A Simple Solution To The Bathroom Wars

[Jenny A]

Unisex bathrooms are the simple solution.

If all restrooms were unisex, no one would have to declare their sex in order to pee. It would also curb the hysteria over transgenders who merely wish to releive theselves. Simple.

Unisex restrooms would also solve a number of other social difficulties including: adults who need physical help in the restroom, but whose primary caretaker, or companion for the day, is of the opposite sex; parents or other persons looking after children of the opposite sex; and people looking after retarded people or people with dementia who are of the opposite sex; persons cleaning restrooms used by the opposite sex.

Unisex restrooms would also even out the line between the mens and the womens rooms. Urinals could be partitioned off from the main room to allow men (anyone with a functioning penis in this case) to do their business with the usual speed.

It would be considerably cheaper in buildings where more than 60 or 70 percent of the people using the building are of the same sex.

Many college dorms already have unisex restrooms without incident. Many business have made single stall restrooms unisex already. Portland business are building with single sex multi stall restrooms already. So far the sky hasn't fallen. There is no sudden uptick in sexual assault.

Why not go unisex?

[Alex K]

But then, transsexual women could disguise themselves as gay men and rape me. You see the problem too, right?

[Aoi Magi]

But then, transsexual women could disguise themselves as gay men and rape me. You see the problem too, right?

Well just pretend to be a transsexual man disguised as a lesbian... problem solved

[Jenny A]

While we are on the topic, how many of you have used the wrong sex bathroom in extremities like this? There are two single stall bathrooms and the one for your sex is being cleaned, out of order or has twenty people waiting. I have for all of those reasons. And where the womens room was out of order and not many people around I've used the multi stall mens. Anyone else?

[Crossless2.0]

I think it's a reasonable idea. However, this is the country in which a woman's breasts can't be shown on network television, supposedly to protect the innocence of the kids who will witness thousands of simulated homicides on those same networks before they hit adulthood; in which some people still freak out if a woman nurses in public; and in which a disturbing number of grown men and women either giggle or cover their eyes like schoolchildren at the sight of public nudity (at a beach, say). Repressed, uptight, and prurient is a lousy environment in which to foster the notion that people could just take care of their business in a unisex facility without a bunch of fuss.

Yes, yes, I know . . . there would be stalls. But I just can't imagine a significant percentage of people in the U.S. wrapping their heads around the idea, much less supporting it. Not anytime soon, anyway.

[Jenny A]

I think it's a reasonable idea. However, this is the country in which a woman's breasts can't be shown on network television, supposedly to protect the innocence of the kids who will witness thousands of simulated homicides on those same networks before they hit adulthood; in which some people still freak out if a woman nurses in public; and in which a disturbing number of grown men and women either giggle or cover their eyes like schoolchildren at the sight of public nudity (at a beach, say). Repressed, uptight, and prurient is a lousy environment in which to foster the notion that people could just take care of their business in a unisex facility without a bunch of fuss.

Yes, yes, I know . . . there would be stalls. But I just can't imagine a significant percentage of people in the U.S. wrapping their heads around the idea, much less supporting it. Not anytime soon, anyway.

And yet doms across the country have them, with showers no less.

[Joods]

While we are on the topic, how many of you have used the wrong sex bathroom in extremities like this?  There are two single stall bathrooms and the one for your sex is being cleaned, out of order or has twenty people waiting.  I have for  all of those reasons.  And where the womens room was out of order and not many people around I've used the multi stall mens. Anyone else?

I fully admit to doing this. We have this hole-in-the-wall bar in town that has those "one at a time" bathrooms. The line for the women's bathroom would be ten deep. I would often bypass that line, knock on the men's door and get a friend to watch it for me so I could go pee. 

Hey... when you gotta go... you gotta go!

[SteelCurtain]

The problem comes for high traffic areas like schools and malls. Single occupancy unisex bathrooms are not an efficient solution. Also, requiring small businesses to pay for changing a multi occupancy bathroom into single occupancy would be too burdensome.

The solution, in my mind, is education. If we dispel the ignorant views about what transgender is and isn't, we can make significant changes in a pretty short time, like with gay marriage.

[Crossless2.0]

I think it's a reasonable idea. However, this is the country in which a woman's breasts can't be shown on network television, supposedly to protect the innocence of the kids who will witness thousands of simulated homicides on those same networks before they hit adulthood; in which some people still freak out if a woman nurses in public; and in which a disturbing number of grown men and women either giggle or cover their eyes like schoolchildren at the sight of public nudity (at a beach, say). Repressed, uptight, and prurient is a lousy environment in which to foster the notion that people could just take care of their business in a unisex facility without a bunch of fuss.

Yes, yes, I know . . . there would be stalls. But I just can't imagine a significant percentage of people in the U.S. wrapping their heads around the idea, much less supporting it. Not anytime soon, anyway.

And yet doms across the country have them, with showers no less.

True. That's why I think this is an idea whose time will come when those people accustomed to such arrangements from college come into power (for lack of a better way of putting it). I doubt many Boomers would get behind such a proposal.

[Doubting Thomas]

I've thought that we should do this. I mean, what's wrong with having a husband and wife both go into the same restroom albeit different stalls? Unisex bathrooms would make it a hell of a lot easier when I'm out alone with my young daughter and she has to go potty.

But, it will never happen in this country. With all the hysteria of men dressing up as women in order to peek at our young daughters (what's keeping them from doing that now if they really want to? Why is it that criminals will always get guns no matter what laws are passed, but a simple law will keep male creepers out of women's restrooms?), we're sure to hear even more rabid hysteria from conservatives over "What if my young daughter has to go to the bathroom and a man is in there and attacks her?"