Peter Viney's Blog

Toilets. Bogs. Loos. Rest Rooms. Bathrooms. Powder Rooms. The Little Girls Room. The Shitter and Pisser. The Slashery. We all need them.

We are far into the march of Unisex toilets. Hull University had them in 2018. So did the Tate Modern. The Old Vic introduced them as CUBICLES and then URINALS + CUBICLES. I stood waiting outside them for Karen just afterwards. All the women emerging from CUBICLES were complaining about it, and they weren’t our age group either. All much younger.

The Royal Shakespeare Company has renovated The Swan Theatre, and now part of the renovation is they still have the women’s toilet with the usual sign, but the men’s toilet has been replaced by ALL GENDER CUBICLES. My point here is efficiency, not the politics of Trans, or how many genders you consider there to be. ALL GENDER replaces UNISEX.

The Swan men’s was always a spectacularly badly designed toilet. There used to be three or four urinals, a cubicle, and an extra urinal squeezed in past the cubicle, which could only be accessed by pushing the last piddler in the row of piddlers hard into the wall. Now it has three cubicles and an open doorway.

On Saturday in the Swan Theatre interval,  as ever a queue fast stretched out of the Women’s, and there were also several women outside ALL GENDER CUBICLES. That fast developed into a queue entirely of women. Men were reluctant to join this all-female queue and like me, walked diffidently through the shop to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre toilets. Then they had a bag check to go back into the shop and back through to the Swan Theatre (tedious). This will work as long as the The Swan and The Royal Shakespeare Theatre never have simultaneous intervals. The walk doesn’t work for the several very elderly men either. It’s incredibly inefficient too. I will expand on this. Effectively they have eradicated the Swan Men’s toilets. No men’s.

Nicholas Hyntner, as Artistic Director of the National Theatre, said his main post was letters from women complaining about queues for women’s toilets. When he opened The Bridge Theatre, he boasted it would have the best toilets in London. Well, the National was always really excellent in comparison to any West End Theatre, as is also The Globe, and Chichester Festival Theatre. Karen has pointed out that The Bridge was never as good as claimed – the central line of wash basins meant you couldn’t see which cubicles were free, and the handbag / coat hook had been placed at the very top of the door, way beyond her reach … that has been corrected by adding another hook lower down.

There are some basic physical facts. Women have smaller bladders, and with pregnancy and ageing genuinely need the loos more often. That’s partly why all theatres have queues at the women’s in the interval. This performance with a one hour first half was less crowded. You need to see the queues when the first half runs to 100 minutes, or in 2012, 140 minutes.

Time and motion. Men are in and out way faster when using urinals. Men do not have to undress, though the hipster generation do seem to unfasten belts and lower trousers and pants rather than peeing through the flies as nature intended.  That makes it quicker too. OK, you may add that the percentage who do not wash their hands speeds it up (you really wouldn’t believe it, lady reader). Admittedly in theatres, the turnover is slower than normal due to more elderly men waiting at the urinal for the ‘afterthought’ pee.

Take Reading University Library. They have a separate men’s, but it’s all cubicles (Why? madness. You can see the wall space where the urinals used to be). However, mostly men having a pee just go into a cubicle, stand,  and don’t close the doors. So it’s still faster.

Do women like shared space? In restaurants with unisex toilets as well as in homes, women have complained all my life that either men don’t lift the seat, or pee on the seat, or both.

My son said his office block used to have a men’s. Now the urinal section has been closed off, and just the cubicles (now Unisex) left. Thou shalt not urinate in a urinal even though it’s still physically there.  Women have been quoted saying ‘We have to queue. Men should do the same.’ We are talking the practicalities of theatre interval urination, not “revenge” for centuries of male domination.

So why is the sign ALL GENDER? At the Bridge Theatre in London two weeks ago, they had a kind of solution. The Men’s was Men’s and Unisex, the Women’s was Women’s. The urinal section in the Men’s is separate to the cubicles section and several women came in and used the cubicle section. That’s efficient use of available cubicles. I have seen this in ELT conferences in both Italy and Spain, and well over 25 years ago. With a ten minute break between sessions and long queues at the women’s, women just walked in and used the cubicles in the men’s, calling out ‘Women walking through.’ I never saw it in the UK.

The thing is, practicality, not ticking boxes. Nearly every theatre needs more women’s toilets. Both men and women are entitled to have non-shared space. In practical terms, those Trans people who look and dress to the gender which they identify with, can use their choice of appropriate loo cubicles and no one will notice (or care).

So then we’re down to a very tiny minority of trans people who might have long hair, a beard, breasts, a frock and hairy legs. We can see that they might have problems with gender-fixed loos. However, it’s not the tail wagging the dog. It’s a few hairs at the tip of the dog’s tail wagging the dog. The expenditure and practical inconvenience to others in accommodating them is enormous. OK, they could use the disabled toilet between the other two, but then there is a storm of ‘We are not disabled!’ If a theatre feels so strongly, then re-build the toilets. Women’s, Men’s, Disabled and finally Unisex (or if you really ,really must, ALL GENDER) cubicles. Really, just one cubicle would do. If the theatre feels that strongly, spend the money.

We are in a world where a vociferous minority can cause changes way beyond their number. I stood for half an hour in a cycle lane in Ferndown waiting for a taxi. This cycle lane cost millions and took over a year with tremendous traffic problems to create. It had to be wide enough for speed cyclists to overtake too. In 30 minutes, 8.30 a.m. to 9 a.m. rush hour, I saw only one bicycle and that was being pushed by an elderly man.

Then a bookshop owner told me he really thought dogs sniffing the bottom shelves inappropriate, but the violent abuse from dog owners who feel they have the right to take their dogs anywhere, meant he had to give in and accept dogs in his shop. He polled regular customers and found a huge ‘no dogs’ majority, but still had to cave in. Restaurants and hotels were dog free 15 or 20 years ago. People accepted that you stay outside with a dog. No longer.

ALL GENDER loos are a ludicrous example of the same sort of tiny vociferous minority forcibly getting their way and of craven theatre managers pandering to them. Yes, Royal Shakespeare Company, we are talking about you.