Today (July 19th) is Changing Places awareness day!

[Image description: a photo of the changing places toilet with the features listed below /end ID]

What is a changing places toilet?

A changing places toilet is a toilet which can be used by disabled people like me who can’t use a standard accessible toilet. This may be because someone needs extra equipment, and/or room for carers to help them. The main features of the changing places toilet are:

1. Lots of room! Changing places toilet must be at least 12 square metres. This means that there is plenty of room for a wheelchair user to turn around as well as room for up to 2 carers.
2. A peninsular toilet! This is a toilet which has enough room on each side were wheelchair to be positioned for transferring. As with standard accessible toilet there are grab rails on each side.
3. Accessible washbasin! The washbasin must have room underneath for a wheelchair user. An adjustable height washbasin is preferred.
4. A ceiling hoist! This allows people who cannot transfer independently to be able to safely get out of their wheelchair. A person brings their own sling which is hooked onto the hoist allowing them to be lifted.
5. An adult size changing table! This allows people need help with undressing to use the toilet, or help changing incontinence pads to have their needs met safely and with dignity. Without a changing table, many people have to resort to lying on the toilet floor to change their pads which is unsafe, undignified and unhygienic.

Why raise awareness?

The lack of changing places toilet means it’s hard for disabled people like me to leave the house. It’s limits our ability to socialise, access work/education, exercise, travel, and even attend hospital appointments. (In the UK there are only 93 hospitals with a registered changing places toilet).

I have to plan my entire life around the few changing places toilet that exist, which massively shrinks my world. It’s incredibly difficult for me to travel (less than 2% of train stations in the UK have a changing places toilet), go days out, visit the hospital, and otherwise experience the world outside my house. Hopefully one day every event like Pride or music festivals will have a mobile changing places toilet, and there will be public changing places toilet with 24/7 access in every town, as well as changing places toilets in public buildings like leisure centres, libraries, museums, cinemas, tourist attractions and shopping centres.

More info including what you can do to help the UK campaigns for more changing places toilets can be found at changing-places.org

i was interested to learn more about changing places outside of the UK, and i found, from what looks like the same organization, this international map + this Florida/Georgia/Alabama project to install more, in case anyone is in the same area and would like to learn! we apparently only have one in my city, seven in my state, which is absolutely not enough to let people go about their days freely.

A new report into the barriers facing Indigenous women trying to access health care during the pandemic describes serious issues including racism and lack of access to mental health services.

The report titled In Her Circle also suggests ways to provide better health-care services.

About 43 indigenous women and two-spirit individuals spoke about their experiences through telephone and online interviews in November 2020.

Researchers found many Indigenous women said changes to services because of the COVID-19 pandemic led to "limited access to mental health care, medical services, and other health-related programming, including face-to-face appointments." [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

what

wtf gay little monkey

anarchists: all theory is bad. to even have any understanding of anything at all is reactionary. i’m a reactionary for even thinking this thought and i now have to find a way to abolish myself without existing in this world because then my abolition would only be on the terms of this world, which is evil and which i am trying to leave

tankies: we must all unite under the proletarian banner of “invest in chinese stocks” in order to develop the productive forces and build global socialism

& btw fruit Flies literally spawn spontaneously

you look at a fruit fly and tell me it's ever been anywhere else

interested in whatever this guys story is in the notes

He's chillin!!!!!

doing the marge simpson impression so hard that I throw up

this article mentions an Electronic Frontier Foundation article listing the specific departments that do this, in case anyone in CA is wondering where they need to be

idk im really tired of 15-17 year olds who have never interacted with the gay community irl and spend too much time on tiktok trying to act like the authority on all that is lgbt+ 

  mean this in the kindest possible way. if you are too young and unsafe to go to your gay community center or pride here’s some ways you can connect to gay history.

• the oral history project from act up
• the lesbian herstory archives
• the transgender archives of the university of victoria
• the digital transgender archives
• glbt historical society (digital)
• lgbtq digital collaboratory
  
• 
  

since it was suggested in the tags

anything that moves

the bisexual manifesto

the Samuel Proctor oral history project

a masterpost of lesile feinberg’s works by @genderoutlaws

more to come

• the queer zine archive
• the dyke march compilation 
• paris is burning 
• how to survive a plague
• united in anger: a history of ACT UP
  
• one archives
• new york public library lgbtq archives

for today’s update:

• screaming queens
• a collection of audre lorde’s poetry
• the arquives
• dykes to watch out for
• the bi woman’s quarterly (1/2)

if you found this list of resources helpful, i implore you to help the lgbt you see on this website. especially right now when things are so hard.

my paypal. my cashapp. my venmo

when i say lmfao it means laughing my faggy ass off

also add in the tags if you want how your tolerance has changed over time!