<p>I’m always surprised at how modest the younger generation is. When I go to the Y the girls on the swim team go to great contortions to make sure no one sees anything, while the 80 year old women wander around without worrying about how they look at all.</p>
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<p>I’m totally pro-gay marriage so no argument there, but I’m failing to see what a guy who “only” has a men’s bathroom to use is being excluded from. (Same for a girl, of course.) </p>
<p>What great thing did I miss out on by going to a girls’ bathroom on my coed floor? I still hung around guys as friends, had them in my room, ate dinner with them, studied with them, etc. I just didn’t go to the bathroom next to them, that’s all.</p>
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<p>That may be a boy vs girl thing. I absolutely never showered in a school gym setting. </p>
<p>I also think there are different cultural norms re walking around naked / partially clothed in a men’s locker room vs a women’s locker room. At the summer camp my twins went to, the boys’ camp showers were communal and the girls’ camp showers had some curtains for a modicum of privacy.</p>
<p>I live on a coed floor with a coed bathroom. There hasn’t been a problem so far. Two showers (with shower curtains), two stalls, one urinal. I have never felt at all awkward. I mean, you just go in, do your business, and come out.</p>
<p>I’m sorry. I’m just surprised at how big of an issue this is. I kind of take this arrangement for granted.</p>
<p>(I might add that I felt more awkward in a girls-only bathroom a few years ago when the shower curtains were too small to cover the width of the shower stall. I mean, so long as the shower curtains are large enough, I don’t see the problem.)</p>
<p>As I said, I think I’m reacting to the particular set-up that I was familiar with (curtains, and arranged in such a way that you did step out of your clothing more “publicly”). I agree that with the right set-up, it’s not that big of a deal and modesty can be preserved. But I disagree with the premise that culturally, it’s not a big deal – because culturally, in the rest of the adult world, we don’t have mixed-gender bathrooms in public settings.</p>
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<p>Yeah, it’s a self-esteem/privacy thing. However, at my school, there just wasn’t enough time, and the facilities were disgusting. </p>
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<p>If I’m 80 years old and still care that much about how people think of me, I’ve failed at life. I think it’s just the “I’m 80 damnit.” Mentality setting in.</p>
<p>When I go to the Y the girls on the swim team go to great contortions to make sure no one sees anything, while the 80 year old women wander around without worrying about how they look at all.</p>
<p>I think I would appreciate a little * more* modesty at the gym, nobody uses the curtained changing areas in the corner , and I know way more about peoples tattoos and who defoliates and how much than I want to.</p>
<p>My daughter who had a co-ed bathroom- was at a small private college and the dorm also was pretty small- lots of single rooms or divided doubles. The bathrooms could be divided by sex, if the floor voted for that ( and if someone protested, they would have changed it I am sure- but this was something everyone knew about before attending), but then they would also be not as convenient. I visited her and used the bathrooms, even taking a shower at times ( cause the one in the hostel where I was staying was kinda grimy), and don’t remember anyone else even using it at the same time.</p>
<p>I think a public bathroom being same sex is different- because * anybody* could come in, however, I know a few times when I have gone into the mens bathroom when it was empty and the line at the womens was 15 people long. Nobody came in while I was in there, but I sure surprised some guys coming in while I was going out!
;)</p>
<p>I guess to me, in my situation, what seems like “anybody” could still come in-- there are like 800 people in my building, I know about 6 of them, all of them female. The people that show up at my floor meetings and live in my little corner are the only ones I ever see on a regular basis or even know the names of. In my situation it would not just be the group of people I had gotten to know over the course of the semester, it would literally be somebody I had never seen before a majority of the time. Not to mention that anybody could walk in off the street and I’d have no idea that they aren’t a student, much less not somebody that lives in my building-- and it is really not difficult for a stranger to get into the building, my father has “tailgated” into the building every time my parents have come to get me and he OBVIOUSLY does not belong there. I might feel differently if it were a MUCH smaller setting where I actually knew the males in question and would recognize somebody out of place. (Though I would still not be comfortable without a changing room and a shower door with a latch.)</p>
<p>We also have probably two mens rooms and two ladies rooms (at least) on every floor, and a unisex bathroom on maybe every other floor, because it is such a big building, so we do not have the inconvenience issues that some other dorm layouts would have. Given that, if the school has decided they want to provide locked, single-sex bathrooms I don’t see why that should shock anybody or make them doubt the safety at Michigan as it apparently did. That bathroom door is one of the few I get to have lock behind me, it’s nice to have some semblance of privacy once in a while.</p>
<p>I also never even took gym, so even getting used to changing in front of my roommate has been a big deal. We don’t all come from backgrounds were it is totally normal to change in front of people. We are very private people in my family. Maybe that makes me a prude, maybe Michigan just isn’t “liberal” enough (…?), but I think I have the right to keep my own body private if that’s what I need to be comfortable. If that’s really such an outrageous idea, I don’t know what else to say.</p>
<p>My younger daughter is pretty private- she lives on a womens floor in a co-ed dorm, and has a roommate, wheras her sister had a private room.
But she also has traveled extensively thru Africa and India, and you don’t usually have the luxury of American style bathrooms, it is more common to share water- at a public watering hole or the river, so you learn how to be fast and modest.</p>
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<p>Not I. The all-boys’ (except for me, the way I looked at it!) school I attended from ages 11 to 17 had a communal shower with rows of shower heads along the wall, and no privacy whatsoever. Everyone was supposed to shower every day after gym.</p>
<p>I hated, hated, hated it. Never mind the teasing and bullying I was subjected to in the locker room and shower because I was so tiny (barely 4 feet tall when I started) – and because it was so incredibly clever to knock me down in the shower, and to rip my glasses off my face and put them where I couldn’t reach them in the locker room, and lots of similar fun and games. Besides all that, I hated having to see my body even when I was alone (especially after puberty came along), let alone being naked among a lot of teenage boys, and could have done without seeing them, either. So for the last few years of high school, on the occasions when I didn’t get my mother to write me a gym excuse, I just didn’t bother taking a shower. It isn’t like I was active enough to need it!</p>
<p>And I never liked locker rooms as an adult, either. (I don’t think I’ve been in one since I transitioned.) </p>
<p>But, as I’ve said before, co-ed bathrooms aren’t locker rooms, and public nudity shouldn’t even be an issue so long as provisions are made for privacy while showering.</p>
<p>PS to Keilexandra: I’m not a big fan of the idea that trans people should be shuttled off to gender-neutral or single-occupancy bathrooms, unless that’s what they want to do. Most trans people I know identify either as men or women, not as a “third gender,” and would greatly prefer to be treated as such when it comes to bathrooms, as with everything else. If a trans woman has transitioned and is living as a woman, or is presenting as a woman prior to transitioning, then there’s no reason she shouldn’t use the women’s room. And there really shouldn’t be any difference among pre-op, post-op, and non-op trans women when it comes to that. The danger of harassment derives from not being passable (or “blendable,” as I prefer, since “passing” to me implies trying to be something you aren’t), and has nothing to do with operative status. Nobody I know, trans or not, is in the habit of displaying their genitals in the bathroom. And I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone’s in many decades of bathroom use, not counting accidental views of guys at urinals who insist on standing well back of their target. The solution to harassment, especially in a college setting, is to make absolutely sure that it isn’t tolerated – not to segregate trans people in separate bathrooms, unless they’re at a stage where that’s what they feel, themselves, that they need.</p>
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<p>Wow, hostile much? This is a discussion board in which people can discuss issues. It’s not “whining” to express an opinion.</p>
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<p>So did I, DonnaL, and I was a fairly normal-looking, but late-blooming girl. If some us tried to wrap a towel around us while heading toward the communal shower, our PE teacher would literally rip it off of us. Crreeepy and traumatic.</p>
<p>Maybe that is the root of my sensitivity about the importance of privacy in showering. I don’t know. But I find it strange that others think it strange that we care.</p>
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And many of us never stopped being intensely uncomfortable about it. I still don’t particularly like it, though I’ve learned to deal with it on the rare occasions when it comes up.
I’m curious: what is there about puking that’s specifically more embarrassing or distressing in the presence of the opposite sex vs. your own? I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this feeling, I just find it puzzling, because I don’t find that the experience of vomiting involves those kinds of gender-specific privacy impulses. I certainly feel unready for company in that situation, but not any more so for female than male company; if anything, the other way around.</p>
<p>Crreeepy and traumatic.
eew
In middle school- I know I didn’t take a shower- I took " towel showers".
In high school, I had PE first period, so I did take a shower- but we had lots of showers with curtains and I don’t remember it being much of an issue other than I waited until almost everyone was done so the locker room was mostly empty.</p>
<p>I was normal looking, except I was * very* well developed on top, and self concious about it, because it didn’t fit the rest of my body.
I usually seemed to have the class with the very athletic girls, who were pretty unselfconscious ( plus they had muscles they liked to show off)
I was not only different looking but I wasn’t coordinated and the girls who were, always seemed to make a point of trying to tell me " how good I did today", which made me feel even more pathetic, so I just tried to avoid them as much as possible.</p>
<p>Bay, that’s creepy and traumatic indeed. I remember some creepy, sadistic gym teachers/coaches myself. Including one who used to check personally to make sure everyone was wearing the required jockstrap.</p>
<p>I’ve never figured out why there was this seeming obsession at a lot of schools, 40 years ago or so, with compulsory collective nudity for kids in their early adolescence, a time when so many of them are incredibly self-conscious about their bodies – regardless of their gender identity! There were even a few times I remember when we were made to swim without bathing suits. Why? Who knows? Maybe the idea was to make kids less self-conscious? It certainly didn’t work for me or for a number of other (non-trans) kids who hated it. If anything, it made it worse. </p>
<p>As for stalls without doors, I remember seeing them in the bathrooms at a few high schools I visited for debate tournaments. No, thank you! (I assume the rationale was that kids in high school can’t be trusted behind closed doors. Who knows what they could be up to!)</p>
<p>Thinking about the whole issue more, I remember now that even though puberty was rather traumatic for me in many ways, the fact that I still showed no signs of it when I was 12 or 13 was itself a source of embarrassment for me (and an opportunity for other kids to make fun of me) – yet another reason I tried very hard to avoid communal showering, letting anyone see me change in the locker room, etc.</p>
<p>DonnaL – While I agree that trans or otherwise queer students shouldn’t be shuttled off to gender neutral bathrooms if that is not what they want, at my school, at least, the queer community generally seems to be really in support for gender neutral bathrooms, as well as gender neutral housing. So, obviously it makes a difference for some people.</p>
<p>I’m sure you’re right, weskid. That kind of thing tends to be more problematic in the corporate setting, where trans people, after transitioning, are often prohibited from using either the men’s room or the women’s room, and forced to use a single-occupancy bathroom no matter how inconvenient that may be. In other words, singled out to be treated like second-class citizens, if not lepers. </p>
<p>Fortunately, I’ve never had any trans-related bathroom problems of any kind at any point, whether during or after transition, at work or outside work. Except for one woman at my office who, for a few months after my transition, would march out of the ladies’ room on my floor and slam the door behind her every time she happened to run into me there, and refused to acknowledge my presence or speak to me anywhere else in the office. But that’s really minor compared to what many people experience. I was very lucky that I seemed to blend in and go unnoticed from the first time I ever went out in public as myself almost seven years ago. As overwhelmingly terrifying an experience as it was, I realized that first time that transition, which I had never believed possible, was something that I could actually do.</p>
<p>“And I think there’s something wrong and unhealthy about a fear of appearing sick or vulnerable in front of a broad category of other human beings”
Oh, I assume most people would simply prefer not to be seen getting up from the toilet with vomitus on their cheeks as they lunge to the sink for a wash down, same sex opposite sex, young, old, whatever…
I know this is completely off topic, but I think it’s more a question of maintaining one’s dignity as opposed to being vulnerable. Quite frankly, it is no one’s business but your own if you are unwell.</p>
<p>And then there are the college kids, like some I remember, who never hesitate to throw up, anyplace, anytime, in front of (or upon) anyone. But that’s usually for a different reason.</p>
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<p>Oh that is one of my pet peeves. I <em>hate</em> when bathrooms in office buildings need keys.</p>