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Opening toilets and changing rooms to men who identify as women compromises the safety and privacy of women and girls.

In recent years, we have noticed that “gender identity” campaigners have succeeded in ‘desexing’ public toilets in Switzerland. Numerous single-sex spaces are being changed into mixed-sex facilities, for instance at Geneva University, where toilets were desexed by activists in 2024, and the University of Lausanne (which includes the EPFL polytechnic), which built mixed-sex toilets in 2022. If they are not overtly transformed into mixed-sex toilets, people are allowed to use single-sex facilities according to one’s gender identity, not according to one’s biological reality. This affects the privacy and safety of women and girls.

As Irish writer and journalist Helen Joyce argues in her book Trans (2021), single-sex

spaces exist for three reasons: “risk reduction, comfort and an opportunity for women to be somewhere that their needs are centred” (Joyce, 2021, p.155). Furthermore, a key purpose of sex separation in communal toilets “has always been to protect girls and women from sexual assault and harassment. […] Justifying it does not require that all men are violent, but it is impossible for women to tell which men pose a risk.” (Joyce, 2021, p.155).

Crime statistics in Switzerland are crystal clear. A survey has shown that 59% of women in Switzerland have experienced sexual harassment, including unwanted contact, touching or kisses. Out of a total of 7644 prisoners in 2021, just 896 were female. Almost none of these women committed sexual offences. Swiss federal statistics state that between 1984 and 2022, 99% of sexual assault perpetrators were men. In 2022, among 735 victims of convicted sexual assaults, 645 were women and only 90 were men. Women are 7 times more likely to be a victim of sexual assault than men.

Helen Joyce adds: “Transactivists generally dismiss fears that women will be harmed if males who identify as women access female single-sex spaces. Transwomen are merely going about their business, they say, and any concern is prejudiced.” (Joyce, 2021, p.153).

“The usual response is to say that statistics about men do not apply to [men who identify as women].  […] But under gender self-identification, [men who identify as women] are not objectively distinct from other male people. (…) The little evidence that exists shows that some of the males who identity as women are very dangerous indeed”. (Joyce, 2021, p.156).

With regard to the issue of changing rooms, Helen Joyce writes: “[women have the] desire to undress away from the male gaze. (…) One consequence of opening women’s spaces to males is to recast two common male sex crimes as rights. Exhibitionism – non-consensually displaying one’s genitals, (…) [and]  voyeurism – non-consensually viewing someone in a state of undress – is known to be precursor to contact sex crimes. Entering a changing room constitutes consent to see and be seen by the other occupants while undressed. Women grant that consent on the basis that those occupants will be female; gender self-identification removes that basis while denying that it does so. It therefore turns facilities intended for women into places where males can commit exhibitionism and voyeurism with impunity.” (Joyce, 2021, p. 158-159).

“The logical impossibility of giving female people  privacy in single sex spaces at the same time as allowing males to enter on demand may mean service providers give up and make all facilities formally mixed-sex. That would be to women’s detriment. Those  who continue to use such facilities will be less safe.”(Joyce, 2021, p.159). Making female spaces mixed-sex also means that some women would self-exclude, be it for religious or other reasons.

Gender identity ideology is taking precedence over the rights of women and girls – their right to privacy, dignity and safety, their right to set boundaries. Women and girls, despite being at considerable risk of sexual assault by men, are being forced to open up their safe spaces and allow men access. 

Femina Helvetica demands that public facilities such as toilets and changing rooms remain sex-segregated, and that no man, whichever way he identifies, may enter women’s spaces.

Links to supporting documentation:

1. Joyce, Helen, Trans: Gender Identity and the New Battle for Women’s Rights, 2021

2. Geneva University’s toilets “degendered” by queer activists in 2024.
   https://renverse.co/infos-locales/article/flucki-tu-deranges-les-toilettes-sont-degenrees-acte-1-4391

3. Lausanne Polytechnical School EPFL and Lausanne University built mixed-sex toilets in 2022
   https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/vaud/12654498-des-toilettes-non-genrees-disponibles-a-lepfl-et-lunil-des-2022.html