‘So if the real concern is protecting people from sexual violence, we need to be honest about where the actual risk lies.’
That’s what I have been doing for the last few years. The conclusion I have come to, supported by medical and scientific data, newspaper reports, discussions with manufacturers, toilet designers, charities, government departments inc HSE (and common sense) is that as many public toilets should be single sex with the safety gaps above and below the doors.
If you have to have any mixed sex/ unisex/ universal toilets they should be in highly visible places and monitored ideally by an attendant but at least cctv which is visible. Unfortunately because of politeness/embarrassment/fear, people do not intervene so the actual risk of being harmed is still greater in a mixed sex toilet because they are private.
Single sex toilet designs are also private if it is ambiguous as to whether they are single sex or if the area in front of the cubicle is mixed sex.
Also with studies, you have to really analyse them. For example, the Stonewall for a public consultation for Document T (building regs for toilets), a few years ago. Stonewall very effectively got lots of people to write in which is fine in itself. But look at the detail and it skewed the results when it came to safety. 79% of responses mentioned safety concerns for trans/non-binary people and 75% mentioned safety concerns for women. Fewer than 5% of responses mentioned safety concerns for one of the following groups: girls, children, men, disabled people, and boys.
Stonewall UK’s LGBT in Britain – Trans Report (2018), was cited in 11,866 responses. This is 67% of the total number of responses for the consultation.
Stonewall encouraged people to mention their report which looked at a survey of a 733 people identifying as trans from 2017. In it, it stated 48% of transgender people felt uncomfortable using a public toilet. It listed two examples both when people were shouted at, and one where two women pushed a person to get out of the ladies.
I am not condoning this, but these two incidences must be put into context of health and safety for the population as a whole. It throws out some anomalies as well as 51% of the LGBT population are disabled according to the Stonewall report, but in the Doc T analysis only 2% of people appeared to be supportive of ‘disabled’ toilets.
Another more recent report by a cleaning company said 80% of people felt uncomfortable using a public toilet. This time they mentioned hygiene as a big problem. This does not mean anything in relation to Stonewall but just shows how toilet needs analysis are problematical. We need unbiased datasets based on actual incidents.
In the same time period all the sexual assaults were by men on women, girls and boys. Look at my previous posts for the statistics of sexual assaults in schools and hospitals.
Deaths in public toilets are men, women, boys and girls. I have examples in hospitals, schools, supermarkets etc. I don’t have a national database because no one does. Deaths and sexual assaults in toilets aren’t recorded nationally. The ones I have are from private toilets.
It’s good you are thinking of boys safety. That’s why men should go to men’s toilets which should have door gaps too so men aren’t so likely to take a boy into a cubicle. It’s also why women should be able to take their sons to the ladies.