Asymmetrical Information

Um... don't you mean unisex bathrooms?

Explanations other than the practical? Meaning, men are more likely to leave splatter on the latrine seat and women tend to leave behind a foggy aura comprised chiefly of perfume and discarded feminine hygiene product odors?

Overlawyered's postulate on enabling sex crimes by increasing opportunity for plausible deniability doubtless factors in, though.

Then there's the fact that defecation just sorta evolved into a sex-specific activity as awareness of personal hygiene and odor first arose after the middle ages. On that point, Ivan Illich's "H2O and the Waters of Forgetfullness" -- the published text of a speech given in Dallas when the city was considering installing a park with a large artificial pond -- is relevant and reasonably brief (Dallas, Texas: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1985).

There used to be a bar in SoHo that had unisex bathrooms. Moreover, the doors to the loos were made of glass!

The glass door and metal frame contained some kind of mechanism that made the glass turn opaque when you shut the door, but you didn't know that until you saw someone do it. It was pretty shocking at first.

If we had unisex bathrooms, male architects would start putting in enough toilets for women and there would be no more line outside the women's room.

I used to go to a mainly gay house music night where the bathrooms said: Mostly Boys...Mostly Girls

Also, there is a restaurant in DC that has unisex bathrooms with the glass doors like the one Joe Schmoe mentions that is in SoHo.

They already have unisex loos on the Continent, & have had for quite some time. Why not check out what happens?

Actually, in downtown NYC, many of the newer restuarants have Unisex bathrooms, and I have never had a problem with it. The only issue I can think of it that whole men-not-lifting-the-lid thing which gets very annoying when you live with a man, let alone with men you don't know.

I've never understood why the toilet seat should be left down for the women, as if it were the natural position. After all, women prefer it down, and men prefer it up. I don't complain when I walk into a bathroom and find that some woman forgot to lift it back up for me.
I guess I'm being only partly facetious.

Gazzer,

You misunderstand. I do not in any way mean to imply that Gravity is not my friend. I grew up sharing a bathroom with my brother and uncounciously check for the toilet seat location when I go to the bathroom at night. The problem is that men actually try to be considerate by leaving the seat DOWN and then aim poorly. I would rather put the seat down myself on the condition that men leave the seat up when they use the toilet rather than getting a wet bum...which is just gross.

I hit upon a solution to the up/down toilet problem quite a few years ago. This applies only to those seats which also have lids, as are found in most homes. Always put the lid down after use, no matter whether the toilet was used by a man or a woman. That way, both men and women have to lift at least part of the seat/lid combination before using the toilet. If everyone is almost equally discommoded (ha!), tensions around the house are a lot lower. And it has the added advantage of keeping pets and small children out of the toilet bowl!

Temporarily back on topic, in Thailand the restaurants had unisex restrooms with a common door to the restroom, urinals down one side, stalls (with doors on the stalls) on the opposite side, and common sinks at the far end in the middle. Let's face it; it's hard to see from one urinal to the next and quite impossible from behind.

Americans are more hung up about this than Europeans. In Russia, public men's rooms frequently have female attendants, who are there all the time. No one seems to mind.
As for the toilet seat up/down thing, It never occured to me to pee with the seat down. Leaving the lid down is a good option, until some sleepy person pees on the lid.

In a little linguistic aside, it's kind of funny that "unisex" and "single sex" are opposites. It seems to have confused Jane in the title of the post.

It kind of reminds me about how nobody can remember whether "biannual" means every two years or twice a year.

Maybe if women would learn to go the bathroom singly, instead of insisting so often on going in pairs, the lines would similarly decrease.

What I don't understand is why some restaurants have restrooms specifically labeled "Men" and "Women", when they're just single-occupancy, and could serve either sex.

How tangential would it be for me to ask if anyone knows what it is about toilets that gay guys find so romantic? Is it like Paris to them?

Men's rooms can squeeze more people in due to the fact that urinals -- or in the more bare-bones latrines, the urine troft -- allow more users at one time than women's rooms, which is why new stadiums are being designed so that the women's room is larger, allowing for equal numbers of occupants at one time by giving those areas more toilets (the fact that men can get in and out of crowded restrooms faster than women by using the urinals is probably also why we ended up as the hunter/gatherers a few dozen millenia ago).

In some of the new stadiums around the country, there actually are unisex restrooms -- they're smaller rooms either designed to be ADA compliant -- allowing for more stalls in the regular restrooms -- and/or to double as baby-changing rooms for the kids along on the trip, since either mom or dad can go in and do diaper duty. While you could just build an ueberloo with toilets, urinals, ADA compliant facilities and diaper changing tables, the Male/Female/Mixed option is probably the best solution to the problem.

Coz guys are very messy and smelly too!
anna

Just leave it to Dave Munger to make some kind of incendiary remark like that! Didja ever think that maybe the only reason heteros don't attempt to pick up people in bathrooms is because they rarely find someone of the opposite sex there...?

I know very few women who would feel even remotely comfortable using a restroom with strange men standing by. If the notion is to involuntarily retrain/resocialize these women to conform to the current version of what passes for progressive thinking, it is as offensive as it is coercive--again, typical for progressive thought.

I suppose you can find a unisex facility on the continent, but the prevailing trend in Italy, Spain and the UK is for each sex to have their own facility, particularly if its a communal facility and not a single room that can be locked.

For liability and other reasons, public restrooms in many office buildings are kept locked, particularly women's restrooms. Sexual predators occassionally make use of public facilities and there is a specie of gay male that looks for anonymous sex in public restrooms. The former is a felony and the latter is, for most people, distastefully deviant.

But why not let the market decide? Cutting edge restaurants and clubs can lump everyone together and see what effect that has on their customer base. Progressive statists won't have that--in their world, smoking would be outlawed and same sex facilities would be mandatory. Lovely.

What I have often wondered is why people don't realize that male bathrooms are in fact CHEAPER than female, particularly wrt to floor space and to turnover reate (how often the same fixture can be used by different people). The reason that men rarely have a line is that in nearly all cases, the same amount of floor space is reserved for male and female batherooms (see also turnpike bathrooms when busses come in, or restroom bathrooms when a football team and cheerleader busses come in). In the same amount of space that you can put 2 stalls, you can usueally get 3-4 urinals, which also have a much higher rate of use than seated fixtures.

Unisex bathrooms would simply create a shortage for everyone, more space would be allocated to ineffecient fixtures.

Really, what we need is an architect with guts that will take some of the men's floor space and give it to women to even out the capacity.

And we would never, ever have an lawyers that might complain about sidecrimination, now would we?

There are at least Two very good restaurants here in DC that have unisex bathrooms, of a sort. Mie & YU in Georgetown and Cafe Asia in the Triangle both have a large bathroom with closet-stalls along one side (Cafe Asia is actually designated male and female closets), with a common bank of sinks on the other side. The reason this works is because both places are uber-hip and expensive, and the attendants keep them very clean (as well as expect a hefty tip for having the paper towel ready for you when you wash your hands). This is a very good setup for both places, affords all of the necessary privacy, and everyone seems to like it. I've even had the very strange expirience of meeting a cute girl there. Very awkward indeed!

And I can confirm that many European bathrooms (especially nightclubs) have no problem with having a female attendant in the mens room. In fact, European girls in nightclubs usually don't have an issue invading the mens room when the line gets to long. Maybe that is a progressive answer for women here in the US.

I've traveled in Europe a lot and I have yet to see a multi-stall unisex bathroom.

For unisex restrooms in posh restaurants with an attendant, the reason they probably have unisex bathrooms is so that they only have to hire 1 bathroom attendant, instead of 2.

Going back to the question with which Overlawyered began -- while I don't especially care one way or the other on the bathroom front, this new presumption that avoiding discomfort to transexuals (let alone a "preoperative transexual"!) is an absolute requirement to which everyone's else's comfort must defer leaves me cold.

I mean, this case involved a man (who takes female hormones) using a women's shower. Is it so egregious that someone objected to that? It seems like a fairly thin case of "discrimination".

I still remember The Tunnel on 10th Ave in NYC back in the day, which was after hours, packed to the gills, far too expenisve...and unisex bathrooms...I think there was a bar between both sides. I remember standing at a urinal, with an audience of two or three women waiting their turn at a free stall.

I think I was a little too buzzed to be embarrassed or bashful at the time.

--Cobra

Cobra,

"expenisve"? That is Freudian Typo of the Year, with two months to go yet. Yowza!

Indeed yes, Michelle - oh, Cobra, what you said!

I want to see those glass stalls.

House rules around here are as Rex specifies: all lids stay down, for all the reasons he states plus the aesthetic one that to the hubby and myself, a closed toilet is less unattractive than an open one, and if you're cutting it so close that the fraction of a second it takes to lift lid and/or seat is enough to cause an embarrassing accident, well, better planning is in order.

I've always assumed that multi-stall unisex restrooms are unpopular (in Europe too - I'm with Cathy Young there - but I know diddly about Asian, African, or South American norms) because there aren't all that many adults around who enjoy advertising their physical imperatives to anyone of the opposite sex, be it spouse, parent, sibling, friend, date, potential date, or even stranger. In my experience, even women friends don't do a lot of talking to one another while actually in adjacent stalls, though it does happen when both enter simultaneously in the middle of a conversation, for instance. But I was surprised when my husband told me that men don't watch one another urinating - that the structure of standard urinals makes it difficult, and that they actively avoid looking to the sides at those urine-troughs. I'd thought it was just one of those Mars/Venus things, that men would gather in groups to pee on a target and check their accuracy. (As the one who cleans toilets in a mostly-male house, I ought to have known that scenario wasn't accurate.)

Lastly: my husband hates to take our kids into men's rooms in most places; he says they're generally just gross. Is it true, or is it along the lines of his turning the underwear pink so I don't ever ask him to do laundry again? (Hasn't happened yet, but he threatens it sometimes.)

There are ten irrefutable reasons why we need single sex bathrooms. In order, they are:

1) Children
2) Children
3) Children
4) Children
5) Children
6) Children
7) Children
8) Children
9) Children
10) Children

To elaborate:

The tremendous embarassment of pre-pubescent boys and girls trying to use the bathroom in fron of each other

Adult men next (stall wll or no) to teenage girls with their pants down

Teenage girls trying to change their tampons with a bunch of smirking teenage boys standing around the stall, if not peering under it.

I could go on, but let me say this: Only a lawyer or an economist could be so unbearably stupid as not to see the reason for single-sex bathrooms.

PS: The day the American economy is so shot to hell that bathroom attendants represent a major portion of the work force, is a day that public bathrooms will be a very minor worry.

Jamie-

Let me fill you in on straight-male bathroom etiquette.

Rule 1) No talking to the guy peeing next to you, especially if you are not either best buds or related by blood. In fact, it's best to not talk at all

Rule 2) You are allowed to look
-Straight Ahead
-Straight down
-At the cieling

Rule 3) Two shakes, zip it up, and move out. Otherwise you are just playing with yourself.

I believe these rules are fairly universal, even if unspoken. And, no, nobody has EVER thought about having a shooting match in the John. That just begs for a really unfortunate accident caused by miscalculating ones target in relation to ones opponents shoes.

Deak: Nah. While it may be uncommon for completely strangers to strike up a discussion, guys, even very casually aquainted ones, do sometimes talk at the urinals.

anony-mouse,

I've never been in the vicinity of a urinal myself, so can't know; but there are legions of jokes built around urinal conversations. My own favorite is the exchange supposedly between Clement Atlee and Winston Churchill, in which Atlee chided Churchill for being "standoffish" in the loo, and Churchill retorted, "Clement, whenever you see something large, you want to nationalize it."

If one can handle their smelly issue then why not???
andrew

Heartily agree with the three rules of male peeing stated above. In short: Stand up; Shut up; Get out.

Once had a boss who had the unfortunate habit of engaging his subordinates in conversation when standing at adjoining pissoirs. This was one of the commonest gripes we all had with him (before he was hauled off by the men in white coats).

The rules of (male) public peeing are a splendid example of unpoken socialization. Fascinating how these rules emerge by silent consensus, with zero discussion, debate or analysis. Kind of like Adam Smith's hidden hand, but lower down, perhaps.

And just as clearly, it's different for men and women. Many's the time I've been at a restaurant dinner and heard a woman say, "I'm going to the little girl's room--would anyone else like to come along?" Three or four women then get up and go as a group.

Can any of you IMAGINE a man saying, "I'm going to the crapper. Anyone want to come with me?"

I have observed that women spend way more time in the bathroom (especially public bathrooms) than men, quite apart from the time it takes to empty bowels and bladder, which should be about equal. Apparently, 1) Women often take time to brush hair, 2) They often take time to adjust make-up. 3) They often take time to talk to eachother while adjusting hair and make-up. 4) They regard the bathroom as a refuge from awkward social situations that may be playing out in the bar/restaurant to which the batthroom is appurtenant.

And why not? Who says the female experience has to mirror the male experience, or vice versa?

I see it as a paucity of imagination to think that "equality" must mean "sameness." After all, as many overlook, it is not "discrimination" per se that the courts and Congress have frowned on but "invidious discriminaton"--discrimination with the intent to cause insult or injury.

In college I lived in an experimental dorm that was co-ed room by room. The bathrooms (which had showers too) were unisex on two floors and women-only on the third. Some of the women were distincly shy about showering with men, but men less so about showering with women. (Gee, I wonder why.)

(In point of fact, the shower stalls were adjoining, not single shower rooms with with muliple heads, so it wasn't like an invitation to group sex. The showers were large enough to accomodate bathrobes without getting them wet, so there wasn't much public nakedness either. Still, some of the women didn't like the idea of being naked in the same room with men, with just a wet curtain protecting them from view, so they had the option of a women-only shower/toilet if they cared to walk up a flight of stairs.)

On its face, the arrangement was asymmetric: Women had more options than men, and women's privacy rights were taken more to heart than men's. Still, I think the arrangement served us well. The co-ed bathroom seemed more sedate, if that's the right word, than the men's room in the male-only dorms, where there were a lot of yahoos just learning the rules of public bathrooming for the first time.

Still, plenty of people are shy about public urination/defecation, and it's not a man-woman thing so much as a person-person thing. The ideal bathroom to me has a single jake, a sink with hot and cold running, and a door that locks behind me. In NYC, the Grand Central Cafe (on the mezz level of the main concourse) had two such bathrooms, but you had to know where they were. A discreet sign on a pillar said Restrooms, but the doors themselves were unmarked. Really very civilized.

My other favorite bathroom in NYC was at Windows On The World, on the 110th floor of the WTC (God rest its soul). Each stall in the men's room had walls that went to the floor and its own sink with proper linen towels. So you weren't exposed to other people's pulled-down pants, sound effects and wafting fragrences. A Medici Prince would have been comfortable, and my vote is for more of the same.

Publius,

I have never heard any woman suggest a group trip to the "little girls' room" [ick]; must be a regional thing.

But it needs to be made clear that the amount of time women spend in a restroom and the length of the lines to get into one aren't easily correlated. The stuff you mention (touching up hair & makeup, gossiping, &c.) doesn't occupy the stalls and doesn't contribute to the lines. The lines are long because taking a pee involves considerably more time for a woman than for a man. It's a lesson in comparative anatomy and the details of Western dress, I suppose; but, anyway, it's a fact.

There's another way to make women's bathroom lines shorter -- get rid of the walls! If women are peeing out in the open the same as the men are, they'll hurry things up a bit.

I have never heard any woman suggest a group trip to the "little girls' room" [ick]; must be a regional thing.

I think you'll find it happens more often among pre-pubescent and teenage girls and perhaps becomes less common among older and/or married women. It's actually not a bad personal security strategy for girls of that age range; a ne'erdogooder might be able to subdue and grab one girl alone, but a group lends itself to the basic safety of numbers.

Wow, I almost forgot about the co-ed bathroom in my college dorm... it's been a while. The dorm was originally a men's dorm, so there was only one bathroom on each floor. Each year, each floor would vote whether it's bathroom would be co-ed or single sex. The minority party, usually girls, always wanted it to be co-ed just so we wouldn't have to walk up or down a flight of stairs every time we wanted to go to the bathroom. (And some women go to the bathroom a lot.) I remember one year I was there, the vote was single-sex, and it was a men's bathroom because there were more men on the floor. Usually I walked downstairs to go to the bathroom, but if it was the middle of the night, I didn't bother.

In terms of women talking in the bathroom... well usually that only happens while they are at the sink washing their hands. Talking while in the stalls... that is an "eww gross" thing, just like talking at the urinals.

Women at a dinner suggesting a collective trip to the bathroom? Never heard of such a thing.

Michelle and Jamie,

You got me there. :-) That's one for the gallery for sure.

--Cobra

When I was in college, there was a restaurant (I forget the name) near campus in which the bathrooms were designated "Democrats" and "Republicans." I'm not joking.

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