Trans toilet rules 'may force Scottish museums to close'
(www.thenational.scot)
from tonytins@pawb.social to world@lemmy.world on 27 Jul 2025 23:32
https://pawb.social/post/28756080
from tonytins@pawb.social to world@lemmy.world on 27 Jul 2025 23:32
https://pawb.social/post/28756080
An interim update from the EHRC, published in May, said that “trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities, as this will mean that they are no longer single-sex facilities”.
However, a response from Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS), which supports around 455 non-national museums and is funded by the Scottish Government, said EHRC’s proposals may “force some museums to close”, or “risk leaving trans people with no facilities at all” if changes could not be made.
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Can't they make all toilets unisex? In Sweden a lot of them don't device in male and female. You have your toilet with a sink to wash your hands and a mirror behind a closed door, problem solved.
Adding these is usually the way to solve it. There wouldn’t be enough room to completely convert existing without losing a lot of capacity.
They could, but obviously these people would be against that. Because they don’t have a rational objection, they’re just bigots.
I read this the opposite way.
Scottish museums are objecting to an anti-trans judgement from the UK. They are saying that if trans-women can't use the women's bathroom, and trans-men can't use the men's bathroom, then they have to close. They're being allies.
It's based on a recent case where Scotland's highest court stated that a person's gender could change based on a doctor's authority, and this was overturned on appeal by a UK judge.
But that might mean there’s only room or plumbing connections for (as an example) two or three toilets when there was a room that allowed 4 or 6 toilets. And now the reduced capacity runs against the rules set out in other building codes. I’m not going for or against just saying, see the problems?
I see the problem that someone planned it wrong and now it needs to be corrected.
But also it's not like it costs an arm and a leg to do it.
The bar I used to work at just had a bunch of toilets in full enclosed stalls, a urinal section around the corner from that, and then communal sinks
Heaven.
Yea this is a common layout for toilets in bars.
You have to do it right, but yes.
There is a school in the US that converted stalls into actual rooms, which was good. But the way the law was written, the area outside the stalls was considered a prohibited, unisex "changing area’ because it was private rather than public. The solution was to make it a public handwashing area. But the way they did it was by cutting a window into the former “changing area” to make it public rather than private.
So it got reported by Republicans as a Democratic attempt to spy on kids in the bathroom. And since it was one of the bathrooms intended to accommodate trans students, it got reported as Republicans trying to spy on trans kids.
Basically, they did everything right, but pissed off everybody in the process.
Sounds like they pissed off Republicans. But anything sensible and non-cruel will do that.
They cut a big hole in the wall of the transgender bathroom.
They pissed off everybody.
That’s clearly not possible, because although unisex toilets have functioned just fine for forever some TERF’s with a lot of money behind them have decided that the moment a man enters a bathroom a woman could also be in the poor damsel’s are in distress and faint due to shock or something.
Fascinating how some people are capable of creating problems out of nowhere. That’s Trumponia-tier idiocy.
We can thank the TERFs and their fellow bigots for managing that.
which is a russia-backed sort of propaganda, yes we know putin love to push these sort of things to sow division, what better than CULTURE wars stuff.
Before long, it became clear that private toilet facilities were probably impossible to make work, and the only real option was to revert to public urination and defecation in the street, an option that had worked admirably for many centuries.
Trans people and people who don’t mind trans people get private stalls; TERFs can poo in public so everyone can see if a scary trans person bothers them. If they don’t want to, they’re welcome to use the stalls too.
Gendered bathrooms have always been stupid. Everybody poops, everybody pees, it’s good enough to just have a room where everyone can do that.
Bathroom stalls are nasty. Just have poop rooms with good ventilation and a community sink.
Oh fuck that. No way I want to line up behind 20 women when I need to drop a deuce
I mean you could do separate lines or something for that— but at the same time maybe that just means you need more bathrooms if there is a significant line. Also maybe making a separate powder room would reduce the lines by directing those who want to do make up or something to a different place.
This is the way. The shitter and the talking-shit areas should be separate.
Missed opportunity for taking shit and talking shit.
Wait are you saying they´re taking up bathroom stalls to do their makeup??
No. This thread is just full of guys who don’t understand how female anatomy works.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking. That they were using stalls to do makeup. I supposed I can chock this up to my application of Mens public restroom culture (in the USA) where you try not to make eye contact and avoid one another. This led me to think that crowding around the mirror would be an uncomfortable experience for everyone involved. Hence, the stall being a more private place would be more comfortable with a pocket mirror or something but hey live and learn lmao
It’s not make up that causes long lines. Please tell me you’re being sarcastic and I’ve missed it.
I think their idea is a good idea for freeing up sink space, but as far as decreasing the line? That’s not gonna happen.
For those unaware - those long lines you see outside the door? They extend into the bathroom. As soon as a stall opens up, the next person goes in. We’re not waiting for sinks or mirrors.
The fun thing is tha t by combining them you reduce the waiting tolime overall for everyone together, while making it a bit longer for the now privileged.
This. Most of the time women have to wait in long lines while men’s room is empty. There were times women would loose patience and just went to man’s room because why not.
Most women will not be using the urinal, though, which is why men’s bathrooms are often much quicker to get through.
That too. But especially with smaller bathrooms you have situations with lines to women’s while men’s being just empty
This is why it’s now becoming standard design practice in the design of restrooms for large public buildings to simply build the women’s restroom larger than the men’s. This is really the classic “equality vs. equity.” Equality means building both restrooms the same size. Equity means realizing that to deliver the same level of service - the same average wait time, the women’s restrooms probably should just be built larger and with more total stalls. So you build out your restrooms with the number of stalls in the women’s room being about 40% or so greater than the total number of stalls and urinals in the men’s.
Wouldn’t designating a stall or two in the women’s as pee only, so that the pee’rs can go quicker without having to wait for people doin other stuff, basically rectify that… without needing to gum up the more efficient urinal situation men get? That way they’d have that ‘fast lane’ option, just like guys, while guys could still have the more convenient-for-their-body urinals to use. Maybe get an engineer to make like a pee-troth for women to squat along for peeing en masse, and designate half the bathroom to that, like how urinals are done in mens rooms.
Equity should generally be about improving the situation for the disadvantaged demo, without dragging everyone else down, no? Not causing added issue for existing people / setups is also an argument for lettin trans people go wherever they’re comfortable – cause it wouldn’t make sense to have to setup a bathroom for every gender identity out there.
I think the word you’re looking for is “trough.” I can’t see that working out well for most women. We’d still have to take off our pants and underwear, and asking us to do that in a room full of people is more than many would be comfortable with.
Besides, it seriously underestimates how many of us are on our periods at any given time. Consider that periods last about a week and occur every month. Not counting those with medications or health conditions that prevent periods, are currently pregnant, or are post-menopausal, that means about 1 in 4 women are actively menstrating at any given time. We’re going to prefer private stalls to take care of such needs. If somebody on their period chose to use such a trough, seeing blood splattered over it would probably discourage the rest of us from using it anyway.
Yeah, stalls take longer. But they help keep private things, well, private.
yeah this isn’t really an issue in Denmark where gender neutral toilets are fairly regular.
Word of caution. Many politicians are into that.
No worries, I’ll just hold it until I find a politician to piss on
Reminder - because trans men are almost always treated as invisible in these conversations - UK law makes it illegal for trans men to piss anywhere at all. Trans women can use the men’s, but trans men cannot use the women’s or the men’s.
It’s fucked.
Seconded. There’s almost zero solidarity most of the time in the trans community when it comes to trans-men, who often get treated as though they should just vie for themselves. It’s almost like some sort of reflexive trauma of not wanting to associate with anything remotely masculine post-op.
I’ve seen trans-men literally get berated and put down for being enthusiastic about anything remotely masculine, be it sports or clothing, 24/7 by other trans people. They fucking hate them.
We should move onto a ‘by function’ system, where there’s one section with urinals, another with toilet cubicles, another could rooms for the handicapped. If women can piss decently into the urinal, more power to them.
Now that I think of it, maybe we should have tissue paper dispensers and bins for people to dab dry their genitals at urinals. Just sticking it back in after flicking it thrice?
Anyone and everyone can use any facility. Although it would be an asshole move to take up the handicap cubicle if there’s one waiting. But it would be idiotic to wait in a long line for regular cubicles if it’s empty.
One of the libraries at my university has bathrooms for everyone which simply has solid floor-to-ceiling stalls (as opposed to the flimsy barely standing things that are common in the US).
That’s the way they divide it at the building I trained for my job in (which isn’t a unique facility, it’s just where the training room is located.) Adults there have two bathroom choices - stalls, or urinals and stalls. The stalls are real stalls that actually provide privacy. There’s no gender requirement for either and it works fine for the dozens of people who work and train there. The kids still have gendered rooms, since they are at an abundantly curious age (and some parents have gender requirements for who diapers/potty trains their kids, especially the little girls.) We can honor parents’ wishes for their kids, but as adults we can still choose which grown-up bathroom to use for ourselves.
As a bonus - there are white noise machines in each bathroom, which helps decrease awkwardness across the board.
White noise machines sounds cool. The sounds coming from the (ladies) stall next to the men’s is nothing short of impressive.
Some women going #1 sound like power washers.