3 ms·

I never understood when a place has two single occupancy bathrooms with one marked Men and the other Women. Maybe there's a law that requires this in some place

I never understood when a place has two single occupancy bathrooms with one marked Men and the other Women. Maybe there's a law that requires this in some places or are they just catering to social expectations?

VLM 11y ago
Womens rooms have sanitary napkin dispensers etc. In the old sexist days only womens rooms had a baby changing table. There are also social issues, is a one stall / one urinal a single occupancy or not? Technically there's two holes. Also you'd be surprised architecturally how many are precisely arranged such that a strategically located adjacent closet could be sacrificed to double or triple the bathroom size at a later date, if it because necessary. (edited to add, if you assume the massively dominant cis, the labeling is to prevent office romance trysts, along the lines of joining the mile high club on a plane but without the plane)
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Those dispensers cost ~$10. Cheap to have them in every bathroom. The guys are not going to have a conniption fit if they see them. So there's no longer a good reason to mark individual bathrooms as far as I can see.
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  There's still no good reason for the labeling. Take Starbucks for example: two individual gendered bathrooms. When someone is taking a long time in one bathroom, invariably someone of the 'incorrect gender' will use the next available room, because there's a single line of people in a crowded space that all need to go and nobody cares who uses a single person water closet. And before anyone mentions cleanliness, my anecdotal experience (from experiences like the Starbucks) is that both men and women's toilets are dirty at about the same rate. I would love a janitor to give their observations :)
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Ok I volunteered at a parent-cooperative preschool. I cleaned the bathrooms. The girls' bathroom was shockingly worse than the boys'. A data point.
unclenoriega 11y ago
I came across a good summary of these requirements a while back. Unfortunately, I can can't find it now, but I can say there are definitely laws regarding this in the US, but they vary by jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions require 2 single-occupancy bathrooms to be labeled gendered, while some other jurisdictions require 2 single-occupancy bathrooms to be unisex. P.S.: While not what I was looking for, I was able to find this Reason article that talks about the issue: http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/11/gender-neutral-bathrooms-building-codes http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/11/gender-neutral-bathroo...

VLM 11y ago

Womens rooms have sanitary napkin dispensers etc. In the old sexist days only womens rooms had a baby changing table. There are also social issues, is a one stall / one urinal a single occupancy or not? Technically there's two holes. Also you'd be surprised architecturally how many are precisely arranged such that a strategically located adjacent closet could be sacrificed to double or triple the bathroom size at a later date, if it because necessary. (edited to add, if you assume the massively dominant cis, the labeling is to prevent office romance trysts, along the lines of joining the mile high club on a plane but without the plane)

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Those dispensers cost ~$10. Cheap to have them in every bathroom. The guys are not going to have a conniption fit if they see them. So there's no longer a good reason to mark individual bathrooms as far as I can see.
peterwwillis 11y ago
There's still no good reason for the labeling. Take Starbucks for example: two individual gendered bathrooms. When someone is taking a long time in one bathroom, invariably someone of the 'incorrect gender' will use the next available room, because there's a single line of people in a crowded space that all need to go and nobody cares who uses a single person water closet. And before anyone mentions cleanliness, my anecdotal experience (from experiences like the Starbucks) is that both men and women's toilets are dirty at about the same rate. I would love a janitor to give their observations :)
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Ok I volunteered at a parent-cooperative preschool. I cleaned the bathrooms. The girls' bathroom was shockingly worse than the boys'. A data point.

unclenoriega 11y ago

I came across a good summary of these requirements a while back. Unfortunately, I can can't find it now, but I can say there are definitely laws regarding this in the US, but they vary by jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions require 2 single-occupancy bathrooms to be labeled gendered, while some other jurisdictions require 2 single-occupancy bathrooms to be unisex. P.S.: While not what I was looking for, I was able to find this Reason article that talks about the issue: http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/11/gender-neutral-bathrooms-building-codes http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/11/gender-neutral-bathroo...