Unisex Bathrooms

North Carolina is getting a lot of pushback about their new law requiring transgendered people to use the bathroom of their birth gender.

Mrs NoCo had a suggestion.

"Why not make ALL bathrooms unisex?"  I said that would work for women's bathrooms, which have separate stalls.  Men's bathrooms, with a line of urinals (or in some bars, a metal trough) not so much.

"Ew," she said.  "That's gross."

McSorley's used to have just the one bathroom, but they eventually broke down and put in a ladies room. Going used to be fairly amusing, because a good proportion of the female clientele didn't know about the unisex bog, and was pretty grossed out when it came time to use it.

Wikipedia wrote:

, it was one of the last of the "Men Only" pubs, only admitting women after legally being forced to do so in 1970.[2][3][4][a]

That explains it. Plumbing is expensive to put in.

Mrs NoCo's point -- and II think I can paraphrase her because I agree with her -- is this:

We have all learned to sit two feet from somebody else while they are defecating, as long as there's a metal wall between us.  It's unpleasant, but we recognize rhe necessity.

In these days of striving for gender equality, men (and women) must face the fact that "everybody poops" and our basic human needs are irrespective of gender.


On another tack, I have heard anecdotally from janitorial staff that women's bathrooms are always messier than men's. Perhaps if everybody shared they'd be more considerate and civilized. That works for legislatures.

Which are a lot like toilets.

Separate bathrooms are not a world-wide standard.
In 1964 I encountered same-sex bathrooms in Japan (or as they called them, "bathrooms").

Actually I believe they originated in Victorian England.

That could be, but I have never been in Victorian England.

They probably originated in the stone age. Or before.