03-06-2025
Peter Shawn Taylor: Standing up for urinals amid the gender-neutral washroom craze
The famous genderless washroom in the 1990s TV show Ally McBeal was a plot device meant for comedic purpose. These days it is no laughing matter. Across Canada, separate men's and women's restrooms are rapidly being replaced with unisex facilities.
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In Kitchener, Ont., recent renovations have left the 2,000 seat Centre in the Square, the city's premier music auditorium, with five multi-stall gender-neutral washrooms. These require men and women to line up together to access a series of individual stalls that each contain a toilet, paper dispenser and garbage can. Such an arrangement, which upends centuries of sex-separated bathrooms, brings with it plenty of double-takes, puzzled looks and awkward moments. (Including when I took my 89-year-old mother to the Nutcracker.) But it is by no means unique.
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In Montreal, a new washroom at the Université de Montreal's student services building features a unique circular design with study rooms and couches meant to encourage users to linger all day. It also includes 12 individually-ventilated stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors, and a common area for washing up. Numerous public schools across B.C. have similarly done away with separate boys' and girls' washrooms. And the same is planned for the current renovation of Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the seat of Canada's democracy.
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While these bathroom changes have all been presented as bold steps forward for 'inclusivity,' there's one thing genderless washrooms lack. Amid current efforts to rid restrooms of any vestige of traditional male and female differences, the urinal — a uniquely male waste management device — is at risk of disappearing forever. It's time someone stood up for this unloved, overlooked and occasionally smelly necessity.
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The current campaign against urinals finds its roots in efforts to solve the eternal dilemma of why the line at the ladies' room is always longer. Kathryn Anthony is a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a well-known advocate for 'potty parity.' As Anthony explained in an interview, 'Potty parity means equal speed of access to public toilets for men and women. Women simply take longer to go due to our anatomy and the need to disrobe.' To this end, she has spent decades campaigning for larger women's washrooms to compensate for the extra time requirement.
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More recently, however, the potty parity movement has made common cause with trans-gender activists who seek to eliminate any evidence of biological sex by promoting the concept of universal washrooms, which entail one bathroom line for all. And no urinals. 'As we see more and more unisex restrooms,' Anthony said, 'we will see fewer and fewer urinals. And not too many people are going to be sorry about that.' That remains to be seen.
