Talk:Sex segregation in public restrooms

Rename?
Perhaps would be a better title? Bongolian (talk) 04:48, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Europe
Not sure how useful this is as an insight, but in western Europe, it's perfectly acceptable to use the "wrong" restroom if there's a queue at your gender's. This happens a lot at parties where the women's restroom is queued up while the stalls in the men's room are empty (because everyone is peeing their beer away). More often than not, women will just go into the men's room to pee. On the other hand, tables for changing diapers are usually only in women's restrooms for some arbitrary (sexist) reason. As a father, I just walk into the women's restroom to change my child. I've never had anyone comment on it. In sauna's or other wellness facilities, restrooms and showers usually aren't segregated at all...

It's weird to see how much emphasis Americans still put on a thing that just doesn't matter here.


 * well, for the first example, the usualy problematic constellation is "Men in Womans Bathroom" due to the fear of sexual predators, which obviously means the first case is out. The second is due to the Man in this case having a clear and justifiable reason for being there (similar to how janitorial staff working in the "wrong" bathroom isn't aproblem). No objection to the third case though.--94.220.107.182 (talk) 10:53, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

My Braindead Students Union Decision
They made the single room disabled toilets "Gender Neutral Toilets" instead of turning some of the normal male/female toilets into just "toilets". These toilets are labelled GENDER NEUTRAL TOILETS (such a self pat on back) but still have the disabled sign for those who identify as handicapped. Annoys me anytime I see it, a genuine case of virtue signalling that doesn't help at all. Disabled toilets were already gender neutral, and the non binaries these toilets are meant to help are still segregated. Féinléiriú (talk) 11:44, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Sex segregation in Public Restrooms being obsolete
This article claims, that there is no need for sex segregated public restrooms/changing rooms anymore, and that anyone holding on to this is just holding on to a obsolete tradition from a bygone era. This is, unfortunately, not the case. Statistics show, that, despite less than half the changing rooms at swimming pools in the UK being unisex, 90% of complaints regarding sexual harassment, sexual assault and voyeurism are about incidents taking place in said unisex changing rooms https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html. Unisex facilities that are single user are obviously rather unproblematic (since them being single user means that it is impossible to be harassed by another occupant). So the best solution would probably be, to desegregate any single-user facilities, while in case of communal facilites a single-user unisex-facility (that anyone uncomfortable with using one of the gendered ones) should be added. --94.220.107.182 (talk) 11:12, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Even ignoring above augment, you can't just presume unisex toilets are obsolete from the argument stated. The argument is basically women didn't want to share restrooms when they joined the workforce, now there are more women in the workforce, ergo women don't care if they share restrooms now then they did back then. The conclusion does not come naturally from the arguments as provided, why would more women in the workforce make women okay with sharing restrooms now? You can argue the desire for sex segregated restrooms is cultural and thus illogical perhaps, but the argument that more women in the workforce somehow changes the cultural desire to avoid restrooms is not in any way proven. As to the claim that same sex restrooms are a result of women joining the workforce that's demonstrable false. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_public_toilet#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20Massachusetts,for%20women%20in%20the%20workplace. Wikipedia] says that sex segregated restrooms first appeared in 1739, laws started appearing for them in 1887 with the vast majority of states having such laws by 1920. By contrast women didn't really enter the workforce until WW2, every site I found cites 1930 as the earliest date for women joining the USA workforce. It seems sex-segregated restrooms clearly predated the women joining the workforce. The whole section should be removed as distracting, making unproven conclusions from a provable false starting premise, irrelevant to the real debate, and does not feel a 'rational' argument that a website that prides itself on rationality should be making. It sounds more like the nonsense this site should be debunking as a fallacious argument.


 * —cosmikdebris talk stalk 21:32, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't think the links completely supported what was contained in the text, so I rewrote that paragraph. BobJohnson (talk) 22:26, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

urinals
I made a change to the discussion around urinals. Not really too familiar with the subject so my contribution probably looks a bit weird. But what I do know is that urinals definitely do not take up more space than a toilet stall. Kauri0.o (talk) 02:32, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure. But I think the point is that you both a urinal and a toilet stall in a male bathroom and, unlike in a female bathroom, they usually have difference functions. GeeJayK (talk) 02:39, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * In a men's bathroom, one stall + one urinal, using lesser floor space, will offer near-identical functionality to that of two stalls. As long as the ratio of stalls-to-urinals is well-estimated, you should be able to have greater pee-poo capacity for a male bathroom than if you were to substitute those urinals for stalls. Kauri0.o (talk) 03:02, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree urinals need to be called out better, the arguments for/against sex segregated restrooms seems to presume urinals would not exist in shared restrooms, the fact that they *do* in many countries that don't segregate restrooms seems to prove that presumption is not necessarily true. I'd argue it makes sense for urinals to exist even in combined restrooms, those that can use them are much faster using them and more can be fit in a given amount of space. Speeding up a bit less then 50% of all restroom uses via urinals would benefit everyone, including females, by increasing restroom efficiency and thus decreasing lines-thus the reason so many countries include them in shared restrooms. Still I'm perfectly fine with including arguments for and against urinals, everyone doesn't have to agree their inclusion is the most logical design. What I don't like is other arguments making an unstated presumption of how unisex restrooms would look that seems questionable given what we know about existing unisex restrooms across the world. Call out your arguments, let people debate them, but don't make them an implicit presumption that we are asked to take for granted.


 * —cosmikdebris talk stalk 21:32, 17 January 2023 (UTC)