Change.org, a popular petition hosting site, has reportedly taken down a 12-year-old British girl’s petition to have her school install sex-segregated bathrooms. The move comes amid a wave of sex-based violence erupting in gender neutral restrooms across the UK.
The petition, which garnered over 13,000 signatures prior to its deletion, was established in May by the daughter of a woman who runs a pro-woman Twitter account under the handle @mjeslfc.
Change.org, which claims that “anyone can start a petition,” told the girl’s mother in an email that the petition was taken down because it was notified that the campaign was “started by a user under 13 years old.”
@mjeslfc responded on Twitter by informing her followers that, despite her daughter launching the intention of the petition, all elements of it were managed by her and that she had explicitly informed Change.org of that fact.
“I had written to them [at] the start of the petition to explain that I was managing the account but clearly it’s been reported,” she said on Twitter yesterday.
An archived version of the petition includes a plea from the 12-year-old girl, describing the uncomfortable bathroom situation at her school, explaining that because they are ‘mixed-sexed,’ many boys and girls refuse to use them:
“I am a 12yr old girl and my school, like many, has open plan mixed sexed toilets with only sinks to act as a divide. This makes many boys and girls uncomfortable, with many refusing to use them.”
She continues by proposing that her school should install single-sex toilets for the comfort of all students:
“I would like single-sex toilets to be available so I, and many other children, can feel comfortable and safe when using more private spaces. I propose we have male only, female-only and a mixed spaces to give people choice.”
Gender-neutral bathrooms have been a topic of contention in recent years due to the encroachment of trans-identified males in female-only spaces. The UK in particular has been grappling with a wave of attacks on female students in gender-neutral washrooms at schools across the country.
On February 28, Reduxx published a report about a 13-year-old girl from Coventry, England, who was admitted to the hospital after a trans-identified male physically assaulted her in a unisex washroom.
According to Gemma Brennan, the mother of this girl, a teenage boy kicked a toilet cubicle door open to take photographs of her daughter while she was using the facilities with so much force that the door hit the girl in the face, leaving marks on her arm and a huge cut on her forehead.
Although the incident happened after parents expressed their disapproval regarding the unisex toilets, Brennan explained that their “concerns had ‘fallen on deaf ears’ and not been taken into consideration by the administration.”
That same day, protests broke out at schools across the UK in which female pupils expressed their desire for single-sex facilities for their privacy and safety. Local media outlets reported that students in Southampton, Essex, Blackpool, Yorkshire and other cities throughout England all participated in the demonstrations over gender-neutral restrooms.
Most recently, a teenage boy was arrested over four allegations of “serious sexual assault” at a school in Essex. The horrific attacks took place in a gender neutral lavatory.
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