Good Law Practice launch a EHCR/Supreme Court challenge over toilets

[fromorbit]

After raising over 418K it turns out the GLP's amazing legal case is all about toilets. Details:

https://archive.is/TWRTl

No doubt it will fail like most of their previous legal cases.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5336208-good-law-project-suing-the-ehrc-and-bridget-phillipson-letter-before-action?page=1

Have you got a submission for the case, @Keeptoiletssafe

Epic, thank you. What a very odd journey he's been on. I wonder where it is heading.

The last time I saw Gerry Adams I had to do a double take, for he had let his hair grow long and was wearing a turquoise shellsuit. I wondered if he was about to head off to the Himalayas on a vision quest.

I kind of assume Jolyon will go off on another amazing tangent, but I have no idea what it will be. I just have faith that it will be cringe.

Happy to offer up what I have but the GLP one is done is it not? The judge is now writing up the decision. Unfortunately the things that have happened to me aren’t documented anywhere. The evidence that I have can all be corroborated in newspaper reports, foi results etc. so it’s checkable. I don’t collate anything that’s not published officially. The difference is, I have found no one else has been collating it. There should be a central body, maybe within the BSR of the HSE. Toilets are so important to get right.

Is there a website, @Keeptoiletssafe ? I remember hearing Clara greed talk about loos, it is a big issue and under considered

I haven’t got a website. Agree about Professor Clara Greed. Her work is amazing, I have never heard her lecture. There’s a Rose George book that’s fascinating too. And the man (whose name escapes me and I am travelling so can’t check) who did a lot for disabled loos - his wife was instrumental in getting more women’s loos in places.

@Keeptoiletssafe I've seen press reports recently on two people who have died in toilets following healthcare emergencies. There were no details about the toilet design in the articles I read, but I do wonder - especially for one who wasn't found for a week.

Yes. I check the designs using different methods. It’s easier because people tend to take pictures of facilities and post them on websites. There’s even Facebook pages devoted to them which is a bit odd. But some have beautiful tiles etc. and people rate them. There’s one dedicated to Wetherspoons loos! There’s helpful sites that discuss disabled loos and what side the transfer is on. Also Google maps, trip advisor.

There’s also live sites which discuss toilets for ‘quick transactions’. It’s difficult because I don’t want to sound like a prude, but having a design which makes it easier to have sex (there’s a clause in the Sexual Offences Act which makes sex in a public toilet illegal) means it’s easier to have unconsensual sex too.

When I did work on schools I looked in local papers. You could actually trace the timeline from a celebration of ‘inclusivity’ for new general neutral toilets, to parents and children complaining, to a serious incident happening.

Sometimes you can tell the design because of the description. The worst cases are the ones involving children when it’s a private mixed sex toilet in a very public area, which I get myself into a different ‘zone’ to read. I know practically anyone would help if they knew so this is the frustration.

This is what annoys me when the EHRC mentioned a shopping centre and said the solution is to add a mixed sex enclosed toilet elsewhere. That is not a neutral act. You have got to look at the disadvantages as well as the advantages. What will happen in there? How will this private space be supervised? CCTV outside is retrospective. Blue lights inside to stop drug use don’t really work and ODing in toilets is a problem. Where’s the risk assessment? It took only a few hours for the newly reopened public toilets in Bath to be closed again because they were trashed. Vandalism is a real problem in all public toilets.

Robin Moira White said mixed sex toilets can be ghettos. I agree that some can. Where we differ is that if Robin doesn’t seem to realise that if Robin uses the women’s then the designs change to mixed sex designs for everyone. It’s not a race to the worst loos.

Still there:

https://x.com/jolyonmaugham/status/954005262632972290

https://x.com/JolyonMaugham/status/954049878140825601

Just in case:

https://archive.ph/KkXT0

https://archive.ph/koUqi

thanks 🤩

These are all good points, but they at the moment will add a lot of fuel to the fire of it's all too complicated, too expensive, requires rebuild from the ground up and the best thing to do is kick it in the long grass with a lot of consultation while men crack on using women's toilets.

The goal is to implement the SCJ immediately and give women back equal access, which requires men out of their spaces.

No one is going to treat men as they did women, and just say 'go in ones you're very unhappy about or go without' - apparently people with ovaries are a fuckton more resilient and capable than those with balls.

There has to immediately be a cheap, accessible, practical alternative to sex based provision. This is most likely in the short term to be enclosed single use cubicles and most likely to be the commandeered disabled ones, with all the issues involved, or re labelling of a proportionate number of cubicle rooms as gender neutral. This immediately returns women's single sex spaces back to accessible ones so that all women have somewhere they can go, and starts work on the idea for men that however they feel, they can't have that one, they have a choice of two others.

Yes men will kick off about this and find a whole raft of excuses about ghettos and othering and outing and safety and anything else they can think of, because they want to be where the non consenting undressed women are, and they do not want anything in the world that makes clear they are not actual women. Unfortunately as women have rights too, that is tough. The middle ground and compromise is to provide accessible facilities alongside single sex facilities, and those who consent to use them can do so. If they choose not to use them at that point, it is a personal decision.

It is not going to be perfect, and won't be probably for years, but the priority has to be to start with, getting men out of women's single sex spaces and women having rights being once more an accepted thing in the UK. I worry that making it complicated now plays into the hands of those invested in ensuring that the SCJ never makes it into reality.

Frankly it needs to START from 'here is your accessible gender neutral facility which respects your gender identity' and is not perfect, but let's develop it and work on it. (You do not have the option of the women's, it's this or the men's.)

Not from 'at some point we will eventually all agree on how these future toilets much look and stop arguing about costs/building etc and create them' (and in the meantime let's carry on with men in the women's until things are right for them).

Maybe in ten year's time there's be a lot less demand for these gender-neutral (or whatever term you want to use) facilities? It would sure be ironic if millions were spent on new toilet configurations all over the country, only to find that people were increasingly satisfied with the traditional Gents and Ladies.

I disagree that we need to change much. There should be risk assessments and Equality Impact Assessments to assess what will happen if we start telling venues, at their own cost, to alter their provision. From my research, it is not a neutral act - the disadvantages outway the advantages. This is why I think there are delays - it is too huge if you are going to cater to a small proportion of people’s preferences. You can’t square having more private, mixed sex provision with health and safety. Remember superloos? They didn’t work for the same reasons.

Document T analysed costs etc and decided that any new toilets going forward should be done under Doc T conditions. It didn’t say you need to alter provision now, because it would be too costly. I think it costs about £15k per commercial toilet room from one manufactures site.

Provision should mainly be single sex (with door gaps). That should be the default as it is now. Ambulant toilets too are single sex.
Document T is mostly ok - annoyingly it doesn’t specify exact doorgaps (long story which involves transactivism preference over medical conditions) and they need to tweak them into the universal designs for single sex use in areas that can be single sex. It’s only single sex toilets that can have door gaps. There’s a couple of other niggles too but it isn’t a big job and it has been costed out already. BUT anyone thinking of changing toilets, if they are doing them to comply with building regs, has to do them to the specifications of Document T (with the exception of schools and a few others). It’s not that simple. Read any books on toilets and you’ll read about all the things that happen in them apart from the obvious.

Some are this mess partly because people did what they wanted in the recent past and didn’t build facilities that comply with health and safety. Some are accidentally in this mess because the people they trusted to know the rules, didn’t. One quarter of schools have private mixed sex cubicles most then with communal shared sinks. The fallout cost is going to be huge for those.

Just reading in SM about the govt back-tracking with their unhelpful butting in to the GLP court case. There's every reason to be suspicious of their good faith, isn't there?

https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/the-government-is-trying-to-rewrite-for-women-scotland/?mc_cid=c4dcb4c7fa

OpheliaWitchoftheWoods
There has to immediately be a cheap, accessible, practical alternative to sex based provision. This is most likely in the short term to be enclosed single use cubicles and most likely to be the commandeered disabled ones, with all the issues involved, or re labelling of a proportionate number of cubicle rooms as gender neutral.

Why? Why all that disruption and expense for such a tiny number of transpeople - about 250,000, according to the last census?

Women's toilets for biological females, men's toilets for biological males is the cheapest, most accessible, practical solution, as most older buildings will have that configuration already, and all new building will have to have separated single sex toilets to meet with building regs.

Keeptoiletssafe has written in detail about the dangers of enclosed cubicles, and I have written many, many times, about the complete unacceptability of commandeering accessible toilets that disabled people campaigned for for decades, and handing them over to able-bodied transpeople simply because they prefer them.
Disabled toilets are not a preference for disabled people, they are a necessity.

I'm a wheelchair user, I get that.

And I get the infuriating weight of men's preferences crushing everyone and everything else out of the way, particularly such a small number.

I get it.

But considering that this is being framed as much to hard to do at all, unless there is a fast food solution that proves what this is really about - that alternative spaces are not wanted because they are not the goal - we have no hope of ever getting men out of women's spaces.

I welcome the move to accessible toilets, noting the issues that enclosed cubicles bring. A lot of disability is invisible. I know a man who looks very dapper and is mostly able-bodied. He has an ostomy bag that needs emptying 6-8 times a day, so he uses the accessible toilet.

Others have IBS, or autism that means they need a self-enclosed cubicle.

If I see someone going to the accessible toilet and they're not in a wheelchair, I automatically think they must be trans. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So Ophelia is right, at some point we have to address the real reason men who identify as women want to use the ladies. It's to titillate their sexual fetish. This is also not something that women who identify as men have. Once again we are succumbing to what men want.

The government might not be so ready to plead for such men, if they knew the real reason for them wanting to use women's facilities.

I just realised that the TKDB logo is a chess pawn wearing a fool's cap. Whichever adult behind the scenes designed that was laughing his sides sore about hiding that message in plain sight.

Protection from torture is the only unqualified human right.

THIS is exactly what will happen. Not least because it seems there might only be 1 generation significantly affected.

So I’d suggest we build (new/additional) gender neutral facilities which meet the requirements of a wider group which will also have the benefit of avoiding any claims of “outing”. Eg ambulance disabled, family groups, baby change, those who don’t like cubicles etc etc

If I see someone going to the accessible toilet and they're not in a wheelchair, I automatically think they must be trans. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Really? If I saw a man in women’s clothes then yes but not otherwise (I wouldn’t assume a woman in man’s clothes was trans as so many women wear men’s clothes without that belief system). You would think this even though you list in your post reasons why people not in a wheelchair may need accessible toilets?

There’s never going to be a perfect solution but what we had was based on health, safety and welfare. Public toilets are even specifically mentioned in clause 71 of the Sexual Offences Act (2003) and implied in voyeurism laws.

If you look at the Government’s Provision of Public Toilets (2008) (it’s googlible) you can see these are what are being discussed. There is nothing about men using womens toilets or vice versa. There is lots about men’s behaviour in toilets and women’s needs. Vandalism, sex, drugs, queues, problems with disabled toilets and misuse, lack of safe facilities for women, are all in there.

What has changed since 2008 is the loss of council public toilets so people are using venue toilets which have used a variety of rise of designs (seemingly building control is not used), mobile phones and transactivism: the rise of the unregulated and ill defined gender-neutral or ‘inclusive’ toilet. Now we have the rise of cheap hidden cameras, the easiest places to hide them and one where you are not noticed setting them up and one where they can be hidden easily amongst mechanical ventilation etc.

Voyeurism with mobile phones is a boy/man problem. But the way to prevent that it not to reduce health and safety by making designs completely private.
Having sex in toilets is illegal but the way to not have to deal with it in pubs and clubs is not to enclose toilets, because you have to consider unconsensual sex as well. Similar reasons with drug taking and overdoses.

The ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach is not safeguarding.

Because most of the toilet behaviour is so sexed, the best way to deal with it is to have single sex toilets as the primary provision with healthier and safer non-enclosed designs. This prevents misuse, is better hygienically and most importantly protects anyone who is in need of help as they will be seen quicker and heard if they are able to make a noise, as the designs for single sex toilets can then have gaps in the doors and partitions. The ability for women to say ‘No’ and know that the government is behind you and you are not going to be prosecuted for harassment (or lose your job), which has been implied by others, is the thing that needs to be sorted out.

No. Because a mixed sex, private space big enough for more than one person (that can be opened from the outside easily) is not as safe. Why have we had so many rapes happening in disabled toilets and train carriages? Why are so many deaths in enclosed designs? Why did the extra new disabled toilets at the BBC, according to Rod Liddle, get used for sex (as part of a bigger story about Russell Brand who is being accused of sexual assault a woman in a toilet).

There need to be as few of these as possible. The mixed sex disabled design needs to be so closely monitored off a general circulation space where hopefully people noticed who is going in and how long they take in there and also to act if they thought something was a problem.

Retrofitting mixed sex, private designs in unsuitable places is a nightmare for safeguarding.

Yes to designs with door gaps to prevent misuse and for supervision. Which means single sex toilets - they’re the only design that has them. Ambulant toilets can go in the single sex provision too, which is what happens at the moment.

There is not a problem with men. Most men are good men. There’s a problem of being in a private space accessible to all men. Take a bit of privacy out with small door gaps which means in legislation and building regs everyone sticks to their own sex in toilets. It means boys are safer in the men’s. It means women and girls are safer. Vulnerable people are safer if anyone, regardless of gender, has a medical emergency.

For the people who want to have sex or do drugs in toilets, they have a choice of running the risk of being prosecuted or not misusing the toilet.