The Dose: Make Room for Women's Rooms

Confronting nationwide restroom unrest

By Peter Gilstrap
Published: May 12, 2008

First of all, yes, there is an American Restroom Association, and no, they aren’t happy about the way things are going down. Specifically, the fact that equal rights, when it comes to men’s and women’s rooms, are just too damned equal.

The situation came to a head when designers of the new Chaifetz Arena at St. Louis University magnanimously installed 120 toilets for women, 17 more than the law demands and 17 more than the boys are getting.

Why not? Anyone who’s attended a public event of any size has witnessed the snaking lines for the ladies room and the rapid in-and-outness of the men’s. Yet the extra facilities still do not meet female bathroom needs, architecture professor and ARA board member Kathryn Anthony explains. “People always laugh, but it's an issue that affects all of us.”

Numerous states in our equality-based nation have laws demanding equal numbers of toilet fixtures, while truly progressive states, cities and counties in our great land have passed regulations allowing triple or even quadruple the number of toilets for women's rooms, something that Anthony feels should be on the books nationwide.

It boils down to this: men have two simple reasons to use a restroom, despite Sen. Larry Craig’s alleged social stall-working. Not so for women, and it’ll always be that way, “until men have menstrual periods, until men get pregnant, or until men breast-feed or have babies,” emphasizes pissed-off Anthony, who will not be backed up in plumbing the serious depths of commode equality.

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The Dose: Make Room for Women's Rooms

Confronting nationwide restroom unrest

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