The Permanent Revolution
I thought it was funny that Jessica Valenti telling Deborah Solomon she doesn’t like the label “third-wave feminist” ended up with an article being headlined “Fourth-Wave Feminism.” Such are the wages of the editing process.
But I think Valenti’s point was pretty clearly that it doesn’t make a ton of sense to try to slice things up into a series of waves. The interesting thing, I would say, is that for the past 40 years or so we’ve been in something like a feminist permanent revolution. On the one hand, the abstract idea that men and women should be treated equally in a manner that goes beyond formal legal equality, is now rarely contested by anyone. Yet at the same time, many of the practical implications of this idea remain extremely controversial. So we’ve seen, are seeing, and will continue to see many fronts of conflict animated by this incredibly far-reaching idea. I suppose my grandchildren will think it was weird that there used to be sex-segregated bathrooms everywhere. At the moment, that’s not much of a mainstream political issue, but I don’t think that really implicates any novel questions of principle.
54 Responses to “The Permanent Revolution”
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November 15th, 2009 at 10:41 am
I suppose my grandchildren will think it was weird that there used to be sex-segregated bathrooms everywhere.
Of all the projections you could make about a gender equal future, this was the best you could come up with?
November 15th, 2009 at 10:44 am
When I was a freshman in college 25 years ago or so, I was in a mixed gender dorm, but it had been built for single gender living, so there was only one bathroom on each floor. Our floor was designated female. Rather than make the guys walk down a floor in their bathrobes, during the first week of school the girls voted to make the bathroom coed. 2 weeks later, after dealing with guys walking around nude, drunk guys peeing in the sinks and vomiting in the toilets, and the general uncleanliness of a men’s room compared to a women’s room, the girls voted to kick the guys out of the bathroom. The grand unisex bathroom experiment lasted a week.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Unlike PJ, I lived quite successfully in a dorm with a co-ed bathroom. Maybe things changed in the intervening 19 years.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:02 am
That pretty well supports the point, pj. As someone who was living in a dorm quite a bit more recently than that, I can promise you that coed bathrooms are uncontroversial among men and women in coed dormitories at many liberal arts colleges.
It is almost as if some kind of progress towards gender equality is being made, where standards of cleanliness are less and less based on gendered norms and comfort level with the other sex is increasing.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:16 am
“I can promise you that coed bathrooms are uncontroversial among men and women in coed dormitories at many liberal arts colleges.”
Those men and women are also the generation that has given us “Girls Gone Wild” on one end and date rape drugs on the other. Ah, progress!
Mike
November 15th, 2009 at 11:35 am
We had co-ed bathrooms at college. Completely uncontroversial. Meaning there was no controversy. No protests. No people carrying placards. Not a big deal.
That being said, the fact that something does not cause controversy doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to extrapolate across other areas.
I disagree with Matt. I think my grandchildren will continue to have gender segregated bathrooms in places like shopping malls, restaurants, stadiums, etc.
If they don’t, they are stupid.
Men and women are different. They use bathrooms, sure. But often for different things. Even when they use them for the same things, they use them differently. I don’t think this is because of sexism or bigotry or anything like that. It’s just… because.
I suspect that if you informed women that feminism means sharing bathrooms with men in bars and at football games… feminism would die. Immediately.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:56 am
It’s pretty clear that not only do biological differences lead to single-sex bathrooms, but also as a way to prevent sexual assault, etc. We wouldn’t want guys in their 40’s hanging around bathrooms used by little girls. As for my dorm experience a little while ago, our bathrooms tended to be single sex, but some girls would violate that by doing their hair and makeup in the boys’ bathroom. Instead of the guys becoming more hygenic to reach the girls’ level (the best part of freshman year ending was not having to use those disgusting bathrooms again), my female friends would complain about how gross other girls were (throwing up everywhere, leaving bloody tampons in the shower soap dish). Then again, that could have just been my school.
As for your overall point, it depends on your point of reference. If you’re comparing feminists as a whole to the general population and looking at the secular social change, then it’s less necessary to break feminism up into waves. On the other hand, this past Democratic primary showed a large divide for second wave feminism, which tended to go for Clinton, and third and fourth wave feminism, which tended to go for Obama. While Obama and Clinton tend to agree on feminist issues, choosing between any two people can have large implications for how policy is followed, prioritized and how successful it is.
The third and fourth wave also seem more concerned with issue affecting minority women and with LGBT rights to a greater extent than second wave feminism, in part because of the times and because third and fourth wave feminism draws from a more diverse pool of adherents. Third and fourth wave feminism also tends to be sex positive, as opposed to the influence of Greer and Dworkin among the second wave.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Or, more likely, your grandchildren’s generation will see the complete abandonment of feminism and gener equality and a return to more 1950’s mores of dependent domestic women.
After all, the liberated feminist women are having less than on child each on average and the surrendered wife, christianist, traditional mom women are providing almost all of our coming generations. Meanwhile the children latino immigrants, who will outnumber white Americans if trends continue, inherit a shockingly sexist view of gender relations where keeping mistresses, domestic abuse, and even domestic rape are considered minor sins and part of daily life.
So feminism looks to be defeating itself through infertility and population replacement.
And don’t think too much about the consequences of the liberation of gay men.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Newt;
Care to cite the statistics on how these traditional houses necessarily lead to a traditionalist next generation? I only ask because half the feminist activists I know grew up in those traditional environment.
IOW, traditional mores are not genetic.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I strongly doubt most women would want to desegregate public bathrooms. That’s just a really dumb idea.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I suspect that if you informed women that feminism means sharing bathrooms with men in bars and at football games… feminism would die. Immediately.
What is more likely is that public commodes become more private–stalls that are more like closets you can securely lock others out of, and the only common area in the restroom is the washbasin.
Even today, you see the urinals separated by these absurd little partitions. God forbid anyone should check out anyone else’s package. Back in the days when men were men, the Astrodome had these big group piss troughs, the better to accommodate maximal beer disposal. But I doubt anyone who pays a couple thou for two season tickets really wants to relieve himself in such a primitive way (though oddly I can’t remember what the restrooms at Reliant Stadium (where the Texans play, been there once) were like).
November 15th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
public commodes become more private–stalls that are more like closets you can securely lock others out of
That would do away with public restrooms altogether as junkies and perverts fill up every public facility in America with their shooting up and such. The survival of public facilities requires that the public exercise some kind of supervision over nominally private areas.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I suppose my grandchildren will think it was weird that there used to be sex-segregated bathrooms everywhere.
Hahah. Sure. Tell this to women and it will kill feminism. Women want segregated bathrooms to keep Quagmire out.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Are feminists fighting for co-ed bathrooms? Is that really an issue or is Matt just being a dumbass? I figured the unisex bathroom trend was more about building codes and property owners not wanting to have the double expense of constructing double bathrooms in public buildings than it was people wanting to poop, piss, and primp together as some expression of gender equity.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Newt, we were talking about bars and stadiums, places where people have already paid to get in, and/or whose continued presence there is at the discretion of the proprietor. Truly public restrooms are already nearly extinct–the courthouse, the library, rest areas on the highway are about all there is.
Portable toilets like those found at construction sites or at rock festivals typically are not gender-restricted.
November 15th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
It’s not uncommon for men’s restrooms to have baby changing tables, now. Right? That’s progress.
November 15th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Re: I suppose my grandchildren will think it was weird that there used to be sex-segregated bathrooms everywhere.
Great. I suppose Yglesias would prefer to facilitate random promiscuous hookups by allowing young men and young women to share lavatorial facilities.
If unisex restrooms are ever the norm by the time I have a daughter in college, I will counsel her always to walk down the stairs, across the street, and down the block and use the restroom at CVS rather then to participate in the moral decadence of unisex lavatories.
November 15th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Re: Meanwhile the children latino immigrants, who will outnumber white Americans if trends continue, inherit a shockingly sexist view of gender relations where keeping mistresses, domestic abuse, and even domestic rape are considered minor sins and part of daily life
As opposed to white America, which boasts such paragons of sexual morality as Mark Sanford, Carrie Prejean, and David Vitter, of course.
Latin American cultures, for all there faults, have not produced “Girls Gone Wild” videos, so quite blaming your societie’s shockingly high rape rate on Latino immigrants.
November 15th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
That Newt dude is some weird freak.
I think Matt was reaching for a change that we would find shocking but in the future they might not think is a big deal.
November 15th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I’m in college right now, and our dorm bathrooms are co-ed. Of course, there are a few individual bathrooms on each floor as well (nominally for the handicapped), and the floor residential advisers do give us the option to turn certain bathrooms into single gender ones at the beginning of the year, but I haven’t heard of anyone taking them up on it.
That being said, it is awkward to hear someone of the opposite gender take a dump.
November 15th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I suppose Yglesias would prefer to facilitate random promiscuous hookups by allowing young men and young women to share lavatorial facilities.
Your one-track mind isn’t really our problem, Hector.
November 15th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
haha, kth wants to check out other men’s packages.
the idea of mass coed bathrooms are stupid. you’re just begging for more sexual assaults. maybe if you can imagine a world in which sexual assaults are no longer a problem for women, then you can imagine a future of coed bathrooms…but I hope I am not being unduly cynical about our children’s future when i say i can’t imagine that.
it maybe could work if all men were somewhat enlightened/not totally gross, but as is, i suspect there will not be a critical mass of enlightened men in the near future.
November 15th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
That being said, it is awkward to hear someone of the opposite gender take a dump.
Yes. Exactly. Who thinks it’s progress to move to a world where you have to pinch loaves around the opposite sex, and they around you? That you have to do it around anyone at all is unpleasant enough.
November 15th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Co-ed bathrooms are quite common at some liberal arts colleges (Wesleyan, for example), but I mean, as much as they are uncontroversial, they are pretty silly too. It doesn’t do much for civilization or refinement.
November 15th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
It’s worth remembering that the whole “OMG!!!! Same sex-bathrooms!!!” nonsense helped kill off the ERA. The fear-mongering was as idiotic now as it was then.
Sex-segregated bathrooms are inefficient; we see this every time there’s a long line at the lady’s room and no line at all at the men’s. It’s not the most important issue in the world, which is why no one makes a big deal about it, but it would be better if we got over our fears and learned to accept the fact that members of the opposite sex piss and shit like everyone else.
(Yes, my dorms had unisex bathrooms, and it was never an issue.)
November 15th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Re: Sex-segregated bathrooms are inefficient; we see this every time there’s a long line at the lady’s room and no line at all at the men’s.
The solution to this would be to create more women’s restrooms and fewer men’s. Not to create co-ed bathrooms which will simply provide the occasion of sin and facilitate immorality.
November 15th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
This is inevitably how conversation about feminist aspirations devolves: dreary, silly discussions about co-ed bathrooms. Believe it or not, when feminists were fighting for equality in the 60s, one of the main issues they tried to push was that housebound working women, doing the hard and necessary work of raising the next generation, deserved their own Social Security for the work they did. This was a radical and important idea, because it recognized that the work of women in the home was as valuable as outside work, and it meant that women would not be dependent on the good will of their husbands and the success of their marriage to count on a stipend in old age. It disappeared into a welter of hysteria over burning bras, the same nonsensical kind of crap that keeps rising to render feminism irrelevant in the eyes of those who buy into it today. So we still make less than 70 cents for every male dollar earned, and the work that can still be identified as “female” is the shittiest on the market. That’s progress.
November 15th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
What is it with you and your obsession with people fucking in bathrooms? Nowhere near as many people want to have sex in a public bathroom as you think. They stink and are often covered in others’ urine. Do you hand around highway rest stops a lot or something? Hook up with Larry Craig? You seem to bring this up a lot, which just begs a whole lot of questions.
November 15th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Wow. Hector has actually developed the perfect strategy for involuntarily preserving the virginities of millions of Americans.
Who knew that all it takes to prevent horny 18-23 year olds -living in coed dormitories with no adult supervision- from having sex is some pieces of paper that say “Men’s Room” on them?
November 15th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Re: Who knew that all it takes to prevent horny 18-23 year olds -living in coed dormitories with no adult supervision- from having sex
I don’t insist that they all abstain from having intecourse, but I do think we should frown on promiscuous encounters at bars, nightclubs, fraternity houses, and other locales. There’s really no way to _stop_ that kind of behavior other then by moral exhortation and possibly by better enforcement of the laws about noise violations, but we don’t need to create yet another place where people can have anonymous, meaningless carnal encounters.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Men and women are different. They use bathrooms, sure. But often for different things. Even when they use them for the same things, they use them differently. I don’t think this is because of sexism or bigotry or anything like that. It’s just… because.
That isn’t logic. You’re just making unsupported assertions, rather than an argument.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Hector, sex with someone I hardly know or don’t really, really, really like holds no appeal for me. So the culture of hookups and “booty calls” mystifies me a bit, but beyond that I don’t consider it any of my business, nor is it a particular concern of mine. People are different. Some are sex-positive, some are a bit more negative and selective. If you personally find those kinds of hookups distasteful, fine, but why do you care what others do? How does it affect you? WTF?
November 16th, 2009 at 4:20 am
Because you’re work isn’t worth that much.
The truth is, if it weren’t for government anti-discrimination laws, businesses would only pay women what they are actually worth which would lead to you earning about a dime for every dollar a man earns.
I’ve asked this question before to Feminists but I’ve never received an answer: Feminism is basically just a demand that men respect women as much as they respect other men, but why should men respect women? What have you ever done to merit our respect? And if men refuse to respect you, what are you going to do about it?
Until those questions are answered I see no reason to take Feminism seriously.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:26 am
The only way I’m sharing public bathrooms with men is if they do away with urinals or put them in stalls with CLOSED DOORS. No way do I want to see men peeing!
November 16th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Hector, you’re not seeing the big picture here. Of course coed bathrooms would facilitate sin — but you need to see that as an opportunity.
Try this on for size: in every coed bathroom, next to the handdryer, the huge crucifix, and the little shelf for the Chick tracts, you put a hairshirt dispenser! So, after everyone’s finished lusting and sinning and bringing down Western Civilization as hipsters are wont to do, they can feel terrible about themselves and mortify their flesh!
What could be more moral? Or hotter?
November 16th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Re: Because you’re work isn’t worth that much.
Go f*ck a syphilitic bear.
November 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I suppose my grandchildren will think it was weird that there used to be sex-segregated bathrooms everywhere.
I think Matt is stretching here to make the analogy between Jim Crow racism (with its race-segregated bathrooms) and contemporary sexism (with its despotic sex-segregated bathrooms). The difference here, in constitutional law terms, is that racial classification is subject to strict scrutiny, making it almost impossible to justify a policy of any racial segregation as anything other invidious discrimination. Gender discrimination policies are subject to the “heightend scrutiny” test that allows legislatures to account for biological differences and cultural norms (separate bathrooms and male-only Selective Service registration are two examples that demonstrate that the line between biology and culture is a little fuzzy).
Particularly in school cases, courts recognize that while all too often, racial groups continue to live in separate and unequal communities, gender is different. Most Americans (and Canadians too if you pressed me for an answer) are a product of fathers and mothers “sleeping with the enemy”. Since male and female voters are fairly well matched (politically if not matrimonially), while no modern court would allow separate but equal single-race schools, no court has stopped the trend of school boards voting to establish separate but equal single-sex schools and classrooms.
And I doubt any court ever will. Single-sex school proponents such as Dr. Leonard Sax have been smart to insist that single-sex schools only be an option but never a replacement for co-ed schools, so its the parents– those gender class traitors– who decide for their child and not the school board.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
All the worthy feminist goals are short-changed when smirking, deadingly predictable liberal elitist lesbians like Rachel Maddow are propped up as “leaders”. They not only turn off guys, a lot of women (especially younger women) find their dowdy retro-70’s style off-putting.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Matt- when you write a post about feminism, aren’t you amzed by the stupidity of the comments? In this case mostly guys, all fixated on the throw away line about co-ed bathrooms.
The real issues feminists care about have little to do with bathroom, as Matt knows. They are about balancing work and family (for men and women), ensuring that domestic violence and rape are taken seriously, and helping all people have a shot at the kind of lives they want without being hampered by gender stereotyping.
November 16th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Matt- when you write a post about feminism, aren’t you amzed by the stupidity of the comments? In this case mostly guys, all fixated on the throw away line about co-ed bathrooms.
The real issues feminists care about have little to do with bathroom, as Matt knows. They are about balancing work and family (for men and women), ensuring that domestic violence and rape are taken seriously, and helping all people have a shot at the kind of lives they want without being hampered by gender stereotyping.
November 16th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Re: The real issues feminists care about have little to do with bathroom, as Matt knows.
If he knows it, then why did he bring up the topic? The real answer is he doesn’t know it. In his post, Yglesias made no mention of family leave, balancing work and family, domestic violence, or any other serious issue. He appears to think that gender segregated bathrooms are a big deal, though.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
And you’re wrong. If you took a poll of women, I’m certain you’d find that at least half would support unisex public bathrooms. And I know this because…wait for it…I actually listen to what women have to say, as opposed to the numerous men commenting here who ascribe opinions to them on the basis of “common sense”.
The truth is that a perennial complaint of women are the long lines for women’s restrooms. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard women complain that it would make sense to allow them to utilize the largely vacant toilet stalls in men’s restrooms. The lack of sufficient facilities for women is a long-standing sore point.
Sure, for most women the ideal solution would be just more and larger bathrooms. But when you see this issue discussed, it often comes down to the reality that men and women use bathrooms differently and that while men’s toilets are under-utilized, it’s not practical to reduce their number of shift them to women’s restrooms because the number of stalls are calculated to be minimally sufficient at peak times. So the “ideal” solution would mean devoted more space to women’s restrooms while continuing the status quo of having men’s toilets vacant 90% of the time. The bottom line is that it’s much, much more efficient to have a, um, “pool” of toilets available to both men and women—men usually don’t need them, but women usually do. And when men need them, they’ll at least be available to share with women.
When this issue is discussed with women, women who have experienced unisex bathrooms will almost without exception praise them for reducing or eliminating the shortage problem…without creating any of the new problems that the above commenters are imagining.
Many businesses and all households in the US use unisex bathrooms. In bathrooms used by numerous people at once, the increased privacy requirements for unisex bathrooms can be achieved architecturally. It should also be noted that many men and women both would like more privacy than they currently have available in conventional restrooms.
I’m sure he is. I am. I’ve come to expect them, however.
What amazes and saddens me is that, here and elsewhere in the liberal blogosphere, any posts on sexism produce an astonishing number of sexist comments from liberals and progressives. It’s really an eye-opener.
However, it should be kept in mind that the demographics of the liberal blogosphere are very masculine. There are approximately zero regular female commenters here on Yglesias’s blog. Liberal and progressive men may be slightly sympathetic to anti-sexism; but, in general, they’re pretty much just as threatened by women and jealous of their privilege as are conservative men. And I’ve met very, very few men who are aware of the daily sexism that all women experience; or, indeed, even take womens’ complaints of such sexism seriously.
A good example in this thread are the absurd comments darkly assuring us that unisex bathrooms will result in many sexual assaults against women. What’s absurd about this is that women are already sexually assaulted by men in women’s bathrooms, as well as in pretty much every other public space. Women don’t feel safe walking to their car in supermarket parking lots at night, for crying out loud, yet these commenters cry crocodile tears for the troubles they claim women will have with unisex bathrooms. If these men could demonstrate to me any action or even public speech decrying the ubiquitous threat of sexual assault of women and not just in supposed unisex bathrooms, then I’d take their “concerns” more seriously. But I’m sure that many of these men not only don’t take sexual assault of women seriously, they actively complain about supposedly false accusations. Don’t believe for a second that they’re arguing against unisex bathrooms on the basis of womens’ safety in good faith. They’re not.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
To a degree, they are. If you paid attention, you’d know that the near-universal shortage of facilities for women is a very, very common topic of complaint. Feminists do, in fact, regularly talk about unisex bathrooms as a solution to this problem, as well as it being an issue of gender discrimination because many women believe that were more women public planners and architects, then there wouldn’t be such shortages. And because where unisex bathrooms exist, they are largely non-controversial—as many commenters above with experience in college report—then desegregating bathrooms is seen as a reasonable political victory, though in political (as opposed to purely practical) a modest one.
If you don’t talk to feminists or read feminist publications and follow public feminist discussions, or (at minimum) talk with the women you know about issues specific to women, then don’t presume to tell people what feminists do, or don’t, find important.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
You sound like a real tool, Keith. Pandagon is that——> way.
The idea of co-ed bathrooms is gross and if women support it, who cares? Men are fine with the current system so why should we care if women don’t like it? What are they gonna do, complain? They do that anyway.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I attended Caltech, hardly a “liberal arts college,” as an undergrad from 1991 to 1996, and we had coed bathrooms in the South Houses (i.e., student dormitories), and nobody made an issue out of it. Ever.
Hector might be stunned to know that I never saw anybody do anything sexual in any of those restrooms, either. They were merely restrooms in the houses where people lived. Not that nobody had sex at college (well, a lot of people at Caltech didn’t have sex), but that they had actual dorm rooms of their own to do that in. Why on earth would anyone get it on in a public restroom?
Honestly, Hector, your reaction to this subject reveals a rather unhealthy obsession. And if you did have a daughter, and you instructed her to avoid the coed restrooms on campus, you would be well-known, and rightfully so, as an insane, tyrannical father, and I can guarantee that she would not obey you.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
That’s because women aren’t capable of doing such jobs. Tell me Keith, at what point do women actually have to take responsibility for their failure to accomplish anything of substance in over 5,000 years of civilization? In the year 3000 when most fields are still overwhelmingly dominated by men, will that still be because of sexism, or will you have moved on to a new excuse?
November 16th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
All the worthy feminist goals are short-changed when smirking, deadingly predictable liberal elitist lesbians like Rachel Maddow are propped up as “leaders”. They not only turn off guys, a lot of women (especially younger women) find their dowdy retro-70’s style off-putting.
Seriously, fuck you.
Otis the Sweaty: fuck you too.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
#36 and #47: You do Otis a favor with your curses, as they are the first f*cks he’s had in a long, long, time.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
meant to say surely they are the first f*cks
November 16th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Just out of curiosity, who is Rachel Maddow?
Adam Villani,
OK, that was a bit exaggerated about my hypothetical future daughter. I do think co-ed bathrooms are a bit of willful antinomianism, though, like much of what Yglesias and his ideological comrades-in-arms advocate, and is such not something that sensible people should give the time of day.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Hector:
1. Rachel Maddow is a liberal news commenter on MSNBC who happens to be a lesbian.
2. No, seriously, nothing ever happens with the coed bathrooms. The Institute only became coed in about 1970, and originally the few undergrad women there were all lived in one particular hallway. Gradually more women were admitted and they were more integrated into the student housing, although as recently as a couple years before my Frosh year, the male:female ratio was about 7:1.
As such it would have been fairly onerous to have specific bathrooms designated for the women as long as they were integrated throughout the student housing, as they wouldn’t form enough of a critical mass to support the maintenance of a single restroom, especially since the South Houses were built with short hallways set off by stairwells and such making it difficult to easily go from one to another.
The newer, North Houses were built more conventionally and had more rooms per hallway. While I was a student, at least, they did designate particular bathrooms as being for men or women, but I remember in at least some cases this being set by a dial on the door, changeable according to who happened to live in the vicinity. I think some of the bathrooms may have been coed.
Regardless, I don’t recall any evidence of anyone having any problems with the coed bathrooms, nor was there any “near occasions of sin” from having men and women excreting near each other. These restrooms were small and generally only had 2 or 3 stalls each. Everybody had a sink in their room, so nobody hung around and brushed their teeth or did their hair in the public restrooms.
But really, it was not a big deal. Do you separate the bathrooms in your home by sex? Likewise, there was little need seen for doing the same in the student houses I lived in.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
[...] Yglesias at Think Progress had a slightly different [...]
November 17th, 2009 at 12:59 am
I guess I’ll have the last word. As far as I know, the lastest iteration of New York City’s building code requires builders to devote more space to women’s bathrooms than men’s; I can’t recall if the ratio is 2:1. Unfortunately, codes for new construction don’t fix the assymetry at existing buildings, like (for example) the Metropolitan Opera or Grand Central. The situation both places is fucking ridiculous. 30 seconds to curtain at the Met and a line extends 20 feet out of the women’s room, while the men’s is all but empty. I ask the usher if I can use the men’s room since, you know, it’s empty. No, I can’t use the men’s room. Grand Central, same fucking thing. Line out of the women’s room extends around the corner, while across the corridor men sail in and out of their room. Of course, a serious affront and mode of oppression of women and girls in some poorest developing countries is that schools – yes schools – have no bathrooms for women students. So, yes, with respect to this I think we all keep a sense of proportion. But, you know, I wish NYC would come up with a mandate about reallocation of bathroom space in existing buildings.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:39 am
Dorms are your home. I grew up in a home with co-ed bathrooms because I had sisters. It’s not at all a stretch to suggest co-ed bathrooms in what amounts to a residence. There are all kinds of social norms in a residence that don’t exist in a public bathroom at the Port Authority Bus Terminal or the Metropolitan Opera.
My guess is your grandkids will be wondering why people spent so much money back in the day going to a physical university while they read the funny papers sitting on the bowl in the still segregated public rest rooms.