Toilet progress Supreme Court

[JazzyBBBG]

This lovely little sign has done up at my leisure centre in last couple of days. Well done Dudley!

That’s great!

Fantastic!

I see India Willoughby is having a meltdown over on Twitter as Merlin group (Alton towers etc) have also applied the supreme court's judgement to their facilities.

Ooh that's a biggie if Merlin have.

Lots of places are, even some charities and LAs. I’m refraining from sign posting as the ones I am aware of have managed it sensibly (notifying all staff of the change and what to do if unhappy). I figure they don’t need an avalanche of TRAs targeting them. Without this, they can focuses on supporting / addressing the staff who are objecting

Is India a regular at Alton Towers? (What a picture that is.)

I’m guessing Alton Towers just brought Nemesis to India.

😂

@DuesToTheDirt maybe at Halloween?!

🤣

That’s great news! Long may sanity reign.

We had an incident on our campsite where the men’s toilets in one location were closed so a young lad, maybe 15, decided to use the women’s rather than walk 50 yards to the other men’s.

Partly teenage logic but I think also may have been due to the conditioning by so many schools that mixed sex is fine and girls don’t deserve their own spaces.

My husband gently pointed out the other toilets to him and asked him not to use the women’s again and he apologised. Nice lad likely misled by adults who should know better.

If anyone lives locally, it might be nice to email or leave a comment on their webpage to show appreciation and pre-empt pushback. I will certainly do this for any orgs who do this in my area.

It's a good start but I'm not particularly thrilled about the Accessible toilet being utilised by someone who "prefers" to use a gender neutral one. Accessible toilets are a legal requirement for those with actual disabilities not because they fancy not using/queueing for the fe/male toilets.

Merlin have worked out that their main target demographic is families, and how the adults in that demographic might feel.

Well done. I mean, about time and the only sensible decision in terms of their business, but still, well done.

I'd consider extreme mental illness that causes someone to chemically or surgically change their body a disability.

Someone using the accessible facilities because they prefer not to use single sex spaces for their biological sex is probably going to be quicker in the toilet than someone with a limiting physical disability. The transwomen posting pics of themselves in the Ladies aren't going to be posing in the accessible toilets.

Hoping all other councils follow this example.

The failure to protect accessible toilets in the same way as the sign protects single-sex toilets is a big disappointment - otherwise this sign is great, and should be used everywhere.

Some mental illnesses can indeed be disabling; however, just having a disability does not automatically mean you should use the accessible toilet.

Many people with disabilities are perfectly capable of using the 'ordinary' toilet. For example, the fact that I am deaf does not mean I need an adapted accessible toilet, so I leave it free for those people with disabilities who don't have the luxury of choosing which toilet they feel more comfortable in - for some disabled people it's the accessible loo or no loo at all, it's not a choice.

At times my other disabilities limit my strength and mobility to the extent that I physically need an adapted accessible toilet to be safe, in which case I use the disabled toilet. But I only do so when I actually need to.

Disabled people know that we are not all one homogenous group who all need adaptations to make toilets accessible for us, and we know the importance of keeping accessible toilets free and available for disabled people who need the adaptations.

There is no way of policing women's toilets to 100% keep men out, it works on trust - 'the good men stay out so the bad men stand out' .
Similarly, the decision to use the accessible toilet is a matter of trust and personal judgment, but it is every bit as important to state on signage that the accessible toilets are intended for people with disabilities only, as it is to state that the women's toilets are for biological women only.

A pity they didn't get proper legal guidance before opening the women's changing rooms/toilets up to men. It was all there in the EA2010 - it just needed reading properly and in its entirety.

The new accessible toilet dilemma is not great. Already people using disabled toilets are disadvantaged by all the problems that go with mixed sex designs.

Interestingly in the Stonewall survey that was quoted in 2/3 of all public responses for the toilet consultation several years ago, 51% said they were disabled. It didn’t breakdown this figure into which disabilities.

Not all disabled people are better in accessible toilets either. For example, people who have epilepsy, diabetes, pots, post-stroke frailty, heart conditions are best having a single sex toilet with door gaps so they can be seen asap if they need assistance. Collectively this group is in the millions of people. Ambulant single sex toilets are good for some in this group too as they provide hand rails and a shelf.

The problem with accessible toilets is because they are mixed sex and private and bigger, more goes on in them that takes longer (sex and drug related). Even at the BBC, according to Rod Liddell in the Spectator.

This is particularly frustrating when it is the only toilet that is suitable for your toileting needs which may be urgent because of a medical condition.

edit to say: we need to leave accessible toilets for toileting and changing needs for those who need them - this may be ambulant people too with certain medical conditions.

To be fair, so many organisations got drenched in Stonewall's interpretation of the law and everyone thought Stonewall - the much respected gay-rights campaigning group - must be correct. Of course, we know otherwise now but plenty of places genuinely thought they were doing the right thing. Good on Dudley for correcting themselves; so many others won't accept they were wrong or don't dare incite the ire of the TRA crowd.

I'd tried to find a source for Merlin that wasn't just India but didn't have any luck - does anyone else have a link to share?

It's a good sign, I like that they said 'recent ruling', although recent clarification would have been better.

Well done Dudley and Alton Towers. Come on the rest of the country.

If it really is too frightening (ha) for Trans identifying men to use the male loos, then a fourth space (ie not clogging up scare-enough accessible facilities) would be preferable to this.

But at least they’re not dragging their heels as hard as the NHS (still) is.

This is great, and seems fair.
i agree it’s concerning that accessible toilets may be under more pressure, it feels like a good use of resources to prioritise building more of these.
I really feel that people with hidden disabilities, including mental health issues such as gender dysphoria, need these facilities.
it’s a tragedy that so much money was spent on stonewall brainwashing that could have been used in a different way.

I am disabled and have no choice but to use the accessible toilet.
Now I am supposed to wait whilst some non disabled bloke is in there doing his make up??
Not really a victory.