Can we lay this to rest, once and for all?

[HelenaWaiting]

I'm disabled. I have MS and a congenital heart condition. I'm wheelchair dependent. Only if you are disabled or a carer do you understand how difficult it is to find a disabled toilet (there is always just one), how disappointing it is to find that toilet occupied, and how infuriating to discover that the occupant was some twat trying on a dress. So please, please stop saying "trans people can use disabled toilets". I've been fielding that particular curve ball for years but now we have Kemi Fucking Badenoch saying it. (No, she's not great. No she's not on our side. She's an entitled, vacuous, talent-free zone. She just happens to be a gender critical entitled, vacuous, talent-free zone). I can't wait for the loo as long as you can. I don't get as much warning as you. I can't hold onto it as efficiently as you. And I have no desire to piss myself in a shopping centre because some hulking great bloke in an ill-fitting dress is touching up his make-up. Disabled people campaigned for years for accessible toilets. There still aren't enough of them. Please don't hand them over to a group of people who have chosen to have a problem.

Are you asking for trans people to campaign to have their own spaces rather than to colonise others'?

But that would be something like genocide!

Reddit is that way ----->

That's where the TiMs your message is aimed at are, they won't see it posted on here

100% agree!
there's no reason for any men to avoid using the men's toilets. Why should they?

No, she’s asking for GC people not to use this argument.

Please don't hand them over to a group of people who have chosen to have a problem.

I'm sure you know that these toilets don't belong to feminists, so we can't "hand them over".
We can, as we have been doing for years upon years, ask people who don't like to use single-sex, mixed-gender toilets for their sex, ask them to campaign for these spaces.

The point you make about not using disabled toilets unnecessarily has been made by gender-critical people countless times. I don't think anyone disagrees with it.

Oh hang on, is this because a TRA has said 'well we can't use disabled spaces, that would be wrong' - implying that's what women are asking for? Yeah, don't fall for it.

Your point is valid but I think you'll find people suggesting that are usually pulled up pretty swiftly on this board.

Orgs that shove baby changing units in the accessible toilets or rename them as gender neutral and twats who think it's okay for them to use accessible toilets because it suits them whatever the reason other than needing accessible facilities (undoubtedly some who are indeed GC as arseholes come in a range of beliefs) are the issue.

There's an article in The Guardian trying to make out there's an alliance between disabled people and men who want to use women's toilets. I gave up reading it because it was the usual dishonest bollocks.
I have a stoma and usually use the disabled loos but I'm absolutely thrilled that men are no longer being told they can use the ladies if they fancy it.

I don't think anyone has?

Not anyone on here in any case.

I don't think Trans people should use disabled toilets (unless they're also disabled of course).

However, a lot of toilets are accessible rather than disabled- so they are designed to be available for use by disabled people, but are actually open to all. They make an ideal gender-neutral space in my view.

I don't know how you feel about those OP, personally I think they are a good way of expanding disabled access to areas where you wouldn't necessarily get a disabled toilet.

I have never seen GC women on MN suggesting this.

To put this bluntly, this is not women's problems to solve. Men need to sort themselves out and campaign for other spaces. I'm not sure why women always seem to be expected to solve problems created by men

Are there no mirrors in the mens?

I can’t speak for every single post on MN on this topic.

Probably would be better on a main board.

But anyway, it’s always a message worth repeating. Because I reckon this will happen more and more now than orgs have to provide a unisex space alongside single sex. Just appropriate the accessible loo, job done.

Exactly this.

You're absolutely right, OP! I won't say that nobody has ever suggested that on a FWR thread, because obviously posters post all kinds of things, but when somebody has posted 'TW could use the disabled toilets' there has always been ain immediate push-back - not least from me

So you're preaching to the converted, HelenaWaiting.

Furthermore, at every possible opportunity I point out that this business of trans people campaigning for third spaces should be for fourth spaces, because the accessible/disabled/adapted toilet IS the third space - campaigners only seem to think of women's and men's toilets, and surprise surprise ignore the existence of disabled toilets. Unless they want to appropriate them, that is!

A wheelchair user and I wholly agree OP. Those should not be the automatically repurposed spaces, more need to be created. And those will not need to be wheelchair accessible either.

FWR MNetters are usually well up on this, but yes, useful to ensure letters and communications about all this make this part clear too: no more commandeering of other people's needed resources to placate a small group of men. The main board unfortunately, you would run up against some of the inevitable 'yes but' kind of people who won't fold buggies so you can get on a bus because their baby is sleeping, it's the accessible space, they can't fold down because reasons etc etc etc, who would also not see the issue. That makes it definitely worth a thread there; those people will argue but you'll reach many more who haven't yet really thought about it.

The supreme Court introduced the double bind, which means that AHFs who look like men can be excluded from the women's, and that AHMs who look like women can be excluded from the men's.

It has been suggested by many people, Kemi Badenoch high amongst them, that a third space is the solution.

Unfortunately the third space is often the disabled toilet, which would be unacceptable to disabled people (and I presume anyone of sound mind)

There is a bind here which hasn't been addressed beyond the construction of other third space toilets

Fourth spaces. Accessible to all. It has been suggested.

Where did all these people pee before men started to just use the ladies? Just go back to that. It wasn't a problem before, no reason for it to be a problem going forward.

Exactly. The fuss and moaning and wittering about expense and no space all happened when the requirement went out to create those disabled toilets when it was mens and womens and that was it. Everybody survived, accessible toilets are now widespread and entirely normal in most buildings, and changing places are on the increase.

Gender neutral additions can easily be added in the same way.

I'll definitely ask Mumsnet if it's okay to post it here, given that you seem to find it so objectionable. I wouldn't dare to assume that you are just being nasty and dismissive for no reason.

Trans people can be disabled, and not necessarily visibly so. My trans family member has Crohn's and also can't wait for the toilet. They have a radar key. Presumably if you saw them coming out of the toilet you would make a host of assumptions about why they were in there, in the exact way that people with invisible disabilities have had to campaign against for years.

I don't see how this can be policed.

Absolutely OP.
It's pretty rare on this board to find people saying 'oh just use the accessible loo' and most will be happy to have the issue explained to them if they do.
Clearly, TRAs must campaign for their own space if they want to. They can't just hijack the rights of other people with different protected characteristics.
Unfortunately instead of using their vast power and wealth campaigning for their own spaces, they've wasted 10 years demanding access to women's spaces instead.
And certainly women here are heartily sick of it. Possibly as a by product, some women who previously would have helped campaign for more accessible loos have been using so much energy and time trying to hold the line against male encroachment that I can see that maybe disabled rights have fallen even more out of focus. Another way in which the aggressive TRA movement has been so damaging.

None of it needs to be policed if people just use the facilities that they are supposed to use. Obviously if a person who is trans also has a disability then it's fine for them to use disabled facilities.

None of these arguments mean that men should use women's facilities or people without a disability should use disabled facilities.

It's not rocket science.

There needs to be less whataboutery and more focus on men sorting out their own facilities that don't infringe on anyone else's. It's not a problem for women to solve.

My reasons were quite clearly stated.