Why girls need a little privacy
Oh what do you know look at that – the Independent in 2018 doing a whole piece on the need for girls’ toilets in schools.
Unesco is urging governments around the world to prioritise providing single-sex toilets in schools, warning as many as 1 in 10 girls in some countries are missing out on lessons because of their period.
The UN’s education body surveyed 189 countries as part of its sixth annual gender review, obtained exclusively by The Independent ahead of International Women’s Day.
While the report found some progress had been made in gender equality in education, it said one in three countries still failed to allow equal numbers of boys and girls into primary school.
…
One “obstacle” to girls attending school was a lack of segregated toilets in schools, review director Manos Antoninis said, adding the agency found there was “little focus” on menstrual hygiene in schools in 21 low and middle income countries.
So sex-segregated toilets are needed for girls to be able to attend school? Is that what we’re saying?
“Improved sanitation to address adolescent girls’ concerns over privacy, particularly during menstruation, can influence their education decisions,” he said. “Single-sex toilets are desperately needed to overcome girls’ barriers to education.”
Huh. But we’ve been told it’s the worst kind of transphobia for women to say that women and girls need privacy in the toilets.
In Bangladesh, 41 per cent of schoolgirls aged between 11 and 17 reported missing three days of school every month because of a lack of adequate sanitary care, according to the report.
Meanwhile, in rural areas of west African nations including Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, less than a fifth of schools had four or more of Unesco’s five recommended menstrual hygiene services. These include separate sex toilets with doors and locks, water and rubbish bins.
And one more thing…
Unesco also for the first time recommended children be taught about power dynamics between boys and girls in school.
Teaching children about the relationship between the genders in sex education classes would not only tackle gender-based violence, but also help reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, Unesco said.
Not a word about trans girls in the whole piece. Was anyone sacked?
I think that the velocity of the trans cult can be seen in the lack of controversy over this article two years ago. If it were published in 2020, someone would have to edit it to say that 1 in 10 “trans-boys” also lose class because of their periods, and that’s even worse.
I’ve seen this very point raised ‘over there’ and dismissed by the odious you-know-who with periods happen, get over your hang-ups, with the addition from hangers-in of the predictable boys have periods, too.
Perhaps if they weren’t such a big deal for men, they wouldn’t be such a hang up for women. But they are a problem, and in countries where girls are not allowed to bleed in public places, they are an even bigger hang up.
When I was in school, girls were constantly being taunted for being “on the rag” if they had overflow and blood showed on their pants. If they had to go to the bathroom during class, the boys would hoot at them that they must be having their period (only, of course, they had a number of ruder terms for it). If there was ANY SUSPICION, real or perceived, that a girl was menstruating, it was hell for the girl. I doubt very much has changed.
So for some obnoxious male-bodied person to say “get over your hangups”, it is easy. And obnoxious. And to pretend that boys get periods, too, is only possible if you are willing to believe in magic gender fairies that will change you from a girl to a boy if everybody claps their hands.
Really? Saying that to/of girls in Bangladesh and Ethiopia? I don’t suppose you have a link handy?
‘Gender identity’ is about as First World as a problem gets.
Ophelia, I should have been clearer. The comment was made about single-sex toilets in general, back when some of the commenters there dared to suggest that some public places such as toilets and changing rooms needed to be single sex. Menstruation was given as an example of why privacy was important. However, I’m sure that the comment would apply equally to girls in any country; a different view for girls in African and Asian nations might mean losing woke credentials and being open to charges of the racism of low expectations.
iknklast:
Too true. However, the odious one to whom I referred is Giliell, a woman who has described herself as a ‘cis’ woman but has on occasion claimed a non-specified trans-status*, and who despises the non-woke in general but seems to harbour a deep loathing for non-woke women in particular. Apparently, because she regularly attends naked, mixed-sex saunas with complete strangers she sees no reason why any girl or woman should have any silly hang-ups. Oddly, given her support for mixed-sex toilets and changing rooms in schools, and given that she’s also said that there’s no harm in young girls seeing adult male strangers naked, she’s never actually said whether she allows her own pre-teen daughters to accompany her to the saunas. I would have asked her but she’d have said yes, regardless of whether or not they do (I strongly suspect not: I also strongly suspect that she saves the bulk of her claimed wokeness for the internet). She also claims that women who demand same-sex facilities but who also take infant sons into those facilities are raging hypocrites. I’m not over fond of her: does it show?
* probably some form of trans-fluidity where her anger and general misogyny is the man in her coming to the fore. The ‘cis’ part is the woman who does the baking, crafting, childcare and housework. That is how gender works, isn’t it?
AoS, I assumed it referred to Gilliell; I guess I assumed from her claiming trans status at times that maybe she was a man who identified as a woman. I rarely read her comments when I was reading over there. I found her impossible to tolerate. I stand corrected.
Nonetheless, it is still odious. It is as odious as when my sister-in-law told me my morning sickness when pregnant was all in my head, because she had been pregnant five times (miscarriages) and never had morning sickness. I must admit to some rather uncharitable mirth when she got pregnant and suffered worse morning sickness than I did…but I did lace that glee with a large dollop of sympathy and empathy, so maybe it’s okay. On balance, a decent person with a slight desire for schadenfreude.
At the risk of whitesplaining, aren’t Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia in east Africa? Certainly not in west Africa.
Yeah, the trans thing is just something trots out occasionally if it helps her argument or can serve as a big SHUTUP COS I KNOW WHAT TRANS FEELS LIKE AND YOU DON’T pile of dishonesty.
So a regular, decent person, then. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing a little schadenfreude now and then?
The more I read about mixed-sex secondary schools, the happier I am that I went to a single-sex one. Or, at least, one which was single-sex when I was there. I believe they started admitting boys into the sixth form some time this century.
Same here. My school went mixed-sex the year after I graduated…boy did we dodge a bullet.
The school went mixed-sex by merging with the boys’ school and moving to a new building and campus. My brother had gone to the boys’ school, and a couple of years behind him so had…
…Robert Mueller.
I find that amusing.
Colin Day, whoops, yes. Indy copy editor asleep on the job.
I don’t know, I went to a mixed sex public school, and I found the girls to be so vicious to me I was glad for the one person who would treat me like a human being – a boy. He and I remain friends today, and the few students who didn’t mistreat me did it only because he was their friend, too, and they respected him enough not to pick on me.
So I’m not so sure it’s about what sex is in the school, but who the kids are in general. Lots of asses of both sexes in my school. Of course, part of that was because the school was rich, and we were poor. No black kids to pick on, so pick on the poor kids who went to the wrong church and who lived on a farm where they raised pigs.
Yeah, I went to a co-ed school and wouldn’t change that if I could. That said, I had a miserable time at school (too quiet and nerdy back then). The exposure to girls at least allowed me to experience them as actual humans. That said, I can see how some (many?) girls education suffers as a result of boys metaphorically sucking the oxygen out of the room.
Girls are missing out on school time during their periods, therefore… the toilets need to be unisex? How on earth did they reach that conclusion?
Re #15
“Single-sex” means separate “female only” and “male only” toilets. “Unisex” means toilets that can be used by persons of either sex. I can see that the terminology might be confusing.
Oops, I completely misread it – single- mysteriously swapped to uni- in my brain.