As long as UK dopers are chiming in, do you have mens’ rooms that have troughs for urinals? These are typically at least six feet long, with water continuously dribbling down the entire length, and you you can get a much higher density of men urinating. Needless to say, I’ve only seen these at large amphitheaters and in college gyms.
Yeah. They are pretty standard.
Chris.
Heh…would that be American Standard, kris?
That’s probably a joke the non-USers aren’t going to get… sigh
The menstruation argument seems a bit disingenuous. Are you saying that women don’t want an audience when they insert a tampon, but are perfectly happy to urinate and defecate with an audience? You may feel comfortable doing so at home, but I bet you don’t like to do it in public.
It’s more than a “tad” unfair, it’s in fact discriminatory and arbitrary. I found the experience of going to the bathroom as a boy in public school to be an unneccesarily degrading and humiliating experience. I also find the argument that men are messier to be lacking as well. I have no doubt that such an argument was applied to blacks earlier in our history to justify sub-standard facilities for them. There is no instrinsic reason that boys deserve less privacy than girls.
That’s how my high school was set up too, no doors, but a wall you went around so no one of the oposite gender could look in. I know the boys had stall doors too. (NHS did a night of babysitting before Christmas one year to let parents shop, and we did several bathroom field trips with the preschool age kids) Our locker rooms were set up differently, but I’m not sure either was better. Boys had the typical movie locker-room set up with all the showers supposed to be taken in on place; girls had seperate showers, but no shower curtains, so there were 2 walls, and an open and back front.
If the women’s restrooms were smaller, you’d have a point. But generally speaking, I don’t believe they are. The line difference is probably caused by the male mindset of “Get in. Do what you came to do. Leave.” Men do not talk in restrooms. They do not bring friends. They (usually) do not wear makeup. Thus, larger numbers of men can be served with the same facilities. You shouldn’t get angry at the owners of the facility for being unfair, but at your fellow women for being inefficient.
Dogface is the most correct about the reason, I believe, whether or not he believes the flawed reasoning responsible for the bathroom differences. The people that designed most school bathrooms, particularly at older schools, end up giving women bathrooms that “protects” each individual more thoroughly than a men’s bathroom because they grew up in an environment when women were considered more fragile, both emotionally and physically. I really doubt that newer schools often have such differences in bathroom facilities. They probably only have differences that are necessary for purely physical differences.
Back in H.S., I was extremely pee-shy (still am, but to a much lesser extent). There was no way I could piss if I thought someone had a chance of seeing me. Which they easily could, as there were no doors on the stalls. So I just held it for the six hours of school. Very painful.
Excuse me? You are under the impression that I’m holding up dozens of people in the hallway to work on my makeup and talk with my friends? Consider, rather, that while a men’s room and a ladies’ room may have the same number of stalls, the men are mostly there to use the urinal, which in a sports arena might evidently even be a trough just to fit more men at it. Women are stuck with the stalls, not to mention with a more complicated delivery mechanism - we can’t just unzip, you know. It just takes a woman longer to pee, and there’s less of us able to go at one time.
Just opened a new Sports/Entertainment Arena here, and
but it doesn’t talk about the number of stalls. So I don’t know if we are making “potty equity” here or not, allowing for the difference in ‘time on the job’.
To the OP - back in the day (late 60s) stalls had doors, but didn’t “go” there much 'cause of the smokers. Haven’t been in a school RR in years, so don’t know the current. Will ask about Mrs.Plan’s elementary.
kelly-‘pee shy’ is a known phobia of sorts. Dogface- right you are. Remember the female who won in the Supreme court to get into the all male Citadel & washed out after the 1st day of boot camp-disgracing her gender?
Shannon Faulkner did drop out during the first week, but so did over thirty men. Were they a disgrace to their gender?
The first barracks I was in had a line of toilets, no walls even. You just got used to it.
The whole tampon theory is bullshit once you have had to pry a used tampon off a wall or other surface when there was an empty disposal unit on the wall next to the toilet.
As far as bathrooms in a nightclub go women are as dirty as men, and they shit all over toilets too.
We kept the door to the mens open so we could use the mirror to see if someone was doing drugs or smoking.
And now you must have the strongest bladder in the land. 
About the condition of mens restrooms throughout the land: I have noticed that it has less to do with gender and more to do with expectations. When I walk into a fancy restaraunt or club’s restroom, it is absolutely pristine no matter the time of day I’ve entered. This can not just be the cleaning staff, although I’m sure they play a pretty major contributing factor. No, men go into those restrooms expecting to find them neat and clean. However, a public men’s restroom evokes totally different expectations and permissions. Men write crude things on the wall and make serious messes because they know in some vague way its “allowed” by society, indeed almost demanded.
Veteran of the illustrious Los Angeles Unified School District here. I never saw a stall door that I can remember in 12 years of school. I can remember taking one shit at school in all those years - I had diarrhea in 3rd grade and was made fun of for using the facilities. Yeah, it was humiliating, but it probably pales in comparison to the countless stomach aches, gas pains, and general discomfort experienced over those 12 shit-holding years.
Male checking in here. The worst situation I have come across was the University of Pittsburgh*, which I attended from 87-91. Not only were there no stall doors, but they had two rows of stalls facing each other!. Not only were you on public display while doing your thing, you faced the grim spectre of some dude copping a squat not 15’ directly in front of you. Now, it was never crowded enough that this happened to me. There seemed to be an unwritten “not across” rule (similar to the one empty urinal between rule), but the thought enough was horrifying.
I’m not at all shy about #1 around other men, such as trough-type urinals. But I want no part of even peripherally seeing another guy lay some cable, or even worse, witnessing the wipe.
*For those familiar with Pitt, this was the “Cathedral of Learning”, the campus’ “signature” building.
I just tried looking up the stats on Safeco Field (home of the Seattle Mariners, opened in 1999) and I couldn’t find what I was looking for. One of the selling points on the tour, as I recall, was that there were about 32 women’s restrooms around the concourse, and about 18 for men. I can’t recall the precise figures and I didn’t find them on the official Safeco Field website, but it appears modern stadia are making strides in the direction of the bathroom.
FISH
Wait, maybe I should rephrase that…
BlackNGold, all I have to say is :eek: to the idea of thrones facing each other. That’s just wrong.
Oh, and the University of Pittsburgh isn’t by any chance where you got your username, eh?
No doors on bathroom stalls??I have never heard anything like this, and neither has my SO. We both grew up and went to school in Québec, but have also travelled quite a bit (though mostly in the rest of Canada and Europe). I can’t believe that this is the case anywhere- how humiliating!
I know the shower areas in schools tend to be different. In my high school, the girls had stalls and curtains, but the boys had no curtains. I believe the reasoning given was that they got torn down WAY too often, and so the school stopped putting them back up. I seem to recall a difference in their lockers too, because they consistently became damaged. Boys tend to be rowdier, in my experience, and schools just figure its easier to take something away than to try and absorb the cost of constant replacement.
Though no stall doors…shudder