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<p>For those who are so blase about mixed-gender bathrooms - how do you feel about using a urinal in front of a member of the opposite sex? Would you be comfortable doing so?</p>
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<p>Interesting tidbit . . . the YMCA actually didnât allow swimsuits in the pools until the 1960s. It was nude swimming or nothing!</p>
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This is a good point, and it shows that part of the disagreement here may be on how we are visualizing these bathrooms based on our own experiences. The co-ed bathroom I used had two toilets and two showers, each with an opaque door. No problem. I would have had a lot more problem with open showers and urinals, and I suspect a lot of other people would have, too. So what are these bathrooms like?</p>
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<p>I donât think this happens much anymore. Kids in our area do not take showers at school or rec centers at all anymore. All private clubs I know of, have private stalls (but I am female). Most people that I know of, shower at home after working out, even when there are some shower (stalls) available at the gym. My kids did not go to camp much, so I canât speak to those arrangements today.</p>
<p>I think in the past shower facilities for boys and girls were often different. Perhaps now theyâre more the same.</p>
<p>Iâm pretty sure our athletes at school shower after athletics before they go back to class. </p>
<p>YUCK!</p>
<p>All of our athletics are at the end of the school day.</p>
<p>I can attest that having to shower with a bunch of other boys in middle school was much more traumatic than sharing a bathroom with girls in college. Perhaps the kids of today donât have that middle school experience, and thus are less prepared for a lack of privacy. This probably explains some roommate problems as well.</p>
<p>Oh, thereâs no way we could do that, schedule-wise.</p>
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<p>Right. I suspect that those of you at Harvard and Yale who had small bathrooms serving just one suite are right in thinking âwhatâs the big deal, itâs like sharing the bathroom with opposite-gender siblingsâ and those of us who had large bathrooms serving 20, 30, 40 kids are right in thinking âitâs like a locker room, people coming in and out, and who would stand for a mixed-gender locker room in a fitness facility.â </p>
<p>Opaque, completely closed stalls are also quite different from rows of stalls where every rustle can be heard.</p>
<p>Even in MS we had shower stalls with dressing areas and curtains. I have to say though - even with those, in MS, most girls didnât use them. Sometimes the coach would stand in the locker room because it was a requirement to shower - but girls would just turn the water on for a while, hang out in the dressing area and leave. Most refused to undress in the presence of others - even with a curtain.</p>
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Well, they werenât that closed offâyou could hear. But you couldnât see. My recollection is that the bathroom in question served about 8 people.</p>
<p>We donât know what the bathrooms that the OP is talking about are like, do we? Are there still college dorms with completely open showers? Certainly there might be urinals.</p>
<p>My dorm had gang-style (never heard that before this thread) bathrooms - one big bathroom for the entire hall of women. If it were mixed-gender, I might have had an issue with it, but for me it would probably be due to fear more than modesty. With bathrooms serving that many students, there were often strangers passing through the hall who would stop in and use the facilities. If random strange men were entering at all hours, I think it would be off-putting, to say the least.</p>
<p>The Yale bathrooms I saw were shared by maybe 10 women between 2 suites, so yes, they were more like sharing with siblings, and the dorms are secured like fortresses - key cards and alarms if the door is left open.</p>
<p>That fortress-securing is a modern innovation. In my day, the dorms were secured like, maybe, Starbucks. The big innovation while I was a student was to lock the gates sometimes, unless someone propped them open.</p>
<p>I wasnât going to revive the thread for this, but since it got revived anyway â Did anyone else read the story in this morningâs Wall St. Journal about how one councilman in San Francisco is proposing an ordinance banning public nudity? It turns out (a) San Francisco doesnât have an existing ban on public nudity, (b) San Francisco has quite a lot of public nudity, and an active, vocal cohort of people who like to hang around (yes, pun intended) without clothes talking to reporters, and (c) San Francisco also seems to have a fair number of people who wear clothes in public but see any kind of restriction on public nudity as the thin edge of a knife that will take away all our freedom in short order. The anti-nudity ordinance is probably grandstanding on the part of its sponsor, not something with a real chance of enactment.</p>
<p>Anyway, yet another reminder to all of us to be modest (ahem) in assuming that we know what our collective core values are.</p>
<p>If S.F. is doing something, you can rest assured that it IS outside our collective core values. :)</p>
<p>Locker rooms are typically built differently for men and women, and they were probably even more so when I was coming along. In high school, the boys had open showers. The girls had shower stalls and curtains. While boys would change in the open, girls would go into shower or bathroom stalls to change. Where I live, girls and women donât change in front of each other, no matter how old or young they are. Boys and men do, although thereâs an unspoken âno lookingâ rule.</p>
<p>As for opposite gender siblings sharing bathrooms: How many boys use the sink while their sister is behind the shower curtain, or vice versa? My children brush their teeth side by side, but each one shuts and locks the door when he/she takes a shower or âuses the facilitiesâ. It becomes a closed-off room at that point, one that is occupied by only one person.</p>
<p>Even the outhouses I used in my youth (I had one elderly relative who just never got around to getting indoor plumbing) were totally enclosed one-holers with latchable doors!</p>
<p>I agree that students have to adjust, but throwing them into gender neutral locker room-style bathrooms when that is so counter to anything they will encounter in the rest of American society (and is even a big taboo in most places) is a little much.</p>
<p>Now that Iâve read JHSâs post, I will modify that to âmost of American society, not including San Franciscoâ. :)</p>
<p>Oh lordâŠyesâŠSFâŠenough said. </p>
<p>If I remember the saga leading up to this proposed ordinanceâŠone of the main concerns is hygiene. Some of the âhangers outâ would sit directly - in all their bare glory - on public chairs and in restaurants. Asking them to put down a towelâŠwellâŠthat was also an infringement on their rights and frankly much to much of an imposition. Well, frankly UGH. The fact that âThe Cityâ has to even consider such an ordinance indicates the lack of common sense, simple manners or an ability to consider that wellâŠ'itâs NOT all about me" which pervades itâs fog shrouded population. </p>
<p>Andy yes BayâŠthe human game preserve which is SF does not represent the collective core values held outside of itâs little bubble.</p>
<p>" 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>Thatâs a reach. Apparently there are plenty of girls at this school whom this doesnât bother, do you think the girls are the least affluent, and the guys are the rich kids? Doesnât make sense. Some people are just very modest and private when with the other sex, others arenât. Itâs a matter of personality, not wealth. </p>
<p>I had to use an outhouse in our back yard for a while, and constantly in the woods while hiking when I was young. Doesnât make me comfortable enough to be an exhibitionist now. Some people are comfortable walking around next to naked just about anywhere, and others remain fully covered, alone in their own home. I personally would never get used to having a diarrhea attack with a guy sitting in the stall next to me. Sharing a private bathroom in a home, one person at a time, is a completely different issue and I have no idea why one would compare that to a dorm bathroom used by several people at a time.</p>
<p>And for those who are saying the son is immature for mentioning this to his mother, really? The first step towards dealing with a problem is talking about it. And parents often put issues on cc to get others opinions. How arrogant to make that statement. I thought it was a matter of etiquette that we donât slam each others kids here.</p>
<p>I wish I could even remember the bathroom arrangements in college. We didnât have coed because we didnât even have coed dorms. My hall was the only hall freshman year that voted to not allow boys on the hall past midnight. Others thought we were prudes, but we really just wanted to not have to worry about how we looked in the hallways so I think we were just vain.</p>
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<p>In a single-gender bathroom, the guy at the next urinal might be gay, so what is the conceptual difference?</p>