Are unisex changing rooms and toilets really common across Europe?

[saynotofondant]

Often when there is a new ruling or clarification about single-sex spaces in the UK, I read comments (not here) like “Unisex changing rooms are normal in Europe, it’s just Brits being prudish”.

I lived in Central Europe for a long, long time - Germany mainly - and to be honest I never came across unisex changing rooms or toilets.

What are your experiences? Have you been to many (or any?) places in Europe where unisex changing rooms and toilets are the norm?

Germany does have a very progressive law on self-ID* (including for prisoners) but in daily life, changing rooms and toilets in my experience were always sex-segregated. I did once witness an argument in the ladies’ communal showers after swimming as a woman had brought all her children into the showers with her and one of them was a boy of about 12. (It’s considered hygienic to shower naked after swimming so the women were especially sensitive to overage males).

Sometimes there were slightly ridiculous situations - “textile free” evenings at the local swimming pool where those partaking changed separately and then met naked on the poolside, or stripping off separately and then getting into the same sauna… And of course the lakes often had a naked bank, where everyone stripped off together. But places were designed with separate changing rooms, and there were often allocated “ladies’ days”, “men’s days” and “mixed days” at saunas or naked sections of thermal baths. So people could choose to be naked in front of the other sex or not.

*I guess that means that nowadays men can go into women’s places if they identify as such, and vice versa. But only if they say the magic words.

I've not seen one mixed sex toilet or changing room since moving to France 5 years ago.

Never seen any anywhere since they were phased out in the 90s (?)

French here, and no, never seen one in France. The closest I've come to it is mixed-sex changing areas with individual cubicles, which are indeed everywhere, but you never get naked in view of anyone else. Even at the swimming pool, you don't take your swimming suit off to use the communal showers (and many pools are like my current one, where they also have private shower cubicles).

Interesting! What was it like before the 90s? Unisex loos and changing rooms? Where was this?

Thanks

In an Italian airport at the moment and all toilets clearly marked male and female.

I spend a lot of time in Portugal and have never come across unisex changing rooms or toilets except in cafes and restaurants where there is only 1 toilet so it is a fully enclosed self contained space

portugal has self ID but talking to the Portuguese people I know , most of them were completely unaware that it is the law and very 😨 when they understood what it means

I have never been to any, been to France and Spain quite a few times. Only in places like cafes that only have one room, same as you would have here.
Maybe at more public swimming pool type places which I wouldn’t have been to?

I live in France & you do find the odd toilet here where there is a cubicle plus a urinal plus a washbasin. This means that a female accessing the cubicle has to walk past the man standing peeing into the urinal. The setup is unusual but does exist. The last time I encountered such a toilet was at the Machines de l'île exhibit in Nantes.

https://www.lesmachines-nantes.fr/en/

Sorry, I confused myself, I was thinking of the communal (single-sex[ changing rooms we used to have in the UK in some clothes shops.

The public swimming pools I've been to here in France had mixed sex-changing facilities, with individual or family cubicles. Then single-sex toilets. Communal open showers though.

Ohhh that does feel kind of familiar. I think I might have been to a set-up like that before. Not very often though - and it did feel weird! Think it was at a cafe in South of France.

The exhibitions look amazing!

The exhibitions look amazing!

They are. The mechanical elephant has become the symbol for Nantes like the Eiffel tower is to Paris or Statue of Liberty to New York.

My experience of Spanish campsites is of separate sex facilities. In northern Spain, my DH misunderstood the hieroglyphics on the door of the female section and was quickly told to leave by the cleaner! No nonsense there.

Not currently in an Italian airport, but last time I was all the toilets were labelled male or female.

Swede here. Never seen a unisex changing room here. We do have unisex toilets but only where they are individual and open directly onto the corridor, otherwise they're still separate.

Stockholm. There were a lot of mixed sex toilets in major tourist attractions. Ranged from pleasant and clean to downright horrible. Examples of the latter; I opened the door to a mixed toilet to find a bloke pissing who hasn’t even bothered to shut the door. Toilets absolutely stinking of piss and dirty with wet floors. The more pleasant ones were in museums and galleries with well behaved clientele, mainly middle aged couples or groups.

There must be another set of toilets there though, as I’ve been there and had normal single sex ladies, no urinals.
I go to France 2-3 times a year. In the decades I’ve been going, I’ve only once encountered a mixed facility. It was a small restaurant in Paris, the toilet was down a tiny staircase, there was a room with 2 toilet cubicles, no urinals, and sinks in the main room. It looked like a regular 2 cubicle ladies loo that they were now allowing men into. Maybe they’d taken the men’s toilet for the staff.
The man I met in there looked as uncomfortable as I felt, as it was a small space. I didn’t get the impression it was normal for him either.
i have seen more mixed facilities in London than all of Europe put together (V and A, National Portrait Gallery, Somerset House, the Sky Garden, that restaurant with the champagne button, Lyric theatre, Wagamama).

Many visits to Sweden over 40+ years both camping and skiing. Never seen a unisex facility.
Though as a young visitor in the early 80s was 'shocked' at the nudity of the women and girls in the female changing rooms of swimming pools which seemed completely normal to the locals but not to me at that time!!

I think that's why mixed sex would never work. We don't get changed in cubicles or underneath towels, everything is out for all to see.

Sort of unisex loos everywhere I've been in Italy (4-5 times a year for 10 years). The loos have cubicles and then a shared sink area. Sometimes the cubicles are labeled male and female but sinks are still unisex.

I've often wondered if they have the same issues as the UK with women being assaulted in toilets.

And yet we are constantly told by some posters who are very dismissive of single sex provisions that Sweden and other Scandinavian countries have mixed sex communal changing rooms and that we are all just prudes to want single sex provisions.

Other than one toilet in say a cafe, not at all. Even at German spas/saunas where you sit in a sauna without clothing, there are separate changing areas and toilets for women and men.

No mixed sex changing in Scandinavia! We also have separate public saunas for women and men or separate times in the same facilities, since we sauna naked or in just a towel.

Most toilets are still also single sex, but the places where the idiot woke brigade are most active (eg theatres) have sometimes taken down the signage now, to the discomfort of most and pleasure of a few.

Most of the w/c I encountered in Iceland were mixed sex.

Changing rooms were single sex.

The separate sex saunas in Scandinavia are quite different from Germany and Austria - I’ve heard Scandinavians express shock at being expected to sauna naked with the opposite sex in German-speaking countries.

But as pp said, even in those countries the changing is separate so the mixed sex part is very limited and also very public, so it’s more difficult for men to get creepy than if there are hidden corners etc.