Then you either need to move or stop going places dressed as a man where you are likely to be physically harmed for doing so. Unisex bathrooms are not the answer.
So you want everyone else to change to accomidate you? You (and I’m speaking in the plural, since you are apparently speaking for “your kind”) are a small fraction of the population. We need to teach tolerance instead of forcing people to do things that most aren’t comfortable with, such as pooping in front of strangers of the opposite sex.
You’re right. I didn’t really give any good reasons. I’m sorry.
Consider this. If you’re building a new restroom and you can build either two rooms with two stalls or one room with four stalls, what happens when one of the four stalls breaks down? In the segregated case, one room is cut to 50% capacity while the other room is still at 100%. In the integrated case, it’s just the one room cut to 75%. It’s just more efficient.
I recently found it necessary to use the men’s room at a local mall. To my vast surprise, a young man (20ish) had a young girl (5ish-6ish) beside him as he stood at the urinal. I can only suppose he had an emergency, and had no one with whom he could leave the girl–his daughter? Niece? I dunno. Anyway, she was very curious as to what was going on at the other urinals. Fortunately for me, the guy finished up and left with her before I got to an available urinal. First time in my life I have encountered this situation and I hope it is the last. This situation, to me, is a reason NOT to have unisex public bathrooms—family bathrooms, yes.
Family bathrooms, IMO, make it easier on the family AND easier on everyone else. I don’t have children, but I have a bunch of nieces and nephews and have dragged them all around with me extensively. When you have several small children in tow, and there is only one adult, a family bathroom is a simply wonderful option. There’s room to take all of them in with you at once. This means you can prevent them from touching icky things (the yellow stain on the toilet, for instance), supervise bathroom activities (wiping and pulling up pants where needed), change diapers, AND prevent your small band of hooligans from driving other patrons to distraction. If you’ve never had this experience, I can see how you might not know what exactly a family bathroom is for, but believe me, they’re probably enhancing your experience as well as the family.
As for unisex bathrooms, I can only offer opinion. I would HATE it. Mr. Cur wouldn’t like it, either, but he’s not quite as vehement as I.
I have to say I have seen some rather androgynous looking individuals myself. I believe that some simply grew that way, while others were in a process of rebirth. And I’ve heard, but I could be wrong, that therapists “assign homework” to people who are undergoing sexual reassignment, and part of this homework is to live completely as a woman or a man. The patient doesn’t get to decide “Today I’ll go about my business as a man” or “Today I’ll be a woman”, the patient MUST dress and act like the appropriate sex.
It’s not just transsexuals that would benefit from having simply public restrooms, as opposed to men’s and women’s rooms. A lot of women are afraid to let their gradeschool sons use the men’s room without supervision. Individual people may vary as to whether they think that the mother in question is being properly cautious or downright paranoid, but it is happening, and it will continue to happen until and unless we get guards in public restrooms. And as more fathers become more active in the upbringing of their children, they are going to need to cope with their daughters’ potty needs.
While I don’t think that most men need to see a tampon changed right before their very eyes, I don’t really believe that most of them would be scarred for life if they saw a woman take a tampon into a stall.
If you take urinals out of the equation, you have radically reduced the overall efficiency.
I don’t care a whit about unisex bathrooms; but abolishing urinals would piss me off. No seat to touch, no door to touch, and ideally an electronic sensor for flushing. Don’t have to touch anything.
Lynn’s post isn’t relevant to me personally, since I’m not at that point yet, but it’s very relevant to a good number of transgendered individuals. Once you reach a certain point in transitioning, you don’t get to choose whether you go out as your identified sex, you either always live as it or you go back to square one.
I think you really don’t understand what’s involved in being transgendered if you think that “well, then don’t dress that way if you might get hurt” is a valid response.
And MGibson, the benefit in a multi-user unisex bathroom is that there’s no way that I get seen as the wrong sex for the bathroom, since there is no wrong sex.
That said, I still on all levels prefer the unisex single user ones. They’re very impractical as the only option in any place with significant traffic, but I think there should be more of those at least as another option.
What do you mean by that? The bathroom in the Bodoni domicile is unisex (and it gets visited by another species, too, as our cats love to join us and make comments), but the public restrooms in, say, the hospital or my favorite restaurant all have signs on them, designating which sex is allowed to use that restroom. I only know of a couple of unisex bathrooms in business establishments. Usually, when the available potty is unisex, it’s because there’s only one public restroom. I haunt a couple of used book stores, and they generally have one public restroom, with one stall, one sink, and occasionally a urinal, which is used by any human who happens to need it at the time, if it’s available.
In the bigger and more mainstream shops and restaurants, though, there are two public restrooms, and they are clearly labelled as to which sex is supposed to use them.
Uh, right. We’re supposed to just knuckle under and change our lives because of a bunch of thugs who think that their petty notions are more important? Thuggery is indefensible, and placing the onus of avoiding thuggery on the victims is reprehensible. It’s not like we have much choice about being transsexual, either.
I was in the same situation (reversed) as Daikona, although at this point in my life I pass well enough as to not get questioned anymore. But if I were out and about today (not having shaved in four days) I’d probably get the odd look, at the very least.
Yes, we want everyone else to change to accomodate our needs. We think that respect for human dignity should be mandatory, and think that demanding that people respect our dignity is very reasonable.
In that people would then be able to fucking use the bathroom in a public building without getting harassed or assaulted for gender outlawry for so doing.
Mmm, tough call. I have the greatest sympathy for the transgendered people who simply want to live and let live, and yet I can’t see reorganizing every restroom in the country on the basis of this alone.
To me, the ideal solution is to have multi-stall restrooms definitely set aside for “men” and “women,” and some other rooms “extra.” The biggest advantage of the gender labels is psychological, really; it provides a place that is safe, or perceived to be so. As already noted, the ladies can cluster in one room and talk Girl Stuff. Guys have their own room to vandalize. And there would possibly be some individual rooms—not a large room full of stalls, but some unisex one-stool one-sink rooms—set up for anybody.
That way, you have an overflow section of toilets available to either gender, which people can spill into (urrgh, bad choice of words) depending on need. If the facility is the football stadium and it’s Green Bay vs. Minnesota on Fifty Cent Bratwurst Day, the guys might need the extra stalls. If the stadium is being used for a Michael Bolton concert, maybe the women will need them more. (Or maybe lots of people just feel like throwing up. Who knows.)
The unisex idea for all bathrooms… I dunno. Everyone’s objections are based on what you do in the bathrooms now but I’m more worried about what kind of hijinks people will think up with the restrooms are co-ed. Would you want your eight-year-old walking in on a couple having sex on the sinks? (Mind you, I think we’re too uptight about our bodies and our sexuality, but good grief, that couple should get a room.)
Exactly how many people are we reorganizing all these bathrooms for again? If it’s just for the transexuals, I can’t see it happening, simply because there just aren’t enough transexuals to justify the costs.
Why shouldn’t any single stall restroom be marked as unisex? All it would cost is the sign.
When my husband was ill with stones and infections, sometimes he would pass out wiht pain when trying to use the restroom. I would go in with him in single use to prevent him from getting hurt if he collapsed. I had to go in and get him when he collapsed in a men’s room. The men in there, who did not seem to mind him passed out in the floor, jeered me for coming in. They would not jeer me in the hall, but presumably, because it was a mens only area, they jeered any female who dared enter. Presumably unisex restrooms would eliminate this kind of harrassment. This recent flair up started over some U of C single facilities, very silly indeed.
It is not just transgenders who would benefit. Parents with their children, anyone who needs assistance from a caretaker not the same sex, as well as the victims of bad architecture would benefit from every restroom being designated for people, not just certain people. Numerous buildings I know of have restrooms less than optimally distributed. It sometimes means walking across the building or down a couple floors in a couple of cases it has meant dong both.
More and more, there are restrooms that get flipped from Ladies to Mens depending on the crowd makeup. Why not just mark these as unisex?
Maybe we should step back and ask…
What is the purpose in having separate toilet facilities for each gender? Most of what we do in there is identical, so there seems little reason in creating huge extra areas for us to be able to wash our hands in single-sex environments.
That’s neither a terribly likely situation, nor something that’s actually prevented by putting a little sign on the door that states one gender or the other.
And Lord Ashtar, I wish you would be a little less snippy at me. All I ever really said as far as pushing it was that I would personally like it. Not that I expect every bathroom everywhere to be changed for me. Not that I’m going to get pissy if it isn’t changed. Just that I would like it. Since if I remember correctly, the original question was what you thought of it. I’m sorry if having an opinion of them that differs from yours is really that terrible a thing.
Chisel: $10.00
“Washroom” sign: $2
Labour to knock off one sign and put up a new one, at $15/hr: $1
Not having to choose between a bladder infection and multiple contusions: priceless.