Glyphs on Restroom Doors

Factual Questions
1

Might as well kill off this millenium in style by overasking why it has been the why it has. Query #1:

The more-or-less internationally standardized symbols distinguishing (or melding) men’s from women’s restrooms are roughly something like (if this form cooperates):

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and

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./__
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. . .BUT. . .I’ve seen (at times other than while watching Mama kissing Santa Claus) people in jeans and slacks go into the johns [janes?] bearing the latter glyph. There’s something wrong here!

The basic problem seems to be that, in attempting to avoid overstimulation of the male, the distinction of the female symbol is centered on an arbitrary (?, see my next post) style of dress.

How are we going to correct this in the next millenium? Should we adopt the symbols used on the plaque in the capsule shot into space. . .and assume no overreaction to it will result? Or will we use glyphs of XY and XX chromosomes. (The biological symbols for male and female, of course, should’ve stayed in the 19th Century.) Then again, overall (is that the word I want?) human waste disposal systems may change.

Ray (Stay tuned.)

2

You know, I’ve seen artwork inside the bathrooms that could be used in their place…

3

I’m in favor of the words ‘Male’ and ‘Female’, respectively.

4

I’m sure this would instigate lawsuits on the part of the literacy-challenged.

DHR

Why must I feel like that/Why must I chase the cat?/Nothin’ but the dog in me.–George Clinton

5

How are they going to look up a lawyer in the phone book ?

Oh, forget I asked, the lawyers will look them up.

6

On this subject, I always get nervous using the rest room in a German restaurant.

The terms Damen and Herrun, both sound like English words that refer to females.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I walk into the “Herrun’s Room” and find some woman who thought it meant Her’s.

7

Back to the original question, though…

I imagine what you are asking is, “In the future, if skirts and dresses become obsolete, will the current glyphs become confusing?”

This assumes that fashion is arbitrary. I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that there is a deeper reason that we find skirts attractive on women. It is concievable that they may never disappear.

8

Or what about the Scottish boy with poor spelling skills who went into the Laddy’s Room.

9

One of the bathrooms here at RIT has a disturbing female glyph that is broken into two parts. The top is head, arms and breasts. The bottom is the rest of the body, but they are split apart along the double curve that is the bottom of the breasts. I’ll try to get a picture of it and post it but don’t count on it.

10

A few years ago I was in Taipei on a business trip, and at one point was forced to make the disturbing choice: Am I a picnic table or a rocking chair?

I solved the problem by waiting for someone else to enter one, and acted upon the assumption that they knew which was correct. I suppose I was fortunate that the first people to come along weren’t cross-dressers.

11

( Assuming the persona of Barbara Walters )

" So, Torq, if you were a glyph, what kind of glyph would you be?? "

Cartooniverse

" If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel "

12

I have noticed that frequently the shapes of the signs containing the glyphs are different, with the male sign being always triangular and the female sign being circular. (I leave it to the amateur semioticians out there to derive the sources for the sign shapes :).) Perhaps the standard will eventually drop the male/female glyphs altogether and simply use the sign shapes with a toilet glyph to indicate function (although whether an international symbol for toilet is possible is a matter for some debate).

As for “Male/Female”, that’s clearly only a useful standard in English speaking countries.

Rick

13

FWIW - in Texas and many other places, a unisex bathroom is all that is available. Ummm…took all the fun out of doing hair, makeup, ect…
They had both symbols on the door, and two cubicles inside the bathroom.

14

Which means women in line for the ladies room have to wait longer, which means they come strolling over to the men’s room with their c-struck boyfriends who are instructed to “guard” the men’s room door from men while they pee.

Pssht. Chicks.

If I wanted smoke blown up my ass, I’d be at home with a pack of cigarettes and a short length of hose.

15

I never answered that, did I?

I’m a picnic table. At least, the sign above the bathroom I went into, which seemed to have the proper plumbing and from which no women ran shrieking that a male had entered, bore a passing resemblance to a picnic table (of the sort depicted on the international sign meaning “there are picnic tables here”) under a picture window.

The symbol that I’m presuming meant “female” (for all I know it actually meant “exit” or “caution do not enter” or “Chong-Won’s House of Beauty”) didn’t really look all that much like a rocking chair, or anything else for that matter, but it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw it. My hosts later confirmed that the crude sketch I attempted looked vaguely like a word meaning “girl” or “woman”, probably in the same way that “VVcnner” looks vaguely like the word “Woman”.

16

A local restaurant resolved this issue with silouettes of setters and pointers.

You know, Woof Woof Woof!

17

Notice that the symbol used for telephone is, and will continue to be, a dial phone. Who has even seen a dial phone in the last five years?

So I think they’ll stick with skirt wearing figures as being representative enough of a woman.

-PIGEONMAN-
Hero For A New Millennium!

The Legend Of PigeonMan - Back in the new year! Honest. I promise. No, really.

18

Kid_Gilligan:

The plural of ‘Herr’ is ‘Herren’.

As to my OP question, it’s “deeper reason” was: In avoiding a form-fitting glyph that might be taken as erotic, the shape of the glyph for ‘women’ was taken as a particular sort of attire, which really doesn’t represent faithfully at all, even in the present day, the intended distinction in the two sets of referents. It appears to say, if you’re wearing an open outer garment on your lower body, you should pick one certain door, but if you’re wearing a crotch-seemed outer garment there, you must pick the other door.

I suppose they could just paint one door pink and the other pastel blue. :slight_smile:

HeadlessCow:

The women’s room where you are has a glyph with breasts on it? I’ve never seen one of those.

RickG:

As far as the semiotic derivation of the triangular background for the male and the circular one for the female, one would assume that it relates to the curvilinear tendency in women versus the angular same in men. Of course, if you’re thinking of traffic signs, round might mean RR crossing and triangle caution. :wink:

torq:

You better not go back to Taiwan and rely on your memory of Chinese characters in terms of a picnic table under a window and a rocking chair, because, according to:
http://www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/DRCM/COMM/F97DRCM90/CCC/Family.html

, you are a rocking chair under a window, while a woman is a picnic table:

http://www.tsoft.net/~raych/Man.gif

MAN

http://www.tsoft.net/~raych/Woman.gif

WOMAN

GuanoLad:

Well, if you’re gonna mix telephones and outhouses, maybe we should make people who wish to be connected at both ends at the same time use a loo that has a picture of a cell phone on it. :wink:

Ray (But if we’re talking guano, those dirty birds just put their grafitti anywhere – don’t need not steenking signs.)

19

I did that wrong. I wanted the pictures to appear here, like this:

http://www.tsoft.net/~raych/Man.gif

MAN

http://www.tsoft.net/~raych/Woman.gif

WOMAN

Ray

20

Uh oh, I don’t know what that woman’s doing. Looks like she has crowbar and is doing more than moving the furniture around. That GIF didn’t start out that way.

Ray