There are important questions to be asked about lavatories, and Kemi Badenoch is certainly the Tory best suited to answering them. A report in the government’s Daily Telegraph mouthpiece announced that a new government initiative would see the equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, appoint a Tory lavatories tsar, a task that would doubtless make her flush with pride. But the Independent then reported that the government had “distanced” itself from this appointment, for fear of increased bureaucracy, and also, presumably, across-the-board toilet tsar-based ridicule.
Apparently, Kemi Badenoch’s Tory lavatory tsar would have ensured that all new offices, schools, hospitals and entertainment venues have separate male and female lavatories; a big job and a massive piece of business. But our children’s generation seem largely ambivalent about gender identity, and the practical lavatorial considerations that come with it; first-wave feminists, in contrast, are understandably anxious that women’s hard-won recognitions are not, as they see it, eroded; meanwhile, some young women tell me they fear the loss of certified spaces in nightclubs and pubs for crying, vomiting up alcopops and avoiding young men; most young men, however, seem comfortable with the idea of urinating indiscriminately on the floor, while simultaneously passing wind, in any toilet, however Kemi Badenoch choses to designate the toilet’s gender.
