Caller Invokes IRA To Argue Against Gender Neutral Toilets
13 April 2017, 16:45 | Updated: 13 April 2017, 17:00
In a discussion about gender neutral toilers, one caller to Shelagh Fogarty made a slightly unusual argument against them - by invoking the IRA.
“We can’t keep catering for the minorities.”
This was Chris’s view on the idea of introducing more gender neutral toilets. He used his experience to argue why not everyone can be catered to.
“In the late 70s and 80s I was abused massively because of what the IRA was doing.
“You move on. You get a thicker skin and you move on.”
Chris’s argument was that we could end up with toilets catering for every fragment of a person’s identity.
“You can’t cater for everybody. It’s like saying: ‘There’s a loo for the Scots. The Irish. The Welsh. This, that and the other.’
“It’s just ridiculous.”
He also believed that gender neutral toilets constituted special treatment of transgender people, something that could be patronising.
Shelagh suggested the move would be far from a special measure.
“They wouldn’t call it special treatment. They’d call it normal provisions, the same access as the rest of us to a public loo.”
