# Why do some places segregate men's and women's bathrooms when there's only one toilet in each room? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 28, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731 "2015-04-28T17:50:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/42 "2015-04-30T17:11:18Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Multi-toilet restrooms in the US do sometimes have bins in each stall- but in the places I would know about, there’s not a separate company coming to empty them. Yeah, that was the part I found weird — treating used tampons like biohazards. ---
**Author:** ![Turpentine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@Turpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turpentine)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/43 "2015-04-30T20:10:46Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I think what **Disgscen** has in mind is a person _hiding/lurking_ in a single-stall bathroom, in such a way that a woman wouldn’t see him until she enters and closes the door (maybe by standing behind the door). And the fact that he’s not doing anything wrong or noticeable by entering the room in the first place makes it easier for him to do so. > > Having said that…I don’t think any of the examples **Disgscen** linked to actually worked that way. I can’t tell whether any of them involved single-stall bathrooms, let alone any that were unisex; and many of them clearly were not. Yes, this would be a pretty tedious and unreliable way to sexually assault women, if you think about it. If it’s a unisex, single-occupancy stall, the prospective rapist would have to enter the stall, leave it unlocked, then hide behind the door until a woman came along to use the restroom. And who knows when that will be? He could be waiting a long, long time, depending on how crowded or deserted the public restroom is. And if it’s a high-traffic, busy place with this said restroom, there could be roughly a 50-50 chance that the next person to enter the unisex stall would be a man, and once that man shuts the door, the rapist is no longer hidden. Hope the potential rapist is fairly large and not terribly choosy… ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/44 "2015-05-01T01:46:28Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > How do they handle the situation of transgender or “people in gender transition”? I think all places will need 4 bathrooms. Kurt Vonnegut was way ahead of this story, when he described Tralfamadorians as having seven sexes, all of which were apparently necessary to produce more Tralfamadorians. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/45 "2015-05-01T01:50:54Z")
> [@Cayuga](#): > > Yeah, that was the part I found weird — treating used tampons like biohazards. Maybe a bit weird or paranoid, given these paranoid times we live in. But it’s increasingly trendy to treat ALL human waste and bodily fluid remnants as radioactive biohazardous toxic waste. I’m surprised the toilets themselves aren’t disposable single-use units already. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/46 "2015-05-01T02:29:03Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Women also have a tendency to squat & hover rather than make contact with the toilet seat. Or try to flush feminine hygiene products instead of using the bin by the toilet. Or just leave them on the toilet seat or floor. Women are _not_ intrinsically less messy than men. Once I had to use the restroom at a pharmacy where an employee has to use the keypad to let you in. The men’s was out of order, so I went into the women’s. The bowl was caked with mostly dry menstrual blood. ---
**Author:** ![busterpickle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@busterpickle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/busterpickle)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/47 "2015-05-01T03:57:20Z")
My experience has been that in a dual-use bathroom, the women tend to be more messy. Not that they actually are, it’s just that there is much social pressure for males not to be. It’s pretty obvious too. If a guy misses it’s usually in one spot as we have a fairly strong stream that can go quite the distance. Women do the hover thing and as the urethra is not as long there is more of a spray/mist pattern going on. If they do sit, you’ll notice a urine residue at the top, underside, of the seat when you pick it up. That’s no guy. ---
**Author:** ![sparky\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/77aa72/32.png) [@sparky\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sparky_1)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/48 "2015-05-02T23:26:19Z")
The SDMB is slacking. Everyone knows it’s because of cooties. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/49 "2015-05-03T01:52:27Z")
> [@sparky\_1](#): > > The SDMB is slacking. Everyone knows it’s because of cooties. The younger generation of SDMB users [may not even know what cooties are](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Cootie). ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731/50 "2015-05-04T16:28:39Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > It’s been my life experience that women’s public toilets are several magnitudes dirtier than men’s public toilets. The only exception is a business that has strict cleaning rules for its public toilets, in this case, both are immaculate, all of the time. That was my experience, way back when I was a teenager bagging groceries at the corner supermarket. The baggers had to clean the restrooms, and the womens room was _always_ skankier than the men’s room. Always. The idea that men are messier than women is what they call a “polite fiction.” 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-places-segregate-mens-and-womens-bathrooms-when-theres-only-one-toilet-in-each-room/718731.md?page=2)