Are toilets still allowed to be cleaned by members of the opposite sex?

[PoisedRubyLion]

I see signs saying toilets may be cleaned by members of the opposite sex in a lot of places. Is this allowed after the supreme court ruling? If a male cleaner was in there it would be a mixed sex space.

My, we've gotten onto the 'clap if you believe!' Tinker Bell argument.

We're going to need a bigger bingo card.

Most of the signs I have seen aren't so outing, they tend to say along the lines of "Male staff may maintain these toilets" and are there whether the actual cleaner is male or female.

So i don't think it's necessary for it to be outing.

Wait! 18 pages! Am I to assume the TRAs think this is some kind of compelling argument?

Surely if you are cleaning loos you will be expected to be in the opposite sex ones for half the time?

Also I don’t think it’s common to hsve DBS checks for toilet cleaners. I have cleaned loos for the council and they didn’t get one done. The only cleaning job that has ever required one is in a care home as residents are vulnerable.

And... if you are in the opposite sex toilets cleaning, surely it is important that a sign is up so people entering can make choices.

If you are lying to your employer and it involves being in single sex spaces, I would consider the employer would need find that information useful if and when it is needed.

Tbf, TRA's seem to continue to believe, against overwhelming mirth, that 'your toilet at home/train/plane toilet is mixed sex!!!' is a compelling argument. It makes me misty eyed with nostalgia for 2018. I can't remember if its been used on this thread yet but is very popular at the moment on Twitter.

You missed women who have had a double mastectomy as a result of breast cancer (as deployed by the fox killer).

You’ve misunderstood. Women have historically retreated to the toilets knowing they were single sex space in order to avoid male people who were generally being annoying and creepy but not actually actively chasing them. Knowing that if the annoying or creepy guy actually followed into the toilet, the women could call for help and the man would be evicted. I’ve done it on a night out where a very drunk man wouldn’t accept he’d wandered into the ladies and was generally incapable of reason. A quick “excuse me, theres a bloke in the ladies that refuses to leave” at the bar and several obliging chaps went in and hustled him out and straight through the pub to the street while his equally drunk mates stared with mouths open. It was the social contract that kept us safe for years. You can’t do it now because they just say “I identify as a woman”.

If a man is actively threatening and chasing you, that last thing you do is go to a quiet, isolated, private space. You go to the most public place you can and ask for help. Shout “Fire” (because it gets more attention than “help”), scream, draw attention to yourself. The majority of people, men included, are still decent and want to help someone in distress, but common sense says you stay in the company of more than one person until you know you’re safe.

It’s like you’ve never attended any talks on personal safety and have absolutely no concept of the constant situational awareness that is involved in being a woman in public.

I am staunchly GC and have precisely zero time for any of this shit that denies biology and observable fact/reality. We're all adults. Let's act like it.
Trans women are men.
To state otherwise is just lunacy.

But, being completely honest, I have thought for some time now that it's not appropriate for male cleaners to clean female toilets.
I understand that the cleaners will have most likely completed a DBS check and other relevant checks, but it still does make me uncomfortable that there might be a male in the facilities when I use them. Whatever they are doing in there. It's irrelevant really.

There's been times (perhaps on a long motorway journey) when I've been absolutely busting to use the loo ( and have no other option) and I've seen the sign that male cleaners might be present and I HAVE felt uncomfortable going in. I don't like it. It makes me feel on edge. Women are not a statistical threat to me, men are. When I'm in a state of undress, I would much prefer to be around people that are not a threat to me.

So yes, I have though for some time (not just since the SC judgement) that male cleaners shouldn't be cleaning female toilets. Simply because they are men. Being the victim of SA, I don't want to see a man anywhere near a facility where I'm vulnerable and in a state of undress - regardless of their purpose in being there.

So I'd be completely behind a drive to ensure that female facilities are cleaned by female people. Absolutely.
I totally get this would cause issues in terms of staffing etc, but in my opinion, female facilities should be exclusively female.

But the argument about little boys can get to fuck.
Absolutely absurd.

As the single parent of a little boy I find this argument utterly deranged. If you are putting little boys in the same category as fully developed, post puberty adult men you need to have a long, hard think about your thought processes.

And if you need this to be explained to you - why they are completely different categories, I'd be very concerned indeed about your motives.

My experience is different. I run the outsourced contracts for all facilities management contracts for a very large, public facing organisation with multiple sites. This includes the toilet cleaning contracts. We definitely do require our suppliers to DBS check their employees.

Wow! 18 pages about male cleaners in toilets.

I would prefer if cleaners in female spaces were women but I don't think male cleaners present the same problem that gender non conforming men do. A male cleaner is not the start of a slippery slope. Like say you have a guy who is voyeuristic or a flasher...

He learns that male cleaners sometimes clean female facilities. He decides to get hired as a cleaner and proceeds to go into the women's facilities and expose his penis or "accidentally" look at women changing or peeing. He will get reported (either to his employer or the police) and hopefully eventually fired and/or arrested. Everyone will agree that it was wrong for him to expose his penis or look at women. Women will not feel afraid for their reputation mentioning to the building management that the cleaner behaved inapporpriately. No ambiguity there (thanks to Laura Bates).

But say instead he learns that "trans women" are welcome in female facilities. He goes along to a toilet or changing room and exposes his penis or looks at women getting changed. Maybe eventually he gets reported to the police or building management. And he says "no. She's a lying, transohobic bigot. I was just getting changed/fell over/forgot to do up my trousers before leaving the loo. We're all women here." Now the woman who has been assaulted is an aggressor and our common perv is a stunning and brave victim of transphobia.

The first scenario is something that men undoubtedly do. I'm not sure about cleaners but carers, teachers, medical professionals, priests. If men see an opportunity, they will arrange their lives around having access to the target of their abuse. Everybody knows that this happens and we have safeguarding procedures in place to try and mitigate the risk. Of course many men manage to slip through but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. The second scenario is a total denial of one of the most basic and unquestionable facts of life - that men sexually abuse women.

Small children of the opposite sex don't count. It's completely normal for mums to take little boys into the women's toilets and for dads to take little girls into the men's toilet. It's adults that shouldn't be in the other one.

Sorry just to add to my previous post. I think ultimately it boils down to whether you think the comfort and feelings of gender non conforming men is worth adding this extra layer of risk for women. And I do think that's a fair argument to have. But to have that argument you have to acknowledge the fact of the matter which is that women do lose out on some of their protections because of this.

I also think it is on trans people and their allies to be honest about the fact that this DOES happen. It was absolutely disgusting to see on trans Reddit the reaction to Karen Danson (one of the Darlington nurses) calling out the abusive behaviour of "Rose". She was accused of "weaponising her trauma" being a bigot, transphobic and other awful accusations. There was not even a hint of "hmm, maybe this is a case of a sexual predator abusing the system". That is an enormous problem and, imo, one of the key reasons why we cannot give even a millimeter in this "debate".

Tedious. It's a very male thought to think women worried about men in toilets means women see toilets as a sanctuary to run into instead of as a place to avoid having to run out of because of men.
Just tedious.

Bla bla bla my authentic lived experience bla bla. Look at my theory of your potential lived experience bla bla.

Tedious.

I would hope it would stop this. Any man in a single-sex female space means any man can enter it. I had this conversation with a cleaner - he said his lanyard ID'd him and I pointed out anyone can wear a lanyard and apart from having one he was wearing nothing that identified him as an employee - and with the manager of a restaurant. Neither took on board the danger this causes.
Also, women cleaning men's loos is degrading for the women and embarrassing for the men. I don't like it and I think opposite sex cleaners should stop being used.

Tbh, I don't give a toss for transwomen's hurt feelings, need for validation etc. It is not my problem, maintaining single-sex women's spaces is my problem.

This is the equivalent of getting rid of police uniforms altogether because they are easily faked.

To me this is the epitome of how this ideology took hold.
The world is not ideal.
Instead of dealing with the nuance of the solutions we've been able to find within time, space and budget available, we put into question common sense itself and end up with 2+2=6 and continue with this as the foundation for the new world logic.

Ideally men would not clean women's loos but we just might have a work force problem so lanyards, DBS and work and social contracts are required.

Now if we can propose a new solution to make the ideal possible, go for it. In the mean time, we need to have a firm grip on reality. And common sense.

Id have thought toilet cleaners wear some sort of uniform? Its not as if people would be delighted to clean toilets then pop to the supermarket on the way home wearing the same clothes.

Well, common sense suggests that women clean women's loos and men clean men's loos, as this removes the problem of 'fake' cleaners mainly in the women's loos.
That police uniforms are easily faked (really?) does not mean that the police should not wear uniforms - and they usually have other ID that confirms what the uniform says e.g. a unique number on the shoulder of their jacket/shirt - nor that we should dispense with ID for other jobs. False coupling.

The men I have seen in women's loos usually wear a shirt and dark trousers and have a lanyard with ID. Anyone could fake this, it's not hard, unlike a police uniform which would require some effort to find even on the internet.

It's not common sense that you're employing, it's magical thinking. If a cup is used for soup it doesn't become a bowl. If you wear your knickers on your head they don't become a hat.

As I'm sure you know, trans people who pass (almost entirely 'transmen' in this country) will use the facilities that they've always done.

Cross-dressing has always been around - but it's only become a youth subculture recently. And it's only recently that anyone has tried to assert that transwomen are women. No one has ever really believed that and no one does now, including trans-identified men.

Have fun with your gender appearance and identity, if you want - but don't expect everyone else to play along.

If people want to campaign for same sex toilet cleaners, i wouldn't stand in their way.

I think we should think ahead and see how it could work in practice. What are business more likely to do - schedule both male and female cleaners everyday, or have every toilet unisex and avoid the problem?

We know the problems with unisex spaces, bothfor saftey and for reduced number of actual toilets. So it that going to be a win for women, or the men who want to destroy anything for women if they cant use it?

If male cleaners are acting like arses and not signalling their presence or not waiting for women to leave before entering, we need to let them and their employers know its unacceptable behaviour. Isnt that easier?

🙄
Recent history is not that long ago and I'm not going to dig it up (out of respect) .

If you don't know how being afraid of anyone having a lanyard and looking authoritative is the same as being afraid some might be rogue officers and ex-officers then that's your own problem.

Yes ideally we'd have the correct cleaners in the right sex toilets but needing workable solutions shouldn't move society to the conclusion that men have every right to walk into the women's whenever they feel like a spinny skirt or if they castrate themselves.

Oh please, I absolutely do have an awareness of the constant situational awareness that is involved in being a woman.

You’re now retelling the story and changing the scenario to fit your narrative and bend over backwards to explain why something that applies to trans women wouldn’t apply to male cleaners.

The scenario of “a woman running into a bathroom to escape a man and therefore shouldn’t see a man in the bathroom” is a story that has been told on here for years. You have now just added in the “if he follows you in you can now complain about it and he can’t Self-ID out of it” as the focus to suit what you’re now saying.

You may not run into bathrooms to escape men- great- but that’s not what many others on here seem to think.

Please link to a post that describes doing this so we can understand why you are making this point. I have only been on MN for 6 or 7 years and I don't recall seeing the examples as you describe them. I am happy to read what you are referring to though.