Years ago I was shocked, shocked, when visiting a buddy on-res that the University’s residence had a common bathroom, and it was co-ed. I mean, showers, stalls, sink, the works.
Don’t know what triggered the thought today, but I’m looking at the two bathrooms here at work, a set of two per floor. We just moved to this building, built for us brand new a couple years ago. I thought the battle of the sexes was won and we’re all equal now. What a waste - the extra space, the extra cost - to perpetuate this superstition that men’s rooms and ladies’ rooms, never the twain shall meet.
Years ago, that University proved shared facilities are no biggie - they work just fine. There is no doubt, though, that the new building going up across the street will have redundant facilities. Is this a case of irrational social inertia, or is there really good reason to continue this practice?
There’s good reason as far as I’m concerned. Unless it’s a single toilet and sink situation where only one person can occupy at a time, I’m against it.
I don’t want to have a guy I barely know standing there while I adjust my bra, fix my stockings or (heaven forbid) want to be standing there while he’s taking a dump. I know…I know…most other countries don’t care. Well, I was raised here and I will never be comfortable with it. Just my opinion.
I have a hard time starting a piss if there are a lot of people I don’t know around. Like at ball games, where you have 50 guys in the bathroom at a time. I don’t know if I could piss with 3 women I’ve never met sharing the mirror right behind the urinal. I don’t think they’d be comfortable with me pissing right behind them either.
At the res I mentioned, there were multiple stalls, but the stall doors went from floor to top joist with only ½" gap on the floor - privacy doors. The sinks were common and open, though. I used the facilities and chanced to exit my toilet stall while a turbaned and robed woman exited her shower stall. I (a dude) was very surprised, but it really was no biggie.
I’ve been to a couple of nudist camps – where the restrooms are shielded from view and segregated by sex. Apparently there are some things even nudists would rather not do in front of an opposite-sex audience.
I think it’s a big gap between facilities in a somewhat controlled environment such as an office, and totally public facilities. For the latter, I think that the risk of sex crimes outweighs any saved space.
For the former- as a guy, I’d not be comfortable with it…and I can’t imagine that most women would be. And if you put up partitions. single-sex lounges, etc. in restrooms to allow for some more privacy in changing, adjusting, making up, why not just keep them separate?
I once went to a gay bar in Atlanta. They had restrooms for “Women” and “Everyone Else”. The ladies room was full, with a few people waiting, so I went to “Everyone Else” and walked in on a couple that was…uh…gettin’ down with it. There’s an awful lot that folks need to tend to in the john.
Will there still be urinals in this bright shiny unisex bathroom of tomorrow? If not, there are going to be queues, aren’t there? And if so, why should I find this preferrable?
There’s a new facility in a park that we go to that has 4 or 5 unisex bathrooms arranged in a round building, kind of like pieces in a pie. They are all big enough to be wheelchair and parent-with-little-kid accessible. I thought it was a pretty clever design.
I could do without the stainless steel toilet though, although I understand the rationale.
I’ve been in dorms where we’ve had both uni-sex and segregated restrooms, though the students voted to have uni-sex bathrooms unanimously.
Interestingly, a few years ago I was in Boston for the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (big annual meeting). We were in the Hynes convention center, and one of the questions that was raised was one of accessibility for transgendered people. IIRC it was decided to change one bathroom to uni-sex so anyone could use it, but there was a lot of heated debate about whether all bathrooms should be uni-sex, or whether or not labeling bathrooms by gender is opressive/discriminatory.
I guess my point is that whatever your personal opinion about it is, as a country we’re probably not ready for a universal uni-sex bathroom edict.
Why is it, BTW, that in a large public facility like a theater or sports stadium, at intermission or halftime, the line to the ladies’ room always seems to be twice as long as the line to the men’s room?
If I were an architect designing such a building, I would always be sure to include twice as many ladies’ rooms as men’s rooms.
At the University of Chicago, there was a huge uprising because of this. Supposedly, the styilzed figure of a woman in a dress on the ladies’ rooms was upsetting to some people. There was plenty transgender angst involved; someone claimed to have given herself kidney infections due to fear of sex-segregated restrooms. It got really ridiculous–despite the fact that many places on campus already had single-toilet restrooms that could be used by one person only. Why weren’t those good enough? Lord. We got written up in News of the Weird.
Interestingly enough, it’s a very co-ed restroom friendly school already. Some of the dorms have had co-ed communal bathrooms for years and years.
My personal thoughts on the matter: Aren’t there bigger things to worry about? Is the woman in the dress causing you more anguish than, say, the homeless situation in Chicago? Or the kids all over the South Side with bullet holes in their classroom windows? Or the attempts at banning gay marriage? As long as you have somewhere to do your business, and no one’s taking away your rights to do so, isn’t there a better cause out there that needs your voice?
(OK, I guess I’m not quite addressing the OP–If the public wants co-ed restrooms to happen, it’ll happen. As of now, I think most people are perfectly comfortable with the status quo.)
My dorm suite was coed. Both sexes shared the bathroom at the same time. There was a sign on the door that indicated which sex was in there, but after the first week everybody pretty much ignored it. People used sinks and toilets all the time, regardless iof who else was in there. Showers were pretty much respected, though. There were individual shower stalls, but we never had males and females showeering at the same time. You weren’t really supposed to go in when the opposite sex was showering, but agfter a few weeks that changed to “no using the toilets or sinks while anyone of the opposite sex is getting into or out of showers”. It worked fine.
There was one unisex bathroom on campus. They enclosed the urinals in stalls, and everyone was happy.
I work in a refurbed building in which they installed 4 bathrooms (2 each of 2 floors). There are about 80 employees. All of the bathrooms have one toilet and one urinal each. They did not install stalls, you just walk into the bathroom and lock (hopefully!) the door behind you.
Had we gone with 2 female and two male bathrooms with stalls we would have had the possibility for 4 women to pee and/or crap simultaneously while 2 men crap and 2 pee, or up to 4 men pee.
I frequent a bar where there’s one men’s room with a urinal and a toilet, no stall, and 2 guys will pee together in there all of the time. I assume that if we had single sex bathrooms here that might happen here also, stalls or not.
As it stands - and for the life of me I can’t figure oout why they did this - a maximum of 4 people can use the bathrooms in any capacity at once, even just to use a mirror or wash your hands. I frequently have to go upstairs to pee even though there are 4 pee recepticles on my floor, at least two of which aren’t being used at any given time. Stupid, stupid, stupid… and all no doubt in the name of inclusivity or progressivism or… something.
The co-ed bathrooms I’ve seen have been one of two types:
a. Single restroom (that is, occupancy 1 person). Plenty of these in smaller restaurants and other places. No issues that I can see.
b. Dorm bathrooms (Allen Hall at the U of I was co-ed). Bathroom stalls have high walls and low doors, showers are individual stalls with multiple curtains in a sort of “airlock” configuration. Plenty of privacy.
I don’t think that by co-ed bathrooms anyone means that everything is as on-display as in single-sex bathrooms (like a wall full of urinals right by the sinks).
The dorms at Stevenson (UCSC) had four stalls and four sinks on every floor, co-ed. I wouldn’t say it was a shock, but I’m sure I let out a little “wurgh?” when a woman walked into the bathroom where I was (I wasn’t a student, but a visitor, so everyone who might have been freaked out upon-move-in had gotten over it). The rest of the year when I visited, it was no big deal.
Interestingly, Saturn Cafe in downtown Santa Cruz used to have a normal bathroom setup, but they’ve un-labeled the bathrooms and painted androgynous caricatures on each door, so they’re unisex now.
