Sunderland Minster refusing to comply with Supreme Court ruling

[labtest57]

This is from their Facebook page today. No consideration for the women who do not want men in their spaces.

Had a look. Didn't explain why they aren't safe for general population but are safe for disabled people.

It's not in the Sex Matters publication, it's all in Document T and keeptoiletssafe's head and research. I see she's already been on this thread patiently explaining things to you. Didn't you read any of her responses? Did you just decide to ignore those also because you didn't like the answers?

Bingo!
”Your toilet at home/at your friends is unisex!!!!”

Yawn. Can’t you understand the difference between sharing with strangers in public, and sharing with people you know in a private dwelling?

Actually, don’t bother answering that, I can’t be bothered reading the same bleating piss poor arguments from 5 years ago.

You can’t understand because your self-image as a right thinking cool girl depends on you not being able to hear women who are different from you, and who are not OK with sharing public loos and changing rooms with men. Women campaigned for female facilities, I have no intention of giving them up.

I stopped thinking I was any sort of girl about 50 years ago.

Oh Hello. So @TheignT you are on to station toilets now are you?

Robin Moira White used to work on the railways. Unlike you, Robin realised women shouldn’t be in the same toilets as men, because of what Robin calls ‘mischief’.
This is from Robin:

‘Mischief’
It is, I find, an advantage to be very old, in that I started work in the rail industry before the 1992 Regulations were in force. The rail industry was sexist and misogynistic. Provision for female staff was ‘OK’ around office blocks and passenger stations for obvious reasons, but even in the middle 1980’s, a decade after the Sex Discrimination Act had been passed, facilities for women were woeful at many depots and engineering facilities. A few women had been seen in the rail industry during WW2 but the return of the men from fighting had seen them displaced and not replaced. The arguments were often circular. Female apprentices were not employed because there were no female facilities and female facilities were not provided because there were no female apprentices or artisans. Such was the position in may ‘traditional’ industries. I vividly remember that at one train depot we visited as a group of management trainees, the male trainees ‘guarding’ the male facilities after checking they were empty so that our female colleagues could use them.
And this is what the 1992 Regulations were designed to deal with. This was the problem they were designed to solve, and that is why they refer to male and female facilities and the PROVISION of facilities, not their policing.
^^

Sorry, I tagged you before I realized you had already spent the better part of a day explaining these things to someone who just isn't interested in understanding! I've done my best to explain things around the deliberate misunderstanding, but didn't even know where to start with toilets except DOCUMENT T!!

And that's as far as I got.

So my employer had a bunch of offices in an old building in the city of London. Every toilet was a universal toilet randomly scattered around our offices. Several years ago we moved to brand new accommodation and we were asked what toileting facilities we would like. We chose single sex plus a couple of Universal toilets and four Accessible toilets. Were we wrong?

@TheignT I also have data on sexual assaults in train carriages and station toilets and deaths in station toilets. I have data on who the victims were and in the case of sexual assaults and crimes what the gender of the perpetrator was. Crimes are listed by the victims sex but the perpetrator's gender. So that’s a bit annoying for my dataset. However, from the crime code it’s revealing.

Of course remember that it’s only single sex cubicles in a single sex environment that can have door gaps, as it do in Network Rail designs. They are actually pretty ‘on it’ in stations. Here’s their blurb:

Public Toilets in Managed Stations, Design Manual NR/GN/CIV/200/04 Issued: October 2020 by Network Rail
2.5.1 Access Control Accessible and unisex sanitary accommodation is often subject to misuse by the general public due to the self-contained nature of these facilities. For this reason, accessible facilities should be fitted with controlled access through use of a RADAR (Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation) approved lock. Unisex sanitary accommodation that is not designed for use by PRMs, such as a dedicated gender-neutral WC, should not have controlled access to safeguard
the availability of the facility for all those who require it.
Cubicle doors should have a 125 mm floor gap to provide ventilation and assist with monitoring by staff. Doors should be hung to fall open, so that vacancies are clearly visible.
https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NR_GN_CIV_200_04-Public-Toilets.pdf

So there you have it. Because of the privacy, therefore misuse, accessible toilets have a radar key. But the unisex has the same issues but no radar key to allow free access.

@BridgetPhillipsonIsACowardlyJobsworth no worries.
Nice to able to explain why my research is correct.

I've got no idea what that has to do with me being in a station days ago. I know I was waiting for a connection but it was several minutes not days.

No but its also okay to say if the facilities in the old building worked. There were obviously options available in the building with multiple toilets, where I worked there was one toilet and we shared it but apparently daring to say that means you are attacked. Did you ever get attacked for using unisex toilets?

I've got no idea what apprentices in the 1980s has got to do with it.

No you weren’t wrong. Single sex should be the majority of the provision. This will include ambulant toilets too.

You have accessible toilets too so that’s good. Often at the entrance to a building like a school, you will have one unisex loo for visitors - it’s handy to have this opposite reception where it can be kept under supervision.

It seems quite a lot of accessible toilets but this depends on the size of the organisation and the number needing them. They also need to be kept an eye on for misuse, in case of what (allegedly) happened in the superfluous ones at the BBC.

Of course, in a small cafe etc one unisex (universal) design will be the solution because of space restrictions and budget.

When thinking about non-domestic toilets, it’s good to keep this quote in mind:

“Anthropologists and sociologists should be infesting public toilets. There’s nothing else in human society quite like them. Not in society, not quite out of it. Needed but rarely demanded. A place where all sorts of human needs and habitats intersect: fear, disgust, conversation, grooming, sex. It’s an
ambiguous space that is not quite in the public eye, though the public uses it. A place of refuge and sociability: of necessity and criminality.”
Rose George, ‘The Big Necessity’ (2008)

It’s naive to think toilets are just used for sanitation needs. It would be nice to think they are, but that has never been the case and isn’t the case. It’s why toilets have a special section in the Sexual Offences Act (2003) and why so much provision has closed down.

It’s also interesting to see access to women's toilets so demanded by some men. That is what has changed since that quote. It is not for sanitation needs otherwise they would be ok with universal and accessible provision that’s suggested.

Toilets need rules and regulations to keep them being safe and healthy places.