My research shows it is women who are too afraid to use gender neutral toilets so they use the ladies. Men who want to use the ladies, want to use the ladies not gender-neutral. Robin Moira White calls the gender-neutral toilets ghettos, although also says they are useful for other people in the process of transitioning. From a Stonewall survey (published in 2018 and referred to in 67% of the responses for the ‘calls for evidence’ in the toilet consultation for Doc T), people are being harassed by being verbally abused and in one incidence, pushed out the toilets by 2 women. 48% were uncomfortable using toilets. The general population figure (in a different survey) is 80% feel uncomfortable. Opinions and surveys need to be qualified by facts.
There’s a consistency to my findings of private toilets that shows it’s where people (always involving a man) have sex, it’s less clean, and there’s a greater risk of catching something or coming to harm. The most obvious example of preventable harm is someone who has had a medical emergency and isn't found in time. These are individual tragedies that happen on a regular basis to too many families. I have found examples where this has happened to men, women and children in toilets. It can be cardiac arrests, strokes, drugs, head injuries, choking, suicide, self-harm gone wrong.
But the other major prevention is that people ‘prefer’ to do criminal things in private. It doesn’t seem to matter how public the space is before the private enclosed toilet room/cubicle as there’s no witnesses. CCTV doesn’t prevent as it’s retrospective and not inside the cubicle/room (though we are now getting close to that in some schools).
We don’t need to replace single sex toilets with mixed sex toilets. I don’t think there’s enough benefit to justify the cost.
If you tack a private mixed toilet on to increase provision, this is what will happen:
Some may function ok depending on supervision levels (someone being in place having awareness of who is going in and out in real time). This is the same as a unisex toilet at school reception. Others will be stuck in inappropriate places - such as the women’s changing rooms in the basement in the Sandie Peggie case. Women won’t like using them because of safety risks, dirt and smells. Men who want to use the ladies won’t use them because they’ll feel outed or othered. People who will use them include men for a ‘good sit down’ with their phone, two people having sex, and people doing drugs. Depending on where it is, you may have someone sleeping in there if the cubicle/room is big enough. It will be vandalised more frequently. Because of this, it will be shut down more regularly for maintenance. Public toilets sometimes only last a day before they have to be shut down. That’s why thousands have been shut down permanently around the country.
It will be interesting to hear the Good Law Projects arguments in November because I don’t know what position they can justify on health and safety grounds. As soon it’s ambiguous as to who is using toilets, the design goes completely private. Mixed sex designs are always private.
Whichever way they argue, they are arguing for less safe and less hygienic toilets. They haven’t thought it through and don’t have the research on real life consequences.
I keep hearing the term ‘luxury beliefs’ and I think this works with toilets too. When people making policy or designing public toilets think the most horrid thing about toilets is that they are not in a completely private cubicle/room, it becomes a problem.
When I speak to policy-makers some lament that there used to toilet attendants. We have to rely on strangers now for supervision.
Women should have twice as much provision as men. There should be blocks of toilets with a private single sex area (with sinks) and then individual toilet cubicles with gaps above and below the doors and partitions. This minimises queues. The block should preferably have natural light and roof lights/windows that open for natural ventilation. The sanitary bins should be placed within the cubicle then the toilet positioned. There should be an increase in ambulant toilets within single sex provision. These have handrails and shelves so useful for those who may otherwise have to use the accessible provision. The pinnacle would be an accessible toilet within the single sex block too. There should be a clear standard set of rules: no loitering, no phones out, and a note on voyeurism laws and the sexual offence act.
The accessible mixed sex toilet(s) should be as carefully monitored as is possible.
Toilet blocks should be as boring and functional as possible.
In nightclubs etc there could be an open plan area for preening with mirrors, chairs and a sink etc and Instagram friendly walls. Completely public and nothing hidden, open to all.