Toilets, the Transgendered, and the Law

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Some of you will be aware of David Allen Green's Jack of Kent blog, from where this is taken. He's a liberal UK lawyer who writes about the [often] illiberality of UK law.


Toilets, the Transgendered, and the Law

To what extent should the law regulate which toilet a transgendered person can use?

Should equality law enable transgendered people to use the toliet of their choice, in respect of either public toilets or toilets on private premises (eg, pubs and restaurants)?

Or should the law relating to, say, breaches of the peace be used to prevent transgendered people, especially male to female (MTF), intruding into the "space" reserved for a particular gender?

Full blog piece here (http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2010/08/toilets-and-transgendered.html).

[DMB]

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[Bane]

My thoughts on the matter are that we should have toilets for those who sit and for those who stand, without any gender designation whatsoever.

I'm afraid to use the male toilets when I'm in public because I'm FtM and worried I may be verbally abused (at the very least) or get security called on me. I use the disabled toilets--I shouldn't go into the ladies' room either, for obvious reasons.

[Goodchild]

Why does anyone even give a flying fuck what bits the person in the next stall has between their legs? Unless they're busting down the stall door to molest you, it's none of your concern.

IMO, we should just go to unisex restrooms and get over this childish fear of the other gender seeing our pees and poops.

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Why does anyone even give a flying fuck what bits the person in the next stall has between their legs? Unless they're busting down the stall door to molest you, it's none of your concern.

IMO, we should just go to unisex restrooms and get over this childish fear of the other gender seeing our pees and poops.

And in many parts of Europe, they do precisely that.

With regards to why we have male and female toilets - I think it's based on catering for the many and not [as in the case of transgendered] for the few.

[Pandora]

I figure the problem would be effectively dealt with if they'd put up little walls between the urinals. They prolly don't even hafta have doors. Just a visual divider should be sufficient. Then have unisex bathrooms with toilets in stalls with doors and urinals in a "visually protected" area.

[Goodchild]

All newer restrooms that I've been to here in the US have privacy walls between urinals, though places with older restrooms tend not to have them, so I imagine that's a growing trend already.

And I can't remember anywhere that didn't have stalls with walls for the actual toilets.

[MattShizzle]

A couple where I went to college had no walls between the urinals and even none between the last urinal and first sink - and they were maybe 3 inches apart.

[Free in Freeport]

I'm for keeping public toilets sex-separated because men pee everywhere. You never see splattered seats or yellow puddles at the foot of ladie's toilets.

Men, stand close. It's shorter than you think

AND WASH YOUR FILTHY HANDS!!

[Goodchild]

I'm for keeping public toilets sex-separated because men pee everywhere. You never see splattered seats or yellow puddles at the foot of ladie's toilets.

And you'll never see blood spatters all over the toilet or tampons left on the floor etc in the men's room ...

I've worked as cleaning maintenance before, and women's restrooms are not particularly better than men's.

Men, stand close. It's shorter than you think

If a man pee'd on the wall, it's because he meant to. You have no idea of the aiming power of a man's penis after a lifetime of use.

AND WASH YOUR FILTHY HANDS!!

You still raging about E. Coli on the cock? lol

[Ozymandias]

I don't see the issue. People should just use the facilities corresponding to their legal gender. What does sexuality have to do with it? I don't object to gay men using the mensroom either.

[Barefoot Bree]

I'm for keeping public toilets sex-separated because men pee everywhere. You never see splattered seats or yellow puddles at the foot of ladie's toilets.
Wrong-o! I developed the habit years ago of grabbing a wad of toilet paper and wiping off the toilet seat in any public women's restroom before I sit down - because as often as not, they're splattered. If you've never seen that, or worse yet, realized it after you sat in it, you've led a blessed life indeed.

Yes, GROSS!!!!!!
Men, stand close. It's shorter than you think
Although, also as an office cleaner, this I agree with. Even in the fancy bank and investment firms I've done, I have to mop that damn floor under the urinal every friggin' night.

The wall, that I can see as deliberate. The floor, I doubt it. I'm a gonna get me one of them plastic flies and glue it inside the urinal to give those guys in suits something to aim at.

[Barefoot Bree]

I don't see the issue. People should just use the facilities corresponding to their legal gender. What does sexuality have to do with it? I don't object to gay men using the mensroom either.
Oh, do try to keep up, Ozy. We're not talking sexuality, here, we're talking gender again. What legal gender is a male-to-female transgender, or vice versa, at either side of any operation or hormone therapy?

[DMB]

I have come across a few unisex loos here in Switzerland. But one of my bugbears is to fly into Geneva airport and find when I get to the baggage hall, where one first finds loos, that the door to the women's is blocked off for cleaning. They used to have loos at both ends, but since their having "improved" the area, we now have only one designated place to go. I go to the single disabled one in that case if its practicable, but sometimes there's a long queue of women waiting outside with their legs crossed. So I go to the gents and bolt into a cubicle, averting my eyes from the urinals. On occasion, I've known it happen the other way and a desperate man has dived into the women's loo area.

So what? Our exterior arrangements may be a bit different, but we all have kidneys and urethras.

[Politesse]

People try to legislate too damn much. You don't need the goddamn federal government to keep men out of your precious bathroom, especially not since you could probably get a sexual harassment charge to stick already, society being the cocked-up mess that it is.

[Ozymandias]

I don't see the issue. People should just use the facilities corresponding to their legal gender. What does sexuality have to do with it? I don't object to gay men using the mensroom either.
Oh, do try to keep up, Ozy. We're not talking sexuality, here, we're talking gender again. What legal gender is a male-to-female transgender, or vice versa, at either side of any operation or hormone therapy?

Isn't there a legal definition? Isn't there a point in the whole process when the law stops regarding them as their old gender and instead regards them as their new gender? I don't know - I am just asking.

But part of what I was meaning earlier was: no-one cares. Why would they?

[Bane]

Yes, Ozy, it's when we get our gender recognition certificates, which does take a while, but is not legally dependent on whether or not we have some, all or none of the physical SRS treatment--we just have to have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and be living full-time as the gender we feel we are.

However, a transgendered person who doesn't have such a certificate as yet can get a doctor's letter that says they should be allowed to use the female facilities if MtF or male facilities if FtM.

[Barefoot Bree]

To answer the OP, I think it's none of the law's goddamn business. Legislating who can use which loo is beyond ridiculous.

[Bane]

To answer the OP, I think it's none of the law's goddamn business. Legislating who can use which loo is beyond ridiculous.

Definitely agreed. I don't see any actual need for sex-segregated toilets--even the pervert problem isn't a good argument, since unwanted F/F and unwanted M/M contact in the public toilets can happen too.

Oh, and nobody's cleaner than anybody else. I've seen some women's toilets that would disgust a cave troll--and some men's toilets that would make a clean freak jump for joy. :p

[Loren Pechtel]

My thoughts on the matter are that we should have toilets for those who sit and for those who stand, without any gender designation whatsoever.

Yeah. Stalls are normally enclosed anyway, what difference does it make what gender the person in the next stall is??

[LoneWolf]

To answer the OP, I think it's none of the law's goddamn business. Legislating who can use which loo is beyond ridiculous.

Definitely agreed. I don't see any actual need for sex-segregated toilets--even the pervert problem isn't a good argument, since unwanted F/F and unwanted M/M contact in the public toilets can happen too.

Oh, and nobody's cleaner than anybody else. I've seen some women's toilets that would disgust a cave troll--and some men's toilets that would make a clean freak jump for joy. :p

Well, at the moment does the law even get involved in this? I mean, men's and women's rooms are marked but is it actually against the law to use the "wrong" one? I can't imagine that it is.

[Full Tilt Boogie]

To answer the OP, I think it's none of the law's goddamn business. Legislating who can use which loo is beyond ridiculous.

Definitely agreed. I don't see any actual need for sex-segregated toilets--even the pervert problem isn't a good argument, since unwanted F/F and unwanted M/M contact in the public toilets can happen too.

Oh, and nobody's cleaner than anybody else. I've seen some women's toilets that would disgust a cave troll--and some men's toilets that would make a clean freak jump for joy. :p

Well, at the moment does the law even get involved in this? I mean, men's and women's rooms are marked but is it actually against the law to use the "wrong" one? I can't imagine that it is.

I can check - I seem to remember which toilet you use in the UK is more so governed by convention (i.e. expectation, based in their being two majority genders) and propriety rather than statute. If you are found in contravention, then (based on context and circumstance of the case in point), you'd more likely be charged with a breech of the peace or public nuisance.

[Bane]

Well, you could get chucked out of the premises by security or reported as being a "peeping tom" but I haven't heard of anybody being convicted of committing a lewd act in public or invasion of privacy for using the "wrong" toilets--I'd like to say that most people in my area know full well that all everybody does in the facilities is, well...do our business, clean up and get out.

I've heard far more of the management of various institutions getting in a load of shit for discrimination against transgender people, though.