As you know, I like to keep up with everyone’s views on toilets. I would like to emphasize I want to keep everyone safe that’s why I look at what everyone is reporting.
Since Translucent and RMW are being mentioned, I thought I should add a few sentences about what I have found about their views and how they haven’t thought it through. Some of this is a cut and paste from a couple of my other posts.
RMW wants mixed sex toilets for those in the process of transitioning but women’s toilets for those men who have transitioned to women. RMW doesn’t understand that makes all toilets mixed sex which means they all have to follow the less safe, less hygienic designs. However, throwing a spanner in the works is RMW’s admittance (on a tv show) that mixed sex toilets are ghettos (presumably referring to the less hygienic and less safe elements?) which contradicts everything RMW has said. This is all in the public realm.
If you look at Translucent (2025) and Stonewall (2018) in terms of their literature on toilets, the worst case scenario is a man flashed another man in protest that he was going to use the ladies and a man was pushed out of the ladies by two women when he refused to leave. These incidences can not have been nice and there are lots more incidences of people telling others they shouldn’t be in the toilets they are using.
However in the Transluscent booklet it has a trigger warning at the front about rape. I can not find any incident of anyone being raped in that booklet. People have mentioned ‘past incidents’ but not given any details. I work off facts I can verify as much as possible, and there’s been nothing I can find.
In contrast, I have a lot of data about what happens in mixed sex toilets. I have incidences of what has happened in ‘gender neutral’ designs, including loss of life, sexual assaults, rapes, hidden cameras etc. It has always been men who are the perpetrators. In this country, it was noted that a rape is reported at least every school day inside school premises. The locations where mentioned in the press are store cupboards and toilets (disabled toilets are quoted in other reports). It is logical that it would be a private space. There are many, many reports of sexual assaults in toilets in very public places (train carriages, stations, hospitals) - normally to women and children of both sexes.
In terms of toilets and isolation, it is unlikely that a wheelchair user can go out somewhere new without forward planning to find where there are open accessible toilets. There is a lot of evidence (over several decades) that elderly people do not go out if there aren’t enough public toilets in case of soiling themselves. Public toilet provision is much, much less than it used to be. All this is public knowledge too. It was discussed at length in a Government report in 2008 where there is no discussion at all about transgender people because it wasn’t a thing.
Honestly, public toilet provision is so expensive with the maintenance that goes with it. What we need is everyone to respect the toilets we still have but they never have so I can’t see why people are going to change. Unfortunately there will always be people who fall ill in toilets (irrespective of gender/sex etc). I often quote the loo is the place 11% of cardiac arrests happen. You need to know someone is in trouble asap and a door gap can, and has, saved lives. That’s why there’s no such thing as a ‘secured from the inside’ toilet cubicle/room in building regs. They have to have the ability to open the door outwards.
We are all safer in designs that are not completely private in an otherwise public space. We are all less likely to catch something too because it’s easier to clean and ventilate. This has been medically proven.
What we can do is to make sure anyone at their most vulnerable gets the safest and cleanest toilets, by having the default provision to be single sex toilets with door gaps above and below the door. Men in particular need to be kind and tolerant to all men and behave in toilets. Having sex and taking drugs should be discouraged.
The solution, if you had all the money in the world, would be to have another set of toilets everyone could use, with door gaps. Then mixed sex would have the same safety benefits. However, this, in my honest opinion, and research, would end up being the mens toilets. Women already self exclude from mixed sex toilets now as they feel less comfortable. Most men also don’t like being heard having a wee in earshot of women and there is a danger of paruresis.
What would be more beneficial, is more single sex ‘disabled’ toilets within single sex spaces. That means disabled women and their children in particular would be afforded the extra safety.
The mixed sex ‘disabled’ toilets would be for everyone but they need to be very closely monitored and regularly checked. This is usually not possible as, in most public toilets, supervision comes from strangers not attendants anymore.
So yes, I agree with RMW, in part, that mixed sex toilets are ghettos. This is why the single sex design with door gaps and a single sex area in front are better. But for that to happen, they need to be single sex. Single ‘gender’ are always private.
The people who are discriminated against if all toilets become private because they are mixed sex or ‘single gender’ are: those having a medical emergency (physical or mental health), those more likely to have a sudden medical emergency due to a medical condition (including those with certain disabilities like epilepsy), elderly (more likely to fall), children and women (more sexual assaults), people of certain religious faiths (will not use mixed sex toilets).
Can you tell me how gender neutral toilets are inclusive? They are least bad for healthy men.