To gender neutral bathrooms, I say depends
To letting men into a woman's bathroom, I say bah humbug.
If there is a single room, often it is used by either sex.
But "bathrooms" mean many stalls.
a single room bathroom can and often is "unisex". No problem. Often these unisex bathrooms have a urinal on the wall, a place to wash your hands, and a nice solid lock on the door.
But for larger bathrooms, privacy is different.
Women have periods, for example, and often are embarrassed about it.
A decent woman's bathroom should have a couch for those with their periods to lay down on, and have larger disposal wastebaskets inside the stalls for pads etc. They also have vending machines for these things.
There are mirrors over the wash basins, to check out one's hair and makeup.
But since fixing one's makeup tends to slow down those who just want to wash their hands, a high quality women's bathroom often have a separate area for women to sit and apply makeup, outside the area where routine hand washing is done.
Men often wonder what takes women so long when they go to the rest room: This is why. Also, a lot of gossip goes on while you are applying mascara etc.
Modern PC Bathrooms often have a "baby" area to change a diaper (but the couch doubles for this in a traditional bathroom, as does the flat area at the end of the washbasin area in days).
But here is the problem no one wants to discuss:
we have to sit down.
Now, the dirty little secret is that women don't like to sit on a place where someone else has sat. Often they don't sit on the seat, which is often wet after flusing or worse, from the previous person. Yes, there is toilet paper and seat covers, but not in most bathrooms, and often these things clog up the bowl or quickly fill the trash hamper.
But most restrooms don't have these things, so it means partly undressing and doing your thing while trying not to sit on the seat which is "dirty" (even when it looks clean, women think it is "dirty").
And so often women simply don't go at all.
We docs see a lot of problems with these women who tend toward UTI's getting cystitis because they are traveling and don't drink water because they hate using a strange (read "dirty") bathroom.
This also complicates the life of those taking diuretics, aka "water pills". Many of my patients would skip the diuretic when they shopped, and end up in the emergency room with lungs full of fluid that night.
Another thing annoys me about this PC bullying: if you let transvestites use the bathroom, who would know? A good transvestite is not a threat. He/she usually looks and acts like a woman (often with exaggerated femininity, but a woman). So many women would simply not notice he was a she. He/she might even ask if anyone is bothered if he/she uses the place, and those who I know are very clean.
So what if a person is "transgender" and in "transition".
Again, why should one notice?
The fact that it is noticed, and women are noticing, is the problem. It means that they are not women. Meaning they have a mental problem and are now trying to force their mental problem on us.
And now that the latest fad is "transgender", it's become an epidemic some gay activists have decided their "rights" overrule our rights.
So why do the the other 99.4 percent of us have to bow down, leave behind our modesty and give into the tyranny of political correctness?
maybe because the rights of these few misbeguided folks are not the ultimate aim. The ultimate aim is to make the entire country "gender neutral". Hence t
he government has an interest in pushing Catholic sisters to provide contraception and abortifactive medicines, because hey, a pregnant lady is nature's way of saying men and women are different.
That is why the next step if
the claim is that we shouldn't have separate bathrooms at all.
Right now, the most prominent advocates for gender neutral bathrooms seem to be transgender individuals and allies. But efforts to integrate toilets have been carried out by different groups over time, and could also benefit diverse constituencies, particularly when we're talking about fully enclosed unisex toilet facilities. Such restrooms would be useful for parents of opposite-sex young children, adult caregivers of opposite-sex older parents, Muslims who perform ritual ablutions, transgender individuals, women who routinely face longer public restroom wait times, men whom "potty parity" laws have left with longer wait times, and anyone who's ever been inconvenienced because their assigned bathroom was undergoing cleaning with no alternative available.
Most of what he cites would not be made better by unisex bathrooms.
Right now, a simple request at the door would allow a man to help his wife into the handicapped stall if she is wheelchair bound. Similarly, a simple request will allow a man to ask a passing woman to check on his spouse with Alzheimer's who got lost.
But what about women worrying about boys in the men's room? Why should we worry? Well, again the reason is left out: Perverts. If my son is abused in a man's bathroom or sees open sex there, maybe what should be done is to arrest the perverts. Do things get better by letting the perverts do their thing in our restrooms?
The "potty paradigm" referred to also can be gotten around with a request: We women once just opened the empty men's room door and stood guard so we could use it when our group was running behind.
As for Muslims doing ritual ablution: You mean Muslim ladies would feel comfortable washing their feet in front of a man? I have no problem with letting Muslims use the handicapped area to do ablutions (most handicapped toilet stalls have sinks inside the stalls).
In short, for a fake reason (not to hurt the feelings of a protected group) the rest of us are supposed to lose our modesty over exposing our bodily functions to a strange person of the opposite sex.
finally, the real problem no one wants to talk about:
Men's rooms have urinals. Women's do no.
Would a unisex toilet have urinals, forcing men to urinate in front of women, or would they just force all the men to wait in line like women usually do, to use the stall for this.
Now the dirty little secret that all married women know is that men sometimes don't lift the toilet seat, and/or forget to put it down again.
so it's not a "civil rights" issue: the issue is pee on the toilet seat, and that a lot of women will avoid using the rest room at all because they are too embarrassed to do so.
