Not everyone is happy with all-gender washrooms
Modernity! Progress! Change for the sake of change!
Shared, all-gender washrooms the future for Burnaby schools
Why? Why can’t washrooms (toilets, restrooms, bathrooms) go on being single-gender? Why can’t girls continue to have privacy when taking their pants down?
Not everyone is happy with all-gender washrooms installed at a Burnaby elementary school last year, but the school district says the concept is the bathroom of the future for local schools.
Oh well, kids who aren’t happy can just hold it for eight hours.
The NOW got a tour of the new bathrooms last week.
Instead of a door marked “boys” or “girls” there is now an open entrance way that leads to a space with banks of individual, locking cubicles on each side for everyone to use.
Unlike traditional stalls, the door and sides are longer, extending nearly up to the ceiling and down to the floor.
Nearly. So spy photography will be possible, and sounds will be audible.
“These inclusive washrooms are very private,” school district secretary-treasurer Russell Horswill told the NOW in an emailed statement.
Since when are toilets supposed to be “inclusive”? They should include all students of course, and they shouldn’t separate students for bad reasons, but the reasons for separating by sex for, say, changing tampons are not bad reasons. We don’t always have to be “inclusive.” We’re allowed to have privacy at times. Children and adolescents need that permission even more than adults.
Horswill said parents who have questions should reach out to their school principal.
“When the renovations and additions to Parkcrest were complete, there were a couple of parents who didn’t know why we would change washroom styles,” he said. “The principal gave them a tour, so they could see for themselves how students’ privacy was protected and how gender-neutral washrooms support inclusivity. While you’ll see this style of washroom in restaurants, other businesses, and schools in other districts, it’s perfectly normal for people to have questions when there is a change to how something has always been done at their child’s school.”
You’ll see complaints about them in restaurants and other businesses, too. See the outrage when the Old Vic made all the women’s toilets “inclusive” but left the men’s as they were. Don’t be like the Old Vic, or like the Burnaby School District either.
You have to if you don’t want to be called unpleasant names and have black hooded protestors show up!
It looks like a lot of these schools/businesses and so forth are doing this now without being ordered by activists. I’m sure the principal or superintendent would tell you it’s “proactive”.
I was in a restaurant in Seward, NE last week – a smallish town in southeast Nebraska that is not known for wokeness. The restrooms were Male and Everyone. Since they were single user, it didn’t really matter if they just said the bathrooms could be used regardless of sex, but no, they had to poke a finger in women’s eyes.
Unisex toilets should be like the ones we install in public areas in tourist towns in my opinion.
Each cubicle is a sealed private box with its own toilet and hand washing facility. Partitions and doors are heavy, providing both visual and acoustic privacy. They’re very well ventilated (mechanically). Doors open to a publicly viewable area, often behind a perforated screen of some sort so that while you don’t feel as though people are staring at you as you enter and leave, there is also no way for assaults or anti-social behaviour to go unobserved.
Looked at the pictures….
Why? Why would they put that two-inch gap at the top of the doors? It serves no purpose, other than to permit voyeuristic listening (even assuming there’s a monitor there to prevent actual peeping, which I doubt given how poorly these mouth-breathers understand the concept of privacy).
It could have been so easy to get this right–fully sealed stalls, with key-access for school officials in case of an actual problem. Hell, put a goddamned panic button in the stall for students having some sort of medical crisis–it’ll be better than hoping someone is immediately available to hear a cry for help.
Freemage, at a guess (none of the photos give enough information) I’d say it’s because of how ventilation design has been done. It’s kind of standard for single sex toilets, whereas for individual cubicles you have to supply fresh and extract air to each cubicle, which is more expensive. I agree it’s inappropriate to have doors with an opening at the bottom in a mixed sex area, even if designed to make filming or peeping difficult.
At the bottom OR THE TOP. As I’ve mentioned probably too many times, I once had a guy in the adjacent stall (in the women’s in a university library no less) climb onto the toilet and look over the partition. Fortunately I was already leery because he’d entered the room seconds after I did & chosen the stall next to mine & then was oddly quiet, so I looked under the partition just in time to see his foot rise out of sight. I was looking up as his face rose above the partition.