What happens if orgs just make all their toilets and changing rooms mixed sex?

[TangenitalContrivance]

For example I saw this on reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1kdp99q/toilet_door_at_work/

Or if they whole sale remove the mens sign and put up "Urinals and cubicles" and remove the women's sign and just put up "Cubicles"

They will risk legal action on the basis of indirect sex discrimination.

Plus I takedown the cubicles signs everywhere I go 🙂

Liability for foreseeable sexual assaults on women and girls which are much more likely in communal changing rooms/toilets.
Indirect and direct Sex discrimination legal action by women.
Fines etc for flouting Workplace Regs.
Bigger insurance premiums/refusal of insurance cover.

From the EHRC interim update:

It is not compulsory for services that are open to the public to be provided on a single-sex basis or to have single-sex facilities such as toilets. These can be single-sex if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim and they meet other conditions in the Act. However, it could be indirect sex discrimination against women if the only provision is mixed-sex.

Some women will not be able to use the toilets at work, ever.

If these are toilets in a secondary or junior school, or a place of work, it would be illegal.

Workplaces legally have to provide single-sex toilets to employees?

No idea. But some women will not be able to go into that space with men around for cultural or mental health or fear reasons etc.

This would be inadequate provision. "Universal" loos have to be fully enclosed with hand basin. You cannot simply relabel rooms of stalls.

We know what will happen!

"Urinals" is code for mens and "cubicles only" is code for women's. So all the blokes who want access to women's spaces will go into the "cubicles only" and piss all over the seat.

We just need to keep saying no to blokes in women's spaces and retain women only spaces.

I'm not accepting mixed sex loos with urinals either. They smell sickening.

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/the-truth-about-toilets/#:~:text=The%20specific%20laws%20about%20toilets,both%20sexes%20are%20not%20adequate.

Last time I was in a bar that had “urinals” and “cubical” on the door, I crossed out cubicles and wrote women.

With my lipstick.

I think most venues, especially where alcohol is served, install urinals because they know from experience men will just piss down the side of the loo or on the floor without them and the cleaning bill is massive.

No chance of making those mixed sex, so they need to provide those as well as proper sit down loos for women to stay within the law.

The reality is that most businesses and organisations will be covered by the Workplace Regs or some other statutory obligation to provide separate single sex changing rooms and loos. Small cafes and arthouse cinemas or galleries, probably fine to go unisex because we're talking about space for only one or two toilets usually.

There’s a theatre in London that has this.

the loos are marked cubicles and the other door is cubicles and urinals.

they had a member of staff there outside when I went to deal with any confusion.

i’m a woman (biological) and I went in the women’s after a pause to decode it. There were plenty of women but no men in there.

Well if my sons (who are old enough to be expected to change independently in the men’s changing room) found that the showers and changing area were mixed sex, and that they would need to get changed in front of females, they would never go to the swimming pool again.
Not trying to centre the discussion about men’s needs, just making the point that it isn’t just women who want single sex areas.

Well this was a vivid (!) school example I came across the other day:
‘Almost every time I make the mistake of going in, I leave trying to purge my mind of the horrors I just witnessed. Whether it is people having sex, poop smeared on the walls, or the toilet being clogged with an entire roll of toilet paper, horrible things have happened in that bathroom.’

Seriously though, unisex toilets aren’t as safe for women and children - I am as sure as I can be looking at the figures and newspaper reports.

I wish someone would have done analysis on the design of toilets v assaults. Like the changing rooms one. I have plenty of stats of assaults in public toilets. It takes time working out if they were private or not but, with the worst assaults, I haven’t come across a design that did have door gaps in yet.

What is obvious is if you collapse then you are likely to get seen and rescued in time in a single sex toilet if it has gaps. Unisex ones are always totally private so you are hoping someone comes looking for you at some point and opens it up from the outside with the safety mechanism. I don’t think unisex toilets are ‘secure’ because there always has to be a way to get in.

As others have said, Document T building regs say single sex comes first if you have room for multiple toilets. The universal designs (unisex) have to have sinks in and they cost more, are more to maintain and take up more room.

I think the main reason for urinals is that they are very efficient, so you need fewer of them, and they take up less space. So in a typical pub, the Gents will contain 1 cubicle and maybe 3 or 4 urinals, all in the space 2 cubicles would take up. They are also more convenient for men, so we put up with the downsides (can be smelly, lack of privacy though almost all men studiously look straight ahead, possibility of splash back - sorry!). The likelihood of the cubicle being cleaner is a bonus, though at busy times men will use a cubicle for a pee rather than queue for the urinals.

Except somewhere like in a theatre recently, while most normal men would understand it as cubicles is a womens only, there was an old creep and a 6.5 ft transwoman. All while young girls coming out of cubicles not fully dressed due to their ages, doors to cubicles swinging open or there is a need to keep the door open to fit in with a child, what an opportunity for predators to perv.

The most likely outcome of the ruling is that trans women will use the 'women's' toilets in an act of defiant victimhood. And, in reality, it's very hard to police without asking to see their id or genitals.

Perhaps we could have signs which say: Please use the toilet you were allocated at birth.

'Third spaces' [actually fourth - the disabled toilet is the third space and is NOT for able-bodied trans people to 'feel more comfortable' in] and unisex toilets may be a useful idea but they are not the solution in the short term.

Separate single sex toilets should be provided unless there isn't enough space, in which case a building-regs-compliant unisex toilet suffices.
If there is extra space, a unisex toilet toilet may be provided in addition to single sex toilets.

As PPs have said, building regs have specific requirements for 'universal' toilets, you can't just slap a unisex label on existing women's and men's toilets.

So building-regs-compliant unisex toilets would have to be added to existing buildings, if there is space for them, while leaving the men's and women's as they are, as single sex spaces.
It's not a quick fix, it would take time, and a lot of money, and there's not a lot of that floating around at the moment, is there?

And no, able-bodied trans people may NOT use the accessible toilet in the meantime, the disabled toilet is for people who need it, not for people who choose not to use the toilet designated for their sex.

As far as new buildings are concerned, there should be enough room provided in the plans for the required separate women's and men's toilets, and unisex ones. So the suggestion that going forward all buildings will only have unisex toilets is not right, building regs say they have to have separate toilets - unless it's a tiny building with only space for a universal toilet.

There's no evidence that transwomen are at risk in the men's toilet, so there no actual need for third spaces, unisex toilets or appropriating the accessible toilet.
The simplest solution is for men use the men's toilet, women use the women's toilet, and disabled people (only) use the disabled toilet.

I hope you didn't use it on your lips again afterwards.

I think that in reality, not much will change because noone is going to police it. I feel like sports wlll be the place we see change most quickly as it's easier to police.

I think it was only ever social expectations anyway? Now large companies are telling their staff they have to and people feel more comfortable challenging people in toilets things will change

Workplaces cannot do this, they legally have to provide single sex toilets for their staff.

Toilets which are available for use by the public could in theory all be made mixed sex but this could be indirect sex discrimination against women.

Simply relabeling them "cubicles" and "cubicles and urinals" would be at the very least indirect discrimination against women and quite possibly direct discrimination, because women will not feel safe or comfortable using toilets with urinals in them, so it would mean that men had twice as much toilet provision as women.

My experiences yesterday going into three public toilets in a big museum, a big shop and a small theatre, all of whom have made different choices:

1. Museum: Toilets are single sex but turned into comprehensive stalls with basins inside, resulting in even bigger, but equal, queues than used to happen before.

1. Shop: Toilets will remain single sex but there will be voices insisting that extra provision for women is sexist, resulting in the queue for the women's reaching Biblical proportions (but calm and cooperative) while men have no queue at all.

1. Theatre: Toilets will become Everyone and Urinals. This will be better from a queuing point of view but men in the queue will be extremely restive because they are unfamiliar with ever having to queue for toilets.