Bathrooms are interesting, especially those of the public variety. A tiled space, bathrooms are primarily a place for excretion. They are the only acceptable space outside the home where one can feel comfortable replacing a tampon or pulling a flaccid penis out of one's pants for a moment. Not to mention the fact that the windows in bathrooms have the potential to be great escape exits. Most fun though, public bathrooms often offer stalls to enable group excretions as well as privacy. Yet despite the primal, physiological purpose of these rooms, bathrooms are often gender split. There is typically a gentleman's room and a ladies' room. Or a gentleman's room and no ladies' room (or maybe that's just how it feels if you're in the Bausch & Lomb building on University of Rochester's campus). Such gender divide changes everything.
It mystifies:
Some men speculate what goes on in the "powder room" that requires multiple women to enter at a time. The truth is that we probably want to plan something for after this public shindig. Or have someone with which to walk out of the restroom so there's less FOMO. Or we like to group poop. Or we're taking shots. With regards to the vice-versa, I rarely find myself wanting to enter a men's room due to a fear of flaccid, phallic parts. (In fact, I didn't enter a men's restroom until freshman year of college; I mistook the urinal for a bidet and grew upset that men's bathrooms were so much more bourgeoisie than those for women.)
It troubles:
For trans folk or those who are more gender-fluid, using public restrooms becomes much more complicated than necessary. Instead of being able to walk into a space and excrete with no further questions, the gender division of restrooms often stands as a guard begging for ID verification. I don't mean the door as the guard, of course, but rather the fellow excreters and tampon-bumpers inside. Though it seems silly, so often do people police who can or cannot enter the bathroom. As if it's their social responsibility to punish those who dare enter a particular restroom without the right genitalia. Such policing and hassling makes using the restroom very difficult for some people, an absolute injustice considering the fact that nobody is trying to execute certain bodily functions anywhere else.
It brings to taste some bad blood:
Such exclusive behaviors brought out by these rooms bring up some "dirt." For instance, should men just waltz into a women's restroom where I am washing my hands, I would feel very threatened. Such an action would absolutely set off my internal cascade of "men = danger." After all, little good comes from a man and a woman being in an enclosed space together. At least that's what I gather from society's consensus on alleyways. Frankly, I don't know how men would react to a woman entering a men's room, as I'm not a man. I imagine they would let me stand by the mirror because why else would I enter a bathroom but to check myself out. I bet they would light the torches should I enter a stall to excrete (though I'd really prefer incense).
Safe to say, gender-divided restrooms do not bring out the best in us. In fact, they elicit something much more foul: the gender binary. Until we can excrete together and accept our bodies as similarly human, I truly don't see how we can make any true progress with respect to human equality. So please, let's stop developing new, frivolous methods of hand drying and let's figure out how to survive side by side.
