On Ally McBeal, the employees of a law firm all used the same bathroom. This wasn’t a one-toilet-in-one-room type set-up; there were several toilets, in stalls, and they were used by both sexes, presumably at the same time.
Are there bathrooms like this anywhere in the US? I’ve heard rumors that there are some in certain buildings at a couple of ultra-liberal universities (Staford, Berkely), but I don’t know this for a fact. As for having one of these in a private sector employment setting-- I think we, as a culture, are still a little squeamish about our bodily functions.
How about elsewhere in the world? I’ve heard that the Parisiennes are open and tolerant about this sort of things, and that there are many unisex bathrooms throughout Paris.
What’s the scoop?
[sub]FTR, I’m not asking because I intend to go to one of these places. I’m just curious.[/sub]
Back in my college days there was bar in town (long since gone) that had three unisex bathrooms labeled with somewhat ambiguous seafood names (shrimp, lobsters and oysters, I think). I remember taking a girlfriend there once, it was her first time there, and at one point during the evening she asked where the bathroom was, so I pointed down the hallway. A minute later she was back at the table, both confused and laughing, and said, “Which one am I???”
Sorry, forgot to mention that this was in Lawrence KS in the mid 1980s. :smack:
(Which made the whole bathrooms-named-after-seafood thing even more bizarre.)
And if I remember correctly, each bathroom had a urinal and a stall.
I think the law in Greece says that if you are catering food in your premises you must have separate toilets for each sex. If not, you can have a unisex one.
I don’t know if it’s still that way, but at MIT’s Walker Memorial in the late 1970s the restroom on the top floor (which used to be male) was switched to unisex by the simple expedient of enclosing the urinals in stalls with doors on them.
At the same time, the bathrooms in my dorm suite were unisex, at least for the co-ed suites. I’ve never had a problem with this, but it freaked out my parents when they came to visit.
Like, CalMeacham’s dorm, our co-ed dorm had unisex bathrooms. Two or three showers and about four or five stalls (no urinals, stalls only for privacy.)
I never even thought about that until now. Never once struck me as odd.
Personally I can’t imagine sitting on a toilet taking a big dump with 3 chatty girls running about the bathroom at the same time. Men and women are polar opposites in the bathroom, like mixing water and oil. Just the seat up/down argument alone should be enough to kill this idea off entirely.
There are dorms at Berkeley which have unisex bathrooms. The people who live there say it’s strange and uncomfortable for about a week and then everyone settles in and gets used to it.
I don’t see what the big deal is, really. Most of us grew up sharing bathrooms with parents and siblings of the opposite sex, and quite a few of us still share bathrooms with opposite sex partners and children. Very few people seem fazed by this, so what’s the difference, other than you don’t have to clean it yourself?
There’s a bar on Deansgate, Manchester (Baa Bar, for those that know it) have a large unisex toilet with ambious figures on the doors. It’s all stalls. I don’t see the problem with it really. Everyone shares a bathroom at home, don’t they?
By the time I got there, Walker didn’t have unisex restrooms anymore - but most of the dorms did still have co-ed bathrooms. My parents were also suitably freaked out.
I’ll drop in a “me too” here on this one – Walker didn’t have unisex bathrooms, but my dorm did. Some floors would designate a particular bathroom as male-only or female-only, but in general it was a free-for-all. I still don’t see what the big deal is – it’s just as awkward to poop sitting next to a male as a female. The shower stalls were co-ed as well… We never had a single problem in 4+ years there – everyone respected everyone else’s privacy. (This was at East Campus, about 5 years ago…)
My dorm at University College London had co-ed WCs. It was a bit odd to make out with the hot chick down the hall, then say goodnight, then 5 minutes later be brushing your teeth next to her. Otherwise, the shower stalls had dressing vestibules for each one, and there was just an initial “Hey, what’s this?” reaction, but after a few days got normal.
(Berkeley and Stanford)
When I went to school at Berkeley, the dorms had one bathroom per floor. I think this had less to with ultra liberalness and more to do with the expectation at the time the dorms were built you would not have guys and girls in the same dorm.
