Women Are Getting Attacked in Gender Neutral Rooms
New Data out of the UK says that nearly 90% of incidents against women happen in Gender Neutral rooms. The debate over how to best accommodate people has floated between gender neutral rooms and allowing anyone to use whichever room they choose. but with this new data and some high profile stories about people being accused of being the wrong gender we can see there is no easy solution to the issue.
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New data published by the Sunday Times in the UK shows that women face substantially higher risk of sexual assault in gender-neutral bathrooms.
At the start of the transgender bathroom debate, we had people on the right and trans-exclusionary feminists arguing that if we open female spaces to biological males, those females face a risk of sexual violence.
But many people on the left and pro-trans activists argued that no, trans women are not going to attack women.
They're typically the victims of violence and need a safe space.
The problem with the framing of this debate is that people didn't take into account how businesses would respond to the new laws.
While many businesses simply said, use whatever bathroom you'd like, male or female, Newer businesses are creating gender-neutral bathrooms.
These are single facilities used by biological males and biological females, creating an opportunity for some biological males to assault women when they're in private.
So let's take a look at what this data actually says and look at how the gender bathroom debate has continued.
The story from The Independent.
Unisex changing rooms put women at danger of sexual assault, data reveals.
The vast majority of reported sexual assault at public swimming pools in the UK take place in unisex changing rooms New statistics reveal.
The data obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.
Just under 90% of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism, and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
What's more, two-thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centers and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints over 2017 to 2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms, and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas.
Unisex facilities account for less than half of the changing areas across the UK, but the number is on the rise.
Doing away with separate male and female changing rooms and toilets is seen as a way to cut staff costs and better care for transgender people.
These figures show that women and girls are more vulnerable in mixed changing rooms, and there is a danger these places are becoming a magnet for sexual offenders, says David Davies, MP for Monmouth.
It simply doesn't make sense to enable men to have greater access to women's spaces.
The reforms to gender recognition will grant that access."
The concept of unisex changing areas in toilets has proven controversial.
Two years ago, visitors to Chelsea Sports Centre in West London voiced their anger at
plans to merge the male and female changing rooms over fears of compromised privacy and
increased risk of sexual harassment.
However, it's not just in swimming pools and leisure centres that unisex changing areas are on the rise.
High Street Chain Topshop, for example, has had gender-neutral changing rooms for nearly a year.
But according to Nicola Williams, spokeswoman for Fair Play for Women, spaces where women are undressed should be single sex as a matter of course.
This is obvious elementary safeguarding.
The Independent made reference to this story.
Anger over plans to create unisex changing rooms at Chelsea's swimming pool.
And this story is from October of 2016.
In it, they say that people have submitted objections, arguing the scheme would compromise their privacy and could lead to sexual harassment.
Caroline Daggett said, The council will be putting women of all ages, including
the vulnerable and those with learning difficulties, whom likely have no voice here, at risk.
Jasmine King-Leader from Hyde Park Gate said users were concerned that they will always
be looking over their shoulder, feel uncomfortable and ill at ease trying to change out of and
into clothing in a room full of men and women.
Martin Arnold, surveyors on behalf of the center said, It has been noted that while there are several opponents,
the majority of the user groups will benefit from this scheme.
The plans have been recommended for approval and a final decision will be made by counselors next Tuesday.
A Kensington and Chelsea Council spokesman said, The new layout is widely used. It is a proven safe design
that actually includes more changing cubicles than are currently available.
We believe there is no more risk of sexual harassment in these changing rooms than in the version currently in
Chelsea Sports Centre.
We have asked pool users for their views and many support the proposals.
Two years ago, they said that they didn't think there was a greater risk for sexual harassment, but now it seems there's
data to suggest otherwise.
It's hard to know exactly what's going to happen before you create the gender-neutral bathrooms.
And if we look at existing data, when most bathrooms were segregated, female and male, then we're not going to see a lot of instances of men attacking women or vice versa, because they're separated.
So people were arguing that they didn't think men would assault or harass women in these spaces because we don't have a lot of data to show for it.
But obviously, after we created gender-neutral bathrooms, we start to see new data emerge, and now it would seem that's exactly the case, that men actually do harass women in these spaces.
There's a story from December 2016 in The Guardian.
In the Guardian, it says, In the article, they say,
The horrible truth is that, if a man wants to assault a woman, he can do so anywhere.
The idea that making toilets gender neutral puts women at risk is a classic slippery slope
argument.
Where's the evidence?
If Flint has proof that gender neutral toilets put women at risk, I'm all ears.
If not, I'm rather bored by people such as her playing devil's advocate and whipping up unnecessary panic.
Trans women like me have been using female toilets for decades without causing anyone any problems whatsoever.
If you're living in Britain in 2016, you have almost certainly used a public toilet at the same time as a trans person and not even realized.
It doesn't have to be a big deal unless you make it one.
And this is actually a really interesting point because to an extent it's true.
Most people have probably used the bathroom with a trans person and not even realized it.
It's only actually with the start of this debate that it's become so high profile.
But the mistake being made in this article is that the concern shouldn't be about trans women assaulting women.
The concern should be that you're putting biological straight men in the same place as biological women.
So while it may be true that trans women are not going to assault women, you're talking about gender-neutral bathrooms.
You're talking about men being in a private space with women and no one around to see what's happening.
And thus, I think it's obvious that we're going to see more assaults take place than if bathrooms were segregated.
The article goes on.
The biggest irony?
While making bathrooms more trans-friendly hasn't led to any problems, the fabricated debate surrounding this progress has.
Take 22-year-old Amy Toms, who was washing her hands in the women's bathroom at a branch of Walmart in Connecticut, when someone approached her and said, you're disgusting and you don't belong here.
Toms, who was born with a uterus and identifies as a woman, believes she was harassed because of the current panic about trans people in bathrooms.
A fuss about a problem that doesn't exist has become a problem in and of itself, with more and more women who don't look traditionally feminine now facing greater scrutiny in public.
Earlier this year, a 16-year-old lesbian was thrown out of a McDonald's in hull because she says staff believed she was a boy and she had been using the women's toilets.
McDonald's said she was being disruptive.
It's time to stop panicking about imaginary fears and focus on the very real violence and discrimination gender-variant people face every day.
But the op-ed brings up an interesting point.
If trans people have been using bathrooms without issue for years, why then create gender-neutral bathrooms?
This presents a bit of an issue.
In New York, they recognize 31 genders, so they can't just say use whatever bathroom you like because some people don't identify as male or female.
And the law states that they need to accommodate all genders.
So many institutions have been creating gender-neutral facilities.
But if it's true that trans people can and have been using any bathroom, why do we need gender-neutral facilities?
All this does is put biological males and biological females in the same place, and then, as we've seen from the data from the Sunday Times, it results in women facing assault, harassment, voyeurism.
At least that's what they're reporting.
But there is an argument as to why we do need gender-neutral bathrooms.
The high-profile stories that we've heard and the debate over whether or not trans people have a right to use bathrooms has led to people being falsely accused of being the wrong sex.
In this story, lesbian made to leave toilet after police refused to believe she's a woman.
A video that appears to show a lesbian woman in the U.S.
being forcibly removed from a lady's toilet because the police present were not convinced she was female has had more than 2.3 million views since being uploaded to Facebook.
Blogger Tamara McDaniel published a video below, which has garnered more than 5,000 comments since it was posted online.
In the video, the unnamed woman tries to convince the two male officers and one female officer present that she is a woman.
Her friends shout in her support she's a girl, which the officers ignore.
The police then ask the woman for identification to prove her sex.
She rejects their demand, offended.
The male officers then manhandle her out of the restroom whilst calling her sir.
The police eventually tell the woman's friends, who are still vouching for her female identity, you can all leave if you want.
If we have bathrooms that are just for males and just for females, we do face a challenge when we try to open them up to everybody.
In North Carolina, a person who is biologically female was kicked out of a McDonald's because they didn't believe she was biologically female.
We can't punish people simply because they don't look the way we think they should look.
We can't throw out a feminine man or a masculine woman because we think they might be the other gender, because then what are they supposed to do?
If we're trying to say that only males and only females can be in a particular bathroom, but then we throw out a biological female because she looks like a male, what do we do?
Do we tell the biological female to go in the men's room?
That's what the law is trying to prevent, so it doesn't really work.
Thus, it seems like the solution will be, then, gender-neutral bathrooms.
But with that comes the assault of women, and that's rather unfortunate.
I don't know what the solution is.
Is it okay to say to females, you're going to be in a space with males, you may be victimized, your chances of being victimized are substantially higher because of this, but it protects trans people, so that's why we have to do it.
Or is it better to say, look, just use the bathroom you feel like using, male or female, but we're gonna keep segregated bathrooms.
Another op-ed in The Guardian argues exactly this point.
Don't deny trans people their rights because of male violence.
The risks that women face come from men.
To argue about the rights of trans people is to miss the point and the threat.
They argue, granting trans people equality will not make women any less safe.
We live in a society where, unfortunately, women's safety isn't guaranteed.
But trans people are not to blame for this, and often they are at risk themselves.
They cannot be made the scapegoats or the distraction from the real issue.
Granting them rights does not give violent men permission to be violent.
The reality is that if a man wants to dress up as a woman to access women-only spaces, he'll do it anyway.
No piece of paper will prevent it.
The op-ed argues trans people face the same risks to their safety as women.
Research shows that 44% of trans people avoid certain streets because they do not feel safe.
And in the past year alone, 2 in 5 trans people have experienced a hate crime because of their gender identity.
If that sounds familiar to any woman reading this, it is because you have a common cause.
Women and trans people both exist in a world where they are prevented from accessing true equality because of their gender.
We must not be divided by arguments that undermine the equality we so desperately need and deserve.
The op-ed brings up an interesting point.
That simply because some males are violent, we shouldn't withhold the rights to trans people to use the facilities they want.
However, what's happening is that gender-neutral bathrooms are being created.
So if the argument is that trans women and women will be safe together and need a safe space, why then create unisex and gender-neutral bathrooms?
Shouldn't we then create spaces specifically for men and women?
Maybe if that isn't the answer, because sometimes a masculine woman will be thrown out of a bathroom, we need a third option.
We need two facilities and then maybe a single-use bathroom.
I don't know exactly what we should do, but one thing I can say for certain.
While we want to protect the safety and the rights of marginalized communities, we also don't want to create an opportunity for women to be victimized.
And if that's what's happening, it needs to be addressed as well.
I'm sure there are people who will argue, you know what, the rights of trans people supersedes The safety of these women.
But at the same time, those trans people can be victimized just the same in a gender-neutral bathroom.
So maybe this does need to be addressed.
Maybe we do need a more comprehensive solution.
But let me know what you think in the comments below and we'll keep the conversation going.
How do you feel about the gender-neutral bathroom debate?
Do you think it's a big issue?
Or do you think that we should overlook the risks to women and trans women and just say gender-neutral is the way to go?
