Festivals’ ‘non-binary inclusive’ female lavatories raise concerns

‘Women and girls are expected to take all the risks in terms of safety for the sake of inclusivity’

A ROW has broken out over women’s lavatories being “opened up to males” at music festivals.

New female urinals have been rolled out at events including Glastonbury and Green Man in an attempt to cut down bathroom queuing times.

The women’s facilities are “inclusive” of transgender and non-binary people, prompting festival-goers to raise concerns that they are eroding the boundaries of female-only spaces.

Signs outside the new facilities at the Green Man festival in the Brecon Beacons, which ran from Aug 18 to 21, stated that the new urinals were “trans, LGBT+, non-binary inclusive”.

The introduction of these facilities has prompted concerns from some festival-goers, including author and women’s rights campaigner Helen Saxby, who claimed that the regular men’s urinals at the Green Man festival were not similarly branded as “inclusive”. Green Man has not commented on this.

Ms Saxby said: “I think it’s important to note that women and girls are expected to take all the risks in terms of safety for the sake of inclusivity, but nothing is asked of men.

“I don’t feel they are intrinsically a bad idea, as an additional option, to keep the queues down elsewhere. However, signing them as trans, LGBTQ+ and non-binary inclusive opens them up to males and that’s what I object to.”

The new facility was devised by the UK start-up company Peequal as a means of cutting down the bathroom waiting time for women at events.

Green Man festival said that the new facilities are intended to be inclusive of “female-identifying” customers, and to help the environment.

A statement from the festival said: “We want everyone to feel at home, so this year alongside our usual toilets, we teamed up with Peequal squat urinals which are quicker to use, offer user privacy, open air and produce 98 per cent less CO2 than portable loos.”