The Great Gender Neutral Toilet Scandal
The 3rd in my Garbage I wrote for the Guardian series, published April 10, 2008. Note the fact that Amy Lame, who adopted gender ideology when working with Sadiq Khan, was on our side at that time
All women have been there - desperate for the loo, standing in the queue at the cinema just before the start of a popular film, glaring resentfully at the rapid turnover of the men's. Have you ever thought of nipping in to shake your thing with the boys, or does the thought of those urinals put you off?
In one cinema, things have taken a turn, some might say, for the worse. The annual Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LGFF), held at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, has created two gender-neutral toilets: one converted from a staff toilet and one from an existing women's toilet - the busiest one, in fact, in the bar area. Which somehow doesn't seem very fair. (Normally, there are five men's and five women's loos, as well as three unisex disabled ones, throughout the whole building.)
Billy Wizz, one of the LGFF organisers, points out that the festival has a commitment to screening films of interest to the transgender community. "One of our priorities is to work with our audiences to ensure we provide events and facilities that they have requested," he says. But why do women never have enough toilets? Think pubs; think Glastonbury.
Writer and broadcaster Amy Lame was at the festival at the weekend, and felt angry at the khazi kerfuffle. "In gay clubs, men often think it is OK to barge into women's toilets," she says. "When I was in the gender-neutral loo, I did not feel safe. Any number of pervy men could decide to go in to look at the lesbians."
To make our sanitation system properly gender neutral, women would need to learn how to pee standing up, and men do away with their urinals, always put the seat up, and aim for the basin. But not everyone is convinced. "There are men who would love to see what goes on in the ladies'," says Lame. "But, trust me, I do not want to see theirs."
Amy Lame
Now here’s a thing. In gender neutral toilets (like homes) it should be the norm that men sit down to pee. It’s not difficult for them. It’s cleaner and makes for a more hygienic environment. Have you noticed those spots of rust on the radiators in toilets? Caused by male pee spray - a fine invisible spray that gets around however good an aim he is standing. Told us by a plumber many years ago who advised all his clients to sit down to pee. Lest this should seem only slightly relevant to Julie's post - the underlying point is that, once again, there's an assumption that women will adapt their behaviour to accommodate males, rather than the other way round. And again, it's worth making the point that in the majority of homes it's the women who end up cleaning the toilet. If men had to do it they might get the point.
If the venue really aimed to provide what its customers wanted it would provide women only toilets in abundance, with others catered for in whatever way suited them. Obviously they are catering for what men want, and they haven’t got around to dealing with what the other half of their customers want yet. If ever.