April 9, 2012 • 24 mins
Public restrooms are loaded with politics. Did you know that public restrooms were originally intended for men only? Join Caroline and Cristen as they explore the strange history of public restrooms, touching on potty parity laws, civil rights and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And before we go any further,
(00:21):
I would like to say a special hello to everyone
who is listening to us right now. While in the bathroom, Yes,
this this goes out to you, and while you were
in the bathroom, I'd like you to ponder for a
moment the way that you're using the toilet and what
it means socially. I bet you never thought about that before,
(00:44):
but we're here to tell you what it means, and
it means a lot. Public restrooms, especially are loaded with
gender politics and racial politics exactly. And we're not even
we're not We're not messing around here. Okay, all right,
I'm a little tongue in cheek, but seriously, uh, toilets
and public restrooms have a surprisingly rich history of controversy
(01:12):
in terms of access, right. I mean, first of all,
women were denied public restrooms for an absurdly long period
of time. Well because we didn't leave the house, That's true.
We were barefoot and pregnant and baking I'm sure, tending
to our gardens and whatnot, shuffling to the outhouse right
now and then exactly um, and then you know, once,
(01:33):
once there are public restrooms, there's an issue of equality
because I know that you've been at a ball game
or a bar or something where you've had to wait
in line for the bathroom for a significant period of time,
well while the guys just breathed in and out. I
remember going to a Braves game last year and waiting,
waiting in line for the bathroom for twenty minutes. Did
(01:55):
you make it? I barely made it. Hear all these
women uttering like relievably. Oh God. Well, that's why you
find so much camaraderie in the bathroom line for for
the women's restroom, because you're all in this this horrible
situation together having to hold your bowels. Um. But let's
(02:15):
not let's not get to ahead of ourselves, because the
thing is, you're talking about being at a Braves game
and having to wait for a bathroom. But the thing is, Caroline,
here in the United States, in the Western world, we
are taking our bathrooms for granted big time. Uh. It
is a huge problem. Access to santation facilities, especially for women,
(02:38):
is a huge problem in developing countries. Um. We've touched
on this before in the podcast How toilet access is
I'M a problem for school girls in particular in rural
areas because it prevents them from attending school during their periods.
If they don't have access to a toilet, they have
to stay home, and that only keeps them home even longer.
(02:58):
You have a lot of area is um In Africa
as well, the Amnesty International has worked hard to try
and get more UH sanitation facilities in there. But even
in countries like China and India, access to toilets is
still a huge problem. Um. This is coming from a
couple of articles in the Economist magazine. In India, around
(03:20):
three hundred and thirty million women lack access to toilets
and because of that they have to wait until night
to go out to the bathroom, risking rape, kidnapping, and
snake bites. Right, that's dangerous. Um. But in in China,
which I think of as a pretty pretty developed, modern country,
(03:41):
according to that World Health Organization report from it estimated
that forty percent of Chinese people lack access to improve
sanitation facilities, which contributes to the risk of disease. Right,
And that makes sense because there are still so many
large pockets of rural areas in China, even in Beijing.
(04:01):
There has been a protest movement, a small kind of
more underground protest movement to get more toilets in urban
areas because as people are traveling around getting from home
to job and back again, these busses will stop off
and everyone will get out of the bus to use
the public restroom, and there are the same number of
(04:22):
toilets for men and women. And because of that, you know,
women don't can't go to the bathroom because all the
stalls are taken up and a lot of times, um
they mentioned how a lot of the sanitation workers are women.
So the women are cleaning a bathroom, using up one stall,
eliminating another, you know, another toilet for use. Yeah, an
activists have had it. Activists in China are tired of
(04:44):
having to wait in line for the bathroom. Well, like
like I was at the Braves game, while men just
breathe in and out, and so it's not just an inconvenience.
They're saying that it's a gender equality issue and Lea
ting Ting, a twenty two year old student, has led
the Occupy Men's Toilet movement, during which she and several
activists took over a men's restroom near a park, allowing
(05:05):
women to use the empty stalls for three minutes at
a time before they would wave the men back in
for ten minutes. And in this way they you know,
we're hoping to raise awareness and bring attention to the
fact that women need more restroom space. Now, one thing
that I did not realize is that a number of countries,
um including the US, on the state level, have what
(05:27):
are referred to as potty parity laws, essentially laws stating
you must have an equal number of bathrooms for men
and for women. And why in the United States would
we need something like that? Oh? Well, instances like in
West Virginia that barred women from jury service until ninety
(05:47):
six because the courthouses lacked female toilets. Oh and it's
not just it's not just in states. Let's talk about
the US capital, because the Capitol building did not have
a female bathroom for female senators until and because of that,
they would have to run downstairs and use their tourist
(06:10):
restroom and then run back upstairs, whereas mail senators had
their own designated, special private bathroom exactly. So bathrooms were
used as an excuse to keep women out of certain activities. Yeah,
I hope you can't miss your boat because you're waiting
in the line for the bathroom. Right. Um, but this
potty parody, I mean, it's saying one to one, it's
saying men and women need equal bathrooms. But one to
(06:33):
one is not an equal opportunity ratio because our time
in the bathroom. Let's face it, folks, it is not
one to one. Right. Study from Virginia Tech measured how
long it takes men and women to use the bathroom.
It found that women take an average of three minutes
to quote, go in, go and go out, whereas men
(06:54):
are in and out in eighty three points six seconds,
about half the time. Now. I tweeted this little fact
TOID before we came in to record, uh, and received
a number of interesting replies, one of which was from
a woman who I guess she didn't notice that I
had said public restrooms because she was like, wait a minute, No,
(07:15):
my husband takes a really long time in the bathroom,
but now we're talking about out in public guys go in,
go out, and usually it takes women on average twice
as long. Okay, so it's an issue of time and
it's an issue of space. This is coming from the Economist. Uh.
They quoted George Washington University law professor at John bans Off,
(07:35):
who told them that sanitary facilities are assigned by area,
like we were saying, but up to twelve urinals can
fit into a space, they can hold only three to
four sit down toilets. So women either need more space
or we need more solutions. And as we'll go into
in more detail, the design of women's bathroom stalls has
not changed much since the eighteen fifties. There has not
(08:00):
been a ton of innovation, even though as we'll also
discuss female urinals. That's right, female urinals are one proposed solution.
But let's get back to this issue of access and
talk for a moment about some stuff that's been going
on more on college campuses and um trans students on
(08:21):
college campuses who want unisex bathrooms. Right. Catherine Anthony and
architecture professor UH said in that Economist article that one
solution is to make more bathrooms unisex. She says, either
there are no lines or everyone has to wait, and
she says that it also makes life easier for transgender
people who have to worry about making a public choice
(08:42):
and being ridiculed. All right, And this is coming from
the paper Restroom Revolution, Unisex Toilets and Campus Politics by
Olga Gershonson, and she writes, to traditional sex segregated public
restrooms bring transgender people routine risk of being insulted, mocked,
a tact, and even arrested. So again, we're taking for
(09:04):
granted a lot of times access to public bathrooms, not
just by virtue of living in the US, where the
axis usually is more abundant, but also by virtue of
being cis gender heterosexual identified females who can just you know,
we see the lady sign and we know right where
to walk. That's not the same situation for a transgender person.
(09:24):
And this is coming from the Transgender Law and Policy
Institute that listed a lot of problems that transgender high
school students face in particular, and they found that often
transgender and gender nonconforming students don't feel safe in either
the men's or the women's restroom because of the danger
of harassment um and they found that in a transgender
(09:44):
focus group, the lack of safe bathrooms is the biggest
problem that gender nonconforming students face because a lot of
gender scholars will point out that when you really think
about it, the way that bathrooms are segregated between men's
and women and it's also a way of um, I guess,
making our private parts even more private. Yes, and the
(10:07):
idea of gender gender neutral locker rooms was actually suggested
by transgender students at Grinnell College in Iowa. They'd already
had gender neutral dorm options for three years, but last
year added gender neutral locker rooms at the encouragement of students. Yeah,
especially among private UM colleges and universities in the US,
(10:27):
gender neutral dorms have become more common. I think they're
The USA Today article sited fifty four college campuses that
already have those. UM. But in that Restroom Revolution article
that I mentioned by Olga Gershenson UM, she talks a
lot about the two thousand one protest movement that started
at University of Massachusetts Amherst by a student group called
(10:52):
Restroom Revolution that was lobbying for transgender friendly unisex bathrooms,
and they ran into not only opposition from other students
on campus UM and even some gay organizations who said,
you're just trying to get attention. This is bathrooms. Just
you've been going to the bathroom, Just keep going to
the same bathroom that you went to. No big deal, UM.
(11:13):
But when they went and actually talked to the vice
chancellor about getting UM unisex bathrooms in there, I thought
it was interesting that the Massachusetts Architectural Code stated that
a bathroom had to be designated by gender, and I
wonder that was in two thousand one, and I wonder
if some of those codes are changing, because I went
back and checked and the campus does now have gender
(11:34):
neutral bathrooms in a lot of the dorms. Now. So,
while party politics has become a platform for UM transgender rights,
the gender issues go a long way back to when
the first public conveniences as they were called, were invented
and installed in London. And like you mentioned earlier, Caroline,
(11:58):
they were restricted from two men only. Women could not
use them. They did not have women in mind when
they first invented public restrooms, right because we don't need
the house, UM. But the the first large scale public
bathrooms were featured at London's Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one,
and it was the first time that people saw this
set up on a on a large scale and thought, okay,
(12:20):
this is how it works. And they thought it worked
so well that it hasn't changed the whole design of
like going into a stall, unlocking the door and sitting
down on a toilet. Right. Barbara Penner, who is an
architectural lecturer at the University College of London UM talks
about how the model of ladies room that was established
at that Great Exhibition by George Jennings, that came with
(12:42):
a private stall with the water closet, lock and door,
is still so dominant it has not been seriously rethought
in the last hundred and fifty years. Yeah. Well back
then it was just good that they got toilets because
public health concerns back in the nineteenth century led to
the prevent vision of public toilets, but the majority, like
we said, were for men only, and women immediately started
(13:05):
fighting this because you know, sometimes they did have to
be out of the house for whatever reason. UM, the
Ladies Sanitary Association and members of the public in England
campaigned for women's toilets and high traffic areas, and one
was going to be installed in nineteen hundred, but this
giant brew haha broke out and people were calling it
an abomination. I don't want it anywhere near my house.
(13:27):
That's filthy and inappropriate, So the project was abandoned. There
was not a public women's bathroom in that area of
London until nineteen oh five. Yeah, it was sort of
a twofold protest against it. One being the the impropriety
of women urinating and possibly defecating. Women don't do that, no,
(13:48):
but doing it in public no less Caroline than everyone
would know that, yes and due indeed yes, and dude,
yes indeed women do poop um. So they didn't like
the idea of women using the bathroom in pub And
then also this potential interaction of the women who would
leave to be shopping, the more leisurely upper class women
who would be shopping, who might interact with lower class
(14:09):
factory girls and flower girls. But in order to keep
the class divide, they charged a penny to use this
public bathroom, but there was a cheaper option. There was
a cheaper option in a female urinet was installed in
one London public lou and it only cost a halfpenny
(14:33):
and instead of it being a stall with a door
that you locked, they had a curtain and it was
a It was a stand up operation, which was pretty
handy because Victorian underwear was open at the crutch. As
we have discussed before in the podcast Queen Victoria in Victoria,
I wonder if she ever used one. Certainly not certainly
(14:54):
not um, but it's it's been a hard transition, I
think to try to convince women to use urinals or
urinets made specifically for them. I think there's definitely prevailing
attitude that it's weird or immodest or improper. Well, Barbara Penner,
who was that that toilet scholar that I mentioned from
University College of London, has got her hands on some
(15:18):
model urinets that that or They were essentially like siphons
that women could use to to get the urine from
out out of them to the toilet without spring everywhere.
Women out there, you know what I'm I'm talking about.
It's not the easiest to pee while standing up. I
used to work in an office where someone would spray
(15:39):
all over the seat and I think that individual could
have benefited from a urinet. Yeah, they were um a
lot of times they were just shaped like a funnel,
but there was one from the mid eighteen hundreds. It
was glass blown urinet that was shaped like, um, a penis.
I mean, I guess they were. They figured, hey, well
guys used this too to piece, so let's work for
(16:00):
the women. Let's maintain this theme. But again, the female
urin never really caught on, although, fun fact, in nineteen
fifty and nineteen seventy three the American Standard Toilet Company
tried again to produce a female urinal, but it didn't
really catch on so much. No, it still hasn't. And
the most recent that I've read about it, there was
an article in Cabinet magazine by Barbara Penner, who you
(16:22):
mentioned before, talking about female urinals at at the Glastonbury
Music Festival and that they used penates, these little like
cardboard things you would like stick, I guess stick them
in your underwear, used to direct the stream of urine.
It's basically like a yurin funnel. Um. I've also I
think there's also a p she out there. Yeah, you
(16:44):
can see you'll see them sometimes more at at festivals,
but I've never seen one in person. I have an
either I there was one quote where the where a
girl at Glastonbury said that she really liked the idea
was pretty handy because you didn't have to go in
one of those filthy borda potties, but that it was
a little hard to use when you've been drinking at
a music festival, understandably careful, but talking about the gender
(17:09):
politics of the bathroom and going to the bathroom, we
would be remiss to not mention this quote from The
Second Sex by Simon Beauvoir, written in because she believed
that teaching little girls to squat and urinate constituted, quote,
the most striking sexual differentiation of their childhood. And by
(17:32):
by teaching little girls to squat when using the bathroom,
it was teaching them to to hide themselves, and it
was a shameful and inconvenient procedure. And the erect position
was reserved for men alone. Right, Well, you mentioned these
ladies before. Olga Gershinson and Barbara Penner and their introduction
to the book Ladies and Gents, Public Toilets and Gender,
(17:54):
they wrote that public bathrooms are the last openly sex
segregated spaces, and the spaces we expect to be sex segregated,
and we go into them knowing that the guys next
door are probably gonna be standing up and we're probably
gonna be sitting down. And so it really is, they say,
reflects and shapes the binary division of men and women,
as well as quote proper relationships between people of the
(18:16):
same sex, And which is why, when you think about
it in all of those terms, why it makes sense
that these transgender students in particular are so adamant about
getting safer unisex spaces to where you can you can
do away with all those gendered trappings. And while we
talked a lot about gender in this episode, we also
have to address race because during the Civil rights movement
(18:39):
in the US, bathrooms were one of the last places
to be desegregated. For listeners out there who have seen
or read The Help, one of the plot lines revolves
around how this completely racist white woman UM does not
want her black maid to use the bathroom because of
these bogus leaves about race specific diseases UM and these
(19:05):
desegregation cases about regarding bathrooms. One as late as nineteen
seventy seven, there's a case James v. Stockholm that was
still hashing out segregation of public bathrooms in in workplaces especially,
So we talked about gender, We've talked about race. Who
knew that the potty politics of public restrooms? I can't
(19:29):
say that five times fast? But who knew that the
potty politics of public restrooms was so so complicated? Right?
I had never uh considered myself um at a disadvantage
as far as the bathroom goes, other than you know,
oh my gosh, I'm going to have to cross my
legs and pray that I get into a stall really fast.
(19:51):
I hadn't thought of it as a equality issue, but
the fact that women don't have the space that they
need to get to the bathroom in time, hundreds of
million of women and I'm sure men too. But this
is this is an issue that is still very much
needs to be solved on a global level and down
to you know, rights for for transgender people as well, exactly.
(20:14):
So I think we can flush this episode. Oh I
had to, I had to do. Do you have any
toilet pun you want to get out before we close it?
Thanked up? I think I'm good. Yeah, Okay, let's just
wipe this one off the books. There you go. Okay,
So if if any listeners out there have any any toilet,
any clean toilet puns to send our way, or any
(20:35):
experiences with bathrooms? Have you thought about bathrooms on this level?
I know it might have at first seemed absurd to
talk about potty politics because you're referring to a toilet
as a potty and rhyming it with politics. And have
you ever had a bathroom conflict? Because I remember I
I actually yelled at me. I was at a restaurant
that had it's it's two bathrooms used to be unisex,
(20:57):
and they had recently changed it to women and men,
and the women's line was ridiculous. So I just went
in the men's room. It was a single stall, Yeah,
and I came out and this guy started literally cussing
me out. It's like, really, dude, you should tell him
about the three million women in India who don't have potties.
So with that, send us your thoughts. Mom stuff at
Discovery dot com is our email address, and I've got
(21:21):
one here from Marcy. And this is in reference to
our recent episode on age gaps in relationships. She writes,
I happen to be in a long distance relationship with
someone twenty seven years older than myself. Though most of
our communication is through talking on the phone, what's amazing
is that we can talk for hours every week, even
(21:42):
though we don't actually get to do much together. I
don't feel as if age difference affects our relationship, except
that I find guys my age are looking for someone
who is outgoing and exciting, as I've seen on many
online dating profiles, and older men tend to be happier
than younger men. Someone is simply able to hold an
intelligent conversation. My long distance relationship and I are actually
(22:05):
close in the same life stages in many ways, since
we're both mature, responsible adults, and we can discuss things
that many less stable people don't have in common with us,
like taking care of a house. But more than anything,
we are both very curious people and enjoy sharing information.
And by the way, we buck the statistics and that
we both have advanced degrees and decent jobs. So thanks
(22:28):
for that, Marci, excellent. I have a very serious email here.
David has a bound to pick. This is coming from
our air brushing episode, more like a nip to pick.
He says, how could you do an episode on air
brushing without mentioning Marky Mark's third nipple. It was discreetly
(22:51):
air brushed out of all of his underwear modeling shots.
He should be proud to carry an extra nipple like
Anne Boleyn or the Man with the Golden Gun. Yeah.
I did not realize that that Mark Wallberg a k a.
Marky Mark had a third nipple. I was urious, but
thankfully he sent us a link and um to to
(23:11):
an interview with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, and Mark
Wahlberg confirms that yes, indeed he has a third nipple
and like the size of a regular nipple. No, he says,
it's about the size of an infant's nipple. It's like
an small, undeveloped nipple. But the winner, I wonder if
it's along his milk line, milk bridge on the milk ridge.
(23:32):
That's right. So two episodes of one airbrushing men and
nipples tying it all together. So thanks to everyone who
has shared so much esoteric knowledge like third nipples of
celebrities with us. Mom stuff at Discovery dot com is
the address you can send your thoughts too, and you
can also find us on Facebook. Leave us a comment there,
(23:54):
or you can tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast, and
of course you can find us steering a week at
our home website, how stuff works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works
(24:18):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
From housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And before we go any further,
(00:21):
I would like to say a special hello to everyone
who is listening to us right now. While in the bathroom, Yes,
this this goes out to you, and while you were
in the bathroom, I'd like you to ponder for a
moment the way that you're using the toilet and what
it means socially. I bet you never thought about that before,
(00:44):
but we're here to tell you what it means, and
it means a lot. Public restrooms, especially are loaded with
gender politics and racial politics exactly. And we're not even
we're not We're not messing around here. Okay, all right,
I'm a little tongue in cheek, but seriously, uh, toilets
and public restrooms have a surprisingly rich history of controversy
(01:12):
in terms of access, right. I mean, first of all,
women were denied public restrooms for an absurdly long period
of time. Well because we didn't leave the house, That's true.
We were barefoot and pregnant and baking I'm sure, tending
to our gardens and whatnot, shuffling to the outhouse right
now and then exactly um, and then you know, once,
(01:33):
once there are public restrooms, there's an issue of equality
because I know that you've been at a ball game
or a bar or something where you've had to wait
in line for the bathroom for a significant period of time,
well while the guys just breathed in and out. I
remember going to a Braves game last year and waiting,
waiting in line for the bathroom for twenty minutes. Did
(01:55):
you make it? I barely made it. Hear all these
women uttering like relievably. Oh God. Well, that's why you
find so much camaraderie in the bathroom line for for
the women's restroom, because you're all in this this horrible
situation together having to hold your bowels. Um. But let's
(02:15):
not let's not get to ahead of ourselves, because the
thing is, you're talking about being at a Braves game
and having to wait for a bathroom. But the thing is, Caroline,
here in the United States, in the Western world, we
are taking our bathrooms for granted big time. Uh. It
is a huge problem. Access to santation facilities, especially for women,
(02:38):
is a huge problem in developing countries. Um. We've touched
on this before in the podcast How toilet access is
I'M a problem for school girls in particular in rural
areas because it prevents them from attending school during their periods.
If they don't have access to a toilet, they have
to stay home, and that only keeps them home even longer.
(02:58):
You have a lot of area is um In Africa
as well, the Amnesty International has worked hard to try
and get more UH sanitation facilities in there. But even
in countries like China and India, access to toilets is
still a huge problem. Um. This is coming from a
couple of articles in the Economist magazine. In India, around
(03:20):
three hundred and thirty million women lack access to toilets
and because of that they have to wait until night
to go out to the bathroom, risking rape, kidnapping, and
snake bites. Right, that's dangerous. Um. But in in China,
which I think of as a pretty pretty developed, modern country,
(03:41):
according to that World Health Organization report from it estimated
that forty percent of Chinese people lack access to improve
sanitation facilities, which contributes to the risk of disease. Right,
And that makes sense because there are still so many
large pockets of rural areas in China, even in Beijing.
(04:01):
There has been a protest movement, a small kind of
more underground protest movement to get more toilets in urban
areas because as people are traveling around getting from home
to job and back again, these busses will stop off
and everyone will get out of the bus to use
the public restroom, and there are the same number of
(04:22):
toilets for men and women. And because of that, you know,
women don't can't go to the bathroom because all the
stalls are taken up and a lot of times, um
they mentioned how a lot of the sanitation workers are women.
So the women are cleaning a bathroom, using up one stall,
eliminating another, you know, another toilet for use. Yeah, an
activists have had it. Activists in China are tired of
(04:44):
having to wait in line for the bathroom. Well, like
like I was at the Braves game, while men just
breathe in and out, and so it's not just an inconvenience.
They're saying that it's a gender equality issue and Lea
ting Ting, a twenty two year old student, has led
the Occupy Men's Toilet movement, during which she and several
activists took over a men's restroom near a park, allowing
(05:05):
women to use the empty stalls for three minutes at
a time before they would wave the men back in
for ten minutes. And in this way they you know,
we're hoping to raise awareness and bring attention to the
fact that women need more restroom space. Now, one thing
that I did not realize is that a number of countries,
um including the US, on the state level, have what
(05:27):
are referred to as potty parity laws, essentially laws stating
you must have an equal number of bathrooms for men
and for women. And why in the United States would
we need something like that? Oh? Well, instances like in
West Virginia that barred women from jury service until ninety
(05:47):
six because the courthouses lacked female toilets. Oh and it's
not just it's not just in states. Let's talk about
the US capital, because the Capitol building did not have
a female bathroom for female senators until and because of that,
they would have to run downstairs and use their tourist
(06:10):
restroom and then run back upstairs, whereas mail senators had
their own designated, special private bathroom exactly. So bathrooms were
used as an excuse to keep women out of certain activities. Yeah,
I hope you can't miss your boat because you're waiting
in the line for the bathroom. Right. Um, but this
potty parody, I mean, it's saying one to one, it's
saying men and women need equal bathrooms. But one to
(06:33):
one is not an equal opportunity ratio because our time
in the bathroom. Let's face it, folks, it is not
one to one. Right. Study from Virginia Tech measured how
long it takes men and women to use the bathroom.
It found that women take an average of three minutes
to quote, go in, go and go out, whereas men
(06:54):
are in and out in eighty three points six seconds,
about half the time. Now. I tweeted this little fact
TOID before we came in to record, uh, and received
a number of interesting replies, one of which was from
a woman who I guess she didn't notice that I
had said public restrooms because she was like, wait a minute, No,
(07:15):
my husband takes a really long time in the bathroom,
but now we're talking about out in public guys go in,
go out, and usually it takes women on average twice
as long. Okay, so it's an issue of time and
it's an issue of space. This is coming from the Economist. Uh.
They quoted George Washington University law professor at John bans Off,
(07:35):
who told them that sanitary facilities are assigned by area,
like we were saying, but up to twelve urinals can
fit into a space, they can hold only three to
four sit down toilets. So women either need more space
or we need more solutions. And as we'll go into
in more detail, the design of women's bathroom stalls has
not changed much since the eighteen fifties. There has not
(08:00):
been a ton of innovation, even though as we'll also
discuss female urinals. That's right, female urinals are one proposed solution.
But let's get back to this issue of access and
talk for a moment about some stuff that's been going
on more on college campuses and um trans students on
(08:21):
college campuses who want unisex bathrooms. Right. Catherine Anthony and
architecture professor UH said in that Economist article that one
solution is to make more bathrooms unisex. She says, either
there are no lines or everyone has to wait, and
she says that it also makes life easier for transgender
people who have to worry about making a public choice
(08:42):
and being ridiculed. All right, And this is coming from
the paper Restroom Revolution, Unisex Toilets and Campus Politics by
Olga Gershonson, and she writes, to traditional sex segregated public
restrooms bring transgender people routine risk of being insulted, mocked,
a tact, and even arrested. So again, we're taking for
(09:04):
granted a lot of times access to public bathrooms, not
just by virtue of living in the US, where the
axis usually is more abundant, but also by virtue of
being cis gender heterosexual identified females who can just you know,
we see the lady sign and we know right where
to walk. That's not the same situation for a transgender person.
(09:24):
And this is coming from the Transgender Law and Policy
Institute that listed a lot of problems that transgender high
school students face in particular, and they found that often
transgender and gender nonconforming students don't feel safe in either
the men's or the women's restroom because of the danger
of harassment um and they found that in a transgender
(09:44):
focus group, the lack of safe bathrooms is the biggest
problem that gender nonconforming students face because a lot of
gender scholars will point out that when you really think
about it, the way that bathrooms are segregated between men's
and women and it's also a way of um, I guess,
making our private parts even more private. Yes, and the
(10:07):
idea of gender gender neutral locker rooms was actually suggested
by transgender students at Grinnell College in Iowa. They'd already
had gender neutral dorm options for three years, but last
year added gender neutral locker rooms at the encouragement of students. Yeah,
especially among private UM colleges and universities in the US,
(10:27):
gender neutral dorms have become more common. I think they're
The USA Today article sited fifty four college campuses that
already have those. UM. But in that Restroom Revolution article
that I mentioned by Olga Gershenson UM, she talks a
lot about the two thousand one protest movement that started
at University of Massachusetts Amherst by a student group called
(10:52):
Restroom Revolution that was lobbying for transgender friendly unisex bathrooms,
and they ran into not only opposition from other students
on campus UM and even some gay organizations who said,
you're just trying to get attention. This is bathrooms. Just
you've been going to the bathroom, Just keep going to
the same bathroom that you went to. No big deal, UM.
(11:13):
But when they went and actually talked to the vice
chancellor about getting UM unisex bathrooms in there, I thought
it was interesting that the Massachusetts Architectural Code stated that
a bathroom had to be designated by gender, and I
wonder that was in two thousand one, and I wonder
if some of those codes are changing, because I went
back and checked and the campus does now have gender
(11:34):
neutral bathrooms in a lot of the dorms. Now. So,
while party politics has become a platform for UM transgender rights,
the gender issues go a long way back to when
the first public conveniences as they were called, were invented
and installed in London. And like you mentioned earlier, Caroline,
(11:58):
they were restricted from two men only. Women could not
use them. They did not have women in mind when
they first invented public restrooms, right because we don't need
the house, UM. But the the first large scale public
bathrooms were featured at London's Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one,
and it was the first time that people saw this
set up on a on a large scale and thought, okay,
(12:20):
this is how it works. And they thought it worked
so well that it hasn't changed the whole design of
like going into a stall, unlocking the door and sitting
down on a toilet. Right. Barbara Penner, who is an
architectural lecturer at the University College of London UM talks
about how the model of ladies room that was established
at that Great Exhibition by George Jennings, that came with
(12:42):
a private stall with the water closet, lock and door,
is still so dominant it has not been seriously rethought
in the last hundred and fifty years. Yeah. Well back
then it was just good that they got toilets because
public health concerns back in the nineteenth century led to
the prevent vision of public toilets, but the majority, like
we said, were for men only, and women immediately started
(13:05):
fighting this because you know, sometimes they did have to
be out of the house for whatever reason. UM, the
Ladies Sanitary Association and members of the public in England
campaigned for women's toilets and high traffic areas, and one
was going to be installed in nineteen hundred, but this
giant brew haha broke out and people were calling it
an abomination. I don't want it anywhere near my house.
(13:27):
That's filthy and inappropriate, So the project was abandoned. There
was not a public women's bathroom in that area of
London until nineteen oh five. Yeah, it was sort of
a twofold protest against it. One being the the impropriety
of women urinating and possibly defecating. Women don't do that, no,
(13:48):
but doing it in public no less Caroline than everyone
would know that, yes and due indeed yes, and dude,
yes indeed women do poop um. So they didn't like
the idea of women using the bathroom in pub And
then also this potential interaction of the women who would
leave to be shopping, the more leisurely upper class women
who would be shopping, who might interact with lower class
(14:09):
factory girls and flower girls. But in order to keep
the class divide, they charged a penny to use this
public bathroom, but there was a cheaper option. There was
a cheaper option in a female urinet was installed in
one London public lou and it only cost a halfpenny
(14:33):
and instead of it being a stall with a door
that you locked, they had a curtain and it was
a It was a stand up operation, which was pretty
handy because Victorian underwear was open at the crutch. As
we have discussed before in the podcast Queen Victoria in Victoria,
I wonder if she ever used one. Certainly not certainly
(14:54):
not um, but it's it's been a hard transition, I
think to try to convince women to use urinals or
urinets made specifically for them. I think there's definitely prevailing
attitude that it's weird or immodest or improper. Well, Barbara Penner,
who was that that toilet scholar that I mentioned from
University College of London, has got her hands on some
(15:18):
model urinets that that or They were essentially like siphons
that women could use to to get the urine from
out out of them to the toilet without spring everywhere.
Women out there, you know what I'm I'm talking about.
It's not the easiest to pee while standing up. I
used to work in an office where someone would spray
(15:39):
all over the seat and I think that individual could
have benefited from a urinet. Yeah, they were um a
lot of times they were just shaped like a funnel,
but there was one from the mid eighteen hundreds. It
was glass blown urinet that was shaped like, um, a penis.
I mean, I guess they were. They figured, hey, well
guys used this too to piece, so let's work for
(16:00):
the women. Let's maintain this theme. But again, the female
urin never really caught on, although, fun fact, in nineteen
fifty and nineteen seventy three the American Standard Toilet Company
tried again to produce a female urinal, but it didn't
really catch on so much. No, it still hasn't. And
the most recent that I've read about it, there was
an article in Cabinet magazine by Barbara Penner, who you
(16:22):
mentioned before, talking about female urinals at at the Glastonbury
Music Festival and that they used penates, these little like
cardboard things you would like stick, I guess stick them
in your underwear, used to direct the stream of urine.
It's basically like a yurin funnel. Um. I've also I
think there's also a p she out there. Yeah, you
(16:44):
can see you'll see them sometimes more at at festivals,
but I've never seen one in person. I have an
either I there was one quote where the where a
girl at Glastonbury said that she really liked the idea
was pretty handy because you didn't have to go in
one of those filthy borda potties, but that it was
a little hard to use when you've been drinking at
a music festival, understandably careful, but talking about the gender
(17:09):
politics of the bathroom and going to the bathroom, we
would be remiss to not mention this quote from The
Second Sex by Simon Beauvoir, written in because she believed
that teaching little girls to squat and urinate constituted, quote,
the most striking sexual differentiation of their childhood. And by
(17:32):
by teaching little girls to squat when using the bathroom,
it was teaching them to to hide themselves, and it
was a shameful and inconvenient procedure. And the erect position
was reserved for men alone. Right, Well, you mentioned these
ladies before. Olga Gershinson and Barbara Penner and their introduction
to the book Ladies and Gents, Public Toilets and Gender,
(17:54):
they wrote that public bathrooms are the last openly sex
segregated spaces, and the spaces we expect to be sex segregated,
and we go into them knowing that the guys next
door are probably gonna be standing up and we're probably
gonna be sitting down. And so it really is, they say,
reflects and shapes the binary division of men and women,
as well as quote proper relationships between people of the
(18:16):
same sex, And which is why, when you think about
it in all of those terms, why it makes sense
that these transgender students in particular are so adamant about
getting safer unisex spaces to where you can you can
do away with all those gendered trappings. And while we
talked a lot about gender in this episode, we also
have to address race because during the Civil rights movement
(18:39):
in the US, bathrooms were one of the last places
to be desegregated. For listeners out there who have seen
or read The Help, one of the plot lines revolves
around how this completely racist white woman UM does not
want her black maid to use the bathroom because of
these bogus leaves about race specific diseases UM and these
(19:05):
desegregation cases about regarding bathrooms. One as late as nineteen
seventy seven, there's a case James v. Stockholm that was
still hashing out segregation of public bathrooms in in workplaces especially,
So we talked about gender, We've talked about race. Who
knew that the potty politics of public restrooms? I can't
(19:29):
say that five times fast? But who knew that the
potty politics of public restrooms was so so complicated? Right?
I had never uh considered myself um at a disadvantage
as far as the bathroom goes, other than you know,
oh my gosh, I'm going to have to cross my
legs and pray that I get into a stall really fast.
(19:51):
I hadn't thought of it as a equality issue, but
the fact that women don't have the space that they
need to get to the bathroom in time, hundreds of
million of women and I'm sure men too. But this
is this is an issue that is still very much
needs to be solved on a global level and down
to you know, rights for for transgender people as well, exactly.
(20:14):
So I think we can flush this episode. Oh I
had to, I had to do. Do you have any
toilet pun you want to get out before we close it?
Thanked up? I think I'm good. Yeah, Okay, let's just
wipe this one off the books. There you go. Okay,
So if if any listeners out there have any any toilet,
any clean toilet puns to send our way, or any
(20:35):
experiences with bathrooms? Have you thought about bathrooms on this level?
I know it might have at first seemed absurd to
talk about potty politics because you're referring to a toilet
as a potty and rhyming it with politics. And have
you ever had a bathroom conflict? Because I remember I
I actually yelled at me. I was at a restaurant
that had it's it's two bathrooms used to be unisex,
(20:57):
and they had recently changed it to women and men,
and the women's line was ridiculous. So I just went
in the men's room. It was a single stall, Yeah,
and I came out and this guy started literally cussing
me out. It's like, really, dude, you should tell him
about the three million women in India who don't have potties.
So with that, send us your thoughts. Mom stuff at
Discovery dot com is our email address, and I've got
(21:21):
one here from Marcy. And this is in reference to
our recent episode on age gaps in relationships. She writes,
I happen to be in a long distance relationship with
someone twenty seven years older than myself. Though most of
our communication is through talking on the phone, what's amazing
is that we can talk for hours every week, even
(21:42):
though we don't actually get to do much together. I
don't feel as if age difference affects our relationship, except
that I find guys my age are looking for someone
who is outgoing and exciting, as I've seen on many
online dating profiles, and older men tend to be happier
than younger men. Someone is simply able to hold an
intelligent conversation. My long distance relationship and I are actually
(22:05):
close in the same life stages in many ways, since
we're both mature, responsible adults, and we can discuss things
that many less stable people don't have in common with us,
like taking care of a house. But more than anything,
we are both very curious people and enjoy sharing information.
And by the way, we buck the statistics and that
we both have advanced degrees and decent jobs. So thanks
(22:28):
for that, Marci, excellent. I have a very serious email here.
David has a bound to pick. This is coming from
our air brushing episode, more like a nip to pick.
He says, how could you do an episode on air
brushing without mentioning Marky Mark's third nipple. It was discreetly
(22:51):
air brushed out of all of his underwear modeling shots.
He should be proud to carry an extra nipple like
Anne Boleyn or the Man with the Golden Gun. Yeah.
I did not realize that that Mark Wallberg a k a.
Marky Mark had a third nipple. I was urious, but
thankfully he sent us a link and um to to
(23:11):
an interview with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, and Mark
Wahlberg confirms that yes, indeed he has a third nipple
and like the size of a regular nipple. No, he says,
it's about the size of an infant's nipple. It's like
an small, undeveloped nipple. But the winner, I wonder if
it's along his milk line, milk bridge on the milk ridge.
(23:32):
That's right. So two episodes of one airbrushing men and
nipples tying it all together. So thanks to everyone who
has shared so much esoteric knowledge like third nipples of
celebrities with us. Mom stuff at Discovery dot com is
the address you can send your thoughts too, and you
can also find us on Facebook. Leave us a comment there,
(23:54):
or you can tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast, and
of course you can find us steering a week at
our home website, how stuff works dot com. Be sure
to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works
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