Re: Real life.
I often talk about distressing stuff that happens in toilets and one that is common that I don’t talk about much is getting trapped. Thousands of people get trapped in real life.
Last year two young women who were trapped in non-domestic toilets made social media. One, laughing about it (simple, single sex design). She quickly got hoisted over the partition.
The other (unisex design) laughing not so much but luckily her boyfriend was there to phone the fire brigade. It took them a while to get in. The unisex toilets were new, expensive, ‘soundproof’ and had an automated door.
Building regs mean the safest design is single sex design. It’s simple, economic, healthier and safer. Building regs cover all premises. Services and Workplaces.
You can’t have a mixed sex design that’s got the gaps below and above the door and partitions. Everyone knows what will happen and there has never been a regulated design that has allowed it that I know of. If a single sex toilet cubicle is in a mixed sex environment, as in the ‘inclusive’ designs (not regulated) transactivists like, then the cubicle becomes private too. This is not a safe nor healthy ‘solution’. It’s also not a self contained room containing extra facilities like a sink and dryer which is what unisex provision is in legislation and regs in the U.K.
Thanks to FWS, single sex toilets can now be in single sex environments again. That means less private cubicle designs and more toilet blocks with safer and healthier cubicle designs. The people what will benefit the most are medically vulnerable, women and children.
We can’t get rid of all unisex designs but we can make sure there is single sex provision in single sex environments as the main default.
Health and safety isn’t exciting but it’s there to protect everyone in real life. That’s not going to change.