Teachers and parents demanding a stop to gender-neutral bathrooms after girls refuse to use them

By Jonathon Van Maren

The backlash is continuing against the gender-neutral bathrooms transgender activists are demanding. Earlier this month, I noted a story in this month’s edition of The Atlantic, written by a parent who discussed the chaos that resulted when the school decided to eliminate gender designations for student bathrooms — without consulting the parents. This parent — who is very much a liberal — described the profound discomfort of the students, some of whom simply refused to use the bathroom while at school and waited until the school day was over.

According to the Daily Mail, these policies are having a similar impact in the United Kingdom, where gender-neutral bathrooms “have left girls feeling unsafe and even put their health at risk,” according to both teachers and parents. In fact, they reported, the surge in primary and secondary schools implementing gender-neutral bathrooms has made girls “who are menstruating so anxious about sharing facilities with boys that some are staying at home for fear of being made to feel ‘period shame.’” Some are even “risking infections by refusing to urinate all day,” and others are coping by refusing to drink liquids while at school.

This has led to both doctors and politicians calling on schools who are making moves to switch to a gender-neutral bathroom system to stop implementation, with Dr. Tessa Katz saying that “holding in urine for prolonged periods on a regular basis could increase risk of girls suffering urinary and bladder infections.” With teachers and parents stating that girls are feeling “deeply uncomfortable or even unsafe sharing toilets with male students,” halting the shift to gender-neutral bathrooms is necessary “to prevent any further harm to female pupils.”

According to Katz, “the psychological effects of girls not feeling safe enough to use mixed-sex toilets is … concerning.” Parents are understandably outraged, especially as most were not informed of the change before their distraught children began coming home and telling them what was going on. The parents of students at Deanesfield Primary School in South Ruislip in West London, for example, have now launched a petition in response. One mother of four-year-old and eight-year-old daughters who attend the same school told the Mail that the new bathrooms had stalls that “were open at the bottom and top so older pupils can easily climb up the toilets and peer over.”

The parental rights organization Transgender Trend is attempting to represent parents in their concerns, and spokeswoman Stephanie Davies-Arai noted that many schools had been misled by transgender activists into believing that it was against the law not to switch to gender-neutral bathrooms, which is not the case. David Davies, a Tory member of Parliament, called on schools to do a better job of caring for the needs and concerns of female students, noting bluntly that “If girls are not comfortable sharing toilets with boys, then schools should make provision for them, rather than saying girls have got a problem.”

It is awful enough that so many children are being confused by the gender-fluid ideology introduced to them in schools, and that so many of them are beginning to believe that they were born into the wrong bodies. (As Sky News recently reported, hundreds of young people are already attempting to find out if they can return to their “birth sex” after transitioning.) But now, it is often children who are being hurt and disturbed by the new social experiment that adults are imposing on them who are forced to push back against this lightning-fast social trend. Delusional adults may have entirely forgotten the natural order of things, but children live with the reality of the world as it is, not as a handful of incredibly powerful and influential activists wish it to be.

As always, it is the guinea pigs who are so often damaged and destroyed by the experiment.