I am raising to the bait. Apologies. I can’t get over how he raised £500k to try and get rid of single sex toilets. I am doing this out of the free goodness of my own heart!
In my more charitable ‘why is he doing this?’ moments, trying to understand his misguided obsession with ‘gender neutral’ toilets, I wondered if Jolyon has a more personal reason.
With my research I have been looking at who wants what, and what happens when they get it.
So, for gender neutral toilets: It’s young women who tend to want them. Particularly those identifying as non binary. They do not want to be in the ladies or the men’s. It is rare to come across a woman who really prefers to use the men’s. But men, particularly older men, who don’t want to be in the men’s, also don’t want to be in gender neutral. They want to be in the women’s toilets.
So then we have the parents. I haven’t got much information on any demographic other than the parents of younger women, who campaign for gender neutral toilets for their offspring. They don’t want their children in the men’s.
This fits in with Jolyon, wanting to do the best for his family.
BUT when gender neutral toilets are in place Jolyon needs to know the next bit for people who don’t want to be in the toilet for their sex. The men don’t like them - they want to be in the women’s (this is where his moan about disabled toilets comes from). The women don’t like them because they smell, they are dirtier and they feel uncomfortable and sometimes scared (this is where his basement comment also comes in) but try and put up with it for the validation of not being in female toilets. If you are in a private, sound resistant, mixed sex design, it doesn’t matter if it’s in a basement or a busy station, you are isolated in that space. It takes a lot of courage to admit it’s a mistake, but many of the women go back to using women’s toilets as they grow up (in age and experience). The privacy of the gender neutral toilets is a target for men who want a ‘sit down’, and people who want to use misuse toilets for other things than excretion. The women don’t like men using their gender neutral toilets for this.
‘Basements’ feature a lot in feelings about toilets and changing rooms. It’s short-hand for isolation. Sandy Peggie, the pending case with the NHS, Jolyon’s musings all mention basements. Everyone should want to avoid isolating vulnerable people. That’s why the traditional unisex toilet in a school is usually designed to be in the most obviously watched place - by reception.
So, as I said before, he’s got two demographics that he’s trying to please that have sexed-based responses. What he needs to do is think it through for his children and his wife if they are in a vulnerable situation or less salubrious surroundings. Even basements. Think about health and safety rather than validation. Then he needs to stop reinventing toilets, wasting time and money on trying to make all toilets mixed sex.
If he’s got some spare change I could do with some. I am a David to his Goliath. But this Dave has a lot of loo knowledge in her sling.