Posted on 11/23/2019 6:34:44 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
In 1987, a man, a woman, and their daughter attended a Tchaikovsky concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The most notable thing about their outing, all these years later, is something that actually wasn’t the least bit unusual: The two women waited in an interminably long line for the bathroom, while the man did not.
What separates their uncomfortable experience from those of innumerable others is that the man in their party was a California state senator. After witnessing just how long his family members had to wait, he introduced legislation to guarantee the state’s women more toilets.
In the three decades since, dozens of cities and states have joined the cause of “potty parity,” the somewhat trivializing nickname for the goal of giving men and women equal access to public toilets. These legislative efforts, along with changes to plumbing codes that altered the ratio of men’s to women’s toilets, have certainly helped imbalances in wait times, but they haven’t come close to resolving them.
“It still remains a huge problem today, overall,” says Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the issue for more than a decade. The issue persists for many reasons: the exigencies of real estate, the building codes that govern construction, and, of course, sexism.
One would think that developers could neutralize this problem by simply building more toilets for women. And they could—there’s no rule or regulation that would stop them. They’re beholden to local or state plumbing codes, but those only stipulate the minimum number of toilets for men and women in a given building, based on occupancy numbers and use.
Anything that exceeds those prescribed minimums becomes a question of spending. “From an economic standpoint, it doesn’t make much sense to increase the number of toilet fixtures if that’s going to decrease the amount of rentable area in a building,” says Christopher Chwedyk, a building-code consultant at the firm Burnham Nationwide. In other words, toilets don’t make money (and are quite expensive to install), so developers don’t have a financial reason to go beyond what the code requires.
Chwedyk told me about the variety of ways in which building design does account for occupants’ time. Most urgently, developers bring in experts who estimate how long it takes to exit a building, in case of an emergency. Less life-threatening considerations get attention, too. There are traffic consultants who model the building’s contributions to nearby congestion, and even estimators of elevator wait times. But it’s rare for developers to undertake any sort of timing study for bathrooms, even though it’s not clear that waiting for a toilet is any less important than waiting for an elevator.
Meghan Dufresne, an architect at the nonprofit Institute for Human Centered Design, says it’s hard for potty-parity advocates like her to go up against the end goals of real-estate companies. “Nobody is paid for work in this area,” she says. “There’s no career for this, so I think it’s a hard sell to get people to provide extra restrooms.”
If most developers aren’t going to install more toilets than are required by local or state plumbing codes, then perhaps the solution is to change the requirements. Indeed, that strategy has produced a measure of progress in the past three decades.
To understand how much better regulations have gotten on the issue of wait times, it helps to understand just how horrendous they were. The customs of public-restroom construction began to coalesce in the 19th century. Then, “the main concern of the male city fathers was to provide toilets for men, whose role in public space was accepted and indeed regarded as important to the industrial economy,” writes Clara Greed, an urban-planning scholar in the United Kingdom, in her contribution to the 2010 academic anthology Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing. “From the outset,” she explained, “public toilet provision for women was seen as an extra, as a luxury, or as problematic in other respects.”
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Actually, I've been to too-many-to-count sporting events through the years and this has ALWAYS been a problem.
I was in line to use the bathroom at Lambeau Field (Packers, Green Bay, WI) and literally ALL of us gals were pretty much down to our skivies IN LINE after peeling off our snow mobile suits, long undies, etc. so we'd each be able to 'go' as quickly as we could and give the gal behind us a break!
And, according to this article, not much has changed!
Instead, the lines are longer what with all the dudes in wigs and dresses waiting to get in.
I’m very thankful for my convenient hose attachment.
But I agree should have more toilets for women.
Male envy is the root of the left’s hatred of men. Men can get in and out of restrooms quickly because nature lets us relieve ourselves faster, no need to adjust straps, reapply makeup and jabber at the mirror. Men almost never talk in a restroom, certainly not to strangers, we just get in and out. Women and girly boys hate us for it.
But... but...men and women are equal.
Until they are not.
“After witnessing just how long his family members had to wait, he introduced legislation to guarantee the state’s women more toilets.”
It's just dirtier in the men's room. Plus, when the urinals are all occupied, men just go into the stalls to urinate there. We don't worry too much about whether seats are up or down either.
I feel for ya. I really do. What I never understood is why the lines move so slowly. I know you have to sit to do all your business, but neither of my wives spent an inordinate amount of time in the john.
Men’s rooms have urinals and toilets. Women’s rooms have toilets only wrt to eliminatory functions. I have no idea if there are more toilets in women’s restrooms than in mens’ but if there aren’t, there should be.
Would that be sufficient to resolve the inequity? If not, what would be?
Because women waste time checking their make-up and chit-chatting and washing their hands.
Every solution I came up with would get me a timeout.
Quityerwhining. Self-identify as a man for a couple of minutes and use the men’s room.
FWIW this past May my wife and I spent a month traveling from Budapest to London, first on a 15 Viking River Cruise to Amsterdam, and then a week in Paris and a week in London, before flying home.
In many locations on the continent, the bathrooms were co-ed. The stalls were available to anyone, with the urinals on the other side of a dividing wall.
Seemed to work fine and no one except us tourists seem to think it was strange. But we got used to it pretty quickly.
Wait a minute ! There’s a website out there called www.stand2pee.com. They have a complete step-by-step program that teaches girls/women how to stand to pee. They guarantee that any woman that follows through with the program will be able to pee in a urinal as accurately as any guy by only pulling down their zippers, like a guy. Of course they must be willing to use the men’s room at public forums. So ladies,stop whining about the lines at lady’s rooms.
The company’s slogan—Point with your hips, not with your lips.
It’s not this way at new stadiums
It’s the opposite
Titan field Nashville men wait women don’t
The guy in the movie Bachelor Party was quite upset to find out his date peed standing up.
Trying to change the building code to solve a very uncommon problem doesn't make much sense. A better approach would be to focus on the places where the problem occurs, and design those facilities to reduce the problem.
That said, if you have enough of a crowd you end up with a line. Anybody who has tried to get out of the area around Gillette Stadium after a game knows that.
Funny thing is, I'm recovering from C.Diff. It is a horrible disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhea. I was at Home Depot when I felt an "accident" coming on. I ran to the men's room but every stall was in use. I couldn't wait. So I dashed out and ran into the women's room. Thank God the women's room was completely empty with plenty of stalls. I grabbed a stall and saved myself much embarrassment and horror..
By the way, a word of warning, STAY AWAY from PPIs (proton pump inhibitors) That would be drugs like Prilosec, Nexium, Pepcid AC, etc. These are a major cause of C Diff and were my only risk factor. God heartburn? Take Tums.
The NIH, FDA, NHS UK, and Health Canada have all released reports citing the risk of taking PPIs and developing C Diff. The FDA report alone cites 27 independent studies which back up their conclusion. Google them and read the reports.
PPIs are poison and should carry a prominent waring label.Trust me, you NEVER want to risk getting C Diff. it almost killed me.
Saw that at Minute Maid Park, too, during WS.
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