Also, Steve makes a good point!

The social attitude might be eliminated if women could feel free to say stuff like “Excuse me, I gotta take a crap/sh*t/dump, I’ll be back in 10 minutes” or stuff like that. Or maybe not, I don’t know. What would you think?

Of course, it’d help too if we didn’t get stupid relationship advice “experts” suggesting that sharing time in the bathroom (of the “I know you’re showering but I need to take a shit, I’m coming in” variety) erodes eroticism and sexuality because, you know, there are some things couples just shouldn’t share, and how will a man ever be able to think of his wife/girlfriend the same way if he has to smell her shit? (I can’t find the article, it was probably on Yahoo though.)

Also, I am one of those people who will get constipated because I can’t take a crap if there are other people in the house, let alone within hearing or smelling range, and if I absolutely have to I go around checking to ensure that no one will need the bathroom for a good half hour. (We only have one bathroom. I think it should be illegal to build single-restroom places but that’s just me.)

Back onto the topic of unisex bathrooms and not my plumbing problems — I’m wholly in favour of them, for all of the reasons you’ve mentioned, and no, I don’t think liability is some kind of excuse. You’re just as vulnerable in segregated restrooms and nobody’s sued for being harassed in one of those yet, have they?

The only argument I can see, so far, is maintaining the difference in line length because damn it is nice to be able to just sneak into the guys’ room when the women’s line is too friggin’ long.

I would support unisex bathrooms as long they have urinals in them..

Keeping the urinals would definitely be a good idea. In my mind I imagine them being off to one side of the stalls with a divider blocking the urinals from casual onlookers.

Some Guy said:

The social attitude might be eliminated if women could feel free to say stuff like “Excuse me, I gotta take a crap/sh*t/dump, I’ll be back in 10 minutes” or stuff like that. Or maybe not, I don’t know. What would you think?

Well, I’m the type of person who has to purposefully remember to not say that kind of thing in polite company, so I’m not the best person to ask about that social convention.

Personally, I think unisex bathrooms would probably do a lot to ease that kind of pressure, but if not there’s always the option of what Japan does in a lot of its washrooms: add a machine that emits the sound of running water in order to mask the sound of urinating and/or defecation. Some of them also apparently also release air freshener to mask the smell.

I’ve seen powder rooms in a lot of department stores in the US.

Given that throughout history, men are “supposed” to be the stinky, gross gender, while women are “supposed” to be perfectly clean and neat, how could they ever admit that their glorious and clean bodies produce the same brown stuff that us dirty stinky guys do.

Pretty silly, huh? It is a subtle social attitude nonetheless. It may be still necessary to keep the genders separate, or men might figure out the big “secret”. There might be a lot of nervousness, if women feel the need to maintain the illusion, or if men should otherwise be totally ignorant of the processes of the standard human digestive system.

I guess it will have to be 3 bathrooms like they have here in Newfoundland: Men, Women, and Unisex (usually called “Family”).

The social attitude might be eliminated if women could feel free to say stuff like “Excuse me, I gotta take a crap/sh*t/dump, I’ll be back in 10 minutes” or stuff like that. Or maybe not, I don’t know. What would you think?

It’s pretty weird how these attitudes occur. I’m pretty sure most people know that women indeed do defecate anyway. Heck, some heterosexual men even have a scat fetish. And somebody invented the term “Waffle Crapper”, Urban Dictionary could tell you more about it.

I personally wouldn’t mind having all unisex bathrooms.

What about the shared bathrooms being brought _down_ to the level of uncleanliness of the men’s? That could happen just as easily I think.

That possibility, obviously, exists. However, I think that in most of the cases it’s more likely that the standard would be brought up, rather than down. One reason being that what most women will tolerate in, say, a gas station bathroom they’re much less likely to tolerate in, say, a mall’s bathroom and another being that people tend to feel more pressure to “put their best face forward” in mixed company, so there would likely be more effort made on the individual person’s part to be cleanly.

I’ve never seen one of those ‘powder rooms’ you speak of.

They’re much more prevalent in Japan, granted, but they do exist in the States. I’ve seen them in malls and on some of the Washington State Ferries, for instance.

Increased safety through better dividers can be implemented independently from shared bathrooms.

My point was that the false sense of security that exists currently with gendered bathrooms is a hindrance to increased security measures. Unisex bathrooms would get rid of that false sense of security and therefore the barrier to implementing better safety measures as well.

DoveArrow said:

Men’s bathrooms are, on average, not as clean as women’s, because, for whatever reason, some men actively vandalize their bathroom facilities.

One thing to consider, though, is the difference between a homosocial environment and a heterosocial one. Men tend to be on much worse behaviour in an environment that’s all guys versus when they’re in mixed company and this undoubtedly applies to bathroom etiquette too. I think that most men would be less likely to do something lewd/disgusting if they thought they would be caught doing it by a woman.

rebelleink: Re: liability: That would be a possibility if it was a single company that moved to implement the policy, but not so if it was done under government mandate.

In terms of sexual assault, I believe that if implemented with increased security measures (the change in stall type is just one possibility; others include having the washing area be visible by staff, in cases of places like malls having a security guard patrol the area, etc) the actual reduction in sexual assault would outweigh the ability to use “it was a misunderstanding” as an excuse (which is not much of an excuse, anyway, since the communal area would act like any public place and sexual harassment/assault happens in public places all the time). Not to mention that with just one bathroom there is likely to be people there during most times, making it harder for a potential assaulter to have the necessary alone time with their victim to commit the crime (this is similar to steve’s point).

The occasional male abuser (pervert, rapist, bully..etc) would not have the advantage of being the only man amongst women. Other men would act as a policing presence.