OP I am sorry for your awful experience. I hope the following is phrased in such a way not to cause you upset.
Most places, such as department stores, still have toilet blocks that are in a single sex environment, and accessible toilets. Many single sex toilets have the traditional set up of toilet compartments with a door gap from floor to the bottom of the door (up to a max 15cm is the standard) then space above the door and partitions. The reason the single sex cubicle within a single sex washroom is so replicated is because it works. It’s efficient and cost effective. You can clean it easily and it’s more hygienic having the toilet flush plumes away from the sink. It can be naturally ventilated so the compartment smells don’t linger.
Single sex toilets with door gaps are a good design as you have a sense of who is around you, even when on the toilet. You can see who’s in the room with you when you enter, especially if the doors rest in the open position. You have a good idea if anyone is outside the door before you leave. Most women subconsciously check out their toilet room environment, just as most men have an etiquette of spacing themselves out at urinals.
There has been a trend to enclose the toilet compartment floor to ceiling in height, because of the ambiguousness of the environment in front of the cubicle. Sometimes, as is the case with some newer secondary school designs, this was done on purpose because the handwashing areas was designed to be mixed sex. This has lead to massive problems, especially for girls and puts anyone medically vulnerable as risk as you can’t see if someone needs help. It’s gone as far as schools trying to mitigate the extra privacy by having extra alarms in each compartment, or closing them unless there is a member of staff there. However, I hope this design will stop now. Schools are an outlier as they are excluded from building regs and other health and safety legislation. They have been guinea pigs for mixed sex designs.
The government did realise that toilet design was going rogue and produced Approved document T (2024). It states: 1.22 The layout when entering, exiting and using a toilet room or cubicle should cater for the safety, privacy and dignity of users. Cubicle doors should only open into single-sex toilet accommodation.
Because of the cost to businesses they decided it would apply to refurbishments and new toilets. So venues who had got toilets that didn’t conform to British Standards regarding single sex and mixed sex toilets, weren’t obliged to change them. When the Supreme Court clarified the meaning of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ this was massive as those standards definitely mean women and men in the biological sense. And then legislation and Building Control (which will affect insurance etc) kicks in too.
The two rooms you have described with toilets in, both being ‘gender neutral’, was because someone stuck a different pictogram on the outer doors of two single sex toilet rooms. They are a bodged design that doesn’t conform to regulations or legislation. This will stop. The toilet rooms where you were assaulted going to have to be converted back to male and female by sticking a male and female sign back on the doors.
Because of the extra risk of unisex toilets (mixed sex and private) they should be placed in visible areas, so the door leads directly out on to a thoroughfare. For example, in schools the traditional place to put the unisex toilet is opposite reception, that is hopefully manned. Similar to accessible toilets. Where toilets are located needs to be carefully considered and seems to be something you have done already as you are understandably hyper aware. The official name for unisex toilets is ‘universal’ and they should have a hand basin and drying facility in the compartment that includes the toilet.
To be kind to women with your experience, I would have thought that the very small minority of women who were presenting as males with beards and thought they passed well, would realise using the accessible toilet could prevent the distress of others. They too will be checking out toilets they can access around town. There are apps to show where unisex toilets are too. This could help both you and them, if that’s the design you prefer. But please realise why single sex designs matter.
As you will be aware, toilets are vulnerable places, so they have their own section in the Sexual Offences Act (2003). If another person is engaging in a behaviour that a reasonable person would think is sexual, it is illegal. In section 71, this includes any toilets where the public, or section of the public(ie just males or just females), have access to. The following sections are on voyeurism.
It sounds like you already have a set of toilets dotted around town that meet your needs. I hope one good thing out of this bizarre short time period of toilet design mess-ups is that venues realise the importance of toilet design. Some community schemes exist where businesses get benefits for providing toilets to the public.
I think the estimate is one council run public toilet to every 15,000 people now. We need more provision that is safe and hygienic to meet everyone’s needs.