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<p>Wow, an insult wrapped in an insult. Do you get double points for that?</p>
<p>JHS still comes out ahead for use of the word âinappositeâ in a post. Well played, sir.</p>
<p>âWow, an insult wrapped in an insult. Do you get double points for that?â</p>
<p>Quadruple points. Two for the insult wrapped in an insult, another for daring to speak against the oppressor, and one more for being right.</p>
<p>For the record, Iâd be all for the Catherine Zeta-Jones comment if I had the money and room for my own bathroom too.</p>
<p>Allenby, âimmatureâ is a description borne out by your account of how your son has dealt with this problem. Itâs not an insult â sorry if you took it that way â and itâs not inconsistent with any of the admirable qualities you list. I have met lots of respectful, considerate, well-mannered, immature boys in my day; my son was like that, too, and largely still is. If your son isnât immature, then why in heck are you so involved?</p>
<p>I have actually been paying attention to what you (collectively) say, and testing and modifying my views in response to that. I donât think you have been listening to me much at all; you donât get that there are lots of people who arenât going to feel compelled by your tale of injustice here. If you want to evoke sympathy and get change, it would help to adjust your rhetoric to take account of the views of the people who actually have power at your sonâs college, and who have already shown that their first reaction is a lot more like mine than like yours.</p>
<p>But feel free to continue to be defensive, oppressed, and angry. You wonât get much out of a college administration that way, but Iâm sure there are plenty of talk radio hosts who will sympathize. (This IS a great talk radio topic. Iâm surprised no one has picked it up yet.)</p>
<p>Great post JHs. I have to admit, compared what I had to put up with in high school and even jr high ( where I was sexually assaulted by a group of boys on school grounds while waiting for the activity bus), your sons difficulties are not that traumatic, and it is actually a great opportunity to learn a lot.</p>
<p>Why do you suppose multi-user bathrooms in public spaces (restaurants, malls, etc.) are single-gender?</p>
<p>Dorms arenât public spaces. Again it isnât the unisex bathroom th at is the problem, it is the other students behavior.
Harrasment is just as likely to occur in a single sex situation.</p>
<p>No, statistically, it is NOT anywhere near as likely to happen in a single-sex bathroom.</p>
<p>emeraldkitty - your experience, although tragic as it was, has nothing to do with the situation in this thread.</p>
<p>Itâs like saying âoh your troubles are nothing compared to the time I got robbed at gunpoint at an ATMâŠâ</p>
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<p>So what if you were a lesbian, and had your eye on that woman down the hall?</p>
<p>So now we are going to guess how we would react if our gender or sexual orientation were different? Have we given any good advice to the OP in the last 5 pages?</p>
<p>The point is, having a bathroom space separate from people you might be romantically interested in is not some inalienable right that all college students have. If youâre gay, unless you get some arrangement where only opposite-sex people share a bathroom with you (unlikely, to say the least) thatâs not happening. Untold numbers of gay people have survived college despite this hardship. So have lots of straight people.</p>
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<p>There it is in a nutshell. If he were handling this in a mature way, the most he would be telling his mom is how he was handling it. This is the perfect situation in which he simply should take responsibility for himself. If he canât bring himself to do that, then he should just get used to it. There are a lot worse things than being immature. My daughter was very immature with regard to handling issues when she went to college. She had some roommate issues that got so bad, she spent nights outside the room on the floor and in the study area. I owed it to her to tell her that if she wanted to sleep in her bed, she needed to get over her fear of confrontation and handle it. She did.</p>
<p>I admit that I am comparatively unmoved by the romantic interest argument.</p>
<p>That certainly is not the foundation of my argument that in the situation citedâ3 bathrooms per floorâthere is no rational reason not to make a reasonable number of them single-gender if the demand exists, which apparently it does.</p>
<p>I do have genuine sympathy for those whose modesty makes them extremely uncomfortable in multi-gender bathroom situationsâespecially if the bathrooms are not designed for privacy. Gang showers, rows of urinals, flimsy shower curtains affording minimal privacy: one wonders what the designers were thinking. </p>
<p>I would add that when I was in HS. I literally never saw a female take a shower in the girls locker room. After gym class, they didnât give us enough time, and since there were no shower curtains no one was motivated to use them. Perhaps the few female athletesâthis was pre-Title IXâused them after practice. But no one else did. I really do not understand WHY showers would have no privacy whatever, completely against our societal norms.</p>
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I do think society has gotten more squeamish. When I am at the Y the way people behave varies very differently depending on the time of day. In the morning when all the 80 year olds are doing water aerobics everyone stands around stark naked talking. In the afternoon when the swim team is there half the girls change in the toilet stalls which is really annoying if you need to use them for their proper purpose. On the weekend when Moms bring the little kids thereâs less modesty. From time to time on weekends some Mom will decide the womenâs room is okay for five year old boys, which does freak me out, especially since all those kids are supposed to be in kid locker rooms not in the adult one.</p>
<p>Completely against our societal norms? What society are you talking about? I donât know how old I was when I saw a shower in an athletic facility that offered any kind of privacy, but I was definitely out of college. Every shower at every athletic facility I used as a kid â schools, rec centers, private clubs, camps â was a big, open room with a bunch of shower heads. Single sex, of course. Everybody showered with everyone else; if you wanted to check out other guysâ stuff there it was. Of course, that was not always comfortable. We were taught that the adult response to such discomfort was âToo bad. Tough it out.â</p>
<p>As far as I could tell, group showers for kids 10-21 after sports and in many other contexts was universal. Building shower stalls for kids would have been completely against our societal norms.</p>
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<p>Of course I donât know, but in the old days, dorms were built for single sex demand. Now that they are coed, and if there are more girls than boys, does it make sense to underutilize one bathroom, for a few boys while making a bunch of girls stand in line to pee or shower.</p>
<p>JHS: nice posts; fascinating thread.</p>
<p>My thoughts: Teenagers who have been exposed to a variety of living conditions, which may have included outhouses, chamber pots, hole-in-the-ground, drain-in-the-floor, multiple-seaters, the woods, the meadow, etc. arenât shocked by college bathrooms. Maybe teenagers who have only experienced suburban life (where everyone pretty much has their own bathroom these days) and mainstream travel,* will be shocked. Is it possible it may be the most affluent and the least affluent who have been exposed to the greatest diversity of bathroom experience? Maybe the middle class has less access to these experiences?</p>
<p>also - I tell my sons all the time it is real important they always keep in mind they are part of the oppressive patriarchy - even though it is an accident of birth they couldnât help. ;)</p>
<p>*edit : and maybe not homes without plumbing, turn of the century vacation cottages, certain summer camps, youth hostels, cheap pensiones âŠ</p>
<p>**as a child I had an ancient cousin, living on a farm, who didnât have indoor plumbing. She never got it⊠didnât need it.</p>
<p>I take special note when my son shares personal feelings of discomfort with me, because this is rare, as he generally communicates in stereotypical young male-style (one word answers, and almost nothing about feelings). I assume he is looking for some comfort and counsel, so I give it to him and I donât see him as immature for asking for my input, I see him as a normal human being.</p>
<p>I donât see anything that OP has shared about her sonâs behavior that would make me label him âimmature.â He seems to be handling the issue on his own, by talking with others and seeking out other bathrooms when possible. OP seems like a wonderful mother who wants to help, but is unsure how, and has simply asked our advice.</p>
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<p>Anecdata only: My husband attended summer camp that was much as you describe - group showers out there in the open. My son attended that same summer camp and worked there last summer as a counselor. By the time he started working there, they had reconfigured the showers to allow some privacy (this is a place that spends NOTHING on updating or maintenance, so it was a pretty big deal). But the concerns were more out of liability (think Sandusky-type situations) than any real concept that it should be uncomfortable for boys to shower together.</p>
<p>As a girl, Iâm glad that big open showers werenât the norm for us. I canât think of any situation in which Iâve ever showed that way. High school gym? We wouldnât have bothered at all.</p>