Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom never told you?
Speaker 1: From housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And before we go any further,
Speaker 1: I would like to say a special hello to everyone
Speaker 1: who is listening to us right now. While in the bathroom, Yes,
Speaker 1: this this goes out to you, and while you were
Speaker 1: in the bathroom, I'd like you to ponder for a
Speaker 1: moment the way that you're using the toilet and what
Speaker 1: it means socially. I bet you never thought about that before,
Speaker 1: but we're here to tell you what it means, and
Speaker 1: it means a lot. Public restrooms, especially are loaded with
Speaker 1: gender politics and racial politics exactly. And we're not even
Speaker 1: we're not We're not messing around here. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm a little tongue in cheek, but seriously, uh, toilets
Speaker 1: and public restrooms have a surprisingly rich history of controversy
Speaker 1: in terms of access, right. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: women were denied public restrooms for an absurdly long period
Speaker 1: of time. Well because we didn't leave the house, That's true.
Speaker 1: We were barefoot and pregnant and baking I'm sure, tending
Speaker 1: to our gardens and whatnot, shuffling to the outhouse right
Speaker 1: now and then exactly um, and then you know, once,
Speaker 1: once there are public restrooms, there's an issue of equality
Speaker 1: because I know that you've been at a ball game
Speaker 1: or a bar or something where you've had to wait
Speaker 1: in line for the bathroom for a significant period of time,
Speaker 1: well while the guys just breathed in and out. I
Speaker 1: remember going to a Braves game last year and waiting,
Speaker 1: waiting in line for the bathroom for twenty minutes. Did
Speaker 1: you make it? I barely made it. Hear all these
Speaker 1: women uttering like relievably. Oh God. Well, that's why you
Speaker 1: find so much camaraderie in the bathroom line for for
Speaker 1: the women's restroom, because you're all in this this horrible
Speaker 1: situation together having to hold your bowels. Um. But let's
Speaker 1: not let's not get to ahead of ourselves, because the
Speaker 1: thing is, you're talking about being at a Braves game
Speaker 1: and having to wait for a bathroom. But the thing is, Caroline,
Speaker 1: here in the United States, in the Western world, we
Speaker 1: are taking our bathrooms for granted big time. Uh. It
Speaker 1: is a huge problem. Access to santation facilities, especially for women,
Speaker 1: is a huge problem in developing countries. Um. We've touched
Speaker 1: on this before in the podcast How toilet access is
Speaker 1: I'M a problem for school girls in particular in rural
Speaker 1: areas because it prevents them from attending school during their periods.
Speaker 1: If they don't have access to a toilet, they have
Speaker 1: to stay home, and that only keeps them home even longer.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of area is um In Africa
Speaker 1: as well, the Amnesty International has worked hard to try
Speaker 1: and get more UH sanitation facilities in there. But even
Speaker 1: in countries like China and India, access to toilets is
Speaker 1: still a huge problem. Um. This is coming from a
Speaker 1: couple of articles in the Economist magazine. In India, around
Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty million women lack access to toilets
Speaker 1: and because of that they have to wait until night
Speaker 1: to go out to the bathroom, risking rape, kidnapping, and
Speaker 1: snake bites. Right, that's dangerous. Um. But in in China,
Speaker 1: which I think of as a pretty pretty developed, modern country,
Speaker 1: according to that World Health Organization report from it estimated
Speaker 1: that forty percent of Chinese people lack access to improve
Speaker 1: sanitation facilities, which contributes to the risk of disease. Right,
Speaker 1: And that makes sense because there are still so many
Speaker 1: large pockets of rural areas in China, even in Beijing.
Speaker 1: There has been a protest movement, a small kind of
Speaker 1: more underground protest movement to get more toilets in urban
Speaker 1: areas because as people are traveling around getting from home
Speaker 1: to job and back again, these busses will stop off
Speaker 1: and everyone will get out of the bus to use
Speaker 1: the public restroom, and there are the same number of
Speaker 1: toilets for men and women. And because of that, you know,
Speaker 1: women don't can't go to the bathroom because all the
Speaker 1: stalls are taken up and a lot of times, um
Speaker 1: they mentioned how a lot of the sanitation workers are women.
Speaker 1: So the women are cleaning a bathroom, using up one stall,
Speaker 1: eliminating another, you know, another toilet for use. Yeah, an
Speaker 1: activists have had it. Activists in China are tired of
Speaker 1: having to wait in line for the bathroom. Well, like
Speaker 1: like I was at the Braves game, while men just
Speaker 1: breathe in and out, and so it's not just an inconvenience.
Speaker 1: They're saying that it's a gender equality issue and Lea
Speaker 1: ting Ting, a twenty two year old student, has led
Speaker 1: the Occupy Men's Toilet movement, during which she and several
Speaker 1: activists took over a men's restroom near a park, allowing
Speaker 1: women to use the empty stalls for three minutes at
Speaker 1: a time before they would wave the men back in
Speaker 1: for ten minutes. And in this way they you know,
Speaker 1: we're hoping to raise awareness and bring attention to the
Speaker 1: fact that women need more restroom space. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: that I did not realize is that a number of countries,
Speaker 1: um including the US, on the state level, have what
Speaker 1: are referred to as potty parity laws, essentially laws stating
Speaker 1: you must have an equal number of bathrooms for men
Speaker 1: and for women. And why in the United States would
Speaker 1: we need something like that? Oh? Well, instances like in
Speaker 1: West Virginia that barred women from jury service until ninety
Speaker 1: six because the courthouses lacked female toilets. Oh and it's
Speaker 1: not just it's not just in states. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the US capital, because the Capitol building did not have
Speaker 1: a female bathroom for female senators until and because of that,
Speaker 1: they would have to run downstairs and use their tourist
Speaker 1: restroom and then run back upstairs, whereas mail senators had
Speaker 1: their own designated, special private bathroom exactly. So bathrooms were
Speaker 1: used as an excuse to keep women out of certain activities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope you can't miss your boat because you're waiting
Speaker 1: in the line for the bathroom. Right. Um, but this
Speaker 1: potty parody, I mean, it's saying one to one, it's
Speaker 1: saying men and women need equal bathrooms. But one to
Speaker 1: one is not an equal opportunity ratio because our time
Speaker 1: in the bathroom. Let's face it, folks, it is not
Speaker 1: one to one. Right. Study from Virginia Tech measured how
Speaker 1: long it takes men and women to use the bathroom.
Speaker 1: It found that women take an average of three minutes
Speaker 1: to quote, go in, go and go out, whereas men
Speaker 1: are in and out in eighty three points six seconds,
Speaker 1: about half the time. Now. I tweeted this little fact
Speaker 1: TOID before we came in to record, uh, and received
Speaker 1: a number of interesting replies, one of which was from
Speaker 1: a woman who I guess she didn't notice that I
Speaker 1: had said public restrooms because she was like, wait a minute, No,
Speaker 1: my husband takes a really long time in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: but now we're talking about out in public guys go in,
Speaker 1: go out, and usually it takes women on average twice
Speaker 1: as long. Okay, so it's an issue of time and
Speaker 1: it's an issue of space. This is coming from the Economist. Uh.
Speaker 1: They quoted George Washington University law professor at John bans Off,
Speaker 1: who told them that sanitary facilities are assigned by area,
Speaker 1: like we were saying, but up to twelve urinals can
Speaker 1: fit into a space, they can hold only three to
Speaker 1: four sit down toilets. So women either need more space
Speaker 1: or we need more solutions. And as we'll go into
Speaker 1: in more detail, the design of women's bathroom stalls has
Speaker 1: not changed much since the eighteen fifties. There has not
Speaker 1: been a ton of innovation, even though as we'll also
Speaker 1: discuss female urinals. That's right, female urinals are one proposed solution.
Speaker 1: But let's get back to this issue of access and
Speaker 1: talk for a moment about some stuff that's been going
Speaker 1: on more on college campuses and um trans students on
Speaker 1: college campuses who want unisex bathrooms. Right. Catherine Anthony and
Speaker 1: architecture professor UH said in that Economist article that one
Speaker 1: solution is to make more bathrooms unisex. She says, either
Speaker 1: there are no lines or everyone has to wait, and
Speaker 1: she says that it also makes life easier for transgender
Speaker 1: people who have to worry about making a public choice
Speaker 1: and being ridiculed. All right, And this is coming from
Speaker 1: the paper Restroom Revolution, Unisex Toilets and Campus Politics by
Speaker 1: Olga Gershonson, and she writes, to traditional sex segregated public
Speaker 1: restrooms bring transgender people routine risk of being insulted, mocked,
Speaker 1: a tact, and even arrested. So again, we're taking for
Speaker 1: granted a lot of times access to public bathrooms, not
Speaker 1: just by virtue of living in the US, where the
Speaker 1: axis usually is more abundant, but also by virtue of
Speaker 1: being cis gender heterosexual identified females who can just you know,
Speaker 1: we see the lady sign and we know right where
Speaker 1: to walk. That's not the same situation for a transgender person.
Speaker 1: And this is coming from the Transgender Law and Policy
Speaker 1: Institute that listed a lot of problems that transgender high
Speaker 1: school students face in particular, and they found that often
Speaker 1: transgender and gender nonconforming students don't feel safe in either
Speaker 1: the men's or the women's restroom because of the danger
Speaker 1: of harassment um and they found that in a transgender
Speaker 1: focus group, the lack of safe bathrooms is the biggest
Speaker 1: problem that gender nonconforming students face because a lot of
Speaker 1: gender scholars will point out that when you really think
Speaker 1: about it, the way that bathrooms are segregated between men's
Speaker 1: and women and it's also a way of um, I guess,
Speaker 1: making our private parts even more private. Yes, and the
Speaker 1: idea of gender gender neutral locker rooms was actually suggested
Speaker 1: by transgender students at Grinnell College in Iowa. They'd already
Speaker 1: had gender neutral dorm options for three years, but last
Speaker 1: year added gender neutral locker rooms at the encouragement of students. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially among private UM colleges and universities in the US,
Speaker 1: gender neutral dorms have become more common. I think they're
Speaker 1: The USA Today article sited fifty four college campuses that
Speaker 1: already have those. UM. But in that Restroom Revolution article
Speaker 1: that I mentioned by Olga Gershenson UM, she talks a
Speaker 1: lot about the two thousand one protest movement that started
Speaker 1: at University of Massachusetts Amherst by a student group called
Speaker 1: Restroom Revolution that was lobbying for transgender friendly unisex bathrooms,
Speaker 1: and they ran into not only opposition from other students
Speaker 1: on campus UM and even some gay organizations who said,
Speaker 1: you're just trying to get attention. This is bathrooms. Just
Speaker 1: you've been going to the bathroom, Just keep going to
Speaker 1: the same bathroom that you went to. No big deal, UM.
Speaker 1: But when they went and actually talked to the vice
Speaker 1: chancellor about getting UM unisex bathrooms in there, I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting that the Massachusetts Architectural Code stated that
Speaker 1: a bathroom had to be designated by gender, and I
Speaker 1: wonder that was in two thousand one, and I wonder
Speaker 1: if some of those codes are changing, because I went
Speaker 1: back and checked and the campus does now have gender
Speaker 1: neutral bathrooms in a lot of the dorms. Now. So,
Speaker 1: while party politics has become a platform for UM transgender rights,
Speaker 1: the gender issues go a long way back to when
Speaker 1: the first public conveniences as they were called, were invented
Speaker 1: and installed in London. And like you mentioned earlier, Caroline,
Speaker 1: they were restricted from two men only. Women could not
Speaker 1: use them. They did not have women in mind when
Speaker 1: they first invented public restrooms, right because we don't need
Speaker 1: the house, UM. But the the first large scale public
Speaker 1: bathrooms were featured at London's Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time that people saw this
Speaker 1: set up on a on a large scale and thought, okay,
Speaker 1: this is how it works. And they thought it worked
Speaker 1: so well that it hasn't changed the whole design of
Speaker 1: like going into a stall, unlocking the door and sitting
Speaker 1: down on a toilet. Right. Barbara Penner, who is an
Speaker 1: architectural lecturer at the University College of London UM talks
Speaker 1: about how the model of ladies room that was established
Speaker 1: at that Great Exhibition by George Jennings, that came with
Speaker 1: a private stall with the water closet, lock and door,
Speaker 1: is still so dominant it has not been seriously rethought
Speaker 1: in the last hundred and fifty years. Yeah. Well back
Speaker 1: then it was just good that they got toilets because
Speaker 1: public health concerns back in the nineteenth century led to
Speaker 1: the prevent vision of public toilets, but the majority, like
Speaker 1: we said, were for men only, and women immediately started
Speaker 1: fighting this because you know, sometimes they did have to
Speaker 1: be out of the house for whatever reason. UM, the
Speaker 1: Ladies Sanitary Association and members of the public in England
Speaker 1: campaigned for women's toilets and high traffic areas, and one
Speaker 1: was going to be installed in nineteen hundred, but this
Speaker 1: giant brew haha broke out and people were calling it
Speaker 1: an abomination. I don't want it anywhere near my house.
Speaker 1: That's filthy and inappropriate, So the project was abandoned. There
Speaker 1: was not a public women's bathroom in that area of
Speaker 1: London until nineteen oh five. Yeah, it was sort of
Speaker 1: a twofold protest against it. One being the the impropriety
Speaker 1: of women urinating and possibly defecating. Women don't do that, no,
Speaker 1: but doing it in public no less Caroline than everyone
Speaker 1: would know that, yes and due indeed yes, and dude,
Speaker 1: yes indeed women do poop um. So they didn't like
Speaker 1: the idea of women using the bathroom in pub And
Speaker 1: then also this potential interaction of the women who would
Speaker 1: leave to be shopping, the more leisurely upper class women
Speaker 1: who would be shopping, who might interact with lower class
Speaker 1: factory girls and flower girls. But in order to keep
Speaker 1: the class divide, they charged a penny to use this
Speaker 1: public bathroom, but there was a cheaper option. There was
Speaker 1: a cheaper option in a female urinet was installed in
Speaker 1: one London public lou and it only cost a halfpenny
Speaker 1: and instead of it being a stall with a door
Speaker 1: that you locked, they had a curtain and it was
Speaker 1: a It was a stand up operation, which was pretty
Speaker 1: handy because Victorian underwear was open at the crutch. As
Speaker 1: we have discussed before in the podcast Queen Victoria in Victoria,
Speaker 1: I wonder if she ever used one. Certainly not certainly
Speaker 1: not um, but it's it's been a hard transition, I
Speaker 1: think to try to convince women to use urinals or
Speaker 1: urinets made specifically for them. I think there's definitely prevailing
Speaker 1: attitude that it's weird or immodest or improper. Well, Barbara Penner,
Speaker 1: who was that that toilet scholar that I mentioned from
Speaker 1: University College of London, has got her hands on some
Speaker 1: model urinets that that or They were essentially like siphons
Speaker 1: that women could use to to get the urine from
Speaker 1: out out of them to the toilet without spring everywhere.
Speaker 1: Women out there, you know what I'm I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: It's not the easiest to pee while standing up. I
Speaker 1: used to work in an office where someone would spray
Speaker 1: all over the seat and I think that individual could
Speaker 1: have benefited from a urinet. Yeah, they were um a
Speaker 1: lot of times they were just shaped like a funnel,
Speaker 1: but there was one from the mid eighteen hundreds. It
Speaker 1: was glass blown urinet that was shaped like, um, a penis.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they were. They figured, hey, well
Speaker 1: guys used this too to piece, so let's work for
Speaker 1: the women. Let's maintain this theme. But again, the female
Speaker 1: urin never really caught on, although, fun fact, in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty and nineteen seventy three the American Standard Toilet Company
Speaker 1: tried again to produce a female urinal, but it didn't
Speaker 1: really catch on so much. No, it still hasn't. And
Speaker 1: the most recent that I've read about it, there was
Speaker 1: an article in Cabinet magazine by Barbara Penner, who you
Speaker 1: mentioned before, talking about female urinals at at the Glastonbury
Speaker 1: Music Festival and that they used penates, these little like
Speaker 1: cardboard things you would like stick, I guess stick them
Speaker 1: in your underwear, used to direct the stream of urine.
Speaker 1: It's basically like a yurin funnel. Um. I've also I
Speaker 1: think there's also a p she out there. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see you'll see them sometimes more at at festivals,
Speaker 1: but I've never seen one in person. I have an
Speaker 1: either I there was one quote where the where a
Speaker 1: girl at Glastonbury said that she really liked the idea
Speaker 1: was pretty handy because you didn't have to go in
Speaker 1: one of those filthy borda potties, but that it was
Speaker 1: a little hard to use when you've been drinking at
Speaker 1: a music festival, understandably careful, but talking about the gender
Speaker 1: politics of the bathroom and going to the bathroom, we
Speaker 1: would be remiss to not mention this quote from The
Speaker 1: Second Sex by Simon Beauvoir, written in because she believed
Speaker 1: that teaching little girls to squat and urinate constituted, quote,
Speaker 1: the most striking sexual differentiation of their childhood. And by
Speaker 1: by teaching little girls to squat when using the bathroom,
Speaker 1: it was teaching them to to hide themselves, and it
Speaker 1: was a shameful and inconvenient procedure. And the erect position
Speaker 1: was reserved for men alone. Right, Well, you mentioned these
Speaker 1: ladies before. Olga Gershinson and Barbara Penner and their introduction
Speaker 1: to the book Ladies and Gents, Public Toilets and Gender,
Speaker 1: they wrote that public bathrooms are the last openly sex
Speaker 1: segregated spaces, and the spaces we expect to be sex segregated,
Speaker 1: and we go into them knowing that the guys next
Speaker 1: door are probably gonna be standing up and we're probably
Speaker 1: gonna be sitting down. And so it really is, they say,
Speaker 1: reflects and shapes the binary division of men and women,
Speaker 1: as well as quote proper relationships between people of the
Speaker 1: same sex, And which is why, when you think about
Speaker 1: it in all of those terms, why it makes sense
Speaker 1: that these transgender students in particular are so adamant about
Speaker 1: getting safer unisex spaces to where you can you can
Speaker 1: do away with all those gendered trappings. And while we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about gender in this episode, we also
Speaker 1: have to address race because during the Civil rights movement
Speaker 1: in the US, bathrooms were one of the last places
Speaker 1: to be desegregated. For listeners out there who have seen
Speaker 1: or read The Help, one of the plot lines revolves
Speaker 1: around how this completely racist white woman UM does not
Speaker 1: want her black maid to use the bathroom because of
Speaker 1: these bogus leaves about race specific diseases UM and these
Speaker 1: desegregation cases about regarding bathrooms. One as late as nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, there's a case James v. Stockholm that was
Speaker 1: still hashing out segregation of public bathrooms in in workplaces especially,
Speaker 1: So we talked about gender, We've talked about race. Who
Speaker 1: knew that the potty politics of public restrooms? I can't
Speaker 1: say that five times fast? But who knew that the
Speaker 1: potty politics of public restrooms was so so complicated? Right?
Speaker 1: I had never uh considered myself um at a disadvantage
Speaker 1: as far as the bathroom goes, other than you know,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I'm going to have to cross my
Speaker 1: legs and pray that I get into a stall really fast.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of it as a equality issue, but
Speaker 1: the fact that women don't have the space that they
Speaker 1: need to get to the bathroom in time, hundreds of
Speaker 1: million of women and I'm sure men too. But this
Speaker 1: is this is an issue that is still very much
Speaker 1: needs to be solved on a global level and down
Speaker 1: to you know, rights for for transgender people as well, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I think we can flush this episode. Oh I
Speaker 1: had to, I had to do. Do you have any
Speaker 1: toilet pun you want to get out before we close it?
Speaker 1: Thanked up? I think I'm good. Yeah, Okay, let's just
Speaker 1: wipe this one off the books. There you go. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if if any listeners out there have any any toilet,
Speaker 1: any clean toilet puns to send our way, or any
Speaker 1: experiences with bathrooms? Have you thought about bathrooms on this level?
Speaker 1: I know it might have at first seemed absurd to
Speaker 1: talk about potty politics because you're referring to a toilet
Speaker 1: as a potty and rhyming it with politics. And have
Speaker 1: you ever had a bathroom conflict? Because I remember I
Speaker 1: I actually yelled at me. I was at a restaurant
Speaker 1: that had it's it's two bathrooms used to be unisex,
Speaker 1: and they had recently changed it to women and men,
Speaker 1: and the women's line was ridiculous. So I just went
Speaker 1: in the men's room. It was a single stall, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I came out and this guy started literally cussing
Speaker 1: me out. It's like, really, dude, you should tell him
Speaker 1: about the three million women in India who don't have potties.
Speaker 1: So with that, send us your thoughts. Mom stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com is our email address, and I've got
Speaker 1: one here from Marcy. And this is in reference to
Speaker 1: our recent episode on age gaps in relationships. She writes,
Speaker 1: I happen to be in a long distance relationship with
Speaker 1: someone twenty seven years older than myself. Though most of
Speaker 1: our communication is through talking on the phone, what's amazing
Speaker 1: is that we can talk for hours every week, even
Speaker 1: though we don't actually get to do much together. I
Speaker 1: don't feel as if age difference affects our relationship, except
Speaker 1: that I find guys my age are looking for someone
Speaker 1: who is outgoing and exciting, as I've seen on many
Speaker 1: online dating profiles, and older men tend to be happier
Speaker 1: than younger men. Someone is simply able to hold an
Speaker 1: intelligent conversation. My long distance relationship and I are actually
Speaker 1: close in the same life stages in many ways, since
Speaker 1: we're both mature, responsible adults, and we can discuss things
Speaker 1: that many less stable people don't have in common with us,
Speaker 1: like taking care of a house. But more than anything,
Speaker 1: we are both very curious people and enjoy sharing information.
Speaker 1: And by the way, we buck the statistics and that
Speaker 1: we both have advanced degrees and decent jobs. So thanks
Speaker 1: for that, Marci, excellent. I have a very serious email here.
Speaker 1: David has a bound to pick. This is coming from
Speaker 1: our air brushing episode, more like a nip to pick.
Speaker 1: He says, how could you do an episode on air
Speaker 1: brushing without mentioning Marky Mark's third nipple. It was discreetly
Speaker 1: air brushed out of all of his underwear modeling shots.
Speaker 1: He should be proud to carry an extra nipple like
Speaker 1: Anne Boleyn or the Man with the Golden Gun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did not realize that that Mark Wallberg a k a.
Speaker 1: Marky Mark had a third nipple. I was urious, but
Speaker 1: thankfully he sent us a link and um to to
Speaker 1: an interview with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, and Mark
Speaker 1: Wahlberg confirms that yes, indeed he has a third nipple
Speaker 1: and like the size of a regular nipple. No, he says,
Speaker 1: it's about the size of an infant's nipple. It's like
Speaker 1: an small, undeveloped nipple. But the winner, I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's along his milk line, milk bridge on the milk ridge.
Speaker 1: That's right. So two episodes of one airbrushing men and
Speaker 1: nipples tying it all together. So thanks to everyone who
Speaker 1: has shared so much esoteric knowledge like third nipples of
Speaker 1: celebrities with us. Mom stuff at Discovery dot com is
Speaker 1: the address you can send your thoughts too, and you
Speaker 1: can also find us on Facebook. Leave us a comment there,
Speaker 1: or you can tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast, and
Speaker 1: of course you can find us steering a week at
Speaker 1: our home website, how stuff works dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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