Seriously, stop complaining about the gender neutral toilets

It’s not going to affect you in the slightest


A little while back, the Student Union changed their toilet policy to include a set of ‘gender neutral toilets’. I didn’t really think much about it at the time, after all other than the handful of people who it’ll help, it didn’t seem like it should matter to anyone. But the seemingly endless number of people who’ve brought it up seem to disagree.

I’ve heard things like: “Why is the Union spending money on this when the SU loos don’t even have seats?” and similar complaints. These ultimately come down to people thinking the money should be spent elsewhere. In reality, the changing of these loos to gender neutral ones only involved a new sign on each. It’s hardly breaking the bank.

Pretty obvious not many girls are gonna use this

Some people I’ve come across have been worried that with gender neutral loos, the ‘women’s’ toilets are going to be overrun by guys. Let’s be honest though, that’s not going to happen. As a man, unless you’re going for a dump, there’s no reason not to use the urinals. We’ve all seen the queues to the ladies on busy nights, what makes you think guys want a part of that? And nobody seems to mind women sneaking into the men’s when its busy.

The crazy thing is having separate toilets is a relatively recent thing – we went thousands of years without this being an issue. If you are so incensed at the idea of a person of a different gender using the same set of toilets as you, then you still have the option to use the gendered loos.

I don’t want to get too much into the politics of gender identity as to be frank, I’m not particularly knowledgeable on the issue. But for some people, gender neutral toilets can relieve a lot of anxiety, so it makes sense to have the option.

It’s something that can be done, basically for free, which may significantly improve the lives of a portion of students and will barely impact everyone else, what’s the issue?