Free-for-all creates a major inconvenience

WOMEN are under attack as never before. Not content with learning that absolutely anyone can be a woman, even someone with a full set of male genitalia, we are now being forced to cope with yet another horror, namely “genderneutral” loos.

Not only do almost no women want this, but it is actually causing health problems among young schoolgirls. They refuse to use loos shared with boys, and in some cases are beginning to experience health problems with their bladder because they are not obeying the call of nature. Frankly, this is child abuse. But are we finally beginning to see some sense?

There has been a massive row at London’s Playhouse Theatre, currently home to a hugely acclaimed production of Cabaret. The theatre has gender-neutral loos, but the females (the biological ones, that is) in the audience don’t like it. They have complained about being forced to walk past a row of men using urinals and then discovering unspeakable fluids on loo seats.

Needless to say their complaints have been dismissed by the theatre, as so often happens when women get fed up with being pushed around, but this time the row has made headlines and about time too.

Gender-neutral loos are horrible things. I was in one recently and a man was doing his stuff in a cubicle with the door wide open. I don’t blame him personally: he was clearly used to using urinals and he probably didn’t even think about the fact that we women are used to a bit of privacy.

But why should I or any woman be forced to witness this? It’s tantamount to flashing, which is still a criminal offence, and it is totally disrespectful to members of my sex or gender or whatever it is we’re supposed to call ourselves these days.

And the female body functions differently from the male one. Women-only loos are a place where we can attend to ourselves without horrible voyeuristic gawping from elsewhere.

UNTIL quite recently there was a stricture, “Not in front of the ladies,” which possibly went too far in the other direction as it implied we were frail little flowers who couldn’t cope with the reality of beastly manhood and needed to be protected from all manner of unpleasantness, including bad language (those were the days).

But at least it denoted a certain amount of respect. These days, we seem to be expected to put up with the most grotesque behaviour and if we don’t like it we can lump it.This is not what the suffragettes fought for and a sizeable proportion of us have had enough. Pile on the pressure, ladies.

And let us have our private spaces once more.

“Nature is all very well in her place but she must not be allowed to make things untidy” Stella Gibbons