Holyrood loogate is peaking women

[Pluvia]

I've had two, separate, conversations about the allegations that Colin Smyth MSP put a camera in the women's loos at Holyrood in the last couple of days. It seems to have brought home the dangers of men in women's loos to women who so far have been unengaged on the issue of single-sex spaces.

One of them is beside herself with horror at the thought of anyone in her organisation being able to watch her and her fellow workers in the loo. Most of the toilets in her office are mixed sex, which she now realises means that any man can go in and put up or remove a camera at any time. I've talked to her in the past about the issue of loos and she's not been bothered, but the thought that a colleague may be watching or, worse, that the videos been uploaded to the internet and men all over the world may be watching, has really bothered her.

The second conversation wasn't quite as dramatic as the first, but the second woman, too, who has always been 'I don't care who's peeing in the next cubicle', has said it's really brought home to her the fact that nowhere is safe from perverts. Apparently now she is willing to agree that no male should be allowed in women's facilities in order to reduce the risk of spy cameras.

Aha, when it starts to personally affect these women, they start to get it!!

Typically, things have to happen and be meaningful on personal level before many people will begin to understand the implications and issues, and the reasons we have single sex facilities in the first place.

Some people don't have the sense to think through the risks themselves which amazes me. I'm glad this is peaking people.

I think there's an unacknowledged assumption that only a certain type of man does all the sex crime and if you're an intelligent, affluent woman you won't ever need to share a space with him.

I haven’t read up on this but have been wondering- was it women’s toilets, and how did he access them?

Or were they unisex ones allowing him to film everyone and presumably keep only what he wanted?

Yes I was going to post this. They’re realising that middle-class professional types can be perverts too.

The news stories all just say toilets. I definitely wouldn't assume it was the women's.

It amazes me that it takes something like this, for people to understand that crimes of voyeurism and indecent exposure are crimes almost exclusively committed by men, against women and children.

Why on earth wouldn’t they think in the first place that predatory men might exploit loopholes in order to commit these crimes? it really does show a fundamental lack of critical thinking and understanding of why we have single sex facilities for safeguarding reasons.

I still don’t get how a woman cannot imagine how it might be for other women, not to mention children. For me it’s as obvious as the nose on your face. It’s scary that it has to be spelled out to them, and even when they are told what happens to others, it’s still a case of ‘well I’m fine so who cares’. I do think it’s something fundamental about human nature rather than something that could say, be taught.

I’m now convinced a lot of the people driving these changes are basically perpetrators. I did DBS checks for Girlguiding, but once they implemented gender ideology it made me look at what you needed for a GRA - no DBS - and then the well-known loopholes in the DBS system which no one wants to close despite repeated lobbying. The only conclusion is that there are a lot of people up high very happy for these loopholes to exist, if not for themselves, then for their fellow perverts. Once you see it it’s impossible to unsee.

I’d be inclined to agree to a certain extent and what’s happened with Pride Surrey and LGBTYS are probably good examples of that.

However the WYOO board on another parenting site is full of women who don’t see any need for single sex toilets or changing rooms. In the case of the Darlington nurses they think the women who object to a man in their changing rooms are the problem, and that they should be made to change in a disabled toilet if they aren’t happy with it.

I just cannot fathom their thought process around this issue, I can only conclude that they think it’s rare or that it would happen anyway so there’s no point in having any safeguards.

@Pluvia did you tell them that the search for the covert device also included the creche and education centre at Holyrood?

Per the Evening Standard, quoting an email from the Chief Executive Office at the Scottish Parliament.

I didn't know that, just heard that the police were doing a sweep of the building.

Genevieve Gluck over on Twitter wrote recently about how difficult it is for women to understand male sexuality, the extraordinary power sexual attraction has over men and how transgenderism has let the genie out of the bottle. We really, as a society, need an adult debate about it. Child porn seems to have been normalised. I don't think a day goes by when I don't read about yet another man being caught with illegal images being given a community order. We'd have to cover the country with jails for all the sex offenders caught in possession of it. So what do we do?

I live in a fairly rural area, no cities and relatively low population density, yet in the local paper there now seems to be a very steady trickle of convictions for that sort of thing. It used to be rarer.

What changed, of course, was the internet. I suspect the inclination was always there, but the internet made it easier to get hold of the material, easier for like-minded men to contact each other and "normalise" their inclinations to themselves, and easier in some ways to get caught.

Same. Shocking the last couple of years. Including one trying to meet a child.

But we know men put cameras in women's toilets and changing rooms. They can be as small as a screw head. This is why we need our right to single sex spaces enforced rather than inviting all men to share them.

I wasn't sure where to ask this, but this post might be it.

I've been thinking about getting a bug sweeper for a while, a small one that I could carry in a bag. For public women's toilets, especially at places where men pretending to be women may be. But also for 'unisex' toilets/changing rooms.

I do not think that I am being paranoid, though some may think that.

Does anyone have one? If so, any recommendations?

I know, but this particular case was a man putting a camera in the men's toilets. In Daily Record today. So yes, man abusing position of power and being abusive, but not towards women in this specific instance.

You mean they didn’t notice the Prince Andrew furor?

No, not this time, but it has come so close - it could just as easily have been in a gender neutral toilet.

I would also be interested in a bug/camera sweeper - come to think of it, what woman wouldn't?

It makes no difference- it will still make people stop and think.