EHRC suggestion on toilet facilities

I have been to several venues where everything was in cubicles, with floor to ceiling walls and sealing doors, thus ensuring anyone using them total privacy and everyone used them, male, female, trans aand everything else everyone has thought of.

Much simpler and easier.

I think it depends where they are. I wouldn't mind using a mixed sex loo at work, for instance (although I would prefer a female-only one), and it's quite usual in independent cafes, but in a park, or in a pub where the loos are sited away from the busy area I wouldn't like it.

Why, Doodledog?

Need to think carefully here. I have no grudge regarding trans... it is what it is, I take that on board BUT everyone has to be safe. I hate using mixed sex toilets, did it in Italy, seemed ok, but don't take away my privacy. However, I do not feel threatened by a trans..... I will chat to anyone.

Macadia

Why, Doodledog?

For safety reasons. Somewhere busy, with people around, and a good chance that you will recognise people (and so spot a stranger) it is perfectly safe, if not always pleasant, to have men using the loo. In a park or a pub where the loos are away from the busy areas it is different.

There's a big difference between sharing a toilet with male members of the family and one in a park or pub, even if it has the kind of cubicles M0nica describes. In that scenario, for instance, what's to stop a man from coming in, pushing you back into the cubicle and assaulting you?

I've always been against mixed facilities but last week in Amsterdam the loos at one of the museums was unisex- as far as I could see each cubicle had a dual symbol on the door and nobody was a bit bothered.
As far as the danger of a man pushing a woman into a cubicle and assaulting her, honestly it would never have occurred to me.
But yes I concede , it depends where and who the likely " clientele" are of course.

If it's an empty ladies in a quiet area then it could equally happen in that toilet? Always been a possibility.

The ideal are one person toilets that anyone can use, probably as in the O/P.

Certainly it's worth planners thinking where public toilets are situated. I think in terms of right now where there are male/female toilets then add another "unisex" along the lines of a disabled toilet.

My park has a row of one toilet facilities in a busy spot, male, female, disabled, family. If the ladies has broken down, you use one of the others.

ViceVersa

There's a big difference between sharing a toilet with male members of the family and one in a park or pub, even if it has the kind of cubicles M0nica describes. In that scenario, for instance, what's to stop a man from coming in, pushing you back into the cubicle and assaulting you?

Frankly highly improbable. I used the loos I described at the Wallace Collection in London, a wide - 6feet or so, brightly lit corridor directly off a busy passage through the museum with no doors or ubstruction between the passage through the loos and the passage where people were walking. You could look down this brightly lit area as you walked past.

The EHRC guidance covers all single sex facilities ( prisons, refuges, etc) and also ensures that for example lesbians can have organisations without the presence of men, it really is about more than toilets.

Well, Monica I think I would feel pretty safe in the Wallace collection in broad daylight, in whatever style of facility
Alone on a railway station late at night, as I was this week after the theatre, then I would definitely have wanted the female facilities to be for biological women only.

Romola

Well, Monica I think I would feel pretty safe in the Wallace collection in broad daylight, in whatever style of facility
Alone on a railway station late at night, as I was this week after the theatre, then I would definitely have wanted the female facilities to be for biological women only.

That's exactly mu point. We can all cite examples of facilities that are safe, clean and acceptable, but there are others which just aren't. That has nothing to do with TW - I remember being warned by my mother not to use the toilets in the local park when I was a child, as 'bad men' (flashers, I assume) sometimes hung around them. The reason single sex ones are intrinsically safer is that men in there stand out as out of place, but obviously in a mixed-sex facility they have a reason to be there, whether they are up to no good or not.

There are plenty of places which have unisex individual cubicles, some have a sink incorporated some have communal sink.
Many NT properties have nice unisex with washbasins

It's a no to mixed sex changing rooms though.

Frankly I don't know why I bother
Maybe I won't any more.

Romola

Well, Monica I think I would feel pretty safe in the Wallace collection in broad daylight, in whatever style of facility
Alone on a railway station late at night, as I was this week after the theatre, then I would definitely have wanted the female facilities to be for biological women only.

Romula I would always want the female facilities to be for women only, but that is not what we are discussing.

had you had no time to use the ladies on the station, you would then have had to use the unisex facilities on the train - and those have always, in my memory been unisex, no matter how far you go back.

Separate toilet facilities for trans people sounds a good idea, but if I were a trans woman, would I be happy to share with a trans man? Bundling the two together seems a bit discriminatory.

Tbh I wouldn’t use a ladies in a place I was uncomfortable.
I grew accustomed to one toilet or a few, lockable cubicles used by whomever when we travelled in Europe, no problem as in bars, hotels and public buildings.

Thought that all along that they should have their own cubicle/s-I am sure some trans people don’t have the confidence to walk into a female/male loos anyway.

grumppa

Separate toilet facilities for trans people sounds a good idea, but if I were a trans woman, would I be happy to share with a trans man? Bundling the two together seems a bit discriminatory.

I dont think it being suggested there are "trans" toilets but unisex toilets which means anyone.

Doesn’t that already happen,though? I can’t think of any public facilities that don’t have unisex toilets as well as male and female. Not round here, anyway.

More the better, really. I mean individual ones.

nanna8

Doesn’t that already happen,though? I can’t think of any public facilities that don’t have unisex toilets as well as male and female. Not round here, anyway.

No, it doesn’t happen in older buildings which would require complex plumbing arrangements. In some cases (eg older universities) it’s taken ages to get women’s toilets, never mind extra ones for various genders.

New buildings do tend to have more modern arrangements but it would be a mammoth task to include ’gender’-based facilities across the piece. I don’t see the need, really. If you can pee standing up, use the urinals, if not, use a cubicle- but in either case use the one particular to your sex.

I suppose that is a difference between countries. Nothing here is what I would call ‘old’. Something I actually miss a lot.