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Gender Neutral bathrooms in UK universities

Hi, im doing a little research on which universities aprovide the best gender neutral (GN) toilets across their campuses.

My uni's LGBTQIA+ Society is currently campaigning for genter neutral toilets in the SU and rest of campus and would love to have some examples of other unis to show the officials.

I would love to know what uni your at, roughly how many gender neutral bathrooms the uni has (especially the student union). If the gender neutral bathrooms are converted disabled toilets, newly built, single stall/whole bathroms.

Really just any info you have.

Thanks in advance!!!

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Reply 1

Doones

UEA has them. You should probably contact the university for full details though.

Reply 2

Bubs051213

No clue how many or where (as I don't attend to uni and was only there for a tour) but Royal Holloway has at least one!

Reply 3

amingo26

I'm at Leeds Beckett. We definitely have at least one on both City and Headingley campuses. Not sure how many exactly or even where they are, but we have them.

Reply 4

AHC25

Not sure how many are across campus but we definitely have at least two! As far as I'm aware there aren't any in the SU though... (I'm at the University of Birmingham btw)

Reply 5

username1221160

The new research buildings have gender neutral toilets throughout the building. Of course, they are not marked as gender neutral, the doors simply read "toilets". I'm sure someone with traditional views will get upset by this, but most of is don't care.

Reply 6

Sabertooth

Original post by Quantex

That was the case in Manchester student union when I visited there a couple of years ago too. It was pretty cool although kind of strange to start with, me and my wife had cubicles next to each other. :biggrin:

I don't see why people, especially in the US, have such a massive problem about trans people using the toilets they feel comfortable in when in this student union it worked totally fine to have mixed-sex toilets.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 7

Geeta_Rasoya

Whats all this gender neutral toilets i don't understand it.

Reply 8

MadameNhu

I want gender neutral toilets because I have a big **** so I can show off but I'm not gay so I have nobody to show off to but if there is ladies in there, I would.

Reply 9

Beth_H

I'm not sure about the rest of the university, but the St Catherine's college JCR at Oxford has three or four sets of gender neutral toilets with two stalls each, plus one disabled toilet. There's also at least one in the Music faculty (although I think the faculty does have gender segregated toilets as well).

Reply 10

Doones

Original post by Geeta_Rasoya

Whats all this gender neutral toilets i don't understand it.

Think of it like the toilet you have at home.

It's a toilet, in a cubicle. Anyone can use it.

Reply 11

AlexanderHam

Original post by Picklesbunny

Hi, im doing a little research on which universities aprovide the best gender neutral (GN) toilets across their campuses.

My previous workplace had gender-neutral bathrooms, but they were basically all disabled stalls with full ceiling-to-floor doors and walls with their own basin, and a common doorway to enter into the entry hall to the bathrooms.

Why are you campaigning for gender neutral bathrooms? Why is this an issue, and for whom?

Reply 12

AlexanderHam

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

My Uni is really regressive, I think our LGBTQIA+ equivalent society only has four characters in it.

Only four!? :angry:

I bet it's GLBT too! Misogynist nonsense.

Reply 13

Retired_Messiah

I think I've seen a toilet in my uni (Glasgow) that just had "toilet" on it and none of that segregated stuff. Although tbh it could've well have been somewhere I was drunk at on freshers week, in my memory all the days from the first few weeks have sort of blended together. bleh. Union loos are definitely segregated tho, I remember those ****in queues vividly.

As to the gender neutral bathrooms issue as a whole, I don't see why anybody should really be against them in principle. You're all in cubicles anyway, wtf are you expecting to happen in there exactly if it wasn't segregated? At the same time, gender segregated ones aren't exactly a big issue either, it's literally just somewhere you go to pee. If the door's misgendering you, why do you actually care? Your experience is barely going to change, is it?

In conclusion: Gender neutral bathrooms are fine but I can't see the need for the big campaigns to switch the segregated ones to gender neutrals when that's buildingwork money that could be spent on getting more cubicles to stop the bloody queues and some hand dryers that actually dry your hands.

Reply 14

eden3

gender neutral toilets.... dear god...

Reply 15

fallen_acorns

Most LGBT societies have facebook groups or webpages, it would probably taken an hour of searching to find most of them, then its just a quick message to all of them asking the question.

Its not a lot of work, and you will get a much better and more rounded answer (from more trusted sources) then asking here....

As for the issue at hand. I find it an interesting one, back at uni all my transgender friends hated gender neutral toilets.. they are transitioning to the other gender, but they are still a defined gender.. having a 3rd option was not what they wanted. The only people I remember wanting them for personal reasons were non-binary gender individuals.. but there were very very few of them.

Mostly it felt like just a very easy point-scoring method for university diversity/equality staff. Its not a complicated or overly expensive solution, but they can feel like they have achieved something for their students..

Reply 16

Doones

Original post by fallen_acorns

As for the issue at hand. I find it an interesting one, back at uni all my transgender friends hated gender neutral toilets.. they are transitioning to the other gender, but they are still a defined gender.. having a 3rd option was not what they wanted.

Surely not if all (or at least most) of the toilets are gender neutral.

Reply 17

fallen_acorns

Original post by Doonesbury

Surely not if all (or at least most) of the toilets are gender neutral.

true - if all or a vast majority were neutral, it probably wouldn't have been an issue.

Back then the normal proposals were more of '1 girls, 1 boys, 1 neutral' though, which would annoy my trans friends because they then thought that they would be unwelcome in the bathroom of the gender they identified as, because there would be an expectation that they would use the neutral one...

All being neutral would work well though, if possibly a tad wasteful on space

Reply 18

Knightoflogic

bad idea, only two genders, gender-neutral toilets are pointless.

Reply 19

Wōden

Original post by FriendlyPenguin

My Uni is really regressive, I think our LGBTQIA+ equivalent society only has four characters in it.

I have never seen a gender neutral bathroom here.

Monsterous.

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