me into that same position, by holding open the door of the lift he'd just exited, clearly indicating his intention to walk away from it the moment I was in - then jumped right back in at the last minute, standing between me and the door. Thankfully, two other unrelated men then entered.
But at best, that first man misrepresented the situation I'd be in, in the lift, forcing me into a position in which I felt uncomfortable. And, at worst, he was prepared to do me harm.
Here's an analogy for you, Bracknell Forest Borough Council.
Don't be that man.