How trans people feel about correct-sex toilets, in their own words

[MyAmpleSheep]

This is an interesting Reddit thread where members of the trans community write about how they feel about not using wrong-sex bathrooms toilets facilities. (The original question doesn’t say toilets, but that’s how most responders have interpreted it, I think).

https://tinyurl.com/musmm897

There’s a mix of responses, some activist, some self-pitying, some stories that are sad. Genuinely useful and thought-provoking to read what people say.

I can’t very much influence how people should post here, but it would be very easy to only to highlight or mock the more unreasonable responses in that thread. Perhaps I’m allowed to ask Mumsnet posters to be thoughtful, though?

I recent years, in many shopping centres etc in Thailand, they already have 4 distinct facilities. Men's, women's, gender neutral and, more recently, parent and child (those cubicles contain an adult size toilet and a child size toilet plus sink). There are always attendants around keeping an eye on things.
There are plenty of ladyboys around as well as the usual men who dress as women and women who dress as men. Everyone knows who is who and nobody seems to mind using the correct toilets.

The document’s official title is:

Services, public functions and associations: Code of Practice

That’s really interesting. Are you in Thailand or the U.K.? We don’t have the attendants here. How are the toilets designed? Do they have any problems with sex, drugs and hidden cameras?

I spend about half the year in Thailand. I haven't heard about problems with cameras etc, but I will make a point of asking about this. Toilets are designed with floor gaps, but the GN ones are not actually inside the ladies or gents, they are separate and signage is clear. The parent and child ones are the first section you pass, then an entrance into the GN, then separate entrances into women, men. So they might be opposite sides of the same corridor, or along the corridor. I go into the women's, so haven't seen inside the GN. It is a relatively new development, but I think it is a good idea. There are loads of men dressed as women working in shops, cafes, restaurants. Nobody thinks they are actual women though. Make up for men is very fashionable too, so you will meet men conventionally dressed but wearing foundation, blusher, mascara etc. It does look a bit odd when the 5 o'clock shadow appears. Thai features do lend themselves to the androgenous look, much more than the big, hairy, Europeans. It still really easy to tell.

Interesting. It seems that a social contract is still in place there which seems broken here.

True. It’s just that you never normally hear UK laws or regulations referred to as ‘code’. I certainly hear the full term ‘code of practice’ used. When my dc talk about rules, laws or practices using the term ‘code’, rather than ‘regulation’, they have invariably got their information from an American source. So I’m immediately suspicious when a keyboard warrior uses that word in reference to UK issues.

@MashaPav You seem to think that repeatedly telling us we are not feminists is upsetting to us and we'll want to argue the toss with you. But we don't care if you don't think we are feminists. You think you're goading us but we aren't bothered. Do we look bothered?

It's been the law since 2010. Nothing has actually changed except people who have deliberately mislead and misrepresented the law can no longer do so. And they somehow have been able to get away with this for 16 years which has now led to a bunch of people thinking they are some sort of holocaust martyr which is appallingly tone deaf and offensive.

All because they can use the women in women's only space and have to acknowledge their own sex.

Someone’s feathers have been well and truly ruffled…

What on earth is wrong with that post?

Be kind went out the window pretty rapidly there. Once again it appears to be code for 'do what I want or else.'

Thank you.

It sounds like the U.K. system with single sex cubicles, with door gaps, in single sex washrooms, with the addition of attendants.

Be interested to know how the GN ones work design-wise and usage-wise. In Japan, they had to stop a similar set as older men and younger girls were going in together.

Obviously it is location dependent but it is a reoccurring theme across the world. Attendants and more supervision in general seems to be needed in mixed sex, private designs.

Thank you for finding out.

They don't appear to know what the guidance is about. They keep repeating "the guidance is not the law" without seeming to understand that the guidance is about how to follow the law.
They also don't seem to understand that a service provider is perfectly entitled to refuse service if a complaint is made/they think someone is lying etc. (in fact for any reason) and it's on THEM to prove in court that they are the sex they say they are, not the other way around and that the refusal/ban was unjust.

Most of them aren’t all that bright and they just wait to get their talking points from others.

I’ve just got this image of some huge unit of a man bellowing that he’s a “biological woman”.

Well he's not a robot so.....

^^That.

Actually my twat is delightful.

And, probably, be built into recruitment and contracts from the off.

I bet lots of contracts already say that staff need to follow the law.

My work has a code of conduct which we have to sign annually. In addition to work stuff, it says that we have to follow the law and to call out where we see the law not being followed.

I wonder what happens in situations where the company also expects you to follow a policy that breaks the law?

My company doesn't have its own loos, so that wouldn't be an issue but other people might find themselves in a weird position where they breach their contractual terms if they do follow the law but also if they don't break the law.

It would not be the first time that Equality legislation means that staff need to know the boundaries and what they are signing up to, explicitly, from the off, in a way that prevents difficult conversations later.

Frankly, a requirement to respect women's rights and equality and legal protections should not need to be written into the job descriptions of men, but there you go. We thought we'd reached a time where the need for all this women's equality law was starting to pass in the 90s, and then transactivism happened. We now don't just need the laws we already have, we need them tightened up and added to in order to fight off the oppression of entitled men lacking capacity to see female colleagues as possessing more humanity and inner lives and diversity than being merely props for men to use in their self expression.

Sorry, not sorry. I have no sympathy for men who have deluded themselves their non-existent 'rights'.

Well that's it. Even if they were misled about their own so called 'rights' they seem to have never considered the impact on women - not once.