ladies' toilets

Around 2016, the conversation around transwomen in women's spaces really began to pick up. I was told by a colleague that it was ridiculous to think that a pervert/rapist would take this as an opportunity to go into women's toilets and harass women.

It wasn't long after this conversation when I was on a night out and went to the women's toilets to find a man in women's clothes. He was a feminine man who was perhaps pre-transition. He came across to me as a friendly gay man in women's clothes who was surrounded by his female friends, but it was strange.

However, in the same night, a man who was not even attempting to be a woman decided to enter the women's toilets. He stood there waiting in the queue as if he had a right to be there and the women looked around at each other silently saying with their eyes "there's a man in here and it's uncomfortable." The toilets were absolutely not unisex. Where do I go now if men are simply allowed to walk into women's toilets?

#unitedkingdom #england #toilets #bathrooms #safety #privacy

victorian school building authority

I know of three Victorian schools all in metropolitan Melbourne which have felt mislead and or tricked by the Victorian School Building Authority's project management team into building "gender neutral" i.e. mixed-sex toilets. Each of these three schools - in two different school regions - have been told that they must install gender neutral toilets as part of the school upgrades (of varying sizes and budgets), and then told that when they get their certificate of occupancy they can revert to single-sex toilet provision in consultation with the school community. Three different leading teachers and or principals at these three schools have been sold the same line by the VSBA bureaucrats that they are required to install gender-neutral toilets so that the girls and boys and gender-neutral or trans-identififed children will be in adjoining cubicles with a common wash basin area. Two of the principals at schools in the same region conferred notes about the department's tactics in requiring them to install these unpopular toilets in their multi-cultural communities. These principals told the VSBA that Muslim girls could not go to the toilet at school if only mixed-sex toilets were provided and the VSBA both times pretended to have not previously heard this risk being identified, or to know about the discriminatory conduct being recommended by them. Fortunately for these two canny principles they cross-briefed one another and were able to convert the "gender neutral" toilets back into single-sex toilets as soon as they received the certificate of occupancy and before children returned to the upgraded area of the school. Anyone with any common sense or understanding of the difficulties of going through puberty would underestand that girls and boys need their privacy and dignity and safety from one another. If the VSBA want to fund gender-neutral toilet provision for students who are uncomfortable with their biological sex then they need to be additional to the existing provisions.

#australia #victoria #schools #buildingauthority #toilets #bathrooms #genderneutral

requesting a woman lawyer in a community legal centre

For many years now a lawyer who identifies as a woman has been working in community legal services in northern regional Victoria. This person seems well regarded by local magistrates' court staff and magistrates, and is an affable, pleasant individual. In various meeting with the local court that I witnessed, this individual struggles to hide his sex as he is a chronic mansplainer. But every one smiles and calls him 'she' and by his chosen name.

The thing that worries me most about this individual's transgenderism is its impact on women clients who come to see him, with their having to affirm "her" identity as a woman. Victims/survivors of family violence have often been subjected to the most extreme sexual violence by their male partners, and men's coercive controlling techniques always include a liberal dose of gaslighting by the perpetrator against the woman. It sickens me to think of these extremely vulnerable women, with no option to pay for private female legal representation, being forced to again kowtow and comply with this lawyer's belief that he is a woman.

What is worse is that the local magistrates and court staff are complicit in this coercion of vulnerable women and always refuse to mention the elephant in the room that the six foot something, huge-footed, massive-handed individual is and always will be male. If this is not a conflict of the rights of the man to identify as a woman vs. the rights of the most vulnerable women to access and receive justice in our legal system - I don't know what is.

[*Moderator's note: the author of this submission would like noted that this lawyer does not work for LegalAid, who are more sensitive to the needs of their female clients].

#australia #victoria #regionalvictoria #communitylegalcentres #legalcentres #law #legalrepresentation