Why it is not necessary to divide the toilets into male and female
Why design toilets around the world still so focused on cisgender men? Zoe Ligon understands why it is time for booths "for men" and "for women" to change and who does it - from industrial designers from Denmark to authors of new characters on toilet doors in New York.
When it comes to emptying the bladder, I do not care for shyness. As a happy owner of vagina and chronic cystitis, I have to look for alternative ways of salvation, except for the painful standing in a long line at the women's toilet. This usually means a dark corner behind a parked car or deaf bushes. Fines for urinating in a public place do not really bother me - I live in Detroit, but even here it’s not so easy to find a decent point where you can slip and safely cast.
A classic example is the festival of electronic music Movement, which takes place in our city every year. The queue for women's cabins this year was SUCH length that I could go to the toilet, stand again at the end of the queue and want to write by the time my turn would have come. You feel like you are an animal on a urine production line. I watched with envy as the men freely entered their booths and left them after a minute with an expression of relief on their face.
At that moment I realized that for me it no longer plays any role, WHERE the toilet is located: I needed it, and immediately. I resolutely broke into the male, where there was exactly the same number of cubicles as in the female, but in addition to them there were also several urinals. The men were busy with their business and they did not notice me, but the guy who came into the booth looked at me in confusion, and then shrugged. It seems that he was not particularly bothered that I was following him. “You can't be here,” the man behind me snapped at me. "Why?" - I replied. - "Because you are a woman."
I can not say for sure whether he was an employee of the festival or just an ordinary visitor, anxious about how to protect the sacred men's bathroom from female encroachment. I answered very politely: "No," and he fell behind. However, this dialogue did not satisfy another man who fastened his pants at the urinal. “Then show the member,” he told me aggressively. I said that I would be happy to show you, but then let him show me his own - if this is, of course, a necessary condition for being admitted to the men's toilet. He could not answer. Instead, he shouted in my face: "Lesba!" - and then: - "Fag!" Fortunately, at that moment the booth was freed, and I disappeared into it. I was literally shaking - he was obviously waiting for me outside. Having written, I tried to quickly whisk out into the street, dissolved into the crowd and threw it off the tail. I didn’t go into the men's room this weekend anymore.
In the world of the future, where criminals do not attack other people in dark corners, there will be gender neutral toilets
You probably once thought that there must be some easier ways to solve the problem of endless queues at the toilet at crowded events. Gender-oriented toilets, especially individual cabins, should have been a thing of the past. Unfortunately - but not to surprise - this is still an unresolved issue. Well, if we are still forced to choose a particular toilet based on how society regards our gender, then let some special suitable devices be created for our special female urine. Actually, this solution is offered by art director and founder of Urgent Agency Christian Pag. He is one of the developers of Pollee (a female urinal created specifically for large public events), as well as the creator of the Pee Better platform.
In fact, "Polly" looks like a familiar urinal - just with a long, stretched "nose" urogenital receptacle. To go to the toilet, you need to stand over him facing the device, legs spread wide. The trick is that owners of any genitals can easily use it. Pug realized that it was time to tackle the toilet dilemma, after a trip with her girlfriend to the Roskilde music festival - and saw with her own eyes how much time she had to spend in queues at the toilet. "This is an ambiguous situation: first of all, of course, humiliating, but also tedious to a yawn," he said.
I, as a cisgender woman, cannot take the liberty to speak on behalf of transgender people. After the sad toilet incident, I thought how many of my friends who do not fit into the binary gender system find themselves in similar situations every single day. I can’t even imagine how disrespectful, inhuman and simply aggressive the question of gender can be in an intimate setting like a toilet. Why are we forced to draw conclusions about the gender of each individual, based on his set of genitals? Whose business is this, after all? On the one hand, I understand why there are male and female toilets in the world. If we are to speak quite frankly, I would probably not want to be alone with a man in the general outhouse.
But we must understand that gender confusion is not an invitation to dubious actions at all and, accordingly, gender division cannot serve as a kind of "preventive measure." In the utopian world of the future, where criminals do not attack other people in dark corners, it goes without saying that there will be gender neutral toilets, and toilets will be able to boast of much greater security. And they can be done like that now. For example, the problem of dangerous closed space can be at least partially solved by the fact that booths and common spaces will not have doors.
But what about gender-oriented individual booths, in the context of which it is not common to talk about security at all? A recent report from an inspection conducted in New York (you can learn more about it here) stresses that the emergence of a larger number of gender-neutral toilets will bring elementary logistical benefits to the city, not to mention that this is a more progressive approach. The corresponding bill proposed by city council member Daniel Dromme aims to introduce a new policy in this regard, while minimizing the potential objections of toilet business owners. While in other cities of America decisions have already been made to introduce gender-neutral individual toilet cubicles, in New York it is still necessary to prepare a legislative framework for this.
The logic of this report is very simple: there is always a toilet in an individual cubicle. That is, from an engineering point of view, you do not even need to do anything in order to reorient the booths to gender-neutral, with the exception of the signboard. In fact, the problem is much more important and wider than just a toilet stall. It is about changing the sign, the symbol, which as a result leads to much more significant cultural changes. To begin with, to the realization that we all live in a society with a binary gender norm, which has been cultivated for centuries. One should be aware of this, but also take care that everyone has a place where he will be comfortable.
Being emptied without compromising your own comfort and dignity is one of the fundamental human rights.
(In Russia, the situation with navigation in the field of public toilets looks more progressive: modern street toilet modules are designed for use by both women and men, and the famous “blue cabins” are often not equipped with signs at all. separate toilet areas for men and women, and a double icon on the door "M / F" still secretly supports binary gender division (Approx. Wonderzine).
In Detroit, there is the Great Lakes coffee shop, where instead of the usual signs on the toilets there are the inscriptions “Wash harder” and “Better lighting”. I love it. Both booths are suitable for everyone, regardless of gender and gender, here in the queue you never have to ask: "Excuse me, but you can go to that one?" There is also such a moment that everyone can write to the toilet, regardless of the device of the genitalia, but in some men's booths there is both a urinal and a toilet. Yes, everyone goes to the toilet, you know. But do you know that many men, in fact, pee while sitting? So, actually, we can write differently with my old woman vagina: standing, squatting and even hanging over the precipice.
Urinals, among other things, are also economically viable. They need much less space, and sewer drainage to them is simpler, so many who design toilets' interiors probably consider them from the point of view of economy. In addition to the newfangled devices like "Polly", from time immemorial there has been the legendary design of "holes in the floor." Maybe she is not able to take the award "design of the year", but do not discount it.
Polly is still a prototype, but the overall positive response gives hope that this design will become standard practice in the future. “If you want to speed up the process, you have to sacrifice (toilet) comfort,” the creator admits. There are some other advantages in this that go beyond the immediate needs of the toilet: "It will always be seen if someone uses the toilet to use drugs or do something else that this place is not intended for."
This whole topic is actually much more extensive and more complicated than the problem of gender and the disposal of body fluids: how can we make toilets safe, comfortable and accessible to all people in the world with all their physical features and characteristics? After all, the right to be emptied without detriment to one’s own comfort and dignity is, if one thinks so, one of the fundamental and vital human rights.