While many of us don’t suffer from clinical levels of anxiety when using a public toilet, this particular social space is, nevertheless, fraught with contradiction, anxiety, and taboo. The public toilette, hidden in plain sight, inspires a wide range of compensating behaviors and personal social rituals—i.e. leaving a proper amount of space at the urinals, avoiding conversation even with people you know, flushing toilets to eliminate sounds and smells. This somewhat bizzzare realm of ritualistivc behavior is well-known to those who experience them, if not daily at an office, then in other places – schools, bars, restaurants, ball parks, and airports.
The public collides uncomfortably with the private in the bathroom as it does nowhere else, and the unique behaviors we perform stem from a complex psychological stew of shame, self-awareness, design, and gender roles. If you boiled this stew down, though, it’d come down to boundaries—the stalls and dividers that physically separate us, and the social boundaries we create with our behavior when those don’t feel like enough.
In an increasingly sex-positive culture, it seems like bathroom issues are the last thing most people are reluctant to talk about. Serious attempts to research bathroom behavior or design have been done by just a few people who have been willing to break the taboo. One of these, Nick Haslam, author of Psychology in the Bathroom, explains that we attach “shame and secrecy” to the bathroom from a very early age, and that some of that is evolutionary.
“Part of that is surely due to the fact that we are socialized from an early age to control excretion and taught that failures of control are embarrassing and humiliating,” he told me via email. “And from an early age we learn that excretion is something you do on your own, behind closed doors…Another reason for the taboo is perhaps an entirely adaptive and evolved aversion to bodily waste, which is linked to disease and contamination. To some degree there will always be some anxiety and disgust attached to excretion for this reason.”
But he also notes that talking about bathroom issues wasn’t always this taboo. If we’ve talked about it before, we can talk about it again, and in talking, maybe find ways to ease some of the anxieties people feel in public bathrooms, and reduce the need for us to be so vigilant about policing our behavior.
History
Until the 1800’s, there was little expectation of privacy while using the bathroom. Economic prosperity and religious notions of modesty made the desire for a private space in which to do one’s business more widespread. Today, most people living in developed countries expect privacy in the bathroom. Paradoxically, most bathrooms outside of private homes are designed for multiple, simultaneous occupants.
In his 1976 book, The Bathroom, Alexander Kira wrote: “Most of our feelings about the body, sex, elimination, privacy, and cleanliness are magnified in this context of ‘publicness,’ for the fact of publicness, with its inevitable territorial violations and loss of privacy, increases our apprehensions.” We want privacy for our own elimination, and privacy from other people doing theirs.
“Toilet activities are highly personal and ordinarily occur backstage of life,” says Harvey Molotch, a professor of sociology and metropolitan studies at New York University and co-editor of Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing. “You have this really harsh tension between the public and the private, which I don’t think exists anywhere else. That’s troublesome, it has to be settled in some way.” How it’s usually settled in the U.S. is with metal partitions, which Molotch says are “just made with the flimsiest crap.” This is just for stalls of course—men’s urinals typically have even less substantial partitions, if indeed they are divided at all. Obviously, these physical boundaries, though they may protect you from being seen (or may not, entirely, if there are gaps in the stall door), do not protect you from being heard, or smelled.
Because these physical boundaries alone are, for most of us, insufficient, we have to reinforce them with our behavior. A 1985 study called “Meanwhile Backstage: Public Bathrooms and the Interaction Order” notes that “it is not physical boundaries, per se, that define a space as a stall but the behavioral regard given such boundaries.” This is why conversation usually ceases once you enter a stall (and if you do dare to talk, it’s normally to a friend, not a stranger), why we say “Sorry” and quickly retreat if we accidentally open an occupied stall, why we politely ignore any sounds or smells that emanate from nearby stalls—because we want others to do the same for us. These are generally understood behavioral guidelines, but the situation is very different in men’s and women’s bathrooms.
Gendering the Toilet
Biologically speaking, men and women don’t need separate bathrooms—they’re using them for the same reasons. While there are a few functional differences—many men prefer to pee standing, women need receptacles to throw away tampons and pads—it’s not hard to imagine a unisex bathroom that would, at least in theory, work for everyone. In reality, an ingrained sense of modesty about concealing our bodies from the opposite sex might prevent such a bathroom’s success, but many single-user public bathrooms are already unisex.
As prominent sociologist Erving Goffman noted in his 1977 essay The Arrangement Between the Sexes, “the functioning of sex-differentiated organs is involved, but there is nothing in this functioning that biologically recommends segregation; that arrangement is totally a cultural matter.” This culturally agreed-upon separation creates unique single-sex spaces. There is perhaps no other arena that so stridently reinforces gender separation and difference.
“Public toilets…frequently instantiate the most literal and entrenched social division—the division of people into two unchanging sexes,” writes Ruth Barcan, senior lecturer in the department of gender and cultural studies at the University of Sydney, in her chapter for Toilet. “This form of segregation is at once immensely naturalized and immensely policed, the most taken-for-granted social categorization and the most fiercely regulated.”
“When men and women are exclusively in the company of their own sex, for women it’s often liberating; for men it’s often anxiety-inducing.” The nature of these single-sex spaces affects men’s and women’s attitudes toward using the bathroom, as well as their behavior in them.
The arrangement works out in women’s favor, according to Sarah Moore, a senior lecturer at the Royal Holloway University of London’s Centre for Criminology and Sociology. In the bathroom, people are free of the typical gender hierarchy of the co-ed public sphere—in which men are at the top. “This shines a light on what it means for men and women to be exclusively in the company of their own sex,” Moore told me in an email. “For women this is often liberating; for men it’s often anxiety-inducing.”
In a study published in the British Journal of Criminology in 2012, Moore, along with Simon Breeze, observed 20 public toilets in London and Bristol, and interviewed the men and women who used them. She found that though both sexes had plenty of complaints, women’s were more about the cleanliness and quality of the facilities than anxiety about other occupants. They were more relaxed and social overall, chatting with strangers in line, watching doors for each other, sharing makeup.
Men, on the other hand, were on edge. Moore goes so far in the study as to say that for men, public toilets are “nightmarish spaces.” The anxiety they reported was centered around “watching”—being watched by other men, or being perceived to be watching other men—and that this watching was linked to the possibility of sexual violence.
Photo Credit: Sandra Trappen, taken in Venice Italy, 2014.
The Male Gaze in the Bathroom
The theory Moore lays out is that, in public, the gender hierarchy makes women the ones who are watched (under the “male gaze,” as it were). But in the bathroom, sans women, men worry about being the object of another man’s gaze, a feeling they don’t often confront in other places. This can make them fearful, even if there’s no real threat present.
“Many of the men we interviewed felt that they’d experienced implied violence (things like odd and overly-long looks that they felt to portend sexual violence),” Moore says. “This could just be a perception of course. Once we start feeling unsure of a space, we’re perhaps more likely to read danger into a situation that was actually perfectly fine. Here’s what I think: The threat of sexual violence in men’s public bathrooms is actually minimal; it’s the nature of that threat—not just to men’s safety, but to their sense of masculinity—that prompts feelings of anxiety.”
And from this anxiety is born the famous urinal rule. It is well-known, even among women who have never had occasion to use a urinal, that it is expected that men not use a urinal directly next to someone else. (Some women I’ve spoken with have said they prefer to have an empty stall as a buffer between themselves and others also, but it is a much stronger norm in men’s bathrooms).
Good, “OK,” and bad urinal design, according to Soifer (Courtesy Steve Soifer)
“Toilet etiquette requires that one adopts an attitude that resembles that of the perfectly alone individual in Sartre’s writing.” The vulnerability and exposure of using a urinal seems to create the need for additional social boundaries, in place of even “flimsy” physical ones.
A famous, though ethically questionable, study from 1976 found that invading this socially agreed-upon bubble of personal space made it much more difficult for men to pee. To discover this, one researcher hid in a bathroom stall and watched men at the urinals through a periscope, timing the “delay and persistence” of urination when a confederate came into the bathroom and stood right next to or one urinal removed from the unknowing participant. The closer the confederate was, the longer the delay before the man was able to go, and the less time he peed overall. Whether he would have been able to go at all had he known someone was spying on him through a periscope, no one can say.
Making Eye Contact and “Dropping Trou”
The Goffman-coined term “civil inattention” is the scientific way to describe how men often treat each other at the urinal, and how people treat strangers in the bathroom generally. While one person might acknowledge another with a glance, he then immediately withdraws his attention. As the 1985 study put it, “through this brief pattern of visual interaction, individuals both acknowledge one another’s presence and, immediately thereafter, one another’s right to be let alone.” When forced through circumstance to use adjacent urinals, this civil inattention gets bumped up to what the study calls “nonperson treatment,” in which someone simply treats his neighbor as if he does not exist.
Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, in his book Being and Nothingness, wrote about the self-consciousness that can arise when one feels like one is being watched: “What I apprehend immediately when I hear the branches crackling behind me is not that there is someone there; it is that I am vulnerable, that I have a body which can be hurt….in short, that I am seen.”
In the bathroom, feeling that you are seen can leave you too self-conscious to go. A social contract not to look at one another, to treat each other as objects, may help alleviate that. As Moore writes in her study, “Toilet etiquette requires that one adopts an attitude that very closely resembles that of the perfectly alone individual in Sartre’s writing.”
The urinal rule and its obsession with not-looking may be a behavioral boundary designed to enhance bathroom-goers comfort and sense of privacy, but it also smacks of homophobia, especially when you consider Moore’s finding that many men worry about sexual violence in the bathroom. Nolan Feeney, a former colleague of mine, expressed discomfort with the connotations of the urinal rule.
Why I am Afraid of the Bathroom – Homophobia and Transgender Anxiety in the Bathroom
The urinal rule may be designed to enhance comfort and privacy, but it also smacks of homophobia. “What is the implication here?” he asked. “That guys aren’t going to respect each other’s privacy? That proximity leads people to take a sneak peek? Some people are pee-shy, and that is totally understandable, but the take-away of the informal rule of urinal space often isn’t that some dudes like their space, it’s that some dudes—particularly queer dudes—can’t be trusted.” Moore says some of the answers she got in her study were homophobic, but that it was generally not because they feared other gay men but because the men themselves wanted to “reinforce that they weren’t gay.”
Molotch adds that “homophobia is certainly playing a role, and helps to make it very tense.”
Public bathrooms are also often fraught with tension for transgender people, who, if they want to use the bathroom designated for their true gender, may be bullied or derided for doing so. But using the bathroom of their birth gender is similarly stressful. A school in Thailand solved this problem by offering students a “transsexual toilet,” and gender-neutral bathrooms are becoming increasingly common as a way of addressing this issue—even mandated by law for all new or renovated buildings in Philadelphia.
Carl Charles writes:
“As a transgender person, I don’t take small things for granted. I appreciate the store clerk who calls me “sir,” my colleagues who don’t struggle with my name or pronouns, and most important to my daily routine, I appreciate every uneventful trip to and from the bathroom.
To cisgender (non-transgender) people, going to the bathroom is a small thing, a normal and thoughtless part of their day, as routine as breathing air. To me, many other trans people, and anyone who doesn’t fit rigid norms of masculinity and femininity, just locating a bathroom where we will be safe causes anxiety, fear, and takes a great deal of time and effort.
There is widespread fear about trans people being able to go to the bathroom like everyone else does. Fear of how we might be different. Misinformation that somehow letting us go to the bathroom will make other people unsafe. Though there is no data to support that fear, there is data to show that trans people continue to be bullied, harassed and worse just for simply existing.”
Single-person restrooms are another option to ease bathroom tension, for the LGBT community as well as for paruretics, for whom social rituals are not enough to ease their anxiety. “Nothing gives me more happiness when I walk into a place and they only have a single stall bathroom,” Sanchez says. “There’s no stress, I can just relax. It’s like a spa.”
We Just Need to Pee
Not long ago, a law was passed in Texas that its proponents argued was designed to simplify where people can lawfully use public restrooms in the state. The law was drafted as a response to controversial city ordinances, such as the HERO (Housing Equal Rights Ordinance) ordinance in Houston, which opened bathrooms, showers, and dressing facilities to all, regardless of gender, gender identity, or gender expression. Plano, Texas passed a similar ordinance in December 2014. And North Carolina, as of March 2016, passed its own version of the law.
Briefly put, the bill and now law criminalizes the acto of entering a shower or toilet facility designated for the opposite sex. The legislation, furthermore, makes it a state jail felony offense for an operator, manager, superintendent, or other person with authority over a “building” to allow an individual who is 7 years or older to repeatedly enter facilities designated for persons of the opposite gender. “Building” is defined under the bill as “a public building, schoolhouse, theater, filling station, tourist court, bus station, or tavern.”
House bill 1748 defined gender as follows: “the gender established at the individual’s birth or the gender established by the individual’s chromosomes.” A male is defined as “an individual with at least one X chromosome and at least one Y chromosome.” A female is defined as “an individual with at least one X chromosome and no Y chromosomes.”The “Bathroom Bill” further provides that “If an individual’s gender established at the individual’s birth is not the same as the individual’s gender established by the individual’s chromosomes, the individual’s gender established by the individual’s chromosomes controls under this section.”
In the words of one legislator, the author and sponsor of the bill Rep. Debbie Riddle said:
“My ‘Bathroom Bill’ is simple common sense – men go to the men’s room, and women go to the women’s restroom. It protects the privacy and safety of women and children.” She continued “It is sad we even need a bill like this in today’s society.”
Not to be overlooked is the fact that the Texas law not only impacts trans identified people, it effectively guts ordinances that were designed to protect ALL people. That’s because the suspended ordinances were originally designed to protect equal access rights for everyone, not defined narrowly in terms of restrooms, but also for public accommodation, housing, city employment, city contracting, and private employment.
As part of a campaign to to fight the passage of the then bill, activists circulated selfies taken in bathrooms to point up the visual absurdity of creating such a law. For example, under the new law, the person depicted in the photo below is technically/legally compelled to use a women’s restroom, or they will face criminal felony sanction.
Poop & Pee Paruretics
Sanchez first had to face her fear of pooping in public when she attended a summer program at a Philadelphia college in high school, and had no choice but to use the standard dorm bathroom. “I was forced to poop while other girls were showering,” she says. “Probably for four days I just refused to poop, which is obviously unhealthy. And I was apparently not the only one. Some other girl on my program got sent to the hospital because she went seven days without releasing the contents of her colon.” This is why she developed her iPod strategy, which she carried into college. She says this traumatizing experience left her anxious about peeing in public bathrooms too, whereas before she’d been okay with it [Note: paruretics/paruresis refers to people who suffer from an anxiety disorder that makes it difficult to urinate in public. The condition is also known by many colloquial terms, including “bashful bladder,” “stage fright,” and “shy bladder syndrome”].
Now, in the workplace, she has new strategies. “I walk in, I immediately scan every door,” she says. “I take in the situation and if there’s nobody in there, I start running. I sit down and am immediately yelling at myself ‘Go, go, go, you can do it, goooooo!” But if someone comes in before she’s able to pee, it’s over. As she explains, “paruretics have all sorts of routines. One of the classics is, if you walk in after someone, you wash your hands until they leave.” “I call it my failure to launch,” she says. In that case she’ll either wait for the person to leave, or pretend that she’s already finished, flush, wash her hands, and leave.
Soifer has seen similar strategies among paruretics he’s worked with. “There’s all sorts of routines, we’ve all developed them,” he says. “One of the classics is, if you walk in after someone, you wash your hands until they leave.” Soifer runs weekend-long workshops for paruretics, using a “pee-buddy” system to ease them into being comfortable going with someone else nearby. Over the course of the weekend, their assigned partner will get nearer and nearer to them as they go, and the weekend often ends in a trip to a highly-trafficked public bathroom, such as one at a baseball park. This desensitization can help immensely.
“My mom always joked, ‘You’ll get over these bathroom anxieties when you get pregnant,’” Sanchez says. “’You won’t care that people are listening to you, because you’ll have to pee that badly.’” So far, she says that her bathroom anxiety was at its lowest when she had an internship at a magazine that offered free tea in its kitchenette. “I was drinking so much tea, and I had to go to the bathroom so often, and it was so urgent that I didn’t care.”
Though, depending on the extremeness of someone’s paruresis, they may never be comfortable using a public bathroom, design can help. A frequent complaint I’ve heard (not just from paruretics) is that American stall doors don’t reach from floor to ceiling, as many European ones do. According to Soifer, more substantial urinal dividers help immensely as well.
“My favorite public restrooms to go to are movie theaters, bars, and really loud restaurants,” Sanchez says. “At the movie theater there’s always, like, 1000 people in the bathroom, so nobody knows which stream is my stream. At bars they always have music playing, so that sort of cancels out my stream.”
Japan has found an innovative way to deal with the noise issue, in the form of a device called the Otohime or “Sound Princess.” It plays the sound of a flushing toilet, to mask whatever sounds a person may be making, as an alternative to the apparently popular practice of flushing the toilet constantly to hide one’s sounds. The Sound Princess is installed on the wall in some Japanese bathrooms (mostly women’s) and there is also a portable version available for purchase.
Unfortunately, Molotch says, despite the positive effects design can have on people’s comfort level in the bathroom, it’s rarely given much thought.
“I’ve been on a lot of building committees for major university buildings, and the thing that is least talked about is the public restroom,” he says. “If someone were to bring it up, it would cause giggles…In architecture firms, the lowest-ranking person designs the bathroom.”
This unwillingness to seriously discuss public restroom design can stifle innovation, and leads to the relatively homogenous bathrooms we see in most buildings, which, Molotch says, “looks like all the same stuff from Staples.” And as we’ve seen, many aspects of the generic American public bathroom can exacerbate people’s anxieties.
Barbara Penner, a senior lecturer in architectural history at University College London contributed an essay to the Molotch-edited Toilet describing how the bathroom taboo has blunted scholarly work as well.
“The refusal to deal openly with the realities of toilet use can have calculable and devastating impacts on local ecosystems, health, and living standards in developing countries,” Penner writes. “But…we in the so-called civilized countries suffer from this blinkered approach as well.”
Despite our evolution as civilized humans who can send spaceships to Mars and contemplate the nature of our own existence, we all still have to shit. And yet, it’s something nearly everyone is ashamed of and disgusted by. The popular Japanese children’s book, “Everyone Poops” (which caught on in the U.S. despite this taboo) offers an equalizing message to kids newly using the toilet. But this message doesn’t seem to be something we internalize as adults. This is because, as Haslam writes in his book, “defecation and urination… are processes that remind us of our animality and our vulnerability to death and decay.”
“At least according to one psychological theory (a theory called “terror management”) people feel threatened by reminders of their own mortality,” Haslam says. “In theory, at least, signs of our “creatureliness” (essentially how we are similar to other animals) remind us of our mortality and to defend ourselves against this realization we invest in being cultured and civilized (i.e., our uniquely human attributes).”
Bathroom boundaries also help us keep these creaturely processes separate from our public selves. That’s not to say such measures are sufficient to save us from embarrassment. Though others may ignore what’s happening in our stall, we know that they know and they know that we know that they know, etc. To apologize, “the offending individual may offer a subtle self-derogatory display as a defensive, face-saving measure,” the 1985 study reads, such as making a disgusted face, or even a self-deprecating joke, if you know the other bathroom occupants.
The Sacred & the Profane
“Through such subtle self-derogation, offending individuals metaphorically split themselves into two parts: a sacred self that assigns blame and a blame-worthy animal self,” the study says.
We re-sacralize our bodies (and, you know, protect from germs) after these “dirty” acts by washing our hands, and harshly judge those who don’t. Even though, in a 2013 survey, 70 percent of Americans admitted they just rinse their hands without using soap. The expectations for our “sacred selves” may here be somewhat divorced from reality.
Even the word “bathroom” is a sanitizing term. No one is actually bathing in public bathrooms. (Well, maybe at rest stops on cross-country Greyhound bus rides.) “Restroom” is another term that refuses to describe the thing it refers to. (My dad has taken to humorously saying he needs to “go rest” whenever he goes to the bathroom.) Same with “powder room,” “water closet,” “can,” “loo,” and “little boys’/girls’ room.” Perhaps the only nickname for the bathroom that actually refers to its function is “crapper.” (Which also refers to the plumber Thomas Crapper, who helped popularize the flush toilet.) And Leslie Knope of Parks and Recreation’s preferred term, “whiz palace.” Neither of which you would (probably) say to your boss, or in any situation in which you’re hoping to be taken seriously. It’s unbecoming, unprofessional to acknowledge what you do in the bathroom, even if everyone else is doing it too.
Saving Face: Frontstage/Backstage
“Much of what we do in public bathrooms is what we must not do elsewhere but what we must do somewhere.” Engaging with our animal selves means dropping our public face, which we must then put back on when we leave the stall. So we check ourselves in the mirror before leaving the bathroom. It seems this appearance check almost always happens on the way out of the bathroom, never on the way in. It’s a chance to reset, before returning to a place where the public is only public, not colliding with the private in awkward uncomfortable ways. Molotch notes that men are less comfortable performing this check openly, and the lack of opportunity to “recover” their public faces may contribute to bathroom anxiety.
“Men are not supposed to care how they look cosmetically, so a man has to walk past the mirror and adjust his hair or collar without calling attention to the fact that he’s doing that,” he says. “It’s very funny. It’s a very specific choreography they do. They’re walking out of the bathroom, the mirrors are there, and without breaking pace, they catch a glimpse of themselves and move their hand up to their hair to adjust it.”
The 1985 study explains that the bathroom is the ideal place for these adjustments to our appearance because, while still semi-public, is considered “backstage” of life. Adjusting our hair or makeup at a restaurant table, for example, would divert our attention from what’s happening around us—we want our frontstage public face to be poised and ready.
Indeed, though the bathroom’s unique nature can be anxiety-inducing, the behavioral regard given to the space, and its emphasis on privacy, can also make it a safe place to drop our public personas and do vulnerable things like fix our faces. Or cry.
Once you’ve laid claim to a bathroom stall, others typically respect that claim, using all of the behavioral rituals outlined above. This transforms the stall into “the occupying individual’s private, albeit temporary, retreat from the demands of public life,” according to the study. This makes the bathroom feel like the safest place to cry, or work through other emotions one doesn’t want on display, when there isn’t the option to go home.
Public bathrooms can be places of comfort or unease, places where women can relax, where men feel fearful, or where those outside the gender binary feel judged and uncomfortable. But all the social rituals and face-saving strategies are often so much duct tape over a hole we could more effectively patch if we were willing to talk about the bathroom long enough to innovate.
“How does one redesign a taboo?”
“How does one redesign a taboo?” Penner asks in her essay. “The question remains pertinent, as toilet taboos have proved remarkably resilient in the face of change—the final frontier of taboos, now that sex is no longer unspeakable in public.” “Look at how we talk about sex as a society, and we can’t talk about bathroom problems? It’s kind of out of whack if you ask me.”
“The bottom line is we’re a puritanical society,” Soifer says of of the U.S. “We still have these standards that are almost unconscious I think.”
Sources
This post is excerpted from The Atlantic, “The Private Lives of Public Bathrooms: How psychology, gender roles, and design explain the distinctive way we behave in the world’s stalls,” by Julie Beckapr, 2014.
You might also check out the book “Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing” by Harvey Molotch (Editor), Laura Noren (Editor)
“Why I Am Afraid of the Bathroom, ” by Carl Charles. Posted on the American Civil Liberties Union website. Last accessed April 6, 2015. Downloaded from: https://www.aclunc.org/blog/why-i-am-afraid-bathroom
“The New Transgender Panic: Men In Women’s Bathrooms,” by Paisley Currah. Downloaded from http://paisleycurrah.com/2016/03/31/the-new-transgender-panic-men-in-womens-bathrooms/ Last accessed April 2016.
“Texas ‘Bathroom Bill’ Criminalizes Entering Facility of Opposite Sex. Downloaded from http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/03/22/texas-bathroom-bill-criminalizes-entering-facility-of-opposite-sex/ Last accessed Feb 1, 2016.
Discussion Questions
How do you negotiate issues of privacy and social space in public restrooms? Is this a problem to which you have devoted much thought?
Where/how did you learn the “social rules” of negotiating this very private public space? Can you think of a time when you felt uncomfortable in a public toliet?
Do you feel anxiety when using bathrooms that are not rigidly bound by more traditional binary gender categories?
What do you think about the latest public controversy in regards to the “bathroom” bills.
Rock & Roll Toilet, East Village, New York City
When i go out i always try to avoid public bathrooms. reasons why i try avoiding public bathrooms is because you never really know what is going to happen or what you will see in a public bathroom. When i do go into a public bathroom the first thing i always do is first see how many urinals and stalls there are, how many males are in the bathroom and how many males are using the stalls or urinals. There is this rule that is common sense for males when they go to the bathroom, you always follow the one stall rule. A rule that if you see a male using the first urinal then you would use the third urinal if there is one. I give this rule much thought because i find it somewhat weird and uncomfortable when someone right next to me is peeing. There was this one time where in which someone in a public bathroom used the urinal right next to me so i decided to make his bathroom experience extremely uncomfortable by talking to him while he was peeing.I noticed that he felt weird awkward because he was talking while using the bathroom. At the end the guy ended up becoming my best friend so that is a weird story how to meet someone.
the way i was taught these rules of using the bathroom was by experience. every time i would use the bathroom in public schools i was slowly shown about the bathroom rules. In high school the male bathrooms only had 2 urinals and 3 stalls. i would always use the urinals because i never wanted to use the stalls. Every time i would use the urinal someone would make it uncomfortable for me by using the one next to me. Its some kind of weird emotion of anxiety and feeling uncomfortable that takes over me when someone uses a stall and urinal next to me. Over the years i started feeling less and less uncomfortable using public bathrooms but that feeling still comes back
How do you negotiate issues of privacy and social space in public restrooms? Is this a problem that you give very much thought to?
Where/how did you learn the “social rules” of negotiating this very private public space? Can you think of a time when you noticed someone violating those rules? How did it make you feel?
Do you feel anxiety when using bathrooms that are not rigidly bound by more traditional binary gender categories?
The rules of the bathroom are very clearcut and bathroom etiquette is essential, if you want to exit the stall with your dignity still in tact. Don’t slip your sight through the cracks of the stalls, always lean forward when you pee to avoid making too much noise, and if you’re a lady, NEVER ever poop in multi-stall bathrooms unless you lock the bathroom door, it’s 6 in the morning on campus, and you can manage to get away without being recognized as the culprit. There are certainly social rules regarding space and so on, but one of the biggest has got to be gendered bathrooms. In multi-stall bathrooms, the girls room is for girls, and the boys for the boys. Why is this? Why are we so frightened by the thought of the gender-neutral bathroom? We tend to knock things we haven’t ourselves tried, and claim everything as a threat, especially if it involves the oppression of a group, in this case, the LGBT community. Personally, I’ve used gender neutral bathrooms, and have never felt threatened in any way. The danger faced by trans-people, not only in bathrooms but in society, is a serious issue, and placing the safety of one group of people over another simply is not right. Perhaps we meet in the middle, and require that gender neutral bathrooms be built into all public spaces, along with the standard male a female bathrooms. Then, those that are comfortable using it, will use it when they come across it, and those not comfortable, can walk the extra hundred feet to the “appropriate” bathroom.
Personally I have never felt that my safety was in danger in a gender neutral restroom. The first time I used one was two years ago in a gay bar I was at with some friends in midtown. I didn’t know it was gender neutral until I walked in and was a little taken back when I saw urinals. I thought I was in the wrong bathroom until a gay man, mid pee, yelled out “come on in, this bathroom is for everyone!” Wow. What a concept, a bathroom for everyone! I walked right in, and not for one second did I feel threatened. The bathroom was for everyone, everyone goes to the bathroom, what’s the problem? Personally, I do not see a problem with gender neutral bathrooms, and I disagree with arguments that are made by people who do not want gender neutral bathrooms.
I think that we are taught these ‘bathroom norms’ at a young age. I remember being very young going to baseball games with my Dad and having to go into the men’s restroom with my Dad. I think my only thought back then was “why do they pee standing up?” I was taught to not stare at anyway and strictly only look at the wall. I learned at a young age it was wrong for girls to be in the men’s bathroom, and it would be wrong if a man was in the woman’s bathroom. I believe that we learn from experiences and things we are told at a young age. Today I have different views and I believe that people should be allowed to go to the bathroom in either restroom they believe they belong in.
I’ve never felt anxious or worried while using a gender neutral bathroom. A huge argument against gender neutral bathrooms and transgender people using the “wrong bathroom” is that women and children’s safety will be in jeopardy. I completely disagree with this. There is no statistical data that shows transgender people using the restroom to sexually harass any persons. Transgender people are just trying to use the bathroom like everyone else. They are not using the bathroom as an easy way to go and harass people, that is not their intention, despite what many people may say. As was said in class, we know that priests are who have sexually harassed children, but we let them use he bathroom with no problem. Why don’t we argue that our safety or our children’s safety is in danger with a priest in the bathroom? Why do we allow that, but have a problem with people who are just trying to use the restroom that they identify and present themselves as?
This is such a delightful topic: Urinals. I have had some weird fascination with them since I was little, when I used to have very short hair and used to go into the men’s restrooms to watch men pee. They thought I was a boy with my short hair and hand-me-down clothes from my brother. I realize this was very dangerous in retrospect, but the thrill of watching men at the urinals was worth it.
I need to share this wonderful website on urinals from around the world. The site host introduces the site by the following:
“Showcasing the World’s largest collection of urinal photographs ever assembled, Urinal Dot Net is the best place to piss away your time on the Internet.”
Here is the website. Enjoy: http://www.urinal.net/
I deal with the issues of privacy and social space in bathrooms by engaging in civil inattention and generally avoiding eye contact with everyone else in the room. I have never given much thought to this as I have fortunately never had to worry about looking out of place in my restroom of choice. I’m not sure how I learned the social rules of public restroom but it is probably the fact that as a kid we are taught that going to the bathroom is a private thing and that this privacy should be respected.
I accidentally broke these rules when in a rush I walked into a men’s restroom and to my horror saw men at urinals where a normal wall should have been. I darted into a stall, did my business quietly, and peeked through the cracks to make sure everyone’s backs were turned so I could make my escape and wash my hands in the appropriate restroom. I felt very anxious because I was in a very defined male ‘territory’ and knew my presence would probably upset some or invite some kind of unwelcome attention.
I don’t feel anxious in unisex restrooms. The only ones I’ve encountered are designed for only one person to use them at a time. My intense fear and embarrassment from my incident in the men’s room makes me think that if I did encounter a unisex restroom with men using it I would feel uncomfortable and threatened even though I logically know it isn’t a big deal.
I personally have not felt anxiety when using gender-neutral bathrooms. I noticed that many female’s concerns with using gender neutral bathrooms is the fear that they will be attacked by men who want to use the bathroom too. Personally, I have a few problems with these types of comments. For one, it takes away all accountability for men and, in my opinion, shows a general distrust of and prejudice toward certain men. When describing the scenario they’d be fearful in, many women described a “big” man. Many women that are fearful of men because of their size are playing into the stereotypes. As a woman, I understand the importance of being on guard for your safety. However, I feel in this type of situation, the extra caution that goes into using a gender neutral bathroom is most likely unfounded and the act of being more fearful in the bathroom is what makes it an uncomfortable environment in the first place.
This brings me into my second point. I genuinely think that women feel uneasy in gender-neutral bathrooms because it is not what they are used to, and not because they are truly afraid. Not to cause more worry, but in reality any gendered person could walk into any labeled bathroom to assault someone. I really do not believe that, for example, a man wanting to rape a woman would see the women’s bathroom sign and give up, yet so few women think about this. There is nothing stopping anyone from going into any bathroom they want. Just because a place is now open to both genders does not mean predators are going to lurk around there for their next attack. It is just that people are unused to gender-neutral bathrooms that it causes them to have social anxiety. However, if given more time to adapt, I think it would quickly become something normal.
This is very well put and thank you for saying this!
I understand why people are doubtful to use a unisex bathroom. So many bad things happened in the bathrooms nowadays, we should be very careful . Male and female are victims of different attacks solely for their physical appearance.I believe that people could be more open minded and accepting differences or change. For instance, I was about to use the restrooms at Hunter North the other day, while I was entering at the door a young women got out. She was dressed very masculine, I was shocked I found myself apologizing to her because of the surprising look on my face I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. Who knows what would happened if she decided to use a male bathroom instead it couldn’t have been a different reaction. I don’t think that I would be skeptical for using a unisex bathroom special when the women’s bathroom are always packed. You have to take a line most of the time when the men’s bathroom are empty, a unisex will be very useful at this point. Specially if the bathroom is convenient, clean and there is no line I will definitely use it if I have to.
I have always been very conscious and paranoid about the environment in which I choose or in some cases, am left to use due to lack of alternatives. I appreciate as much privacy as possible and so I prefer entering a bathroom stall for whatever business I may have to take care of. My ability to “use the restroom” directly correlates to the space I am occupying and the social appropriateness of said space at a given time. I have found plenty of times before that I am unable to urinate for example if I am in close proximity to other males, while the same goes for defecating in a restroom that is crowded despite being behind a bathroom stall. I recall my dad always questioning why it is that I can’t just use the urinal whenever we’d enter a restroom with a crowd after viewing a movie at a theater. In this sense I did feel somewhat emasculated, especially because I saw that my father and other guys were nearly desensitized to the urinal, or so it seemed.
I began thinking about this more so when I first entered a gender neutral restroom at Hunter College’s Thomas Hunter Hall building and found that there was a female using the facility already. Despite her using the faucet to wash her hands and I stepping into a bathroom stall to urinate, I found it very difficult to bring myself to urinate. I felt uncomfortable, but it was because I believed that perhaps my presence, if noticed, would make her, the female in the rest room with me, feel uncomfortable and even unsafe given that it was just us two in the restroom.
I have never physically been in a unisex bathroom to see how it is set up. I understand in ways it could be helpful however. If all the stalls are full in the gilrs bathroom and i have to go, i can just run into the unisex bathroom, If a individual do not want to be questioned on their sexuality they can go to a unisex bathroom where no one can question them. There could be various reasons. On the other hand the main reason i would not always be comfortable with a unisex bathroom is the fact that we live in a crazy world. People get attacked elderly to young individuals. Females get raped as well as men. I think this can cause temptation to the opposite sexes and anything can happen. A unisex bathroom in a club setting to me would not be a great idea. So i guess it depends on the setting/environment.
The public bathrooms are a nightmare more times than not. A person must learn to navigate this necessary evil. One thing I find unforgivable is when women have to take their very young male children into the women’s restroom and other women raise their eyebrows. I think to myself what’s the problem??? I can’t fathom sending my young male child into the men’s restroom alone. Unfortunately people this is a world where you must protect your children AT ALL TIMES. This includes taking them into the women’s restroom.
Bathrooms are a place of privacy, some urinals however are not very private. Personally I can understand why some feel uncomfortable when the guy next to them is inches away as they are going to the bathroom. This is because some feel that going to the bathroom means exposing yourself in a vulnerable position when using the urinals. This position when you include two guys sandwiching you on both sides can amount to a very awkward moment. However, personally I do not have a problem. If I have to really go to the bathroom and there is an open urinal next to somebody I am using it whether I break a social norm or not. It is when people that go out of their way to pee next to you is when it begins to be less understandable.
Bathroom because it universally the most used room you think it would be the most social but its like nonverbal laws come into play. I cant help but act a certain way whenever I use the public restroom but there are always those deviants that do not follow bathroom etiquette especially since coming to college I have learned not all girls follow these rules. Even our RA’s had to have 4 separate meeting trying to address it . The horror stories I have seen in just my first year. Although for that one article about the girl who refused to use the restroom while away from home I had a similar experience at my first time away at summer camp I did not go for a week and then when it was time for zip lining it was not a fun time.
When I first went to moved into my dorm my freshman year, I did not like going the bathroom when other people were in the bathroom. Then, I realized how much time I was wasting waiting around for people to get out of the bathroom and just went in when I had to go.
Something that I noticed that people get upset about, is when a mother brings her son into the women’s restroom if he is above the age of about five. People talk about how inappropriate it was. Their disgust doesn’t really seem viable because the kid probably doesn’t see anything besides women washing their hands.
I have never had any problem using a bathroom that was not rigidly bound by more traditional binary gender categories. The only problem I have run into when using a gender neutral bathroom was that it was much dirtier than a women’s restroom would be.
After reading this and reading some comments I also decided to ask my husband a few questions. I asked him “Why is it such a big deal if another man used a urinal next to another dude?” He cringed and yelled back that it’s “man code!” I asked how he learned that that was man code. He said, “Everyone just knows! One stall in between, no talking, and look straight ahead. Having another guy peeing next you without a stall in between is worse than if he leaves without washing his hands. Who cares if he washes his hands!?”
I really think it’s crazy how the bathroom has all of these unwritten rules that everyone just knows. Even for the Ladies room, girls are taught “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie, and wipe the seatie?” If someone doesn’t follow that rule, they are inconveniencing the 20 other girls who walked into the bathroom after! These “rules” are almost like second nature. We are taught these unwritten rules that everyone should follow when we are so young that it’s almost as if everyone was born already knowing it. I just find this topic so interesting because it is something that is ever rarely talked or thought about.
Public bathrooms. No one talks about them, what goes on in there, or how and why they do what they do. They’re placed all throughout public and private places, where you can use private stalls, along with urinals for men, with other people of the same gender. It’s never just as simple as running in and going to the bathroom, even though we may think that at first glance. Without thinking much of it before, I have caught myself following a certain set of unspoken, unwritten rules set by social and cultural norms. Speaking on behalf of men, things like using a urinal next to another man when there are other urinals or stalls to use and washing your hands when you see other people in the bathroom as opposed to just walking out if no one is there are two examples of these norms. You get looked at differently by others in the bathroom if you deviate from these norms.
Bathroom etiquette is something that is never spoken about (until now), and can be misinterpreted very easily. Negotiating taboos or changing social/public norms starts will teaching the coming generation, like anything. Bathrooms are common areas, or private, to do ones humanly business. But just because that is a private act there should not be a whole rulebook to follow. Rules for going to the bathroom should plainly be use the bathroom as if it was private and don’t violate personal boundaries. Both guys and girls have unspoken rules, though they may be different, the general rule should just be to keep to yourself and act normal. This taboo attached public bathrooms is ridiculous, but unfortunately its prevalent and society will adapt. My restructuring of this taboo would simply be to teach the coming generation to be clean, polite, and submissive whenever using a bathroom publicly. Also, like always, don’t do or say anything you would not want to encounter if you were the other person. All in all this social interaction is one that is unique in the sense that we have learned these do’s and do not’s through family and peers. To change the way society thinks, you must change the way society teaches.
It’s funny to think about this because this issue isn’t something I think about often. I honestly have no problem using any type of bathroom and I really don’t care who uses what bathroom with me. When I have to go, and the ladies’ room has a terribly long line, I just use the men’s room. I guess I’m just comfortable enough to use almost any bathroom. If you gotta go, you gotta go. I feel like people should use the bathroom that makes them feel the most comfortable. But of course that raises the issue of some people not being comfortable with LGBT people using the same restroom and whatnot. Maybe we all just need to keep an open mind and not think to far into the issue. It’s just a bathroom.
Before coming to college, I never thought about how important bathroom privacy was to me. After having to share a bathroom with a whole hallway of other girls, I now consider my personal bathroom at home to be a luxury. At some point in the first semester, I remember talking to a group of girls in my hall about our bathroom. Each girl shared with each other how they’d chosen a specific stall/shower and refused to use any other. This was because they were aware of who used the other stalls/showers. These girls didn’t want to use the same toilet/shower as others who didn’t have suitable hygiene. I’m aware that I often use the first stall, but that is simply because it is the closest when i enter the bathroom. In regards to unisex bathrooms, I don’t see a problem with it. If I had the option, I would always choose my gender, however, in emergencies I have never rejected the idea to use the male restroom. I have noticed that females tend to keep their bathrooms cleaner, which is always a plus.
Personally, I can understand the people who are skeptical about both genders using the same bathroom. Although, in a household theres is no thought to it, in public is different. It seems that for some people, gender neutral bathroom is a privacy invasion for either sexes. Personally, I find it interesting that I can more easily use a male bathroom, but when I see a male use a female bathroom, I find it uncomfortable. And as i think about it, I don’t know why it makes me feel uncomfortable. I guess is just one of those automatic responses.
This is really weird to think about. As adults we are taught to use separate bathrooms whether its for comfort, privacy etc. However when we are very young society does not care. I recall very clearly my own mother bringing me into the lady’s room as a very young child when i needed to use the bathroom and she didn’t want to let me go alone. For me personally I wouldn’t care if we used gender neutral bathrooms.
Personally speaking, I have no issues with restrooms that are not bound by the “typical” gender separation. By typical we are of course speaking about a male specific and a female specific restroom. I agree with Iriana when she states that in your own home there are not gender specific bathrooms. Now of course you are much more comfortable in your own home then say a public toilet, but even while in public the average person is more focused on relieving themselves rather than paying attention to who is watching them go. Speaking from my own personal opinion I can say that when I use the restroom I do not care who is in there. chances are I will never see anyone in that restroom ever again in my life, so who cares if they stare and who cares if they are not the same gender as I am. We are all humans and we all use the restroom so as long as we all relieve ourselves properly, it does not matter who’s in there with us.
The mens bathroom is a very interesting place with many unwritten rules, for example the rules that I have learned and became accustomed to over the years are; the most commonly known one is you never use the urinal next to someone unless there are only 2 or if the bathroom is very crowded. Other rules are if you are in a stall and you hear someone come in you make a cough or a little noise just to let them know you are present in the bathroom and also you try to not make eye contact and there is absolutely no conversation more then a “hi” which can even be looked to as crossing the line. the only exception to the conversation rule is if you are washing your hands.
I learned these very interesting rules from just being in the bathroom and observing. Also I feel like just being in the bathroom it almost came naturally to know the rules. I actually remember this one time at a Devils it was just me in this huge bathroom and some other guy walked in and went to the unrinal directly next to me even though there were many open urinals. I felt pretty uncomfortable and weird that I finished up very quickly and got out of there very quickly. It was a totally weird situation even though it was not illegal or anything but this very ballsy man just broke one of the top unwritten rules in the book of the mens bathroom.
I personally don’t find anything wrong with gender neutral bathrooms because if you think about it theres gender neutral bathroom in each households.When you have to pee really bad you don’t really think about what gender is gonna see you. You just want to get to that toilet and handle your business. Especially if the bathrooms have a stall and the person can’t see you there shouldn’t be a problem. However, we still have to keep in mind the transgender people because we can’t make them feel uncomfortable in a non-gender neutral bathroom.
I feel that issues of privacy and social space are learned through observation and from parents. When little kids go to the bathroom with their parents, usually the same sex parent will take the kid into the appropriate bathroom. The kid then observes that he/she is going into the specific bathroom and makes a habit of it. Parents also teach their children not to look under the stall doors. Because the kids observe their parents behavior, along with the behavior of other people using the bathroom, they learn the rules of bathroom privacy without having to negotiate them very often.
Its interesting to me that I never really ever realized that there were a set of social standards and “toilet taboos” when it came to using the bathroom. Learning the do’s and the do not’s of the bathroom was something I had picked up greatly in middle school. Example of the do not’s would consist of leaving a space in between guys when using the urinals and keeping one’s pants up fully while using the open zipper on the pants to urinate. I once noticed an older man drop his pants down to his ankles when urinating at a urinal. I was disturbed because 1.) I had never seen this before and 2.) it did not seem right at all.
But isn’t it interesting how you take the “rules” governing social space for granted, not thinking about it much, until someone does something to break those rules?
I actually never realized this bathroom taboo unless my friends mentioned it at a young age. When i was 10 my friend brought to my attention how its weird if two guys pee next to each other at a urinal. My other friends immediately backed him up so i figured this was just how things were. Males become almost homophobic when entering the bathroom. Personally i get uncomfortable when someone stands at the urinal next to me because I’m afraid they can see me peeing! The bathroom is supposed to be a private place where you can comfortably expose yourself , however the urinal takes this privacy away and causes men social stress.
In theory I think gender neutral bathrooms are a good idea because it allows those who may not identity with the gender society says they are, to not have to worry about being yelled at for being in the wrong bathroom. At the same time however, I don’t think that will ever be able to be a successful option because too many people will be uncomfortable with using a public bathroom with basically anybody, no matter what gender. I think the best option would be to still have men’s and women’s restrooms, but also have unisex bathrooms, so you have a choice and aren’t forced into a restroom that you are uncomfortable and feel unwelcome in. It’s not fair to punish somebody and make them feel uncomfortable with themselves just because others can’t relate to their situation and may feel uncomfortable with them. I strongly believe that unisex restrooms should become a normal thing in society to give everybody that option of using whichever restroom makes them feel more uncomfortable.
So, after reading this I took it upon myself to ask my boyfriend about how he felt when having to use a urinal in a public restroom. When I first asked him if he was uncomfortable using a public urinal, he just sort of stared at me blankly, then he went on to ask me if someone would be standing next to him in said public urinal- To which I answered, “yes.” The second I said that, his eyes popped open and he told me, “Of course I’d be uncomfortable! I don’t want some guy staring at my dick!” It just seemed funny to me. Because, I don’t know about everyone else, but I know that when it comes to girls- I don’t really care who see’s my business. We all have the same parts, right? So whats the difference if you catch someone staring at what you have. I just found it funny that that was his immediate reaction.
lolol. You should do a survey, as I bet you would be surprised by the different “meanings” that people contrive around what seems like a simple matter of using the toilet.
Never really thought of the fact that we picked up our behaviors in the restroom through social interactions. As a guy, never really thought of the taboos in the bathroom, just went with the flow. But now thinking of it, the fact that when there are three urinals and the two end ones are in use, another guy can’t go in the middle one because that has become a social taboo. You either wait or go use a stall. I never thought of this because it just seemed like the natural flow of the guys bathroom, that the only time this rule was tossed out the window was during mass sporting events where there was no room to skip a urinal. Now actually thinking of it, its crazy that these things occur and no body really pays attention to it because they think its natural/typical bathroom customs.
I have never really thought about using the girls bathroom before because there hasn’t been a reason for me to use it. I use the boys bathroom because I’m a boy and I don’t think twice about it. I can understand in certain situations where someone would need to use the opposite bathroom for example if the line in the other one is too long. If I were to go into the boys bathroom and see a girl I would be a little curious why she is there but I would probably just leave her alone and not say anything. Although if I were to use the girls bathroom I would feel very uncomfortable especially if there are other people in there. It would just feel wrong using the girls bathroom but if you think about it it doesn’t really matter, it’s just a bathroom.
It’s funny that you posted this because just the other day I was at rehearsal and we were on a break and so we all went upstairs to use the bathrooms in the dressing rooms of the BLC. I walked in and there were boys and girls using the same restroom. I don’t know why but it made me feel so uncomfortable. I’m pee shy anyways, so when there were boys involved it became even worse. I wondered why it made me uncomfortable. I guess because using the restroom is kind of a taboo thing, particularly for a “lady.”
Well that’s interesting. Food for thought: what does it mean to be a “lady?” Whose needs and purposes are ultimately served when women conform with/aspire to uphold the standards of behavior required to be recognized as a “lady?”