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"

Genuine question then - what is the answer?

I wouldn’t consider myself a TERF but I don’t want men to have access to women-only spaces for sure. I am sympathetic to the mental and emotional complexities someone must have to go through to be Trans, and I’m more of the “live and let live” mindset, but not at the risk of my daughters’ safety.

A lot of French ski resorts have “mixed” toilets. It’s horrid for a number of reasons.

But short of checking everyone’s genitalia how do you verify who goes where?

Is it to have male/female/accessible/mixed everywhere? Even then, how do you police that Transpeople are only using “mixed”?

As I say, I’m supportive of protecting women’s spaces, but just saying that does not equal a solution.

99.99% of the time, you can tell. If you genuinely can't tell, nobody is stopping you and life for that tiny minority of a tiny minority, continues as is.

The solution is that everyone uses the facilities appropriate to their biological sex.
We know this is workable because that was happened for decades, ever since women won the right to separate toilets.

If someone is unhappy using the appropriate facilities, they should ask about unisex options - many people research in advance. What they should not do is use opposite sex facilities.

If you think male people are using the women's facilities, alert management or staff. If you are feeling brave, challenge, but essentially this is for the provider to sort out.

My workplace used to be exceptionally TRA, I've had a few threads asking advice on how to gently pushback to reality and they do seem to have realised 99% of their staff prefer single sex loos.

The solution they have settled on is keeping single sex toilets throughout the building and having one set of mixed sex toilets with fully enclosed cubicles with sinks on one floor.

It appears to work well, but it is only really possible because all buildings are multifloor for thousands of staff. How smaller businesses manage must be much trickier.

I think Women, Men and Unisex in individual cubicle. I also there should also be men, women then open for trans people in sport.

The legal requirement for separate male/female facilities at work is contained in Reg 21(2)(f) of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.

However it does say that the unisex self contained WCs with hand basins & dryer are sufficient (sadly - our unisex ones are gross).

But it would not be compliant to just change the sign to unisex on a standard set of toilets.

I'm currently studying for my H&S diploma so this is fresh in my mind... 😂

Maybe a few companies are asking staff to challenge people but I doubt many are. Do you know of any that have definitely directly asked staff to challenge people?

Have you ever worked behind a bar? I have, and trust me, no bar staff in a busy bar on minimum wage are going to be policing toilet use.

Perhaps bars with security guards might make more of an effort.

Interesting. It happened in a school a friend worked at where the SLT were woker than woke. The boys pissed on the seats, spied on the girls, and some girls ended up with UTIs from holding in pee rather than using the loos. My friend was furious but I don't think she knew it was illegal.

This is such a sensible post!

One of the tactics being used by TRAs in the wake of the very clear UKSC ruling is spreading confusion - it's all so difficult/nothing is clear/we need more guidance/the ruling has just produced more confusion...

It hasn't. There is, as WandaSiri says, a clear, straightforward tried-and-tested system: 'everyone uses the facilities appropriate to their biological sex.'

I posted yesterday about the difficulties, and expense, in providing unisex toilets in existing buildings, given that the building regs have very specific requirements for what a 'universal' toilet is, and a new label stuck on a women's or men's toilet doesn't magically make it a 'universal toilet'.

I sometimes have difficulty with words - it often takes me ages to compose a post and the discussion has moved on by the time I hit 'post'😕
Yesterday I was racking my brain for the word I wanted to apply to the 'third spaces' solution - it was 'glib'.

It's very easy to say 'the answer third spaces!' but nobody seems to be thinking about the practicalities - the disruption and expense caused by constructing building-regs-compliant unisex toilets in all existing public buildings.

And new building have to provide separate single-sex toilets to comply with building regs, so unisex toilets will have to be in addition to, not instead of, women's and men's toilets.

The workable way forward is to stick to the law, the building regs and a system that has worked fine until a group of men decided to lay claim to women's spaces.

Why should there be an Open category in sport in addition to Men/boys and Women/girls?

So that trans players can participate.

Why would you not want them to have a category they can comfortably compete in while not infringing on the right of women to play only against women?

After all it's about protecting women's sports, not actively excluding trans people, right?

There's abs

Oops! Absolutely nothing wrong with an Open category plus a Women's category. That's what British Rowing have gone for and maybe some other sports. I think it's a positive way forward.

Because, ultimately, they don't want to compete in a third open category. Men want to compete in the women's category as a fuck you to women.

None of this has been about 'inclusion' and acceptance. It's all been about invasion and 'domination'.

If it had been about inclusion, they'd have campaigned for third spaces in the first place.

My partner and I were discussing it this morning. He was completely unaware of any of this until we got together 4 years ago. His position now is that a lot of people are just very uncomfortable with women getting what they need if it impacts on what men want. In a situation of competing rights, many people instinctively feel that it isn't really fair for women to say no to men if that means some men don't get what they want.

He said realising that just laid male privilege and the 'patriarchy' open before him and he saw it in a way he never had before.

As pps say:

Providing single sex facilities in work places and schools is mandatory - and yes, men making a gesture there will get themselves into bother and be made to stop. That in itself will be a BIG shift in habits and boundaries.

Discrimination against women is now a lot more clear cut and while there's a lot of stupid organisations, their insurers aren't so stupid once money is involved. A couple of court cases will help things along.

The norm will be slowly re established. Not of anyone respecting women or their needs or equality of access of anything, that's a forlorn hope in this day and age, but in women being able to say clearly to a man to get out of their space. And the ones women want out of their spaces are not ones that anyone's going to need a cheek swab for.

Anti social behaviour and kicking off/shouting and ranting and threatening are behaviours that will be of interest to the police. Who will have to point out to any man throwing a tantrum in a public place that he has no right to be in the women's facilities. A few videos of such tantrums all over social media and in the press will put pressure in the right places.

Women will need to repeatedly explain to the general public and to owners of these places both the law, and that women needing access, privacy, safety and dignity is not an unreasonable demand to make of men.

Because, ultimately, they don't want to compete in a third open category. Men want to compete in the women's category as a fuck you to women.

The only way to proove this is to have the catagory and see what the uptake is

Providing single sex facilities is mandatory yet the Department of Education have let schools have mixed sex toilet facilities only. You can specify it in the School Specific Brief.

There was an open category swimming event advertised (I think last year) and they had to cancel as no one entered

The solution is that everyone uses the facilities appropriate to their biological sex.

on the face of it I agree.

But - some trans men look like convincingly like men, so it would seem like a man using a women’s toilet. Yes they could be challenged but their response is “I’m biologically a woman actually” yet the only way to prove it is to look in their pants. Maybe I’m cynical but surely there will be some perverse actual men who will just try it on - go in to women’s toilets and claim to be a trans man knowing no one will really check? I still think women’s safety is at risk.

And a trans woman going into a blokes’ loo? Are they really safe?

Plus - the trans man/woman in question is surely WANTING to act, behave and live as the gender they portray to be, so they aren’t going to tolerate or respect this rule are they?

But adding unisex everywhere is massive. Especially when many places can’t even facilitate accessible loos anyway.

I like the part about “open teams” in sport. However a) I guess the trans women will always win and b) it still relays on them accepting and acknowledging publicly that they are not a “real” man/women…. But better than not having open teams at all I suppose.

They can compete in their sex category. They (some of the males) don't want to. They want to use women and the label "women's" for validation. (see the post about the total lack of take-up of the offer of an additional Open category in swimming.)

An Open category in addition to Men's and Women's categories gives male people a second category in which to excel. This discriminates against women. In the marathons which have a NB category, it is almost always won by a male athlete. The qualification times are easier for a male athlete to achieve.

Almost all trans and NB females compete in the female category because they know they would be at a disadvantage in the men's category.

Gender identity is irrelevant as a factor in athletic performance. Therefore there is no need to create a category based on this characteristic. If it is, we couldn't argue against categories for Virgos or Goths.
In practice, setting up an Open category in addition to female and male categories would impact more on women's sport than men's sport. It would be regarded as a diversity initiative, which unfortunately for women, puts it in the same budget as women's sport. There would be a cost in resources which cannot be justified simply by saying that a minority of TiMs are not comfortable in their sex category. That is their problem, basically. Media exposure, sponsorship and prize money for women is already a fraction of what it is for men and measures like this would reduce all of that further.

An Open category instead of Men would work - in practice it would be 99.9% male, but MCWs could say that they at least were not in the Men's category. But some men might not be very attached to the idea of being in the Men's category, not the Open category. So while Female + Open would work in practice, male athletes should be consulted.

Everybody has a sex. Everybody is included when sport is segregated by Sex.

And a trans woman going into a blokes’ loo? Are they really safe?

In most places, yes. There may be some rough parts of town, the sort of place I would be uneasy in as a man, where they are also unsafe.

Plus - the trans man/woman in question is surely WANTING to act, behave and live as the gender they portray to be, so they aren’t going to tolerate or respect this rule are they?

There are plenty of things "I want" that I don't get. Trans people need to learn to accept that society doesn't owe them everything they want, just as it doesn't owe the rest of us what we want either. We generally have to persuade society of our case for getting what we want, or work to get what we want. I wanted to be married; I didn't expect to be handed a wife on a plate as incels seem to expect. I had to convince someone that she wanted to marry me, and then we had to work through all our differences of attitude and opinion. Trans people need to accept that they have to negotiate a similar path in their relationship with the rest of society.

The desired experience is to be a man in a situation where no other man is permitted to be. To be among women and under the title of woman, and Malaga Airport becomes relevant here unfortunately. Not to mention the excelling that can happen as a man competing against women, which has to be considered in looking at the pre transition records of many men, and their subsequent records once in the women's category.

Yes, an open category would simply become a second men's category should there ever be any uptake at all. But it's one of those things that FWR know that the general public and establishment probably need to learn through direct experience on the journey to really understanding the situation. Wholly agree, emphatically, that women's funding should not be split to cover this as it normally is.

We are not likely to see children who have been given blockers and hormones come to excel in sport: very sadly they're not likely to have a stellar sporting career ahead of them due to the medical complications. It will continue to be late transitioning men athletes.

I refer you to my previous answer.

@WandaSiri
If someone is unhappy using the appropriate facilities, they should ask about unisex options - many people research in advance. What they should not do is use opposite sex facilities.

This is what many people, eg disabled people, need to do in order to access spaces. Research. Plan in advance. The 'special' people can do this too.

Unless nothing except destroying women's rights will satisfy them.

But there are men who only want to play if it is with or against women, otherwise where is the validation/chance to win easily/fun in hurting women?

They offered an open category for trans swimmers at the swimming World Cup in Berlin in 2023 and nobody entered.

Non binary categories just give mediocre men an alternative to winning against other men.