Building Codes Can Solve The Public Bathroom Problem

Unisex restrooms with enough stalls will make the battles over transsexuals in public restrooms go away.

At outdoor events, conflicts about who should be able to use a particular restroom rarely arise; a row of port-a-potties (though often disgusting) averts any such conflicts. In Europe, restrooms are often unisex; they have a row of closed stalls and handwashing facilities. In small shops, there’s often just a single bathroom (often for customers only, unfortunately). Again, problem solved.

Interestingly, the Tremont House in Boston, the first major building in America to have indoor plumbing, had a bank of eight water closets on the main-floor hallway, each designed for a single user. The architect felt no need to designate them by gender, because like the outhouses they were based on, they were single-user only.

I haven’t yet learned how the practice of having separate men’s and ladies’ rooms originated, but it set an unfortunate precedent. It clearly involves a double expense, particularly since men’s rooms also need stalls. And aside from the “bathroom battles” currently going on, it does not solve the problem of what the father of a a three-year-old girl is supposed to do when the girl has to urinate.

Since the configuration of public restrooms is regulated by governmental building codes, overhauling those codes is the place to start in recognizing the realities of sexual variation. Just as at a state fair, each stall should include both a urinal and a flushing toilet. (As a man, I’m far more comfortable pissing in a urinal than in an open toilet.) Stalls would need floor-to-ceiling partitions and perhaps some sound insulation. But the overall expense of building a single unisex restroom would almost certainly be less than that of two separate facilities, especially since only one sink (or group of sinks) would be necessary. And of course all of the arguments about transsexuals would vanish.

It will be a difficult transition because of the huge investment in existing facilities, but building codes and the architecture underlying them are the place to start. Builders will surely come up with clever ways to make the transition in existing buildings. The fact that men’s and ladies’ rooms are usually adjacent makes the necessary construction work a little easier.

Some problems will still remain. Athletic facilities, for example, are segregated by gender. But the problems with athletic facilities are subsumed by much larger problems with the rules for gender in sports — such as the permissibility of men who have been surgically transformed into women competing in women’s sports. And there are other similar problems in competitive sports, such as the treatment of athletes with artificial limbs that give them a advantage.