Posted on 12/19/2019 3:30:39 AM PST by Morgana
A picture of a “gender-neutral” restroom in Lewes, England, has gone viral. Why? Because it has a giant urinal along one wall.
Now, gender-inclusivity apparently means that if what was formerly the women’s room is full and a female of any age just can’t hold it (ladies with toddlers, you know), there’s a good chance they’ll walk by men peeing to get to a toilet stall.
The establishment in question, Charleston Trust, is “committed to creating safe, welcoming and inclusive spaces for all our visitors and staff.” It said it “introduced gender-inclusive toilets in one area of our site in September 2018 to help members of the queer and trans community feel safe with us, and to ensure disabled visitors who need assistance are not troubled by the gender of their carer.”
“We recognise that the way the toilets are currently designed has practical limitations, and are exploring removing the urinals to make both toilet blocks truly gender-inclusive.”
The administrators of Charleston Trust say they realize mixed-sex spaces can be uncomfortable because of sex differences. While other organizations try to address concern by posting reassuring flyers, such as this one at right that Federalist contributor Caroline D’Agati found in Seattle, Charleston Trust’s answer is to erase as much of the evidence of those differences as possible and declare publicly that it’s all in the name of safety and inclusion.
But getting rid of urinals or posting notices won’t make women much more comfortable sharing the space with men because women’s objections to the erasure of their exclusive space go beyond safety or even awkwardness.
Even progressive feminists used to be concerned about women’s bathroom experiences and achieving “potty parity.” In 2001, the Los Angeles Times ran a piece on the subject, lamenting the long lines due to insufficient and poorly designed stalls. “The laws governing women’s bathrooms seem to change only when men are inconvenienced,” the staff writer observed. Although the language has shifted, the Western world of 2019 proves she was right. The Transgender Agenda Is Undoing Women’s Progress
Bathrooms are changing primarily because biological males attempting to live as women desire access to the bathroom aligned with their gender identity. Females who identify as men also want access to mixed facilities, but their numbers are fewer. Either way, it’s safe to say the only things women are changing are diapers on that single changing table in the restroom.
That’s a shame, because the struggle to make public life more accommodating to women has been long and hard. Nineteenth-century women had to limit their excursions outside the home to how long they could hold it because there were no “women’s rooms.” An article in Time Magazine outlining the history of sex-segregated bathrooms notes, counterintuitively, that men’s and women’s facilities didn’t arise simply from “basic biological differences.”
“Even as women entered the workplace, often in the new factories that were being built at the time, there was a reluctance to integrate them fully into public life,” it reads. But it became a necessity. Those spaces — from reading rooms to train cars to privies — were designed to “mimic the comforts of home — think curtains and chaise lounges.”
One may find it sexist that women’s reading rooms and train cars (at the back, to protect them and the children) were a thing, but the development of the designated women’s bathroom was critical to allowing women the freedom to work and move about freely, as long as they wanted, outside the home. Now the transgender agenda has many women begging for those hard-won, women-only spaces to be eliminated. Women’s Bathrooms Serve Many Purposes
Since the late 19th century, those female restrooms became, and perhaps were meant to be, much more than a utilitarian set of closets. The restroom is unquestionably a social and emotional space.
Single-occupancy bathrooms are seen as a “sensible solution” by people who want to quell the outrage, while the unisex restroom is the “gender-inclusive” answer many in the avant garde of gender ideology demand. But they both eliminate an important, although banal, sociocultural institution.
The women’s room is where women get real with each other and with themselves. It’s where they gather to regroup when social situations get awkward or intense or they need to communicate in private. It’s where chit-chat warms women up to each other in a world where it’s easy to turn a cold shoulder or entertain suspicion or false ideas of what other women are like.
What lipstick is that? Where did you get your purse? Could you spare a tampon? Those questions might seem trivial to men, but they are part of the social cohesion that isn’t fully appreciated until it’s gone. Plus, sometimes you really need a tampon.
The resistance to eliminating women’s rooms was never just about sexual abuse or having regular moments of awkwardness. The bathroom is where women go to take deep, slow breaths to overcome their anxiety before an interview or presentation. It’s where teenagers vent to each other. It’s where broken hearts spill out in hot tears onto wet counters, and blessed strangers come alongside to offer comfort. You think all that’s going to happen in unisex washrooms? Women’s Accommodations Aren’t Sexist
The Time author seemed to insinuate that “mimicking the home” in public accommodations for women is sexist. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a woman who doesn’t appreciate spacious bathrooms with seating, music, non-fluorescent lighting, some decor, and ample counter and mirror space.
Who doesn’t want public accommodations tailored to his or her own needs and preferences? It’s like turning down a Holiday Inn room for a co-ed bunk. Designing a mixed-sex space with no urinals and enough stalls for everyone is a challenge; not many businesses are going to invest in the extra non-stall square footage or any of the little details that make public restrooms less drab.
That’s not to say a male who identifies as a woman wouldn’t love homey bathrooms, too, but the temptation is to appease everybody by turning restrooms into a utilitarian row of single-occupancy water closets for both sexes or turn the existing facilities into unisex spaces. It’s not fair to women and apparently not fair to men, either, because they network in bathrooms (John Kerry said as much).
Do you think men are going to linger and talk if they’re sharing the space with women? Certainly not if the urinals are done away with. Do you think men want to make women uncomfortable with their presence for longer than they have to? Women Are Losing Ground
Women who used to be “chained to their bladders” because of a lack of female restrooms are now expected to fight for their elimination. We are being taken advantage of, and not solely by the tiny minority of transgender people who just want to use the restroom they identify with.
This is, however, the consequence of gender ideology, which disregards the behavioral and biological differences between men (males) and women (females) as meaningless. Women are being erased as the term is broadened to cover those who aren’t female and is thus emptied of its rich significance. When anyone can be a woman, no one really is. It is no surprise, then, that women’s spaces are increasingly devalued and perhaps facing extinction.
Women and girls deserve their own spaces, depend on their own spaces for privacy, and gain from them socially. We shouldn’t have to justify that with sexual harassment or assault statistics, or the fact that females and males are biologically different. As Libby Emmons wrote recently, “Fighting for the rights of women and girls to have fair accommodation is not about other people. It’s about women and girls, staking a claim to what they need, and demanding it. Women and girls are notoriously bad at saying what they need.”
The more womanhood is scrubbed out for being outdated and bigoted, the harder it will be for us to speak up for ourselves. Policies that snuff out women’s spaces are not solutions for “gender equity” we can live with.
I see. You guessed that it is eviiiiiiiil womyn demanding bisexual bathrooms. Got it.
The janitorial staff prefers to clean the men’s rooms. Men don’t dirty up the sinks or use paper products. In our community park when they remodeled the bathrooms they closed one side at a time and brought in gender specific porta-potties to replace the closed bathroom. This was no problem for the men, but the women would pull in and read the sign then get back in their cars and leave. Personally I would have given the women the men’s room while theirs was being remodeled and just let the men enjoy the outhouse. This fairness thing can be a pain in the ass.
NASA diapers are gender neutral...
The ones that say oh well women made this problem they can cope are the same ones who have no qualms looking down their nose at those women who are fighting this issue and fighting the ludicrous third-wave feminism that embraces such NewSpeak. If I didn't know any better these same men who say Oh well might regard women as, well, not quite on the level of humanity as they are.
But I think I know better.
I do wish I could figure out where this hatred of women and their desire to quash women's Liberty started.
I’m underwhelmed with the “cultural space” argument. Bleh, just use the toilet, wash your hands, and leave.
most ladies i know don’t want pervert guys checking them out, period.
Guess these people have never been to a college football game at halftime.
There are some sick men on FR. You can complain about them to the mods (I did when one started referring to women as “udders”) but nothing will be done. At least, I’ve never seen anything being done. I’m sure a lot of women contribute money here...
I’m sorry.
It’s hard to take you seriously on this when you are standing there with fingers in your ears.
But do stand around waiting for a man to come fix it. That is one thing women for sure will cop to, after breaking something and never seeing their part in it.
Have you seen that commercial where males ask each other for tampons? A son tells his father he’s started his period, two men are in the street and one asks for a tampon and one man passes a tampon to another under the restroom stall. It’s sick. No wonder kids are so confused.
I’m still waiting for those links to the women who engineered “bisexual” bathrooms.
It’s simple.
They want to be equal to men in society, but then want to revert to poor little girl status when the dumb crap feminists push (some of it women on both sides support) comes back to bite them in the rear. And then look to men to come in and rectify it to save them.
In this case, this toilet situation is the direct result of women carping for years about the bathroom setup. I suppose looking for 4 bathrooms for ever one male and thinking that the mens room is cleaner because of “patriarchy”. I’m more than sure you have read the stories of women going into the men’s room at stadiums because the line at the women’s is so long.
Well not every place can accommodate all the demands, so they said screw it, and gave everyone one restroom and said good luck.
And what do they get? Women complaining and putting on the victim act......again. dont gey me started on all the interviews with ladies online where they all almost to a person think you should use the restroom of the gender you think you are. Now we have places that can get sued if they dont bend over for that!
So you cant win, so enjoy the mess.
Women want this to change, then they are going to have to be the visible ones to want it.
It was some 25 years ago the Tangier Outlet malls (huge number of stores) in San Marcos, TX (south of Austin) had unisex dressing rooms. Had taken the kids there for back to school shopping - NEVER AGAIN.
A couple years later on another back to school shopping trip, the Kohl’s on Research Blvd. in Austin wouldn’t remove a man in the women’s dressing room and acted like I was the one in the wrong. Guess what, Kohl’s, NEVER AGAIN will this wallet darken your doors. In fact, I refuse to set foot in lib Austin.
And I laid out why we are where we are, while you are demanding that I give you a list of names of exact people that engineered stuff like this is some conspiracy theory, as if wider cultural shifts evolve from a single list of people you can cross-check. LOL!
It’s the same dumb thing leftist use when they demand peer-reviewed studies when I tell them there are only two genders.
Since you think I’m making this up, why dont you tell me how this ended up the way it did.
You made a big to-do that it was women who started this nonsense. I merely asked you to name some which you can’t do. You’re typical here in that you want to rant against women without providing documentary evidence that it was the ladies who demanded gay men to invade their bathrooms. You should go work for Adam Schiff.
“You made a big to-do that it was women who started this nonsense.”
Because they were the ones that provided the “in” because they were the ones that started off the move to unisex bathrooms as a way to “fix” what they saw as men somehow getting a better deal with the facilities.
It started to erode the hard line between men and women’s restrooms. going back to the 90s again, there was another show that illustrated women’s permissiveness towards opening this “cultural space” up to males. The show “My So Called Life”, incredibly influential with teen girls back then, had its gay male character portrayed using the girls restroom (these are all high school kids), for his “safety”. This is something that was done in the more....”progressive” schools in reality. Back then in far smaller numbers because the wider cultural was not there.
Those teen girls, then watching programs with unisex bathrooms and gay males using the women’s room, grew up comfortable with, and were sympathetic to, similar shifts at work or at clubs and universities. Those same females were the biggest cheerleaders when it came to the trans guys wanting to use the women’s restrooms, again for “safety” reasons.
Obviously toss in the fact that most of these “trans kids” you see paraded on TV are typically sitting with a mother only, and you see that the girls of the 90s that were being conditioned, are now at the vanguard.
Are there a lot of simp dudes that go along with it? Oh yeah. Anything to get that female approval especially when it comes to elections.
Are there some women that hate it? Sure. But too late now. It was all good until the fat dude covered with hair walks in because he is feeling femmy, and it’s too “dangerous” to dissent. A bad thing when women are far more surface-ly social people, and dont want to be the odd girl out.
Now we have the rise of the TERFs. Maybe it will walk it back. Who knows! But that isnt going to be for a while because that cultural shift that started quietly in the 90s is hitting its peak and will have to be worked out of the system.
” I merely asked you to name some”
Because you cant argue with my points, just want me to try to rattle off a list of specific people as if broader cultural shifts are attributed to a set list of specific names that you can cross-check....for God knows what reason.
“You’re typical here in that you want to rant against women without providing documentary evidence blah blah blah”
I didnt say anything that hasnt been said before. Or maybe you can cite who is responsible then?
Another long, boring rant without evidence.
Absolute typical female reply then.
“Not our fault. Please fix, men.”
Stay stupid, and make room for the dudes.
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