Public toilets are often treated as mundane infrastructure—functional, peripheral, barely worth noticing unless they are missing. Yet they reveal something fundamental about how society imagines the human body.
Toilets are designed around an assumed user: someone able-bodied, unencumbered, predictable in their needs, culturally fluent, and unquestioned in their legitimacy. This figure appears universal, but in practice represents only a narrow slice of the population. Everyone else must negotiate, adapt, or endure environments that were not designed with them in mind.
What follows is not a list of “special cases” but a map of how the built environment privileges some bodies and marginalises others. Each group exposes a different facet of the same underlying problem: the fiction of the “standard user.”
Background
Nioshi Shah writes:
In the face of human rights violations of women’s dignity, health, and freedom to public spaces, activists … have strived to get their voices heard through campaigns such as ‘The Right to Pee’ movement, which acknowledges the absence of safe and hygienic public urinals in Mumbai city. The 9-year-long campaign has been demanding adequate public urinals for women in Mumbai from stakeholders responsible for urban sanitation in the city.1
The Right to Pee has given rise to a global movement. One reports:
Across the globe, however, sanitation issues are still a serious concern. As part of the Millennium Development Goals, the world aimed to halve by 2015 the proportion of the population without access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation.
The good news is that the drinking water goal was met in 2010, however, 2.5 billion people – one-third of the world’s population – are still without access to basic sanitation, which plays a huge role in world health. This is why, as part of the new Global Goals, the world is aiming to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030.2
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were 8 targets UN Member States agreed to try to achieve by 2015. In the context of basic sanitation, the UN acknowledged that progress was too slow for the MDG target to be met globally.
In 2012, 2.5 billion people did not have access to improved sanitation facilities, with 1 billion of these people still practicing open defecation. The MDGs have been superseded by the Sustainable Development Goals
The focus in this article is on the right to pee as framed by the mythical notion of the “standard user” and the implications for various sections of society who require public toilets.3
Women
Women routinely face longer queues, smaller spaces, and facilities that fail to account for menstruation, pregnancy, or caregiving.
Toilets are designed around male patterns of use—shorter duration, less need for privacy, fewer encumbrances. The result is predictable: women wait longer, plan more, and navigate environments that treat their needs as deviations from the norm.
Misogyny is not only cultural but infrastructural, embedded in cubicle counts, bin provision, and the assumption that “equal” provision is the same as equitable access.
Older people
Ageing bodies move differently, balance differently, and need more time.
Yet toilets are built for speed and agility. Narrow cubicles, low lighting, slippery floors, and heavy doors create barriers that turn simple tasks into risks.
Older people often restrict outings or avoid unfamiliar places because the infrastructure assumes stability, strength, and speed—qualities that decline with age but remain central to design standards.
Disabled people
Disabled people face a landscape where “accessible” often means “minimally compliant.”
The British Toilet Association has long highlighted the mismatch between legal standards and lived experience: toilets that are technically accessible but practically unusable.
Poor layouts, missing equipment, inadequate space, and inconsistent maintenance force disabled people to navigate environments that treat access as an afterthought rather than a right.
The result is exclusion disguised as provision.
Parents and carers
Parents and carers move through public space with prams, bags, mobility aids, or dependent bodies.
Toilets rarely accommodate this. Baby-changing facilities are inconsistent, often located only in women’s toilets, reinforcing gendered expectations of care.
Carers of disabled adults face similar challenges: cramped cubicles, lack of adult-sized changing benches, and the constant negotiation of dignity in spaces not built for shared use.
Trans and non-binary people
For trans and non-binary people, toilets are sites of scrutiny, misrecognition, and risk.
Gendered spaces assume that gender is obvious, stable, and visually verifiable. Those who do not conform to these expectations face confrontation, exclusion, or the need to justify their presence.
Anna Lee, Gender Neutral Toilets Campaigner, explains:
For most people, going to the toilet is something that requires very little thought. The decision to enter either the men’s or the women’s toilet is as natural as the action of relieving yourself once you’re in there.
But for a growing number, not just in the UK but around the world, conforming with society’s segregation of men’s and women’s toilets fails to represent who they are as a person. And as attitudes towards gender equality have broadened over time, the necessity for gender neutral toilets has grown.4
The policing of toilets becomes a proxy for the policing of gender itself, revealing how infrastructure can reinforce social norms and punish those who fall outside them.
GIG workers
Gig workers—delivery drivers, couriers, private-hire drivers—spend long hours in public spaces without guaranteed access to toilets.
Their labour sustains the convenience of others, yet they are excluded from the facilities that make that labour possible.
Locked toilets, customer-only policies, and the absence of public provision force gig workers to improvise or endure discomfort, exposing the classed nature of access.
Homeless people
For people experiencing homelessness, toilets are not amenities but necessities.
Yet they are routinely denied access through design, policy, or policing. Public toilets are locked, removed, or restricted to deter “misuse,” reinforcing the idea that some bodies are not welcome in public space.
The absence of facilities becomes a tool of displacement, pushing people out of sight rather than meeting basic human needs.
Migrants and people with limited english
Toilets rely on signage, symbols, and cultural assumptions that are not universal.
Migrants and people with limited English may struggle to locate facilities, understand access rules, or navigate gendered spaces that do not align with their cultural norms.
Fear of authority or misunderstanding can deter people from asking for help, turning a simple need into a source of anxiety.
People with chronic illness
Chronic illnesses—from inflammatory bowel disease to diabetes to neurological conditions—often involve urgent, unpredictable toileting needs.
Yet public toilets assume predictability and delay. People plan routes around known facilities, restrict food or fluid intake, or avoid outings altogether.
Because these conditions are invisible, requests for urgent access are often met with disbelief or judgment, placing the burden of proof on the individual.
People who menstruate
Menstruation requires privacy, hygiene, and adequate disposal, yet toilets are rarely designed with these needs in mind.
Cubicles are cramped, bins are inconsistent, and sinks are placed outside private spaces. Stigma shapes design, maintenance, and discussion.
This dynamic has been highlighted in recent legal disputes where menstruation itself became the focus of conflict between cis and trans women, illustrating how bodily processes can be weaponised in debates about access and legitimacy.
Toilets become spaces where the tension between bodily need and social silence is most acute.
People with stomas
Stoma care requires space, surfaces, cleanliness, and time.
Public toilets rarely provide these. Cramped cubicles, poor lighting, and inadequate bins force people to improvise in ways that compromise dignity and hygiene.
Stomas are invisible, meaning users may face impatience or judgment when they take longer or need accessible facilities.
People with continence needs
Continence issues are common but heavily stigmatised.
People may need frequent or urgent access, yet toilets assume delay is possible. The absence of bins in men’s toilets reflects gendered assumptions about who uses continence products.
Fear of embarrassment leads to avoidance, planning, or withdrawal from public life.
Catheter users
Catheterisation requires sterility, space, and reliable surfaces—conditions rarely met in public toilets.
Dirty facilities increase the risk of infection, while cramped layouts make safe catheter use difficult.
As with other invisible needs, users face judgment for taking time or using accessible spaces.
Other groups
Alongside these groups, many others face barriers: pregnant people, those with temporary injuries, people with sensory sensitivities, individuals managing anxiety, workers who cannot leave their posts, people in rural areas, those with cultural or religious requirements, larger-bodied individuals, and people navigating prams or equipment.
These varied experiences show that toileting needs are not confined to fixed categories but arise from the interaction between bodies, environments, and social expectations.
Policy context: “Pride in Place” and other promises of change
The British Toilet Association reported that on 25 September 2025, the Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Rt Hon Steve Reed, issued a government policy paper titled Pride in Place.5
The paper set out the government’s ambition for communities to take back control of their local environments, backed by a record investment of around £5 billion over the next ten years.
According to the BTA, Section 99 of the paper states:
Recognising that town centres must be accessible to everyone in our communities, we must address the barriers that poor toilet provision can represent. We have therefore included the provision of public toilets as a pre-approved intervention for areas receiving the Pride in Place funding.
In his foreword, Reed wrote: “This is our answer to those who feel silenced, ignored and forgotten.”
This article has examined the experiences of groups who have indeed felt historically silenced, ignored, and forgotten.
It has also shown that many people continue to face social restrictions, disabling barriers, discrimination, and oppression when attempting to meet their most basic bodily needs in public spaces.
The question now is whether Pride in Place will meaningfully address these long‑standing issues — or whether it risks becoming cosmetic rhetoric dressed as policy.
Policy analysis: Promise, pitfalls, and the gap between worlds and reality
On paper, Pride in Place signals a welcome shift: a recognition that public toilets are not luxuries but essential infrastructure.
The inclusion of toilet provision as a “pre‑approved intervention” suggests an attempt to remove bureaucratic friction and encourage local authorities to act.
Yet the history of public toilet provision in the UK is one of chronic underfunding, inconsistent responsibility, and political reluctance.
Without ring‑fenced funding, clear accountability, and enforceable standards, the risk is that Pride in Place becomes another policy that gestures toward inclusion while leaving the structural problems untouched.
The groups discussed throughout this article do not need symbolic recognition. They need toilets that are open, clean, safe, spacious, and designed for real bodies.
They need infrastructure that acknowledges urgency, unpredictability, encumbrance, and diversity. They need a system that treats access as a right, not a discretionary amenity.
The danger is that Pride in Place focuses on aesthetics, regeneration, and civic pride without addressing the deeper question: who is public space for?
If toilets remain optional, inconsistent, or dependent on local enthusiasm, the same groups will continue to be excluded — only now under the banner of a policy that claims to have solved the problem.
Synthesis
Across all these groups, the same pattern emerges: public toilets are built around an imagined user who does not exist.
The result is predictable forms of exclusion. People are not marginal because their needs are unusual; they are marginal because the infrastructure assumes simplicity, speed, and uniformity.
Toilets become sites where social hierarchies are reproduced in miniature—through design, maintenance, signage, and access.
The point is not to catalogue every need but to recognise that the “standard user” is a myth.6
Designing around that myth produces predictable forms of exclusion. Once we see this, the question shifts from “Who needs what?” to “Why do we keep building spaces that only work for a few?”
Design principles
Design for variability, not uniformity.
Prioritise space and manoeuvrability.
Ensure predictable access.
Provide privacy without policing.
Recognise cleanliness as a health requirement.
Reduce cognitive load.
Anticipate encumbrance.
Treat toilets as essential public infrastructure.
Conclusion
In the end, this is not a story about toilets at all.
It is a story about whose bodies we expect to be in public, whose needs we plan for, and whose comfort we quietly sacrifice.
A society that builds toilets for an imagined few tells everyone else to shrink themselves, hold it in, plan ahead, or stay home.
A society that builds for real bodies—messy, unpredictable, varied, and human—tells people they belong.
Toilets are small spaces, but they reveal something large: whether we design a world that accommodates people as they are, or one that asks them to disappear.
Sources:
1. The Right To Pee: The Gender And Caste Privileges Of Urination by Nioshi Shah, 2020
2. The woman fighting for her right to pee! By Joy Elliott, 16 December 2015
3. What is a Changing Places Toilet?
A Changing Places Toilet is designed specifically for people who cannot use a standard accessible toilet. It provides more space (minimum of 12 m²) to accommodate extra mobility or medical equipment and up to two carers, to provide assistance when necessary.
4. The Right To Pee – Anna Lee, Medium – Dec 8, 2016
https://medium.com
5. British Toilet Association reporting on Pride in Place policy paper, 25 September 2025.
Section 99 quotation from Pride in Place policy paper. Foreword by Rt Hon Steve Reed, Secretary of State for MHCLG, Pride in Place (2025).
See: British Toilet Association commentary on accessible toilet standards and compliance gaps.
6. To pee, or not to pee? – The EU Public Bathroom Crisis
The current debate over public bathrooms in Europe focuses on who gets to access them, while missing the more pressing issue of their absence.
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