Warning: another long factual post incoming!
This is why I asked the OnePost poster what had happened. On trying to keep toilets safe for everyone, I have looked what happens in designs.
In the vast majority of cases, there is a sexed preference, and OnePost falls in to the male category. Males want to be with the females. Females prefer to be in ‘gender-neutral’ or ‘third spaces’ which are self contained and private. However, and this is where it is more interesting, once females have the option of gender neutral and females they have a dilemma. The gender-neutral is of completely private design so becomes a location for misuse. Females now have a stressful dilemma - they want to use the gender neutral out of principle but they need to use the female toilets because it’s cleaner and they feel safer. My research shows they are safer in a female space, especially if that design is the traditional design with door gaps leading onto a single sex washroom area.
OnePost indicated that something happened and wouldn’t say what it was so unfortunately we can’t deduce anything from it. I have to research distressing incidents to get data. It takes its toll because it’s not nice to hear any of these stories. I have never come across a verifiable report that supports that girls or boys will be safer in mixed sex toilets. OnePost appears to support this too.
BUT, precisely because of the call for inclusivity, OnePost is advocating for all provision to be mixed sex. Which is the common paradox. I have never come across a regulated mixed sex design that is not completely private.
So, this is what has happened in schools marketing their ‘inclusive’ toilets. The single sex designs change so you get full height cubicles leading out onto a mixed sex space. This is more common in new schools over the last few years where designs have to be for complete privacy rather than gapped designs for health and safety.
What happens when medically vulnerable children collapse behind the doors of these toilets and they are not found in time? It is comparable to home situation where a medically vulnerable child lived on their own. In that space they have no supervision. There will be, in an average secondary school around a dozen children with epilepsy, diabetes, heart conditions that should have a very reasonable adjustment of being able to go to the toilet safely. Disabled toilets aren’t suitable because when a child is hypoglycaemic, having a stroke, cardiac arrest or seizure from a condition or drugs or having a mental health crisis, they have not the awareness to pull a cord. Yet thousands of children are going to school in an unsafe environment for their medical condition.
Next you have the problem of a mixed sex private space. Ofsted said schools have to assume sexual abuse is happening because it is so prevalent and underreported. Males (teachers and pupils) will seek a private place with no witnesses. It’s really upsetting to see the pattern repeated again and again. I have evidence and data but it’s obviously common sense as well.
The fact that I wanted OnePost account is because I genuinely don’t have anything that I can say has happened to people because they are transgender in toilets. That is not to say it hasn’t happened. I have more facts about hospital staff that died from drug overdoses in hospital toilets from 2020-2022, a tragedy particularly because they were in the best environment where the outcome may have been prevented. Likewise all schools have defibrillators.
In the consultation for Document T, most of thousands of (coordinated) replies mentioned the safety of trans people in toilets. Yet when you looked at their evidence source it was actually a report that of ‘verbal abuse’ (being told to get out of the ladies’) and the one account of ‘physical assault’ was being pushed out by two women because the shouting match didn’t work. Contrast this with the very real and verifiable accounts of people dying and women and children being sexually assaulted in toilets.
The way I see it with changing rooms, the school either go with:
- single sex changing rooms
- create individual private cubicles (ripe for hidden cameras btw) with all the associated problems above - remember you’ll need VADs in each and a much longer fire escape time so the fire brigade would have to be consulted. You would need a lot of supervision to keep the children safe and the cubicles misuse and vandalism free. Cleaning will not be as effective as muddy floors can’t be washed and drained as easily and ventilation will be compromised without mechanical ventilation (Lynx Africa was unofficially banned in my classroom as it set off asthma).
3.A free for all communal space with boys and girls changing in the same area. This would require regulation changes and the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to be revised.
I have written this post for the school and their lawyers as much as anyone, as I expect they’ll be looking at this thread. I have many thoughts on how you could achieve safety for all but it is not 3 or 2. Please protect all your pupils at their most vulnerable by keeping changing rooms and toilets single sex within a single sex environment.
I would like to end this with a still from a school tv programme. It happened in the girls’ toilets. You can tell it’s a single sex toilet design as there are door gaps. I would quibble it’s not accurate as they’ve taken out the sanitary bin so the girl can be in that position for the camera. Realistically she would be further forward. But the sentiment is there. Btw in the programme she was alright - her friends found her and opened the door with a hairclip in seconds because all toilet cubicles have to open from the outside quickly for health and safety. Well done those (fictional) girls.
Edit: I started with ‘factual’ and ended with ‘fictional’ ! I know the fictional bit was based on real-life though.