Tuesday, August 30, 2005

standing? gadgets? revolution?

I'm back!
I'm busy tonight.
Just read Urban Chick's post on women's toilets.
Reminded me that it's a favourite rant of mine.
But what's to be done about the endless queuing?

1 - We could lobby for more toilets for women in public places e.g. theatres, towns, festivals etc. -especially the places where we pay - e.g taxes pay for public toilets, ticket sales pay for theatre toilets.

BUT - more toilets = more space needed for building, more water etc. - bad for the environment unless the toilets use grey water.

2 - We could learn to pee standing - lots of advice here on Restrooms and MyVag. There are some people advocating provision of female urinals .... not a bad idea - except could be a problem if you're wearing trousers...the She-inal looks possible though not sure about the hose - doesn't sound clean.

3 - Problems with technique can be reduced by using gadgets. All of this assumes that it's reasonable to expect us females to learn a new way of peeing. Many men in the world sit to pee so why shouldn't we?

What a dilemma.. in the meantime I'll just stamp and shout when I'm out and about and have to QUEUE!!!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just use the guys' room when the queues are really imbalanced. Most guys have found it funny so far.

I find the gendered facilities weird, especially when all the toilets are enclosed. I think a better split would be stalls/urinals, but I guess that kind of puts guys on the spot when they want to poop.

yclepta said...

I was at a folk fest at the weekend and there were urinals for the men (that they had to queue for) and about 6 stalls (portaloos) that all women and the men who wanted to sit (we assumed to poo) queued for. It did make those men obvious.
I use the "men's" loo when there are only two and they are identical - at work, in some restaurants - when the "women's" is busy.
I agree the split of stalls v urinals would be better - except for women who feel unable to share stalls with men - culturally for some women this would be unacceptable. For women who can stand to pee I guess there may be issues about sharing urinals as they may feel overexposed (but then so might the men!)
As you say it's all a bit gender specific - however it seems in this case the "general" is the most common statistically. How will we know what people are happiest with unless things change? - that's a different question altogether I think....

Anonymous said...

the issue of what is acceptable to different people always gets me.

it seems obvious that some women would be uncomfortable peeing in a stall next to a man, but i have little patience for that kind of embarrassment. some people are uncomfortable peeing in a stall next to ANYONE.

meanwhile, i'm uncomfortable following impractical restroom plans based on my gender.

whose comfort zone gets to win?

yclepta said...

all good points - someone has to compromise and it seems to be women mostly and for things to change significantly we might have to compromise in a different way - that's my problem I guess - I'd love a solution where everyone is happy!

tone the blueshawk said...

I share in you feeling of pissed-offness about this (excuse the crap pun). It seems to me as much about economics as anything - ie lets save some money/women have less economic power.

I love the name "Eezeewee" (referred to in one of your links)

quiddity said...

if you want to try out a female urinal there's one at the gladstone pottery museum.

atypicalpen said...

Yes I'd forgotten that - it's in a public exhibition area isn't it?
xxx