‘Dr McCloud believes dangerous predators could exploit this confusion to further target women.
"This is going to make matters much, much more dangerous," she said. "I am now expected to use male spaces.
"I have female anatomy. It isn't safe for women to use the men's loos. It is as simple as that."’
It’s not safe for women to have men in women’s loos.
I can argue it’s not safe for men to have women in men’s loos.
I know a man of roughly the same age as McCloud. He had a stroke, at home, on his own. His wife was out shopping and found him semi conscious and incoherent on the bathroom floor. He can’t remember how he got there but it’s where people instinctively go when they are ill (first thing I thought of when the poor wife of Gene Hackman died - I could guess the scenario, having researched toilet safety).
In the U.K., there is a person having a heart attack every 5 mins on average. There is a person having a stroke every 5 minutes on average. Signs beforehand may be feeling nauseous or if you want to poo. The strain of elimination can cause problems in itself which is a reason why so many people die on the loo.
As soon as toilet rooms/ cubicles are mixed sex the regulations make them enclosed. You also have a regulation to be able to open a toilet door/ room from the outside because a body gets in the way of opening the door.
So single sex toilets are safer because their designs can include door gaps so you can be seen if collapsed and rescued in time.
What has been happening is these door gaps has been disappearing over the last few years in design. I believe in part it is because the societal boundaries of who goes into the toilets has been blurred and people can’t speak out. It’s also because of the rise of unisex toilets. And cameras and male voyeurs. So privacy has become more important than safety.
McCloud needs to think about safety of everyone. The really vulnerable can include any of us at that critical moment when we need to be seen to be saved.
If he starts quoting any toilets statistics he needs to qualify that with what type of design it was. Women do get attacked in toilets. He needs to look at what the design of the toilets was. Because the design, the privacy and who is ‘allowed’ inside the cubicle/room needs to be taken into account. Privacy is not always conducive to safety in all sorts of scenarios. Criminals don’t like witnesses.
Again, single sex toilets with door gaps for visibility - for prevention.