<p>I think why I am more comfortable with family style bathrooms & living conditions than some, is because I was much more comfortable with men generally as a teen and young adult than women.
For years my best friends were men/boys and to assume that I would prefer to be more intimate with my own sex just because we both sat down to pee, would have been confusing.
However, I understand that for people who are more comfortable with their own sex would perhaps feel the opposite and experience the opposite sex as “other”.</p>
<p>We had co-ed when necessary, which meant the girls bathroom was at out end, but if a guy needed to go, so be it. Wasnt a big deal. If there was a guy in there when we were taking showers, we usually had robes. I can see why some want more privacy, and es I probably preferred it, but it wasnt huge big deal when it was temporarily coed.</p>
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<p>emeraldkity4 – Most of my closest friends are of the opposite sex. I don’t think of them as “other”. I will even share bawdy jokes with a couple of them, but a bathroom? No.</p>
<p>Sue22 – Thanks for my laugh of the day! I may even forward the link to my opposite sex, bawdy joke-telling friends.</p>
<p>I have quite a few lifetime opposite sex friends. Both of my daughters have a lot of opposite sex friends. </p>
<p>Around here the boys speak pretty freely. </p>
<p>And I do not want to shower in the same room with them while they go to the bathroom and shave. I do not want to go to the bathroom while they brush their teeth or wash their face, either. </p>
<p>Clearly colleges have decided this is a solution. For whatever reason. Ce la vie</p>
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<p>My department at work is headed by a female vice president. She is usually very busy, but sometimes, when washing her hands or touching up her makeup and hair in the ladies’ room, she will chat with lower-level employees who are doing the same thing. On occasion, we have found out about significant business-related matters this way.</p>
<p>I feel guilty that we women have this channel to her that our male colleagues do not.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I’m so there. Probably more so after “living” the past 25+ years with 3 boys, a male husband and two male animals. (I have my “own” bathroom BTW in our primary home). But then, I chose an all girl dorm and then all girl houses for my four years in college.</p>
<p>I think the Co-ed bathroom thing is usually done out of convenience. Old single sex or single floor dorms are made Co-ed, but they don’t have enough bathrooms to have male and female bathrooms at convenient locations for all.</p>
<p>At my son’s school, each floor that had this issue had a secret vote to decide if the bathrooms should be co-ed or single-sex. If one person was uncomfortable, the bathrooms were single-sex. But that never happened during his college years. Bathrooms were Co-ed. Some had a sign outside that could be turned if someone not from the floor was uncomfortable with the set up (parents!). It really wasn’t an issue for the kids. They were comfortable and respectful of each other.</p>
<p>In this case, the kids may be acting more maturely than their parents.</p>
<p>Yeah. On my list of what makes my kids mature is not a co Ed bathroom check off. </p>
<p>Not so much with that. </p>
<p>Lots of other milestones have been met, however. </p>
<p>This thread is starting to make me grin ear to ear.</p>
<p>I wasn’t crazy with traditional dorms, with bathroom down the hall, even though all girls. But it does seem a rite of passage. DS skipped it due to his freshman honor dorm status. </p>
<p>I went to an engineering college, so our girls floor had been built originally as a guys floor. It seemed odd to have a line of water fountains in the shower area. Then somebody explained that they were probably hooked up to the old urinals plumbing.</p>
<p>Are these coed situations often in dorms that were traditionally single sex, with one bathroom per floor, and thus it makes more sense to declare the bathroom coed than to have members of one gender have to trek to another floor? </p>
<p>I’m not sure of the exact setup but I think my nephew at P had, at one point, to schlep to another floor for the bathroom, which is kind of silly for $60k/year! </p>
<p>How are newer dorms generally configured? I haven’t been in any recently - my son was in a residential college that was suite style (each suite was one gender so each bathroom was too) and now a fraternity, so the issue was moot for him.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, at my school the new dorms had a male bathroom on one side of the hall and then directly across from it was one for females. In this building, males and females lived in the same hall so getting to the bathroom didn’t require trekking up one or two flights of stairs. From what I’ve seen, single sex suite style dorms for freshmen are increasingly popular (for whatever reason they seem more common at less selective institutions).</p>
<p>So are these coed bathrooms usually workarounds in older dorms that were originally designed as single sex? Do the guys use urinals as they would in a male public bathroom?</p>
<p>No urinals. Just stalls.</p>
<p>Why not just separate men and women by floors or have single sex dorms? Why make this more complicated than it needs to be?</p>
<p>Because it isn’t complicated? I understand that co-ed bathrooms are unappealing to some people, but there’s nothing complicated about them.</p>
<p>Reconfiguring the bathrooms and working out the logistics isn’t complicated?</p>
<p>I really don’t see the point of shared bathroom facilities. Is there supposed to be some advantage, and if so, what is it?</p>
<p>I’m not sure what has to be reconfigured. If the bathrooms are not already set up to have private areas I guess you need to reconfigure. But every bathroom I’ve ever seen in a dorm (aside from suite bathrooms) was set up with changing areas outside the showers, private stalls, etc. And I’m female so I have been in more women’s bathrooms but I don’t think urinals are all that common anyway. Even if you had single-sex floors or dorms I would think it’s easier to build bathrooms w/o urinals so that you can change a dorm/floor from male to female as needed.</p>
<p>And on the logistical front, it is no doubt easier to put all of your students into dorm room slots if you have co-ed floors. Which is not to say that single-sex floors or dorms shouldn’t exist. But it would certainly be easier to get everyone into housing if you had at least some floors that were co-ed.</p>
<p>Every older dorm that I have ever been in would have to be completely renovated to be coed unless you want zero privacy and want women seeing men urinating or the two sexes showering together.</p>
<p>"But every bathroom I’ve ever seen in a dorm (aside from suite bathrooms) was set up with changing areas outside the showers, private stalls, etc. "</p>
<p>And some of us are saying – though no one appears to be listening – that ours weren’t set up with changing areas / anterooms outside the showers, so they would have to be retrofitted. And what’s the point of retrofitting to make them coed when the girls can use this one and the boys can use that one, and everyone has a bathroom nearby? What’s the advantage of two coed bathrooms versus one male and one female?</p>
<p>“And on the logistical front, it is no doubt easier to put all of your students into dorm room slots if you have co-ed floors. Which is not to say that single-sex floors or dorms shouldn’t exist. But it would certainly be easier to get everyone into housing if you had at least some floors that were co-ed.”</p>
<p>What’s so difficult about having one half of the floor be guys with a bathroom serving that end of the hall, one half of the floor be girls with a bathroom for them? This isn’t hard either. No one’s against coed dorms or coed floors here.</p>