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Where are all these supposed “unisex” toilets in Europe?!?
Posted November 26, 2024 by old_tomboy in GenderCritical

I’m so perplexed whenever I see the statement that unisex toilets are so common in Europe.

I lived in Italy for several years, and my sister lived in France for just as long and we’ve both travelled extensively. Maybe at some smaller dingy hostels there were unisex bathrooms. Once in a while I’d come across large outdoor bathrooms where there were rows of unisex stalls with communal sinks but those were always disgusting and never have toilet seats. Besides those rare instances, every public restroom, every store large enough to have bathrooms, every museum, every school, every train station… sex segregated toilets were the norm.

But I haven’t been to Europe since 2018, has a whole lot changed since then?!? Where are all these supposed unisex toilets I keep seeing TRAs talk about?!?

29 comments

wintersecondsNovember 26, 2024

I'm from Germany and the most unisex toilets you'll find here are the ones that are a single lockable room. no unisex ones with stalls and flimsy doors and separating walls the way TIMs wish they were.

immersang★♫☆❉★♬☆November 26, 2024(Edited November 26, 2024)

Can confirm. The only unisex toilets I have ever come across so far were indeed single lockable rooms, and they were in tiny cafés that mostly seemed to do this due to limited space. (And I live in one of the major cities, so if "gender neutral" anything was much of a thing, it would be here.)

wintersecondsNovember 26, 2024

re: your last point- I lived in Berlin and Leipzig and I've never seen anything like it, not even in the wokest of clubs. idk what kind of gender neutral European dreamland these people live in. 😭

FutureBreedMachineNovember 26, 2024

Sometimes I don't think the people posting these things even live there. It's so common to see Americans making up shit about Europe when they're not from there nor have ever been there. It's bizarre.

old_tomboy [OP]November 26, 2024

I remember those, too, but those aren’t exactly uncommon in the US either.

Thank you for confirming that I’m not insane or misremembering my entire time in Europe

[Deleted]November 26, 2024

The whole movement is a lie propped up by more lies. They tell a lie as long as they can (from 2015-17 it was 'transwomen are 16 times more likely to be murdered than ciswomen") but once someone takes the time to debunk it loudly, the lie is scrubbed as if they never said it and they're on to the next lie. And their brainwashed followers never seem to notice or question the ever-shifting narrative.

ToselandNovember 26, 2024

Odd isn't it - there are some big fibs being told. I don't think it is the norm in Europe and certainly not in the UK where I am. The nearest example to me is a single toilet in a small cafe 'for all customers'.

old_tomboy [OP]November 26, 2024

Those are common here, too, but I don’t think of those as really “unisex” because only one person, and therefore only one sex can use them at a time.

As an aside, you’d be shocked(probably not) how many TIMs film themselves doing gross things in those toilets and post them on Reddit.

LouhiNovember 26, 2024

There are several in Finland (located in bigger cities mainly). I've been to some in Southern Europe as well, but they're single stalls so you can't be in the same space with a man, technically.

Still found all of these very uncomfortable and by the looks of it, men didn't much appreciate this "solution" either. It's just fucking awkward for all parties, safe for the pervs, of course.

[Deleted]November 26, 2024

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EvileineNovember 26, 2024

I haven't seen any in Ireland.

OpalsNovember 26, 2024

In countries that have self-ID and in university towns that are desperate to show off their support for trans ideology

lskiNovember 26, 2024(Edited November 26, 2024)

The only ones I can think of (I'm in the UK) are at the student's union building and very small cafes or bars. Or very small employers where there is a single sole toilet.

Edit- how bloody sadly wrong I am. It's not just the SU building, and the uni proudly publishes a document telling you where all their many gender neutral toilets can be found: https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=26074

IdentifyAsTiredNovember 26, 2024

I'm also in the UK and the only ones I've encountered have been in one particularly "woke" bar (funnily enough no disabled toilet, which I reported) and universities.

OpalsNovember 26, 2024

Yes unfortunately it has been the case there for around 10 years

MandyNovember 26, 2024

I've come across precisely one, at the top of Chaumont in Switzerland. It was spotlessly clean and each cubicle was big enough for a family of five.

EmmaGildedNovember 26, 2024(Edited November 26, 2024)

Never seen one in the south of Europe. From the tiniest dive to the newest and hippest establishment, all toilets are divided and marked separately for Women and Men. Sometimes a place will have a shared sink for handwashing between two one-person toilet rooms, when space is scarce in old buildings, could that be what they mean?

Edited to add: sometimes there is only one lockable room, as in airplanes or trains.

WristfeversGenderspecialNovember 26, 2024

Are the unisex toilets in the room with us right now?

JehaneNovember 26, 2024

The only European location where I've ever seen unisex toilets alongside separated toilets is the British Library in London. But other than that? Not a single one. Unless you count those small lockable rooms with a toilet and a more or less sturdy door that are quite common in smaller cafés and bars in Austria, but those only exist because the space in those bars and cafés is usually very limited.

emptiedriverNovember 26, 2024

Maybe at some smaller dingy hostels there were unisex bathrooms. Once in a while I’d come across large outdoor bathrooms where there were rows of unisex stalls with communal sinks but those were always disgusting and never have toilet seats

That's what most Americans knew of Europe, at least until recently... probably it's a funny mix of different times being referenced and used to promote whatever agenda since now it's affordable to pay for a plane trip & a nice hotel, but when I was young, a lot of people got their chance to go to europe by something like backpacking thru the continent in their 20s. At the time there were more minimalist style toilet options - like the hole in the floor type that were famous in france - that were not very friendly towards women generally but were open to whoever was brave/ desperate enough to use them.

It was also a time when women didn't travel nearly as much as men, since staying in hostels or using toilets or being on trains with lots of young sweaty men was kinda sketchy, so better if you had a guy to travel with, and at least you needed to go with a girlfriend, whereas dudes could just head out on their own, meet other guys, hang out for a while, say ciao, head out to the next city, meet some new guys, have a beer, give each other advice about what to see, maybe stick together for a while or trade info and agree to send postcards or meet up again... They just had a radically different experience. Not unlike life in general, but somehow on high volume. For guys it was a relaxed journey exploring the world and meeting people, for women it was a constant strategy to get from A to B without putting yourself into too much danger. So there might have been unisex public toilets in spots but mostly bc they were default male, not very high quality areas that women could use if they wished.

But in the US there are just fewer public restrooms altogether - you have to go to a restaurant or something - so the "unisex" ones belong to a particular business rather than the city. People claim that too, the airplane bathroom argument...

I think there are also the more recent uni-gender bathrooms in some places, especially likely in universities or certain types of businesses, that are identical to the ones in the US, resulting from current politically correct attitudes. That is not drawing on anything particular to Europe though.

drdeeisbackKabbalist BarbieNovember 26, 2024

Some new-build office buildings have rows of self-contained bathroom stalls with both male and female bathroom symbols on them. I haven't run across one in a while, but I mostly wfh since Covid so haven't been in many office buildings lately.

drdeeisbackKabbalist BarbieNovember 26, 2024

Oh and I just remembered a large popular local event space has an 'all gender' bathroom - huge space with maybe 20 unisex stalls and a communal washroom. It also has normal men's and women's bathrooms; I think most people use those.

I've mentioned before that it seems to be a thing for schools to have unisex bathrooms - I've seen one in one secondary school. When the school I volunteer at broached the subject I pointed out that it's actually illegal, and the headteacher said 'then how do those other schools get away with it?' Well, they're breaking the law, and someone will enforce it someday.

MafdetNovember 26, 2024(Edited November 26, 2024)

I have no idea where they are because I've never seen them and I'm born & raised North-west EU. Perhaps the bathrooms for the disabled could count (as those are not by sex, usually just a single bathroom accessible for wheelchairs) but other than that: unisex toilets were something we saw in Ally McBeal.

Wait, I think some universities have them, but not my alma mater.

AmareldysNovember 26, 2024

Some train stations and rest stops.

SilentKnightNovember 26, 2024

But then most train station toilets I’ve seen are paid, often with electronic locks or a cleaning lady who makes sure people don’t just crawl under the gates instead of paying. It is far more difficult to get away with sexual assault or other crimes in those since you can’t just walk in and out and you usually have to pay with your bank card, so even if they’re unisex, they’re fairly safe.

AmareldysNovember 26, 2024

Yes, you pay to use them and there is a person at a counter or a cleaner

hellamomzillaNovember 26, 2024(Edited November 26, 2024)

Question for our European members — a number of years ago, had a discussion with a man who dismissed any woman being upset about bathrooms with the fact that there were historical outdoor places for males to pee open to the general view and they were used and no one cares. I was skeptical having been to Paris a couple of years earlier and walking all around the city. But he was insistent that Paris was a lyric in a Frank Zappa song* and I was just a whiny, prude of an American woman.

  • The girls are all salty/ The boys is all sweet/ The food ain't too shabby/ An' they piss in the street/ Down in France/ Way down in France/ Way on down/ Way on down/ Under France
OpalsNovember 26, 2024

Yes there are pissoirs in some European cities… also used sometimes at festivals or similar events

I’ve never been to Paris so can’t say about there

[Deleted]November 26, 2024

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