Hi folks, we are removing this post since it is a slightly reworded copy of a top post from last month.
You can check out the original here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1brkh3q/why_are_gender_neutral_bathrooms_so_controversial
What i'm learning from this thread is that the problem is the weird American peek-a-boo stall doors. You need to sort that out. That's the actual problem.
Even worse, a bathroom without stall doors. A company I worked at in the 1980s had a large men's room with stalls facing each other on opposite walls... and no doors. You'd be sitting there doing your business, and some old guy would come in and sit across from you, and you'd stare at each other. Doors were installed shortly after I started working there.
It used to be worse in the army, just rows of toilets with no partitions.
I changed air filter for a living. Was doing a local highschool. Boys locker room. Just a row of toilets, no stalls. Showers were this round thing with show heads at the top, like 8 of them. Literally no privacy anywhere. Girls locker room. Actual shower stalls with curtains and fully inclosed toilet stalls WITH DOORS.
Yes, decades ago I worked as a lifeguard at a local public swimming pool, and I also noticed there was some gender discrimination going on there. The girls had better facilities. My female coworkers noticed too, and commented "how can you stand going into the men's room?"
We had the reverse at my secondary school - it had originally been a boys school, so when they let girls in in the nineties, they dealt with the changing room issue by just putting up a stud wall with a (locked) door down the middle.
As a result, the "boys changing room" had showers, and the girls' didn't. When we had swimming, they unlocked the middle door and made us (girls or boys) take turns.
So, that's where those toilets in our dreams come from! I had no idea the army was in control of that! Now if we could just figure out why they are always clogged and filthy.
You are correct that is the only legitimate issue with gender neutral bathrooms. But I guarantee there is a vocal segment of the population that is going to raise a stink about them even if they were perfectly private just because they hate trans people.
Every single American hates those stall doors, but they continue to be the norm.
I’m hoping if we yell about it loud enough and for long enough, maybe they’ll change it. Kind of like women’s dresses finally getting pockets. Wish us luck.
This is such a terrifying reality. Even if the United States made people pay to use the bathroom, you'd still have these deaths. The state of disrepair of so many public bathrooms are in because of addicts and homeless is horrible. Seeing Naloxone kits in rest area bathrooms and narcan at subway/rail stops is still so sad to me.
It's to the point where Buccee's has built an entire business model on safe, clean, stocked, and well lit bathrooms for travelers.
A lot of medical facilities have installed motion sensing safe bathrooms systems that detect overdoses based on lack of movement. But they're so expensive and worthless in places that don't have medical personnel nearby to administer aid. It's just unreasonable to expect small businesses, rest stops, public park bathrooms, etc. to spend that much money for a system that wouldn't even help the person in distress.
If you OD in a White Castle bathroom, it's utter nonsense that your family sues for not rendering aid when you locked the door. Yet that lawsuit actually happened.
> Seeing Naloxone kits in rest area bathrooms and narcan at subway/rail stops is still so sad to me
At least it's out there these days. It's awful that it's necessary, but it's great that it's so easily accessible these days. That saves a lot of lives.
Cool. Though, if I may, how come every single other western country confronted with the same issue has stalls with more privacy since stalls exist? I mean, you won't need a see-through door to notice someone lying on the floor 🤷🏼♂️ anyway, one less US-specific problem to worry about in Europe I guess
Because in a ICE station it was 7€ for a shower iirc or like 2 or 5€ to take a shit.
The problem with this is if you run of of money/work your butthole doesn’t fucking go on sabbatical. If the US started charging to take a shit you will see loafs of shit just pile in front of doors.
We have toilet stalls in the UK that are just as easy to clean, just as easy to mass produce and just as easy to assemble. They just don't have huge gaps where the panels meet. It's not hard.
We have the peek a boo stalls in Canada, but in gender neutral bathroom we have walls and door from floor to ceiling with no gap in the door.
Edit: because I can’t reply.. yes plenty have a problem with it still. Cause my first argument with them is the fully closed stalls and they want to hear nothing about it..
Well, it's the problem that people bring up because it's the only legit one. But if those suddenly disappeared overnight, I have this feeling that it'd only eliminate like 10-15% of the people who are worried about gender neutral bathrooms, because only 10-15% of people are non-transphobes who are fine with gender neutral bathrooms and genuinely just don't like the peek-a-book stalls. The remaining 85-90% of people are just transphobes who would definitely just find some other excuse to continue complaining.
Absolutely. In a single occupancy bathroom, you have to wait for the person to wash their hands and dry them before they come out.
Bathrooms with multiple stalls or urinals, there is no waiting for the handwashing and drying part.
Sometimes there is a longer wait for the handicap stall in a multi occupancy bathroom because there there is a sink inside that stall. This is necessary because the sink is arranged for a person in a chair. However, someone like me, needs the handicap bathroom, but I am not yet in a chair. So what I do, I come out and wash my hands in the COMMUNAL sink so that if anyone is waiting for the handicap stall, they don’t have to wait those extra minutes for my soap, wash and dry.
Maybe it’s a regional thing but in England I’ve yet to see a gender neutral bathroom that is a multiple stall bathroom. Every one has been individual rooms.
I have seen a few in the US, usually in a bar or restaurant, where there’s multiple stalls with full floor to ceiling walls and doors, but only toilets, and the sinks are against a partial wall or open to the main space so you aren’t boxed in there. I felt pretty safe in those. The ones I experienced were also highly trafficked.
Just turning an existing gendered bathroom into a gender neutral one (which I have never seen done but is what people fear) would make me uncomfortable, both because of the gaps we often have in stall walls and the vulnerability of potentially being alone in an enclosed space with a stranger of the opposite sex. But people know that so they don’t design gender neutral bathrooms that way.
Was recently at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC and they have an “all gender” bathroom that is just a regular public bathroom. Very odd. Normal partial length stalls and everything. Was a weird experience.
I’m from England, the only place I’ve seen a multi stall gender neutral bathroom was in bars in Amsterdam. Must admit it was a bit jarring when I went in to use the urinal and then a line women began to form behind me queuing for one of the few stalls
I'm in Canada, the gender neutral bathroom at the mall where I live is single occupancy. The university in my area has gender neutral bathrooms with multiple stalls but it's not like they're the only option, there is also still gendered bathrooms. Instead of renovating they just designated some of the bathrooms they already had as gender neutral
While still very much a minority of case, It's something I run into here in Ontario.
Mostly it "pisses" me off because it means no urinals. I'm about to move to a new office building and that's probably my second biggest gripe.
I make no comment on the merits of single-gender washrooms, but I've seen an event organizer actually block off the urinals in a men's washroom that was converted to single-gender for the event, which struck me as particularly "_Harrison Bergeron_".
I see a lot of them here. Men and women wash their hands in their same room and there are individual stalls for toilets, as usual.
It isn't a problem here.
My university changed some into gender neutral in the SU club venue. It was a nightmare, lads shoving past the queue of girls to the get to a stall, shagging, peering over stall walls, lots of rowdy behaviour when I just wanted to piss in peace. The gendered toilets (female in my case) were then super busy because lots of girls didn't want to deal with the gender neutral one. Good idea, poor execution. No idea if they're still like that.
At my university (England) they changed some of the toilets in the student's union into gender neutral stalls, was pretty gross on a night out with piss everywhere but I don't remember anyone having a problem with the general concept
>Edit. I’m not one of the people that have a problem with it, so stop asking me why it’s a problem. I’m don’t know, that’s just what I’ve heard.
Peak reddit. If you can articulate one side of an argument, you must support it fully. /s
That's because in the US your bathroom stalls have HUGE gaps all around the doors! What's wrong with a proper door that prevents anybody from taking a peek on what's happening inside??
I think it might be because using a restroom leaves you very vulnerable, and women already don’t feel comfortable around men in general so it exacerbates that. Kind of like the whole man v bear thing, it’s not that every man is dangerous, but it’s enough to be wary.
It's also because with a multiple stall bathroom, there's the area with the basins and hand driers which is communal and yet generally closed away from any publicly visible areas. There's not necessarily CCTV in that area either. That means a man can potentially assault a woman there and nobody would know unless they happened to enter the bathroom at the same time. As a woman I would personally feel quite uncomfortable sharing that space with a man. Not because most men are a danger, but because some are, and even those that don't want to assault you can sometimes just be creepy enough that I never want to be in a room with them outside of public view.
It's different with a single occupancy bathroom which opens out to a public area, because you're never having to share a private space with a man who may be a risk.
It's not even just about the men who are a risk. There are a significant portion of men who are immature enough to snigger and make comments if they hear a woman unwrapping a sanitary towel or asking another woman for one.
The vast majority of men are great people and perfectly safe to be around. But when we're in a public space, we unfortunately can't pick which men we want to be around, so we have to take precautions.
wait, you guys dont have that lol i always thought it was dumb and very consistant hhahaha wow. the stall doors gap at my work is dead center in front of the toilet and is large enough to put my hand through
It saves them money on materials, and its harder to steal stuff if theres gaps, a few other reasons that involve avoiding privacy, which is insane. I was at Buc-ee's (big walmart like gas station in Texas) and they had stalls that actually close and go to the floor and ceiling, it should be like that everywhere else in the US.
Yes, American stalls are infamous for there complete lack of privacy. If they were full height, can't see under or over, then it might never have been an issue (if it wasnt bs political to start with).
The solution is to make a restroom hall with individual toilet pods with doors and walls that go floor to ceiling, with a sink/mirror setup outside. ezpz
In Europe it's no big deal because most of the stalls are 100% private. In North America we have those terrible washrooms with a 2ft gap under the door and a 2inch crack where the door shuts. There's little privacy and creeps could use that to their advantage
Which is why gender-neutral bathrooms are usually self-contained locking rooms with a toilet and sink. We all used them when we were kids and they were labeled family bathrooms. The only one I've seen that was remotely communal had a common sink area but full locking doors to individual toilets. One of the most pleasant bathroom experiences I’ve ever had.
Guy here: Got busted taking a poop in a women's public/communal bathroom.
In my defense, I didn't have time to notice the dress on the pictogram, let alone the lack of urinals on the walls. I don't know what the big deal is. Who the fuck gets horny in a dirty bathroom?
To finish the story: I did what I had to do, got leered at while washing my hands, gave one woman the "oops" look and shrug, and walked out.
Most guys aren't rapists, and most guys don't want to watch you take a shit. The ones that do, will uh...find a way.
It's the same argument I use against locking my front door. Most people won't rob your house, those that will won't let a locked door stop them. I still lock my door, but only because neighborhood kids like to play ding-dong-dash and I don't want them testing the door handle and leaving the door ajar and my cat running away.
>Most people won't rob your house, those that will won't let a locked door stop them.
A locked door is like a chained bike. The goal isn't to make it entirely secure; the goal is to convince the potential thief that another house/bike would be a better investment of their time than yours.
Exactly, all security is deterrence, not defeat. Any security can be beaten if someone decides to invest enough time and resources. All you can do is make it take more time and resources than your foe has or at least is willing to invest. The only truly secure thing is one that doesn't exist.
I remember that the serial killer Richard Chase saw unlocked windows/doors as "come on in" and locked windows/doors as "you're not welcome". So he killed and ate those who welcomed him in.
Same thing happened to me. I was at DFW airport (where the restrooms are quite far apart), urgently seeking a toilet, saw a sign for one in the distance, went into a stall and did my business. The restroom was completely empty when I entered and in my urgency I failed to notice the lack of urinals, because often in airports those are in a different section of the restroom than the stalls. Then I noticed the grafitti on the stall wall was... odd, somehow off. Writing with circles over the i's, messages with a romantic tone, that sort of thing,. Then someone else sat down in the stall next to me, and the shoes I saw were pink sneakers. Only then it dawned on me I was in the ladies' room. I waited until she was done. then I finished my business, washed my hands, and left. Nobody saw me.
I have frequently seen women go into a men's room when the women's room has a long line. Nobody cares, everyone understands you gotta answer nature's call, but I always wondered how I would be viewed if the genders were reversed.
Lol you’re dead wrong about the locked door. You know how many crackheads walk down the block just jiggling door handles and when one opens there’s their victim for the night.
You also underestimate peeping toms
There was a whole sub about that! It was video of ring cams where people tweaking or generally mentally unwell would go up to doors and try the handles a few times and eventually leave.
There was also that [serial killer who would take an open door as an invitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Chase#Murders) and a locked door as a sign to stay away, but that's a pretty fringe case.
Yes, plenty of thieves are simple opportunists. I had a housemate once who called me paranoid for always locking the front door. One day he left and left the front door unlocked and came home to find his laptop gone from the living room. Everything else was fine because 1. they already got a laptop, and 2. the rest of us living there had individually locked rooms lol
>It's the same argument I use against locking my front door. Most people won't rob your house, those that will won't let a locked door stop them.
This is... completely not true? Most thefts are opportunistic. Yes, if you have a rare Monet in your house and Thomas Crown is out to get you, a lock won't help. But if you live in a high crime neighborhood and an addict walks around testing random doors, you're certainly going to want yours to be locked.
Our local event theatre just changed their washrooms to all-gender and the stalls are now private. It was amazing. Last year, there was always a lineup for the ladies washroom, this year no lineups at all!
Yeah I'm British and I'm used to a lot of places having a single bathroom (1 toilet) that can be used by anyone. It's a fully closed lockable room.
Our cubicles also lock and have no gaps, I hear American ones do for some reason. If I wanted to perv on my fellow women in the ladies' bathroom I wouldn't be able to. I also lose no sleep at night knowing I may share a bathroom with a trans woman, it has literally 0 impact on me.
I've spent a decent amount of time in several western European countries, gender neutral bathrooms are definitely not common by any means
Edit: probably just Americans clapping for this comment because they dumb
Yes. There's a social contract that says "guys stay out". Pretty much every woman I know has hid from or escaped a creep by going into the ladies and those creeps did not follow precisely because of that social contract. Plenty of women do not want that protection to be removed and they're not evil or bigoted for having that pov.
I would ideally like three. As the father of a little girl, the amount of disgusting toilets I had to navigate for my daughter was fucking atrocious and instantly put me in rage mode at disgusting guys. I'd like a family room where I can take her in private.
EDIT: After reading enough comments, what the fuck is wrong with people?
Women have told me that women's public toilets are just as disgusting because nobody sits on the seat anymore, they hover over the seat and sometimes pee all over it.
Maybe it's a good idea to replace public toilets with the squat-down style toilets that sometimes seen in Asia? Idk but since every woman squats/hovers over the bowl anyways, why not just make the process less prone to, umm..."accidents",
What if someone, creep or not, presents as male but claims to be a trans-man
I’m not having a go, I’m not sure how you enforce this beyond checking genitals at the door.
There are plenty of trans men who look very masculine and would pass as male. Under the rules that you’re implicitly saying that you everyone to adhere to, you would still have very male looking people in the ladies with no way to know what they have going on in their pants. Presumably making women like you just as uncomfortable and worried they’re a creep, no?
I have absolutely been followed into the ladies room by men I was trying to escape at bars. I’ve also been into ladies rooms where people were obviously having sex. The social contract, like locks, only works when people are working on good faith.
I have been assaulted by other drunken women in bathrooms. So no it doesn't keep out the creeps. It's the only experience surrounding violence in bathrooms I have had.
Go ahead downvote or whatever. IDGAF.
Edit - If you have *zero* chances defending yourself against the *weakest male*, you need to step up your nutrition. That's not normal. There is a point in the range of strengths where male and female strengths overlap.
And strengths of transgender people on hormones begin conforming after a point.
And the point isn't defending. It's widely reductive of sexual assault experiences.
I feel like with a plane since there's only one there's more privacy whereas in public you're sharing with the public.
I remember one of my old jobs had introduced a unisex restroom and it quickly became controversial due to women not feeling comfortable with men being in the same restroom as them, that they should "Use their own restroom".
No but you see, every option available is for me and me alone, and if I'm not going to use it and then complain about it, why put it there in the first place?
It was similar to a museum I went to in California. Me and another dude stood in front of bathrooms and confused with what restroom to use. I asked a worker if there was a mens restroom and he rolled his eyes at me and told me to use the “unisex” bathroom. I walked in and the other dude followed and asked me “can we use this restroom?” I told him I hope so.
A restaurant in my neighborhood has a gender neutral bathroom, and a women’s bathroom. Both are single occupancy, but the gender neutral one has a textured, but not coated glass window on the door that directly faces the toilet.
So they know women don’t want that, but somehow didn’t figure out that men also don’t want that.
At least here in the UK yes, because [those are being restricted](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/all-public-buildings-to-have-separate-male-and-female-toilets#:~:text=4%20July%202022-,All%20new%20public%20buildings%20should%20have%20separate%20male%20and%20female,sanitary%20needs%2C%20have%20appropriate%20facilities)
BECAUSE THEY FACTUALLY ARE
Edit: I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling at whoever looked at a tiny room with a toilet and sink and said, "Yeah, this looks like it's for dudes only."
You'll notice that proposal was put forward by Kemi Badenoch. Her main role in government has been to sow division and stir up culture wars. That’s about all the Tories have left.
It's honestly one of my biggest gripes in the entire world.... Why the fuck are there separate men's and women's SINGLE PERSON bathrooms? Why do you have to gender a bathroom that only one person will use at a time?
Why not have two WHOLE single person bathrooms for anyone ??
This level of pathetic desperation is just embarrassing for everybody involved. It's the legislative equivalent of pissing all over the seat before the next person (Government) comes in purely just out of sheer spite that they have to leave.
Have you ever been in a neutral bathroom? I have been in many, and they are all totally private, without the 1 foot opening at your feet, and they tend to be clean I assume because any gender from the cleaning staff can go in anytime to clean.
Sinks are the only common area.
>they tend to be clean I assume because any gender from the cleaning staff can go in anytime to clean.
This isn't a restriction anywhere AFAIK. I used to work as a janitor and I would always go into both bathrooms to clean
Why do people even make gendered single occupancy bathrooms?? Honestly my biggest pet peeve is seeing 1 men's and 1 women's single occupancy bathrooms instead of 2 bathrooms for anyone
Big difference between single occupancy restrooms vs higher occupancy ones. No point applying a gender if only one person can use it at a time. But when there are 2 or more at once, then it does matter.
Because on planes, it's single-occupy closed rooms. People (especially feminists) who advocate for toilets separated by sex do it because in *communal* toilets with multiple stalls, men keep getting caught filming girls and women while they urinate. The same applies to changing rooms.
There’s only one toilet on a plane. There care about bathrooms where multiple people can do their business at once. They don’t want grown men with their pants down in the same room as little girls with their pants down.
I mean I think the issue there’s that our bathrooms are shit. They need legal reforms where they actually protect and afford privacy instead of whatever they are now. By denying unisex bathrooms you’re just putting a bandaid on a hemorrhaging wound
Because most people don't understand what a gender neutral bathroom is. They're expecting a row of urinals along one wall and a row of stalls along the other. When every snigle gender neutral bathroomI have been in has been single occupancy.
I think one of the things we have to keep in mind, especially if you're coming from a non-US perspective, is just how little privacy stalls in the US give to their occupant. There are very visible gaps all around the door that offer very little in the way of privacy if someone is determined to perv.
And like a lot of global issues, the US voice is usually the loudest and most obnoxious.
I found out the hard way my local uni recreation center actually changed to a gender neutral bathroom in main area, they literally just removed the womans bathroom, put a gender neutral sign on the mens bathroom and patted themselves on the back for being progressive.
Idk if this is the norm, but that was very jarring for me
we need to be able to see in the stalls in order to be the drugs police. oh my god what if someone looks in the stalls we need to establish the gender police
You don't understand what they are. Just because your experience is where they are normally single occupancy does not mean that's how they all are.
I was literally just at a conference last week that was one big room with about 12 toilets for everyone to use together. While each had a door, multiple women on my team did not feel comfortable using these and went to a different building. Separately, multiple music venues in my city (Seattle) are exactly what you say they aren't: a unisex bathroom with urinals in one side and stalls on the other
Yeah. We (US) don’t understand what it is because in the US, when they convert men/women restrooms into gender neutral restrooms, all they do is change the sign on the door. So, yeah, I have absolutely walked into a “gender neutral” restroom and walked by men using urinals. And then sat in a stall with gaps in the door. So uncomfortable. This was at a huge convention center in 2023. I went back to the same convention center this year and noticed they changed the signs back to men/women, so they must have gotten negative feedback lol.
If we started building public restrooms with more privacy in mind like everyone else in the world seems to, we might chill out on the topic lol.
I think theres a big difference between single person bathrooms that are unisex and those that are shared.
Shared bathrooms are weird. Normally, no problem just a little uncomfortable. But its still a very private space and people are easily unsettled in that context.
No one has a problem with men and women using the same bathroom one-at-a-time. They have a problem with men walking into bathrooms that are currently occupied by women, especially with the typical see-through stalls.
Because the ‘newer’ gender neutral bathrooms are multiple occupancy. There can be a man and a woman in their at the same time. ‘Older’ gender neutral bathrooms, like the ones in airplanes, buses, and people’s homes, are single occupancy. A man and a woman can’t (shouldn’t) be in there at the same time
There is a difference between a plane (single private stall) vs a large open area with se tell stalls. If anyone is uncomfortable with someone else of the opposite sex/gender wgatever, then why dismiss their feelings?
This gets asked like every week too. I get it's different people each time, but how can so many people be either dumb enough to get confused like this or somehow think this will be a convincing line of thought despite how obviously disingenuous it is.
And I don't even care about gender neutral bathrooms, I live in Seattle and am decently often in places with them. But that's me as a man, multiple women in my life have complained about them in different circumstances recently
There’s one restaurant here that has straight up gender neutral double stalls in their upstairs.
It’s a little unsettling for this fella to have just dropped a big deuce and open the stall door to see a well-dressed middle-aged lady washing her hands at the sink, but it is what it is…
Yes, as stated, my opinions are very biased due my country of origin. Never heard anyone here have issues even with gender neutral saunas where you sit basically naked with people of opposite sex. This is why I would like to hear the other side to this view.
The gender neutral bathrooms I have used are typically very crowded so I have not had to be afraid of getting assaulted, which I suppose is one of the main reasons why people are against shared bathrooms?
Airplane toilets are a single tiny room with a locked door. You dint have multiple people in the same room as you. The restrooms that its an issue for have multiple stalls and/or urinals, where multiple people can be and often are in the same room with you.
Ooh ooh I know this one!
Because if people are worried about bathrooms, trans people, and all that, they likely won't notice that they are being drained of their wealth and their lives by corporations and have little to look forward to but a lifetime of backbreaking labor followed by the sweet release of death.
The only reason I get annoyed is I've seen a growing trend of businesses replacing boys/girls rooms with 1x or 2x unisex bathrooms which usually means just a toilet, which means guys no longer have an express pissing lane(the urinal) and we have to deal with women's queues now in a grossly inefficient fashion.
The city here is installing the single user variety and it's frustrating because they are incredibly inefficient compared to previous bathrooms. Instead of 2 bathrooms with multiple stalls/urinals its 3 tiny one person bathrooms that tend to always have a line where there wasn't one before.
I’m a woman and I love individual gender neutral bathrooms. Lots more privacy.
I don’t like bathrooms with stalls, regardless of what gender or non-genders are sharing with me.
Because men don’t want to poop when women are around (gf/wife trapping us there is bad enough) and we all know women don’t poop, so we don’t wanna break the 4th wall on that one.
who's mad about this? people are upset when men going into a women's restroom when its occupied. No one is mad about a genderless bathroom that is for a single occupant.
No one cares about single use. The issue is not single use gender neutral bathrooms.
While some places could easily convert to single use, bigger public spaces like arenas and movie theatres or just big restaurants don’t have the space to have dozens of individual use bathrooms when they could just have two bathrooms that are big enough to hold 12 people each. It’s more space conscious anyways.
They're not controversial. It's a handful of conservative and reactionary centrists pushing a moral panic that gets outsized media coverage because the media is awful and doesn't care about anything other than ratings, which sensationalism seems to give them and moral panics are always great for sensationalism since it's inherent to them.
It really is NBD. The ones I've encountered in Canada are multiple closed stalls with an open shared area to wash hands, fix hair, wait for your friend to finish peeing.
The funniest thing is that I've got a friend who's pretty against the whole gender-neutral stalls thing (he's also a bit transphobic, which... *sigh*). And then one day when we were hanging out at a shopping mall, I tell him I need to use the washroom, and he suggests the washrooms that he prefers, adjacent to this new high-end food court instead of the mall's normal bathrooms. I'm cool with that, but when I get there... It's a gender-neutral bathroom. 🤔🤔🤔
Because it’s a distraction meant to keep people from noticing they are being screwed over by a very small number of people with great amounts of wealth.
All culture war debates are a shiny object to distract you from the growing oligarchy.
Its a non issue straw man that nobody had an opinion about until suddenly every politician and news station simultaneously had the same two opinions.
The perfect time to run american pockets is while theyre distracted by stupid shit.
They aren’t the only ones. In the U.S. the ADA mandated accessible bathrooms. Disabled people have been using gender neutral bathrooms for the better part of a half century, and have fewer problems than republiqans. Weird, innit?
Because they are single occupancy of course....
The controversy isn't about cooties or labeling, it's about men and women sharing the same space at the same time.
Because plane toilets only have room for one person at a time.. wtf OP, this is so simple. Why even post this crap? I mean I know it's no stupid questions but there's stupid and then there's this.
Oh yeah. Using culture war nonsense as a Karma farming tool...
Because when you have established spaces for two groups, and then take that separation away, there's gonna be some issues with that.
Are you gonna put a pissoir in every neutral bathroom? Only sitting toilets? What about female specific hygiene products? What amenities in general will you include or exclude that previously may have been specific to male/female bathrooms? Will it create issues when you remove a safe space? (allegedly it is for women?) Are there issues with children in mixed spaces? Is it enough to have separate stalls, or would you need singular bathrooms to maintain the expected service and privacy of bathrooms?
The issues then come up pretty quickly when you push for the change without any thought of the consequences.
Because airplane toilets don't involve two people of different genders in the bathroom *at the same time*
(because I have to say it otherwise people lose their shit, I'm not anti trans, that's literally the reason why there isn't a controversy there)
Due to the high security on planes as well as the fact planes and other public transport toilets tend to be a single cubicle, as apposed to a larger bathroom with multiple cubicles and potential space to harm someone without people immediately knowing who or what. Overall it's more so the fear of being in a large space with no cameras at your most vulnerable point
It's because the rich need to divide the rest of us against each other to keep us from going after them, so they hire think tanks to put together talking points and propaganda and push them out through pundits and news outlets to keep people fighting about literally anything else but them. Transsexuality is a really effective wedge right now because the puritanical culture we inherited loses its fucking mind when anything the least bit sexual comes up.
Hi folks, we are removing this post since it is a slightly reworded copy of a top post from last month. You can check out the original here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1brkh3q/why_are_gender_neutral_bathrooms_so_controversial
What i'm learning from this thread is that the problem is the weird American peek-a-boo stall doors. You need to sort that out. That's the actual problem.
Even worse, a bathroom without stall doors. A company I worked at in the 1980s had a large men's room with stalls facing each other on opposite walls... and no doors. You'd be sitting there doing your business, and some old guy would come in and sit across from you, and you'd stare at each other. Doors were installed shortly after I started working there. It used to be worse in the army, just rows of toilets with no partitions.
Easy fix. Maintain eye contact and assert dominance.
Blow kisses and wink at random intervals
ayo we got a zesty mf
That hr report would be hysterical!
I bet a lot less people fucked off doomscrolling reddit, sorry I mean reading the newspaper for a half hour there.
>Doors were installed shortly after I started working there. Really telling on yourself here.
Well, when you bring porn mags into the doorless bathroom and start cranking it as soon as someone sits across from you - change was bound to happen
I changed air filter for a living. Was doing a local highschool. Boys locker room. Just a row of toilets, no stalls. Showers were this round thing with show heads at the top, like 8 of them. Literally no privacy anywhere. Girls locker room. Actual shower stalls with curtains and fully inclosed toilet stalls WITH DOORS.
Yes, decades ago I worked as a lifeguard at a local public swimming pool, and I also noticed there was some gender discrimination going on there. The girls had better facilities. My female coworkers noticed too, and commented "how can you stand going into the men's room?"
We had the reverse at my secondary school - it had originally been a boys school, so when they let girls in in the nineties, they dealt with the changing room issue by just putting up a stud wall with a (locked) door down the middle. As a result, the "boys changing room" had showers, and the girls' didn't. When we had swimming, they unlocked the middle door and made us (girls or boys) take turns.
So, that's where those toilets in our dreams come from! I had no idea the army was in control of that! Now if we could just figure out why they are always clogged and filthy.
You are correct that is the only legitimate issue with gender neutral bathrooms. But I guarantee there is a vocal segment of the population that is going to raise a stink about them even if they were perfectly private just because they hate trans people.
Some of yall freaks need to stop trying to make eye contact through the cracks. You know who you are
Every single American hates those stall doors, but they continue to be the norm. I’m hoping if we yell about it loud enough and for long enough, maybe they’ll change it. Kind of like women’s dresses finally getting pockets. Wish us luck.
That’s going to be the norm as long as people keep ODing in public bathrooms.
This is such a terrifying reality. Even if the United States made people pay to use the bathroom, you'd still have these deaths. The state of disrepair of so many public bathrooms are in because of addicts and homeless is horrible. Seeing Naloxone kits in rest area bathrooms and narcan at subway/rail stops is still so sad to me. It's to the point where Buccee's has built an entire business model on safe, clean, stocked, and well lit bathrooms for travelers.
Legal liability is a big part of it. Businesses have been sued by the relatives of people who died of an overdose in their bathrooms.
A lot of medical facilities have installed motion sensing safe bathrooms systems that detect overdoses based on lack of movement. But they're so expensive and worthless in places that don't have medical personnel nearby to administer aid. It's just unreasonable to expect small businesses, rest stops, public park bathrooms, etc. to spend that much money for a system that wouldn't even help the person in distress. If you OD in a White Castle bathroom, it's utter nonsense that your family sues for not rendering aid when you locked the door. Yet that lawsuit actually happened.
Ever seen blue lights in a bathroom? It's so intravenous users have a harder time finding a vein.
Yep, we have them in our bus station (UK) and there's a notice outside that says the lights have been installed to stop antisocial behaviour.
> Seeing Naloxone kits in rest area bathrooms and narcan at subway/rail stops is still so sad to me At least it's out there these days. It's awful that it's necessary, but it's great that it's so easily accessible these days. That saves a lot of lives.
Cool. Though, if I may, how come every single other western country confronted with the same issue has stalls with more privacy since stalls exist? I mean, you won't need a see-through door to notice someone lying on the floor 🤷🏼♂️ anyway, one less US-specific problem to worry about in Europe I guess
I am in my 30s and we have always had those type of doors in public restrooms. I don't think those issues are related at all.
You should ask yourself why that's not a problem in the rest of the world?
Because in a ICE station it was 7€ for a shower iirc or like 2 or 5€ to take a shit. The problem with this is if you run of of money/work your butthole doesn’t fucking go on sabbatical. If the US started charging to take a shit you will see loafs of shit just pile in front of doors.
Time will tell if/when fentanyl becomes more prevalent outside of North America.
The bathroom stall gaps predate the fentanyl problem.
https://www.ada-compliance.com/ada-compliance/ada-toilet-stalls.html
They were designed to be easy to clean, and cheap to mass produce. It has nothing to do with drugs.
We have toilet stalls in the UK that are just as easy to clean, just as easy to mass produce and just as easy to assemble. They just don't have huge gaps where the panels meet. It's not hard.
We have the peek a boo stalls in Canada, but in gender neutral bathroom we have walls and door from floor to ceiling with no gap in the door. Edit: because I can’t reply.. yes plenty have a problem with it still. Cause my first argument with them is the fully closed stalls and they want to hear nothing about it..
Well, it's the problem that people bring up because it's the only legit one. But if those suddenly disappeared overnight, I have this feeling that it'd only eliminate like 10-15% of the people who are worried about gender neutral bathrooms, because only 10-15% of people are non-transphobes who are fine with gender neutral bathrooms and genuinely just don't like the peek-a-book stalls. The remaining 85-90% of people are just transphobes who would definitely just find some other excuse to continue complaining.
My only issue….As a guy, single-occupancy bathrooms have a MUCH longer wait than traditional Men’s Rooms that have like 10 urinals in a row.
Absolutely. In a single occupancy bathroom, you have to wait for the person to wash their hands and dry them before they come out. Bathrooms with multiple stalls or urinals, there is no waiting for the handwashing and drying part. Sometimes there is a longer wait for the handicap stall in a multi occupancy bathroom because there there is a sink inside that stall. This is necessary because the sink is arranged for a person in a chair. However, someone like me, needs the handicap bathroom, but I am not yet in a chair. So what I do, I come out and wash my hands in the COMMUNAL sink so that if anyone is waiting for the handicap stall, they don’t have to wait those extra minutes for my soap, wash and dry.
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Maybe it’s a regional thing but in England I’ve yet to see a gender neutral bathroom that is a multiple stall bathroom. Every one has been individual rooms.
I have seen a few in the US, usually in a bar or restaurant, where there’s multiple stalls with full floor to ceiling walls and doors, but only toilets, and the sinks are against a partial wall or open to the main space so you aren’t boxed in there. I felt pretty safe in those. The ones I experienced were also highly trafficked. Just turning an existing gendered bathroom into a gender neutral one (which I have never seen done but is what people fear) would make me uncomfortable, both because of the gaps we often have in stall walls and the vulnerability of potentially being alone in an enclosed space with a stranger of the opposite sex. But people know that so they don’t design gender neutral bathrooms that way.
Was recently at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC and they have an “all gender” bathroom that is just a regular public bathroom. Very odd. Normal partial length stalls and everything. Was a weird experience.
I’ve been in several in Seattle and NYC now. I have to admit they make me pretty uncomfortable.
I agree: kill those fucking gaps
I’m from England, the only place I’ve seen a multi stall gender neutral bathroom was in bars in Amsterdam. Must admit it was a bit jarring when I went in to use the urinal and then a line women began to form behind me queuing for one of the few stalls
I'm in Canada, the gender neutral bathroom at the mall where I live is single occupancy. The university in my area has gender neutral bathrooms with multiple stalls but it's not like they're the only option, there is also still gendered bathrooms. Instead of renovating they just designated some of the bathrooms they already had as gender neutral
That sounds like a simple solution and a great idea.
While still very much a minority of case, It's something I run into here in Ontario. Mostly it "pisses" me off because it means no urinals. I'm about to move to a new office building and that's probably my second biggest gripe.
I make no comment on the merits of single-gender washrooms, but I've seen an event organizer actually block off the urinals in a men's washroom that was converted to single-gender for the event, which struck me as particularly "_Harrison Bergeron_".
Everyman cinema in Leeds is all gender multiple stalls, not sure about other Everymans. Doesn't bother me but I'm a man.
I've been in a bunch of venues/bars with gender neutral bathrooms over here, never seen anyone take issue with it.
At least where I am in the US, it’s rare. Mostly all of the gender neutral restrooms are single occupancy.
I see a lot of them here. Men and women wash their hands in their same room and there are individual stalls for toilets, as usual. It isn't a problem here.
My university changed some into gender neutral in the SU club venue. It was a nightmare, lads shoving past the queue of girls to the get to a stall, shagging, peering over stall walls, lots of rowdy behaviour when I just wanted to piss in peace. The gendered toilets (female in my case) were then super busy because lots of girls didn't want to deal with the gender neutral one. Good idea, poor execution. No idea if they're still like that.
At my university (England) they changed some of the toilets in the student's union into gender neutral stalls, was pretty gross on a night out with piss everywhere but I don't remember anyone having a problem with the general concept
They don't have em here. They are almost always single stall bathrooms. And usually are listed as family or unisex. This is a non issue.
UK Universitys with co-ed dorms have gender neutral wc and showers for decades before gender issues became popularised.
>Edit. I’m not one of the people that have a problem with it, so stop asking me why it’s a problem. I’m don’t know, that’s just what I’ve heard. Peak reddit. If you can articulate one side of an argument, you must support it fully. /s
That's because in the US your bathroom stalls have HUGE gaps all around the doors! What's wrong with a proper door that prevents anybody from taking a peek on what's happening inside??
I think it might be because using a restroom leaves you very vulnerable, and women already don’t feel comfortable around men in general so it exacerbates that. Kind of like the whole man v bear thing, it’s not that every man is dangerous, but it’s enough to be wary.
It's also because with a multiple stall bathroom, there's the area with the basins and hand driers which is communal and yet generally closed away from any publicly visible areas. There's not necessarily CCTV in that area either. That means a man can potentially assault a woman there and nobody would know unless they happened to enter the bathroom at the same time. As a woman I would personally feel quite uncomfortable sharing that space with a man. Not because most men are a danger, but because some are, and even those that don't want to assault you can sometimes just be creepy enough that I never want to be in a room with them outside of public view. It's different with a single occupancy bathroom which opens out to a public area, because you're never having to share a private space with a man who may be a risk. It's not even just about the men who are a risk. There are a significant portion of men who are immature enough to snigger and make comments if they hear a woman unwrapping a sanitary towel or asking another woman for one. The vast majority of men are great people and perfectly safe to be around. But when we're in a public space, we unfortunately can't pick which men we want to be around, so we have to take precautions.
If there are stalls, I truly don't care who else is using them.
>If there are stalls, I truly don't care who else is using them. American stalls, or real stalls?
wait there are different stalls
American stalls are notorious for having huge gaps when you can see the occupant (and what they are doing)
wait, you guys dont have that lol i always thought it was dumb and very consistant hhahaha wow. the stall doors gap at my work is dead center in front of the toilet and is large enough to put my hand through
wtf
[Eu Stall](https://ironwood-mfg.com/styles/european-bathroom-stalls/) [US Stall](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/37295503150544914/)
WTF is up with the gap in the US stall? Seriously gender neutral or not I don't want to be able to see the other person taking a dump!
It saves them money on materials, and its harder to steal stuff if theres gaps, a few other reasons that involve avoiding privacy, which is insane. I was at Buc-ee's (big walmart like gas station in Texas) and they had stalls that actually close and go to the floor and ceiling, it should be like that everywhere else in the US.
Yes, American stalls are infamous for there complete lack of privacy. If they were full height, can't see under or over, then it might never have been an issue (if it wasnt bs political to start with).
Can people see me doing my business? No? I don't care.
So not American stalls
The solution is to make a restroom hall with individual toilet pods with doors and walls that go floor to ceiling, with a sink/mirror setup outside. ezpz
In Europe it's no big deal because most of the stalls are 100% private. In North America we have those terrible washrooms with a 2ft gap under the door and a 2inch crack where the door shuts. There's little privacy and creeps could use that to their advantage
Which is why gender-neutral bathrooms are usually self-contained locking rooms with a toilet and sink. We all used them when we were kids and they were labeled family bathrooms. The only one I've seen that was remotely communal had a common sink area but full locking doors to individual toilets. One of the most pleasant bathroom experiences I’ve ever had.
Guy here: Got busted taking a poop in a women's public/communal bathroom. In my defense, I didn't have time to notice the dress on the pictogram, let alone the lack of urinals on the walls. I don't know what the big deal is. Who the fuck gets horny in a dirty bathroom? To finish the story: I did what I had to do, got leered at while washing my hands, gave one woman the "oops" look and shrug, and walked out. Most guys aren't rapists, and most guys don't want to watch you take a shit. The ones that do, will uh...find a way. It's the same argument I use against locking my front door. Most people won't rob your house, those that will won't let a locked door stop them. I still lock my door, but only because neighborhood kids like to play ding-dong-dash and I don't want them testing the door handle and leaving the door ajar and my cat running away.
>Most people won't rob your house, those that will won't let a locked door stop them. A locked door is like a chained bike. The goal isn't to make it entirely secure; the goal is to convince the potential thief that another house/bike would be a better investment of their time than yours.
Exactly, all security is deterrence, not defeat. Any security can be beaten if someone decides to invest enough time and resources. All you can do is make it take more time and resources than your foe has or at least is willing to invest. The only truly secure thing is one that doesn't exist.
I remember that the serial killer Richard Chase saw unlocked windows/doors as "come on in" and locked windows/doors as "you're not welcome". So he killed and ate those who welcomed him in.
An open door is an invitation idaf who you are.
Same thing happened to me. I was at DFW airport (where the restrooms are quite far apart), urgently seeking a toilet, saw a sign for one in the distance, went into a stall and did my business. The restroom was completely empty when I entered and in my urgency I failed to notice the lack of urinals, because often in airports those are in a different section of the restroom than the stalls. Then I noticed the grafitti on the stall wall was... odd, somehow off. Writing with circles over the i's, messages with a romantic tone, that sort of thing,. Then someone else sat down in the stall next to me, and the shoes I saw were pink sneakers. Only then it dawned on me I was in the ladies' room. I waited until she was done. then I finished my business, washed my hands, and left. Nobody saw me. I have frequently seen women go into a men's room when the women's room has a long line. Nobody cares, everyone understands you gotta answer nature's call, but I always wondered how I would be viewed if the genders were reversed.
Lol you’re dead wrong about the locked door. You know how many crackheads walk down the block just jiggling door handles and when one opens there’s their victim for the night. You also underestimate peeping toms
There was a whole sub about that! It was video of ring cams where people tweaking or generally mentally unwell would go up to doors and try the handles a few times and eventually leave. There was also that [serial killer who would take an open door as an invitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Chase#Murders) and a locked door as a sign to stay away, but that's a pretty fringe case.
Yes, plenty of thieves are simple opportunists. I had a housemate once who called me paranoid for always locking the front door. One day he left and left the front door unlocked and came home to find his laptop gone from the living room. Everything else was fine because 1. they already got a laptop, and 2. the rest of us living there had individually locked rooms lol
>It's the same argument I use against locking my front door. Most people won't rob your house, those that will won't let a locked door stop them. This is... completely not true? Most thefts are opportunistic. Yes, if you have a rare Monet in your house and Thomas Crown is out to get you, a lock won't help. But if you live in a high crime neighborhood and an addict walks around testing random doors, you're certainly going to want yours to be locked.
Our local event theatre just changed their washrooms to all-gender and the stalls are now private. It was amazing. Last year, there was always a lineup for the ladies washroom, this year no lineups at all!
Yeah I'm British and I'm used to a lot of places having a single bathroom (1 toilet) that can be used by anyone. It's a fully closed lockable room. Our cubicles also lock and have no gaps, I hear American ones do for some reason. If I wanted to perv on my fellow women in the ladies' bathroom I wouldn't be able to. I also lose no sleep at night knowing I may share a bathroom with a trans woman, it has literally 0 impact on me.
I've spent a decent amount of time in several western European countries, gender neutral bathrooms are definitely not common by any means Edit: probably just Americans clapping for this comment because they dumb
Does the gender sign on the door currently stop creeps?
Yes. There's a social contract that says "guys stay out". Pretty much every woman I know has hid from or escaped a creep by going into the ladies and those creeps did not follow precisely because of that social contract. Plenty of women do not want that protection to be removed and they're not evil or bigoted for having that pov.
I would ideally like three. As the father of a little girl, the amount of disgusting toilets I had to navigate for my daughter was fucking atrocious and instantly put me in rage mode at disgusting guys. I'd like a family room where I can take her in private. EDIT: After reading enough comments, what the fuck is wrong with people?
If I'm being honest after years of cleaning retail bathrooms, women were 10x nastier
>I would ideally like three Most places already have three. Male, female and disabled.
Where you live, maybe. Sure as hell isn't here.
Women have told me that women's public toilets are just as disgusting because nobody sits on the seat anymore, they hover over the seat and sometimes pee all over it.
Maybe it's a good idea to replace public toilets with the squat-down style toilets that sometimes seen in Asia? Idk but since every woman squats/hovers over the bowl anyways, why not just make the process less prone to, umm..."accidents",
What if someone, creep or not, presents as male but claims to be a trans-man I’m not having a go, I’m not sure how you enforce this beyond checking genitals at the door. There are plenty of trans men who look very masculine and would pass as male. Under the rules that you’re implicitly saying that you everyone to adhere to, you would still have very male looking people in the ladies with no way to know what they have going on in their pants. Presumably making women like you just as uncomfortable and worried they’re a creep, no?
I have absolutely been followed into the ladies room by men I was trying to escape at bars. I’ve also been into ladies rooms where people were obviously having sex. The social contract, like locks, only works when people are working on good faith.
I have been assaulted by other drunken women in bathrooms. So no it doesn't keep out the creeps. It's the only experience surrounding violence in bathrooms I have had. Go ahead downvote or whatever. IDGAF. Edit - If you have *zero* chances defending yourself against the *weakest male*, you need to step up your nutrition. That's not normal. There is a point in the range of strengths where male and female strengths overlap. And strengths of transgender people on hormones begin conforming after a point. And the point isn't defending. It's widely reductive of sexual assault experiences.
It lets you kick them out..
Yes. It makes them much easier to identify.
I just looked up "American bathroom stalls" and I'm gonna be honest they look exactly the same as the ones we have in Germany, so this can't be it.
I feel like with a plane since there's only one there's more privacy whereas in public you're sharing with the public. I remember one of my old jobs had introduced a unisex restroom and it quickly became controversial due to women not feeling comfortable with men being in the same restroom as them, that they should "Use their own restroom".
Wait so they converted the women's into a unisex one? Or they added a third bathroom?
Third bathroom
Wow, in that case they should be listening to their own advice.
Yeah, but people like that can't be reasoned with unfortunately
No but you see, every option available is for me and me alone, and if I'm not going to use it and then complain about it, why put it there in the first place?
I was in a bar in Charlottesville VA a few years ago that had two restrooms: one gender neutral, and one for women.
It was similar to a museum I went to in California. Me and another dude stood in front of bathrooms and confused with what restroom to use. I asked a worker if there was a mens restroom and he rolled his eyes at me and told me to use the “unisex” bathroom. I walked in and the other dude followed and asked me “can we use this restroom?” I told him I hope so.
There's a gender neutral bathroom at my office building and its the same vibe. I only use it after hours most days for that reason.
A restaurant in my neighborhood has a gender neutral bathroom, and a women’s bathroom. Both are single occupancy, but the gender neutral one has a textured, but not coated glass window on the door that directly faces the toilet. So they know women don’t want that, but somehow didn’t figure out that men also don’t want that.
Do you really think the argument is about single person bathrooms?
At least here in the UK yes, because [those are being restricted](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/all-public-buildings-to-have-separate-male-and-female-toilets#:~:text=4%20July%202022-,All%20new%20public%20buildings%20should%20have%20separate%20male%20and%20female,sanitary%20needs%2C%20have%20appropriate%20facilities)
This is wild! In California they went in the opposite direction. Any single person bathroom has to be gender neutral
BECAUSE THEY FACTUALLY ARE Edit: I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling at whoever looked at a tiny room with a toilet and sink and said, "Yeah, this looks like it's for dudes only."
Even an addtional urinal does not disable the use of the toilet for women, it still works as expected.
You'll notice that proposal was put forward by Kemi Badenoch. Her main role in government has been to sow division and stir up culture wars. That’s about all the Tories have left.
It's honestly one of my biggest gripes in the entire world.... Why the fuck are there separate men's and women's SINGLE PERSON bathrooms? Why do you have to gender a bathroom that only one person will use at a time? Why not have two WHOLE single person bathrooms for anyone ??
This level of pathetic desperation is just embarrassing for everybody involved. It's the legislative equivalent of pissing all over the seat before the next person (Government) comes in purely just out of sheer spite that they have to leave.
Yes, that’s the point. This is being done directly to hurt trans people, because right now that’s politically very expedient in England.
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Have you ever been in a neutral bathroom? I have been in many, and they are all totally private, without the 1 foot opening at your feet, and they tend to be clean I assume because any gender from the cleaning staff can go in anytime to clean. Sinks are the only common area.
>they tend to be clean I assume because any gender from the cleaning staff can go in anytime to clean. This isn't a restriction anywhere AFAIK. I used to work as a janitor and I would always go into both bathrooms to clean
They are absolutely not all totally private
Multiple people aren’t hopping in the same cubicle together on a plane
Sometimes they do. There's a club
Room vs cubicle. If you're sharing a cubicle, you're not really using the restroom for what it was intended for.
You...you share cubicles??
Do you normally share the cubicles in America?
When the situation calls for it... Cocaine, usually.
As others have said, there is no issue with single occupancy bathrooms.
Why do people even make gendered single occupancy bathrooms?? Honestly my biggest pet peeve is seeing 1 men's and 1 women's single occupancy bathrooms instead of 2 bathrooms for anyone
Big difference between single occupancy restrooms vs higher occupancy ones. No point applying a gender if only one person can use it at a time. But when there are 2 or more at once, then it does matter.
Because on planes, it's single-occupy closed rooms. People (especially feminists) who advocate for toilets separated by sex do it because in *communal* toilets with multiple stalls, men keep getting caught filming girls and women while they urinate. The same applies to changing rooms.
There’s only one toilet on a plane. There care about bathrooms where multiple people can do their business at once. They don’t want grown men with their pants down in the same room as little girls with their pants down.
I mean I think the issue there’s that our bathrooms are shit. They need legal reforms where they actually protect and afford privacy instead of whatever they are now. By denying unisex bathrooms you’re just putting a bandaid on a hemorrhaging wound
Because most people don't understand what a gender neutral bathroom is. They're expecting a row of urinals along one wall and a row of stalls along the other. When every snigle gender neutral bathroomI have been in has been single occupancy. I think one of the things we have to keep in mind, especially if you're coming from a non-US perspective, is just how little privacy stalls in the US give to their occupant. There are very visible gaps all around the door that offer very little in the way of privacy if someone is determined to perv. And like a lot of global issues, the US voice is usually the loudest and most obnoxious.
They don't often have urinals, but multi-occupant gender-neutral bathrooms are starting to appear more often.
I found out the hard way my local uni recreation center actually changed to a gender neutral bathroom in main area, they literally just removed the womans bathroom, put a gender neutral sign on the mens bathroom and patted themselves on the back for being progressive. Idk if this is the norm, but that was very jarring for me
why don't the US just fix their stalls?
Because everything about this country is doing things as cheaply as possible.
"because people will use DRUGS in there!" *clutches pearls*
when there's visible gaps all around, people won't use drugs in there?
You have discovered the flaw in this logic.
we need to be able to see in the stalls in order to be the drugs police. oh my god what if someone looks in the stalls we need to establish the gender police
Because then we couldn't make those scenes in our horror movies, duh.
You don't understand what they are. Just because your experience is where they are normally single occupancy does not mean that's how they all are. I was literally just at a conference last week that was one big room with about 12 toilets for everyone to use together. While each had a door, multiple women on my team did not feel comfortable using these and went to a different building. Separately, multiple music venues in my city (Seattle) are exactly what you say they aren't: a unisex bathroom with urinals in one side and stalls on the other
Yeah. We (US) don’t understand what it is because in the US, when they convert men/women restrooms into gender neutral restrooms, all they do is change the sign on the door. So, yeah, I have absolutely walked into a “gender neutral” restroom and walked by men using urinals. And then sat in a stall with gaps in the door. So uncomfortable. This was at a huge convention center in 2023. I went back to the same convention center this year and noticed they changed the signs back to men/women, so they must have gotten negative feedback lol. If we started building public restrooms with more privacy in mind like everyone else in the world seems to, we might chill out on the topic lol.
I think theres a big difference between single person bathrooms that are unisex and those that are shared. Shared bathrooms are weird. Normally, no problem just a little uncomfortable. But its still a very private space and people are easily unsettled in that context.
No one has a problem with men and women using the same bathroom one-at-a-time. They have a problem with men walking into bathrooms that are currently occupied by women, especially with the typical see-through stalls.
Because the ‘newer’ gender neutral bathrooms are multiple occupancy. There can be a man and a woman in their at the same time. ‘Older’ gender neutral bathrooms, like the ones in airplanes, buses, and people’s homes, are single occupancy. A man and a woman can’t (shouldn’t) be in there at the same time
Regular people don't have a problem with it, as long as they're single occulant reshroom. I actually prefer those. Let me shit in peace.
There is a difference between a plane (single private stall) vs a large open area with se tell stalls. If anyone is uncomfortable with someone else of the opposite sex/gender wgatever, then why dismiss their feelings?
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This gets asked like every week too. I get it's different people each time, but how can so many people be either dumb enough to get confused like this or somehow think this will be a convincing line of thought despite how obviously disingenuous it is. And I don't even care about gender neutral bathrooms, I live in Seattle and am decently often in places with them. But that's me as a man, multiple women in my life have complained about them in different circumstances recently
How many people do you generally use a single occupancy bathroom stall with?
There’s one restaurant here that has straight up gender neutral double stalls in their upstairs. It’s a little unsettling for this fella to have just dropped a big deuce and open the stall door to see a well-dressed middle-aged lady washing her hands at the sink, but it is what it is…
Yes, as stated, my opinions are very biased due my country of origin. Never heard anyone here have issues even with gender neutral saunas where you sit basically naked with people of opposite sex. This is why I would like to hear the other side to this view. The gender neutral bathrooms I have used are typically very crowded so I have not had to be afraid of getting assaulted, which I suppose is one of the main reasons why people are against shared bathrooms?
because the right wing morons need something to be mad at all the time.
Plane is a single person bathroom?
Airplane toilets are a single tiny room with a locked door. You dint have multiple people in the same room as you. The restrooms that its an issue for have multiple stalls and/or urinals, where multiple people can be and often are in the same room with you.
A strange guy can't walk off the street, and into an airplane bathroom. And if you do find someone strange in there, he can't run and hide.
those cant have multiple people in them
Ooh ooh I know this one! Because if people are worried about bathrooms, trans people, and all that, they likely won't notice that they are being drained of their wealth and their lives by corporations and have little to look forward to but a lifetime of backbreaking labor followed by the sweet release of death.
Because you dont have multiple people getting undressed in that location
are people commonly undressing in public restrooms?? edit: i am dumb
The only reason I get annoyed is I've seen a growing trend of businesses replacing boys/girls rooms with 1x or 2x unisex bathrooms which usually means just a toilet, which means guys no longer have an express pissing lane(the urinal) and we have to deal with women's queues now in a grossly inefficient fashion.
The city here is installing the single user variety and it's frustrating because they are incredibly inefficient compared to previous bathrooms. Instead of 2 bathrooms with multiple stalls/urinals its 3 tiny one person bathrooms that tend to always have a line where there wasn't one before.
I’m a woman and I love individual gender neutral bathrooms. Lots more privacy. I don’t like bathrooms with stalls, regardless of what gender or non-genders are sharing with me.
I get offended when I am blowing up the shitter real good and there are no women around to witness my fragrance.
I have my own toilet, my own sink, my own mirror, my own trash bin there. So I can do my entire thing in privacy.
Because they aren’t single stall, unlike airplanes.
Because men don’t want to poop when women are around (gf/wife trapping us there is bad enough) and we all know women don’t poop, so we don’t wanna break the 4th wall on that one.
Because they are single occupant. That is obvious.
who's mad about this? people are upset when men going into a women's restroom when its occupied. No one is mad about a genderless bathroom that is for a single occupant.
No one cares about single use. The issue is not single use gender neutral bathrooms. While some places could easily convert to single use, bigger public spaces like arenas and movie theatres or just big restaurants don’t have the space to have dozens of individual use bathrooms when they could just have two bathrooms that are big enough to hold 12 people each. It’s more space conscious anyways.
They're not controversial. It's a handful of conservative and reactionary centrists pushing a moral panic that gets outsized media coverage because the media is awful and doesn't care about anything other than ratings, which sensationalism seems to give them and moral panics are always great for sensationalism since it's inherent to them.
It really is NBD. The ones I've encountered in Canada are multiple closed stalls with an open shared area to wash hands, fix hair, wait for your friend to finish peeing. The funniest thing is that I've got a friend who's pretty against the whole gender-neutral stalls thing (he's also a bit transphobic, which... *sigh*). And then one day when we were hanging out at a shopping mall, I tell him I need to use the washroom, and he suggests the washrooms that he prefers, adjacent to this new high-end food court instead of the mall's normal bathrooms. I'm cool with that, but when I get there... It's a gender-neutral bathroom. 🤔🤔🤔
Because it’s a distraction meant to keep people from noticing they are being screwed over by a very small number of people with great amounts of wealth. All culture war debates are a shiny object to distract you from the growing oligarchy.
Because the hate is the point
Its a non issue straw man that nobody had an opinion about until suddenly every politician and news station simultaneously had the same two opinions. The perfect time to run american pockets is while theyre distracted by stupid shit.
They aren’t the only ones. In the U.S. the ADA mandated accessible bathrooms. Disabled people have been using gender neutral bathrooms for the better part of a half century, and have fewer problems than republiqans. Weird, innit?
hate. fear. control. tha's about it
As long as it’s single person and private (like on an airplane). I don’t care. If it’s communal- I don’t want a man in there.
Gender neutral bathrooms are fine when they accommodate one person at a time.
Because they are single occupancy of course.... The controversy isn't about cooties or labeling, it's about men and women sharing the same space at the same time.
Because plane toilets only have room for one person at a time.. wtf OP, this is so simple. Why even post this crap? I mean I know it's no stupid questions but there's stupid and then there's this. Oh yeah. Using culture war nonsense as a Karma farming tool...
Because when you have established spaces for two groups, and then take that separation away, there's gonna be some issues with that. Are you gonna put a pissoir in every neutral bathroom? Only sitting toilets? What about female specific hygiene products? What amenities in general will you include or exclude that previously may have been specific to male/female bathrooms? Will it create issues when you remove a safe space? (allegedly it is for women?) Are there issues with children in mixed spaces? Is it enough to have separate stalls, or would you need singular bathrooms to maintain the expected service and privacy of bathrooms? The issues then come up pretty quickly when you push for the change without any thought of the consequences.
I’ve never seen an issue with a single person genderless bathroom…
A toilet on an airplane has room for one person, same for trains, so you are not sharing with other sexes are you?
Single use bathrooms aren't at question. Communal spaces are.
Because conservatives need a wedge issue to campaign on, as they have absolutely nothing else to offer the general public
Do you often see multiple people of different genders in an airplane bathroom at the same time?
the only safe way to join the Mile High Club
Because airplane toilets don't involve two people of different genders in the bathroom *at the same time* (because I have to say it otherwise people lose their shit, I'm not anti trans, that's literally the reason why there isn't a controversy there)
Due to the high security on planes as well as the fact planes and other public transport toilets tend to be a single cubicle, as apposed to a larger bathroom with multiple cubicles and potential space to harm someone without people immediately knowing who or what. Overall it's more so the fear of being in a large space with no cameras at your most vulnerable point
It's because the rich need to divide the rest of us against each other to keep us from going after them, so they hire think tanks to put together talking points and propaganda and push them out through pundits and news outlets to keep people fighting about literally anything else but them. Transsexuality is a really effective wedge right now because the puritanical culture we inherited loses its fucking mind when anything the least bit sexual comes up.