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.

“I am not demonising trans people”

“some hulking great bloke in an ill-fitting dress is touching up his make-up”

yep, checks out

I think there are 2 separate if related issues.

One of which is that in response to the Supreme Court ruling and the Interim Guidelines, various articles have implied that disabled toilets could be co-opted to be the "gender neutral" option for trans people who cant use the toilets of their "identity" and wont use the toilets of their sex.

Clearly they shouldn't and providers need to ensure there are single sex toilets, disabled toilets, and gender neutral toilets.

I dont the think problem of men trying on dresses is the cause of the other problem which is all too often for any number of reasons, disabled toilets become the default "solution" with what is the lack of sufficient women's toilets, and as well as the number of toilets that are out of order.

An out patient department I go to fairly regularly (where you are lucky to be seen within 2 more likely 3 hours of your booked time) has only 3 seperate single toilets. Male, female and disabled. More often than not the only working toilet is the disabled one.

Equally, when there are queues for the "ladies" at events etc., many women become desparate and use the disabled toilet, rather than for instance going into the "gents".

Or as happened to my mother, then in a wheel chair, who was literally pushed out of the way by a women with 2 children saying they should take priority and she barged into the disabled toilet with the 2 children for what seems hours. As it happened, but it could very well not have happened, my mother managed the long wait without accident. And I am afraid to say that when the women did eventually emerge with her 2 children she made not attempt to apologise or even acknowledge my mother at all.

Maybe I should start an AIBU thread and see it any mumsnetters admit to something this.

I dont have a problem with what might seem the fact that disable toilets are "under used" any more than I have a problem with seeing unused disabled parking spaces at supermarkets etc..

These are provided because whenever it might be someone will need it. And other people who dont need specialised provision shouldn't then think they aren't really necessary.

By and large, the lack of appropriate toilets facilities, is a huge problem.

There was a thread some time ago on FWR about how many women, for various reasons, are effectively as much on the loo leash as Victorian women.

For Document T, when the government asked a private company to look at designs for people with long term health conditions and disabilities, you would have thought the company would have looked at the most common ones like the millions of people who have conditions where they are mobile but may collapse: heart conditions, epilepsy, asthma, diabetes. But none of these conditions were mentioned so designs that benefitted them could not be analysed. Non binary crotch heights were mentioned. And the ‘evidence’ for an enclosed toilet design (which is dangerous) was chosen because of an opinion piece stating that’s what transactivists preferred in New York nightclubs. The only mention of periods in the reference list was about transmen.

How is that right?

The company did get an award from Stonewall though so must have ticked a lot of their boxes.

Ironically, anyone can have the health conditions, named above, that the company missed. The best, safest toilets are single sex toilets with door gaps. Unfortunately, unless people are assured the toilets will be single sex, then even the single sex designs are enclosed. In that sense, if people aren’t using the correct toilet for their sex, they let everyone down.

I think it’s right for a trans person to use the facilities of their sex (or birth sex as you call it) because it’s safer for them and everyone else. The safer designs follow.

Leave the bigger disabled toilets for those who they are designed for.

There’s an important difference between being unhappy about your sex and having a disability.

Disabled people may be dissatisfied with all kinds of things too. I don’t doubt that many would have preferred to be born in a body that functioned better. But the disabled facilities are in place to meet the specific needs caused by their physical disability. Not just to make them feel happier.

No one has a right to use their a disabled toilet just because it’s convenient. The woman who barged @IWantToRetire’s mother out of the way should be ashamed.

For Document T, when the government asked a private company to look at designs for people with long term health conditions and disabilities, you would have thought the company would have looked at the most common ones like the millions of people who have conditions where they are mobile but may collapse: heart conditions, epilepsy, asthma, diabetes. But none of these conditions were mentioned so designs that benefitted them could not be analysed. Non binary crotch heights were mentioned. And the ‘evidence’ for an enclosed toilet design (which is dangerous) was chosen because of an opinion piece stating that’s what transactivists preferred in New York nightclubs. The only mention of periods in the reference list was about transmen.

That’s outrageous, @KeepToiletsSafe. The company ignored what they had been asked to do, and the civil servants reading the report didn’t bother to check or demand more relevant research. No wonder the result is such a mess.

That census figure has been debunked, it’s much lower than that. Yes, trans people should use the toilet appropriate to their sex, as your sex can’t be changed, no matter what you do to yourself or tell yourself. Their discomfort doesn’t come above everybody else’s.

Re the Guardian article on this yesterday ( interesting timing)
I gave up reading it because it was the usual dishonest bollocks.

And yet there was a thread on this site recently where multiple people said that trans people should use the disabled toilets and pointed out that they"weren't disabled toilets anymore" because so many of them had been converted to baby change facilities. So clearly a lot of people do disagree.

How is relating the fact that a person tried on a dress on the disabled loos 'demonizing trans people'?

I was out at a popular attraction on Thursday. I am a wheelchair user. Next to the block of men's and women's toilets there was one disabled toilet. The sign said 'disabled and gender neutral toilet'. A lady saw the sign as I was wheeling over to the toilet and said 'gender neutral toilet, that's hilarious, I'm going in there' and dashed in ahead of me. Disabled toilets are already being relabelled and people that should be using standard cubicles are using them.

I have no time for posters who come on a feminist board and call a successful woman an entitled, vacuous, talent-free zone just because they disagree with her politically. No one who succeeds in their profession as much as she has can be considered vacuous or talent-free. I loath Nicola Sturgeon but she was a talented politician. And what do you mean by ‘not on our side’? What do you think is ‘our side’? In terms of disability it is Labour who are proposing cuts to PIP, and removal of EHCPs from most children currently entitled to them. Do I disagree with Kemi on things? Absolutely, but the conservatives are in opposition facing a Labour Party with a huge majority who are failing to implement the SC ruling so it is the Labour Party you should be holding to account.

Yes to this.

This is not about concern for disabled users. This is about men objecting because they have been told they cannot use the women’s. This is TRAs spinning false concern for disability as a reason to use women. Men, who have been invading spaces they are not entitled to suddenly decide it would be terrible to invade another space because it isn’t the one they want.

First It was androgynous looking women would be discriminated against - that was debunked

Then it was women that identified as men would face discrimination - that was debunked

Now it’s the idea that trans identifying people are being forced to use facilities designated for the use of disabled people…

What next can TRA’s claim I wonder 🤔

Absolutely this.

Hence the non stop flailing around from one ridiculous line of argument to another.

Normally a problem is discussed and a solution emerges from the theories and ideas.

This is a desired end point 'solution' with a lot of activists frantically trying to find a convincing enough theory to make it happen. They've spent over a decade on it without success.

Not once and for all, no, it's not going to lie down with a stake through its heart: but you can at least look at the EHRC consultation on the new guidelines and comment where they've proposed to use it as an example.

It's a great shame that there hasn't been more campaigning for "fourth spaces" many years earlier instead of providers just saying "oh go on then use the women's if you like" to everyone or "mix everyone together and who cares" and failing to realise they were neither satisfactory nor legal.

As I asked- how often does this happen exactly?

I'm not disabled but a couple of my friends are. The problems they've encountered with accessing designated disabled toilets have been:
People using them to take drugs
They also are the only toilet wih baby changing
People using them to sleep in
They are the default toilet when the women's/men's is out of order
Nobody has the key
Young people are using them as a changing room.

Chris You do know there won't be data on that, don't you? What a daft question.

Someone using the accessible loo for reasons other than genuine need have happened to at least two people on this thread, so I guess you could extrapolate from the number of posters, but it would be very inaccurate.

Edit - and more since I posted

Thats what I think too. I went looking for why design has changed and had no idea this is what I would find. I know a charity talked about door gaps as well as myself but there was nothing in the consultation analysis. Right from the beginning of Document T, Stonewall had set a campaign for toilets in the consultation (which is fine) but the government had 1000s of people writing in which skewed the emphasis in the first place. The government did try and look at protected characteristic of disability by commissioning this private company. There is not any detailed analysis that looked at ‘women’ separately which I believe should also have been done.

I have also found in the small print of toilet design by the Department of Education design briefs asking about whether schools are having unisex toilets or single sex toilets. And, in the last few years, a private toilet ‘identified as gender neutral’ on each floor. A secondary school also has to justify their decisions if they want door gaps and not have the standard tiny 5mm for privacy. There will be around 10 children will epilepsy, several more with diabetes, and several more with other health conditions in an average secondary school. Plus the fact any child can have a medical emergency. The Department do not hold risk assessments for these designs, saying they are designed for privacy. Safety is never mentioned in the toilet design section. I have also found how many rapes are reported inside school premises which shocked me. Frustratingly the location of these has never been investigated but store cupboard, disabled toilet and toilet come up in searches.

I want safe toilets for everyone. What all unisex and ‘gender neutral’ designs do is increase privacy too much in a mixed sex area which results in it not being safe for the most vulnerable. We need as few unisex toilets as possible.

the suggestion that they [trans people] should use the disabled toilet has come from GC people

It really hasn't.

It's come from people who aren't great thinkers or TRAs.

GC people already know that trans people shouldn't use spaces not intended for them.

I know that building regs require wheelchair accessible toilets, but are there specific regulations about providing dedicated disabled toilets?

I can think of at least one local building that only has an accessible toilet, so it's fulfilling it's obligations re: accessibility, but obviously everyone uses it.

They are.
With political correctness, many labels changed because it was thought that certain words and phrases were stigmatising or offensive - one of the changes was from “disabled toilet” to “accessible toilet”, just as it once changed from “handicapped toilet” to “disabled toilet”.

I’m disabled, and have been unable to access many places as they do not have adequate facilities available (typically when an older building has to retro-fit disability provisions). I, and people like me, need disabled facilities or we cannot participate in society. It really is as simple as that.

Think of the way women feel about males (of any and every presentation) using female spaces. Well, disabled people feel the same about non-disabled people using the disabled facilities - and we don’t usually even get the option of a non-mixed sex space.

I think people who use disabled or accessible toilets who don’t need to (ie are not disabled nor in the category of people who legitimately require the physical differences present in the modified facilities) are incredibly selfish, entitled and pathetic. Unless you qualify, don’t use them. It really is that simple.

Absolutely.
And not men (usually it is men in my experience) who want to read the paper whilst having a leisurely poo)…

No. Toilet use has always relied on some type of reliance everyone will do the right thing!

The reason it’s broken down is everyone is worried about speaking up.