what's wrong with this pisser?
I get to scrappin' every now and then with G about public bathrooms. She has her own professional interest (not a plumber though) and rants about them in her own way here, here, and here.
The thing is, I don't have much sympathy for the feminist notion that men's bathrooms are fundamentally super-privileged. That men are institutionally over-served in a manner that discriminates against (i.e. under-serves) women? That urinals are a fundamental inequality, and that by having them, men are given an advantage in urination that women are not allowed. Along with men's fundamentally discriminatory garments (and anatomy) that allow them to zip, pee, zip, flush, wash, and go, the plumbing itself is unequal. That by virtue of the standing piss, men are provided more facilities than women.
I submit that wherever a urinal is properly installed, a stall/toilet could have been installed instead. If there's ever a case where men are crammed together more tightly, it makes for a non-pissable experience, and so the concept of higher piss-density per lineal wall-foot is moot.
So let's talk about some example facilities...
Cadieux Cafe in Detroit. For some reason, a mini-trough and a toilet. But they are crammed into such a small space that it's basically impossible to use both. The width of the toilet tank gives you a sense of scale of the trough. Note how it touches the wall on the right side, and the placement of the other fixture (sink, I think) in the lower right-hand corner. Only one guy can stand at this trough. And if someone is sitting on the toilet, it's unlikely that ANYone will be using the trough. Too close to trough back-spray. It's possible that two could stand and piss, one using the toilet and one using the trough, but there's room for two toilets side by side - so what's the difference between dual-occupancy women's room?
Haabs Restaurant in Ypsilanti. The width of the porcelain of a standard urinal is about 16-18". These two have about 2" between them. Take a shoulder width of about 20". When standing at one of these, one clearly overlaps the "frontage" space of the other urinal - it's simply not possible to squeeze another dude in there, let alone the question of personal space. So basically, one of these is wasted. Note the stalls on the right. Not that much wider than the urinals. (yes, there's perspective distortion from the crappy camera phone lens, but you can see roughly) You can apparently squeeze a stall in about the same space as a urinal, even in the case of ones that are too-close-for-comfort.
The greater of insults is when the squeeze happens without another guy being there. That the little privacy barriers squeeze you even if you're the only one in the bathroom.
Ah yes, and to all the women out there - I'm sure that there's a toilet stall door equivalent of the poster-in-front-of-you at the urinal, right? Do you have posters 6 inches in front of you? You know - advertising to potential customers during those "low-distraction-moments". Not only are there posters, but not apparently there's an entire industry of "urinal communication" where a guy can't even have a moment in quiet contemplation of having a piss.
And if that isn't enough, let's just say that this bullshit at the BW3 in Ann Arbor made me consider angry bathroom vandalism as justified for the first time in my life. There's all kinds of stupid things that happen to men's bathrooms in bars that have college kids as patrons - towel dispensers ripped off walls, soap dispensers smashed, stall doors bashed or ripped off. Until recently, I thought it completely unnecessary to smash and bludgeon bathroom facilities. But a TV? There's already 47 TVs in the restaurant - I don't need one shoved in my face when I'm taking a piss. Seriously, am I going to catch up on an episode of Lost while I'm taking a piss?
2 comments:
This is a topic of greater interest in the community than you might imagine.
One of the most frequent suggestions made to the UM in contemplating renovations to the stadium was to put in plenty of trough-style urinals. I'm talking long-ass troughs, the kind that result in a real Yellow River at the drain end under peak load.
I myself have photographically documented trough-style urinals at more than one Ann Arbor establishment, intending to create a urinal identification contest. I'm a bit constrained in thematic material for my own publication, and I haven't quite hit on how to integrate urinals into that theme, so for now that contest remains just an idea.
“The feminist notion…”???? As if there is only one and it has labeled urinals discriminatory. Sigh.
Just because men sometimes also have shitty bathrooms does not mean that feminists are wrong.
Urinals don’t discriminate, though they may, at times, be deployed in ways that privilege their users. Yes, “the plumbing itself is unequal” but that does not automatically make it discriminatory. It just makes it different. Oops, there we are back at the falsity of sameness equaling fairness.
If women are often under-served in the world of public bathrooms, that does not mean that men are necessarily “over-served.” To follow that line of reasoning would be to suggest that feminists would be just as happy have men’s facilities removed as having women’s increased.
Your post actually does more to prove than disprove feminist arguments about bathrooms. The focus should not be on plumbing (biological or toilet-ogical) but on how the facilities are or can be used. Gender might shape use, but it is not the sole determinant. Because we tend to label these rooms by gender rather than function (“men” or “women” rather than “restroom” or “toilet”), it is easy to privilege gender and perpetuate the idea that men and women (and of course reducing the world to only two genders has its own set of problems) are inherently different and in competition with each other for some limited set of resources. In this case, for women to have better bathrooms, men must necessarily have worse ones. Except that you already have some worse ones, so maybe we ought to be thinking more about that and less about the implication you raise in your second paragraph that women are complaining unduly.
Oh, and yes, marketers have invaded women's restrooms as well. They are not 6 inches from our faces, but the inside of stall doors regularly contain ads. Fortunately, as stall users, when do not have social customs to prevent us from looking away. I've yet to see a TV installed inside a stall yet either!
Post a Comment