VISITORS to Oxford’s most beautiful college, Magdalen, may be interested to know that in future they will be confronted with ‘non-gender specific’ toilets.

The facilities used by thousands of tourists and those attending Magdalen’s beautiful and popular chapel services have had the ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ signs removed, with one now just saying ‘urinals’. I am at a loss to understand the purpose of this; presumably it is at the behest of a small number of ‘transgender activists’ and their ‘feelings’.

Medical statistics indicate that the proportion of the population with ‘gender dysphoria’ is something like 0.05 per cent. Why should the demands of this minuscule minority take precedence over the privacy and feelings of the vast majority? If individuals genuinely have problems about their ‘gender identity’ surely they could easily use the disabled loo? Personally as a man I would find it extremely embarrassing if a woman came in while I was using the urinals, and I am pretty sure that the majority of women would feel very uncomfortable to have men hanging around in what was formerly a safe space for them.

There is also the depressing consideration that there are a small number of disturbed/predatory men who may use this as an excuse to target women in such places, and it is very likely that eventually a sexual assault will be the result.

If this were an internal matter affecting only facilities within student accommodation, etc, this would be the business of the college alone. But these lavatories are in effect ‘public’, as they are mainly used by visitors to the college. If Magdalen has any consideration or respect for our feelings and needs, rather than just appeasing current ideological fashion and ‘virtue-signalling’ in this way, they should reverse this disastrous measure and return to common sense.

LAURENCE HUGHES
Oxford