Avoid Camden Town
Oh just shove them in with the women. Again. Always.
WOMEN who want to use a public toilet in Camden Town have been asked to share the underground conveniences with men – leading to protests that they feel unsafe.
It’s not just that they feel unsafe, it’s that they are unsafe.
A campaign has now been launched to try and persuade the Town Hall to provide women with their own set of toilets, but the council says it needs to find funds to repair broken men’s facilities close to the Tube station – meaning the “ladies” is now gender-neutral.
Aka unsafe for women.
Ironically, these very women’s toilets at the end of Parkway, now designated as gender-neutral while the men’s loos are closed, were the result of a historic campaign to provide a separate convenience space for females.
Pygmalion author and dramatist George Bernard Shaw, during his time as a St Pancras vestryman in the 1890s, had championed the successful cause of providing women with toilets for the first time in Camden Town.
He must have been a TERF.
Camden Town councillor Richard Cotton said he first raised the issue a year ago and was told the men’s had to shut for social distancing reasons due to the Covid pandemic.
But he said when he asked a few weeks ago why they were still closed, he was told urgent repairs were needed and the council was looking for money in the budget to pay for them.
He said: “I think it’s very worrying that this is subject to budgeting. If there is money for other things, there should be money for this. It’s crucial that women have their own toilets.
“Those loos were campaigned for and opened by none other than George Bernard Shaw. We were the first borough to have women-only loos, it would be pretty crazy if we were then the first borough to do away with them.”
He added: “I’m going to keep the pressure on about this. It’s a matter of safety and privacy. I’m not sure how I would feel about one of my nieces having to have her first period in a toilet with men or boys.”
Thank you Councillor Cotton.
GBS as a TERF – surely there’s a play in that?
I was thinking much the same.
TERF is an acronym for ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist’ is it not? I do not think that any male of the species can be any more than a feminist sympathiser. Otherwise, as some women are more feminist than others, we could in time find ourselves in a world in which the Top Feminist (a pope-figure if you will) was a man.
I am sure GBS would have seen the irony.
We’re already there. We’re already in a world where men who call themselves women boss feminist women around, and punish and shun us when we don’t obey.
I’m reasonably confident that this is not the tone intended, but it almost comes across as “C’mon, this is something that a FAMOUS MAN thought it was important enough to do! We can’t disappoint him, or destroy his legacy!” If it had been a FAMOUS WOMAN (Pfft!) leading the charge, that fact would not have carried sufficient weight. (Never mind the fact that women doing anything political at that time would have been considered scandalous, let alone anything connected with bodily functions in public spaces.) In fact I’m sure there were likely many women (maybe even some inadvertantly famous ones) who were campaigning in some manner for exactly the same thing at the same time as Shaw, but it’s Shaw who is remembered, and Shaw whose name is invoked in this instance.
@#4:
A number of recommendations spring to mind, OB.
1. Sounds like the shunning would be welcome. Let them know it is, and 24/7.
2. ‘Punish’ can take many forms, from refusal to give you a piece of their chocolate bar, to threats (legally the ‘assault’ part of ‘assault and battery’) to actual violence against you physically (legally the ‘battery’ part of ‘assault and battery.’) If the latter, then the options include any or all of: a. call the cops on your mobile phone; b. carry in your pocket or purse not a firearm, knife or other lethal weapon which can be captured and turned against you, but a totally innocent-looking, non-lethal and excusable self-made one-shot weapon which I read about in a martial-arts magazine (details supplied on request) ; c. go anywhere potentially dangerous with a dog (my wife’s little super-loyal Maltese-Shitsu cross would threaten anyone he thought presented even the slightest danger to her, and he once attacked an Alsatian which I understand for a long time after rejected all attempts to coax it out of its cage down at the local dog-pound.) d. enrol in a self-defence/ martial arts course. They are all good, but my own preference is aikido. I trained in it for 28 years, but had to stop because of hydrocephalus, which necessitated installation of a shunt in my brain. (Successful.)
Over the years, I have trained with many women on the mats of various dojos who could deal with any bloke who got himself on their wrong side, regardless of size or weight.There is likely a Honbu-accredited aikido dojo near you, provided you have not moved to the boondocks.
Omar#3
Doesn’t matter. Anybody who opposes the ideology is a TERF. I’m a feminist but not a “radical” one. Still a “TERF.”
(I’m a TERF and she’s a TERF and he’s a TERF and we’re a TERF and wouldn’t you like to be a TERF too?) (You’re welcome for the earworm.)
When the Adelaide Railway Station’s loos were being renovated, I seem to remember them being done one at a time, with a temporary structure built to accommodate whichever sex as being displaced at the time. It would have cost less money to simply slap a unisex sign on the door of whichever was still operational, but that would have halved the toilets available to each sex and so is obviously a lousy option.
…Right? It’s obvious that this is the wrong way to go about it, right??