Public Toilet Usage for The Disabled And The Transgender

The squabbles over transgender rights regarding which toilets to use in bars and restaurants and other public places frankly baffles me. It's a fight I struggle to get my head around. The bigots object while the transgender toilet user is queuing. Once doing what needs doing they, like other users are in the cubicles, presumably with a locked door. It's the gents loos where most toilet unit space is taken up with messy unsanitary urinals, and the users see what each other are doing that ought to change.

Being partly and irreversibly, permanently disabled I face some inconvenience with many conveniences myself. While I can use urinals as I ever did, I do now need sit down cubicles for stoma changing so it strikes me that if gents loos dispensed with urinals to install more cubicles (where urination needs can be just as easily met as in urinals) it would be more practical and hygienic for all users, and it would get rid of the main difference between gents/ladies loos making all toilet blocks in public places effectively unisex and it wouldn't matter one jot who went in which loo.

At the urinals, and bladder troughs, men can see what each other are doing, while cubicles have doors, for closing and (except where badly maintained), locks, for privacy. The bigotry relates to an unwillingness to see transgender folk in the waiting areas, or using sinks, dryers and mirrors to prepare themselves for going back out to the main bar/dining public areas again. They can’t justifiably object to what happens in the cubicles unless they get in with the users which is rarely if ever going to get consent.

The advantage men have, when only emptying bladders, which we need to do more if glugging pints rather than wines and spirits, due to sheer volume of liquid consumed, irrespective of its strength, is that we can use the private facilities quickly, (hopefully) wash our hands and go. There is relatively little queuing. The needs that lead to need for use of cubicles take a little longer to address, so queues can form, which is distressing if someone is stuck near the back and busting to go. Replacing urinals with cubicles would fix several problems. Men emptying bladders into cubicles will be just as quick about it as at the old urinals and less likely to splatter the floors, turning the bathroom facilities into a shoe ruining paddling pool. The queue would be unisex and there would be no need to ever mark doors as Gents, Ladies or use often confusing symbols to segregate the genders anyway. It would just be one big toilet area, with multiple cubicles, ideally spacious enough for wheelchair rotation. All public toilets should be accessible to disabled users.

There is no reason for the outcry from bigots, or the outbursts from ought to know better authors like J K Rowling. Everyone will be just doing what we all have to do. Just remember to flush, wash and dry hands afterwards.

Photo taken by me.

Arthur Chappell.