Gender segregated restrooms now, gender segregated restrooms tomorrow, gender segregated restrooms FOREVER!
I wonder if I’m the only one reading this thread and thinking “Gah, I hated sharing an in-suite bathroom with three other people, all of the same gender!”
Duke - I think it is the whole disillusioned thing!! Not sure, I have another appointment with her tomorrow…We’ll see.
i learn something new here everyday… ^^;
The only thing thing that bothers me about unisex toilets, is the fact that guys always seem to forget to close the bathroom door!
I lived on a co-ed floor, with co-ed bathrooms, and a bunch of men and women who I hated equally.
However, the co-ed bathrooms were not a problem at all. Personally, I much prefer them: they’re closer (I’d be thrilled if the washrooms were co-ed at my office: the men’s is much, much closer) and there’s less waiting. I imagine all the nasty stuff went on (sex, no doubt, and people who saw that cute girl from down the hall driving the porcelain school bus after a heavy night at the pub) but isn’t it best to break down these kinds of barriers? I mean, if you’re a man in college and you don’t want to pee beside a sanitary napkin disposal box (a complaint I have heard) … you’ve got some bigger problems.
I’ve never been squeamish about using the men’s room if there’s a line-up for the women’s.
Women’s rooms also run out of toilet paper a whole lot faster than men’s, so co-ed ones make for a more efficient distribution.
Downfalls:
- Men will finally realize that women do poop, and yes it can even smell
- Women will realize the full extent to which men poop (how often, potency, etc.)
- Women will whine and complain about not putting the seat down. This reminds me to ask women: If I can remember to raise the lid to avoid an arctic plunging of my posterior region, then, why can’t women who sit down every time??
That’s exactly what I’m thinking. I don’t want to fart in front of my best friend since kindergarten, so I certainly don’t want to fart in front of anyone else…
On a tangent, my roommate’s boyfriend often stayed at our house (yes “house”, own bedroom, own bathroom, etc. etc.) and it freaked me out when he went from her bathroom to her bedroom in a towel. Or when I had to dig through the dryer wearing my jeans and a bra. And her boyfriend and I are fairly close. Oh, and my boyfriend is not allowed to enter the bathroom when I’m peeing. There are some times when you simply need your space.
Ok, so maybe I’m far more modest than the majority, but I can totally see where this girl is coming from. I’d have issues, too.
So slightly off-topic, but around here, you drive 3 hours out of town to a remote parking lot in some provincial park that will serve as a parking lot for your next backcountry excursion. And there at the end of the parking lots are two outhouses. Not big multi-stalled outhouse comlexes; I mean the 3’ by 3’ single outhouse. Except they have one for men and one for women. This seems so silly to me I usually try to use the wrong one, just on principle 
How many people to a bathroom?
I’m asking because the last building I lived in had multistalled coed bathrooms, and they were remarkably clean and quiet, even considering the high percentage of pukey drunks on the floor. With ~15 people to one bathroom, there’d be a very good chance that no one would be in the bathroom at all when you went in, and depending on the time of day, you could probably pass hours in there without anyone coming in. Sure, the co-ed bathroom was a little weird at first, but we all adjusted pretty fast.
And believe it or not, most guys are just as worried that someone will yank open the shower curtain on them. The shower curtains in this bathroom became the Things That Were Not To Be Messed With.
Sneaking out in the middle of the night to use a bathroom somewhere else? In the middle of the year? This goes beyond not wanting to pee next to anyone else. I echo the person who asked if something happened in this particular bathroom, or if it’s just co-ed bathrooms in general she’s freaked out about.
I’d much rather have unisex bathrooms with private showers than the same-sex bathrooms with “community showers” that I’ve seen at some dorms. I mean, it wasn’t uncommon just to have one large room with a dozen shower nozzles sticking out of the wall. Talk about lack of privacy.
That said, I also think back to some of the stupid idiot™ freshmen at the state university that I went to. All it takes is one putz (perhaps under the influence or not) with a digital camera to really screw things up.
Yes, I can remember the social taboos and “Things That Are Not To Be Messed With” in college. I can also remember some grade-A jerks there as well, who seemed to have little inhibition against crossing those lines.
In a university scenario, where kids are experiencing freedom for the first time, co-ed bathrooms would disturb me. If it were restricted to floors for upperclassmen only, I might have less of a problem with it.
Personally, I grew up in a small town. It took me years to get used to undressing in a locker roo around other guys when I got to colleg. shrug It’s not so much me being embarrassed by my body as that I’d feel bad if others were embarrassed by viewing it. Or, for that matter, blinded by my pasty white skin…
That said, I think I’d be quite leery of communal showers. Communal bathrooms wouldn’t be all that bad because, as said before, it’s not like people look in.
This was not a very big deal in our college dorm. I recall lots of broken beer bottles in the hallway, but little piss on the toilet seats.
Plenty of times the men’s room in our local arena go de-facto co-ed during concerts. The ladies hesitate at the door at first, and then quickly walk past the guys at the urinals to the stalls, giggling (hmmm - this is the only part I don’t like).
So far no deaths or injuries to report because of this…
I think the dorm I am in right now has co-ed bathrooms… but there are two of them in the hall… and one has strongly become the boys room… and one the girls room… and I don’t think there is any rule saying it really is like that, but I don’t think anyone would dare go to the wrong one (they are pink and blue even… they USED to be single sex, but when they switched no one really started useing the other bathroom)