Last fall, a group of transgender students at Wesleyan University tore down gendered bathroom signs and replaced them with ones that read, “All Gender Restroom.” [...] On college campuses across the country, student activists are dismantling what Sheila Cavanagh dubs an “architecture of exclusion,” more commonly known as gendered bathrooms. [...]
To this day, plumbing regulations in Massachusetts limit the number of gender-neutral bathrooms a building can have.
— dailycollegian.com
14 Comments
Bill O'Reilly just sharted with glee....
Speaking of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxBoQSXwesI
Why not take it all the way?
Let's put a stop to the small-minded exclusion of bodily waste elimination from all the eating, working, and socializing in the rest of every building. Everyone, free your junk from the tyranny of terrazzo! Think of the money we'll save on bathroom partitions.
Worried about touching that nasty bathroom doorknob on the way out? No problem. No bathroom doors, or even bathrooms! The net leaseable area in every building grows, just like that.
Just whip, flop, open or spread those important parts (male, female, "other") as needed, whenever you feel the urge, wherever you happen to be.
Yes, it'll stink, and we'll all get tired of slipping in the urine and feces... but that's a small price to pay for inclusion.
I'd prefer that all public restrooms be single-stall non-gendered individual rooms with a door that goes to the floor. Toilet, sink, diaper-changing table, chair, mirror, etc. all included in each room. Actual privacy, instead of these puritan concerns that someone of a different gender might - oh horrors! - see your privates. It's silly.
My post was mocking the ridiculously ominous title of that article, but I think your suggestion is where we're eventually headed, Donna.
Here's the thing about urinals, though: they are incredible space-savers in restroom design, and square footage is money. It'll be hard to wean, as it were, developers away from that model.
But then where will Larry Craig pick up guys.
How could anyone see his foot tapping if we had door to floor stalls.
Donna you are being very discriminatory towards republican closet homosexuals!
God save the urinal!!!!
[It's in all our best interests. I speak from experience.]
the newer codes seem to be trying to accommodate more family or assistance oriented unisex restrooms. however, a bunch of single rooms would cut into leasable square footage more than i think many building owners would want. toilet partitions are like 1/5 the width of a regular wall. doors that go to the floor often make it more difficult to mop. also, from what i hear girls don't like to like to sit on toilet seats boys have peed on.....
chair and toilet? the toilet is a chair.
i don't really understand gender confusion, or the various forms of being between 'male' and 'female.' one room is for those who pee standing up (with a sit-down option), and the other is for those who might find it more difficult to pee standing up. i can only speak for myself, but if i was in a restroom with a person who, by nature and through no fault of their own, was peeing standing up while wearing a dress, i would be fine with that. or if they were exercising the sit-down option at their own discretion, i would also not be offended. you're just going in there to do what you need to do. even if you're a woman in a man's body or whatever, you're still in a man's body, right? and there is nothing wrong with being in a man's body, imho.
Curt, I think we finally agree on something. Lol
In all seriousness, some people fall outside of normal gender categories, but it is economically not feasible to have single stall or three bathroom types everywhere. Male and female as types still exist everywhere else: I.D.s, fashion types (I don't see anyone protesting fashion labels for their gender types) etc.
So what is the pragmatic solution? Not sure there is one...
When I was in the Moscow airport in 1991 they had apparently decided that toilet stalls - and in fact toilets themselves - were not "economically feasible". I peed in a hole in the floor, in a room of open holes in the floor. It's not about financial feasibility, it's about what a culture is willing to accept.
Between two dumpsters in an alley behind the bar where the equivalent of a six-pack has been downed can be both feasible and functional...
So I've heard.
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