The inconvenient truth about unisex loos is that women — my wife especially — loathe them

ThE love of my life is a woman of preternatural patience. She’s never once lost her temper with our children. And, despite the much greater cause given, nor has she ever lost it with me.

But there is one habit of mine which causes her more exasperation than any other: that of leaving the loo seat in a state which — how can i put this delicately? — she finds repulsive.

i know: there is no excuse, none whatsover, no matter how great the hurry. But at least she knows the culprit and can deliver him a satisfying rebuke.

So imagine her disgust and frustration last week, when, on a visit to the Design Museum in London, she found the available cubicle in the unisex loo to have all the familiar signs of poor male hygiene practice and with the rank stench that goes with it.

it’s bad enough for her to clean up after me when at home. how much worse to have to do it after any number of unknown men, before she is able to use the facility provided by one of London’s supposedly most civilised institutions.

i would not be bothering readers with this were it not for the fact that my wife’s experience is that of millions of British women. in ever more public places, the old system of male and female loos is being replaced by a single unisex facility.

Often they are designated not as ‘unisex’ but as ‘gender neutral’.

Hostility

this reveals the reason for the change. it is designed to provide a remedy for transgender males and females, who had faced hostility and abuse when they entered the loos designated for the gender with which they identify.

thus, in the spirit of inclusivity, the old segregation is being broken down, replaced with a mono-loo where none can be excluded.

But in avoiding unpleasantness or distress for a small group (the less than 1 per cent of the population defined as transgender), a much larger number of people — women as a whole, so 52 per cent of the population — are being discomfited, or even made to feel threatened.

that feeling of threat is not delusional. Six months ago, a Freedom of information request uncovered the fact that the great majority of sexual assaults at public swimming pools are taking place in unisex changing rooms.

in 2017-2018, of the 134 such complaints, 120 of the incidents took place in genderneutral changing rooms and just 14 took place in single-sex changing areas.

Less than half of such facilities are unisex. But the proportion is rising rapidly, since doing away with separate male and female changing rooms and loos is seen both as a way to meet the demands of transgender advocates and — joy for the finance departments — cheaper.

the Labour MP Caroline Flint has taken a stand on this issue, intervening in a parliamentary debate on ‘transgender equality’ to declare: ‘A woman friend reported leaving the cubicle of a gender neutral pub toilet to be confronted by five drunk men, one of whom urinated in a sink while she was washing her hands. the chances of that happening in a women’s toilet would be minimal.’ Well, one hopes so. the Conservative MP Maria Miller, who chairs the Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee (and who has devoted herself to the cause of transgender rights), responded that loos in aeroplanes had been unisex for as long as anyone can recall, and no one makes a fuss about it.

She is right, but misses the point that if men behaved like that in an aeroplane lavatory, they would be immediately identified (and have no means of escape). Many of the academic advocates of single-sex public loos insist that the old distinction between male and female public facilities originated in the Victorian era, based on a ‘discriminatory’ agenda and ‘outdated morality’.

Less ideologically motivated scholars have countered that the division of male and female loos not only long preceded the sexually prim Victorians: it was always designed to protect women (and girls) from male harassment.

While it is right to show sensitivity to the concerns and anxieties of transgender people, there are other minorities for whom the imposition of single-sex loos is a particular horror. Orthodox Jewish women (and, indeed, many Muslims and hindus) cannot countenance the notion that they share such facilities with men, especially during menstruation.

i accept that public policy cannot encompass all the rules of every minority faith. But this demonstrates how meeting the needs of one minority can cause particular difficulties for others.

Horror

What is the solution to this very modern problem? the answer is not to reduce the number of options down to one, which is no option at all. instead, we should retain the existing male and female loos, while adding a unisex facility.

All would be welcome in the third one, which would be as non-discriminatory as anyone could wish for. it would not be specifically for transgender people, and in that sense would be as ‘inclusive’ as the solitary unisex loo now being imposed on all of us.

it is, when you think about it, extraordinary that this change has been happening without any mass consultation of the population as a whole.

We were consulted in a referendum on whether the UK should remain a member of the European Union. that was reasonable, given the strength of feelings about the matter and its importance.

But i suspect that for the typical Briton — or at least the typical British woman — these issues of public safety and personal hygiene weigh much more heavily in their daily lives. it really does matter, viscerally.

in short, the nation’s women — and not just my wife — are mightily p**d off.