Best solution for bathrooms

[feministmom4ever]

I recently posted on a Reddit thread to ask transgender people if they felt that third spaces/unisex toilets for transgender/non-binary/gender fluid were a good solution to the bathroom problem. The answer from most was “no”. Mainly the response was TWAW, and since they seem to truly believe that I didn’t bother to argue. They did make one point which I felt held some validity, which was that biological women with a masculine appearance would be harassed. I know this is rare, but there are instances of it happening. Any suggestions for how to address this?

A 'Mind the Gap' campaign!

the 'solution' of fully enclosed individual spaces means potentially losing the positive aspects of single sex spaces.

Sacrificing them to appease a very small number of people means losing communal spaces and all their value in exchange for enclosed, isolated, hyper individualist spaces. Seems like a bit of a metaphor.

You've moved mountains here in making sure FWR readers are informed and that your posts are easily found for reference, with the links and evidence, for women to quote and share as needed. ❤ There's plenty of us writing to those people and dealing with every day issues who will use them.

I would love that. I even bought a laptop to store all the info as my phone is full!

The nagging problem I always have is I have a lot of personal cases from people which completely prove my points but I don’t think in full conscience I can publish. Also I worry about giving people ideas. But it appears it’s happening anyway. It’s a problem with Doc T and standardising toilets. Everyone will know the ‘tricks’ to getting in to a cubicle. Which is supposed to be a ‘safety’ solution to people collapsing. Because people do collapse in toilets but it doesn’t solve the problem of them being rescued in time. It’s more retrieval.

Single sex toilets with door gaps. It’s the system that’s been used for years because it’s the safest.

I was thinking of all those trendy bestsellers with titles like 'Cod' or 'Salt'. The time seems right for 'Toilet!' - something for ordinary people to read, about the history, politics, etc of it all. On searching, the best I could find at first pass was this:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38402052-no-place-to-go

which seems quite skimpy.

Pitch it as a one-off tv or radio show or episode in a health series? It would have wide appeal because everyone knows what's going on in schools, everyone uses public toilets, etc. I went to a TED talk on public toilets once and it was fascinating. As is the history of women's public toilets.

I have tried. I probably come across as a toilet obsessed fetish person. Toilet safety is a bit niche 😬. The story does have lots of sex, dirt, voyeurism, gay cruising, death, drugs, assaults, rape in it but you get to the uncomfortable transactivism bit and then that’s too much. I really am just laying the facts out but the last bit is what puts people off. But it is important of how we have ended up with these private dangerous cubicles.

And I really am just trying to find safe solutions for everyone.

Shame. I will ask around on your behalf just in case - if you don't mind, of course. Might be possible to just swerve the whole TA aspect, especially if it's a "history of the toilet" series. Or you could do a nod towards transactivism by having a drag queen present it... I jest.

PS - I know your focus is on actually making a difference and improving safety, Keeptoiletssafe, but it's so much easier to get your message out there if you've written a book or done a TV/radio series on something.

Yep if anyone knows politicians or press, happy to discuss.

Butch masculine looking women still look like women, the skin, the hair, the bone structure, size of hands, size of feet, no adams apple, the jawline, the facial features etc etc etc etc

Are trans women now trying to liken them selves to masculine looking women ?😂

It is the usual 'queering' tactic: blur the boundaries by any means possible, including obfuscation and lies.

we have been through all this toilet stuff before.

Suddenly after YEARS of ignoring transmen and butch looking women (and women with PCOS) suddenly the TRAs are all about not upsetting them.

Hmm. Strange, eh?

Is it just me … I always find it odd that only lesbians are described as butch - not “butch looking women” in the loos - it’s always “butch lesbians” as though you can tell someone’s sexuality in that way ?

while I though about it someone managed to say butch women not butch lesbians

It's the homophobic implication of sexual threat.

I was recently subject to a random
security check at an airport, search of my bag then a brief pat down and scanner thing. It was only as the security guard was patting me down (I was a bit stressed at leaving DH and DDs behind so not paying full attention) that I noticed the woman security guard was a butch woman. I hadn’t really looked at her before, but what my brain must have recognised is that she was female, otherwise I’d have objected to being patted down by a male. Women are very good at telling someone’s sex, even when we don’t know we’re doing it.

The idea that butch lesbians are getting “harassed” when using women’s loos is (I suspect) entirely in the imagination of TRAs. I did see one tale on X of a butch lesbian (one who understands reality) saying she had been challenged in a loo but once she spoke to the woman she immediately recognised her error. She didn’t mind as she also wants female only spaces.

TRAs are so desperate to shoe horn men into women’s spaces that they’ll make up any old nonsense. Reality is, very few if any trans identifying males “pass” as women, and we don’t want them in our loos even if they do!

Women are very good at telling someone’s sex, even when we don’t know we’re doing it

Agree, there are so so many little things ( and big things) that make it easy to tell if someone is a woman.

All the surgery / alterations in the world won’t change that

I believe in free speech and all. But please can we just stop with 'bathroom'. This is not the US. This is the UK and we say loo or toilet.

Maybe because I'm a far-right funded, rich, white housewife with a golf-playing lawnboy shagging husband (see Reddit thread), I clicked on this expecting a discussion of how to fit a walk-in shower AND rolltop bath into a 2m x 2m ensuite.

Also worth noting: the GI lobby does not approve of women calling themselves lesbians, since it comes with a hint that they recognise biological sex before identity. Good girls refer to themselves as 'queer' under these politics. The only people applauded for calling themselves lesbian are men.

So the term 'butch lesbian' has definite connotations, and not positive ones within this culture/belief system.

I think the reason transactivists use “butch lesbians” as opposed to GNC women more generally is (1) to leverage lesbians’ status as a specific group sharing a protected characteristic under the EA, which scares employers that they might be inadvertently discriminating against lesbians (like they’ve ever actually cared about that) and (2) to sidestep any discussion of how appearance doesn’t actually change someone’s sex which would be the obvious next objection if they start discussing GNC women, as these activists would regard at least a portion of those GNC women as transmen.

Or maybe some kind of pamphlet just to be disseminated around

I'm sure Posie Parker would hand it out at her Filia maybe. Wherever women collect

I wonder how many dates your average lesbian goes on before she realises- oops! - she’s dating a man not a woman? If it’s all so impossible to tell? 🙄

This is another contradiction from the MRA's.

Some butch looking women may be challenged in female only spaces therefore that's an argument to let men in?

They care about the wellbeing of butch looking women but don't care about the wellbeing of all other women who don't want men in their single sex spaces?

Another point. MRA's are constantly telling us that "most women" don't mind sharing their single sex spaces with men who identify as not men. So by their own argument there would be hardly any pushback at all against women who may appear masculine. Seen as "most women" are welcoming to men who identify as not men.

That bit is the attempt of those who have a very limited understanding of women and capacity to listen to them, or to think about anything but what they want to leverage the situation for. The crude comprehension basically goes:

"you keep saying you care about women - so suck up men or you'll upset some women possibly a bit and you'll care then!"

It misses that women are tough, after all they've been under threat and forced to suck up situations for years that men appear to be utterly terrified at the thought of from all the SM posts. In this situation men have put women in, women will have to deal with some mess. There is no way to avoid it. Better awkward conversations be the mess than the women being excluded, harrassed, assaulted etc kind of mess.

going to have to leave the convo - every time i click on "I'm watching" i think i'm going to get tips on grout (which i need) not a load of twaddle about something that has now been cleared up in law.