Thinking about peeing

[beetiger]

I got Rhys a potty, since he's been really interesting in flushing the toilet whn I use it. I took off his diaper and put him on it; he promptly hopped off, stuck his head in it, and peed on the floor. Not sure what to make of that.

I've been thinking a lot about gender-neutral bathrooms these days. I was at a performance of the Vagina Monologues last weekend, and the bathroom situation was just silly -- lines down the hallway for the women's room, and no one in the men's room. I couldn't get any of the women to hop overto the other side, though I suggested it to several. Part of it is the cultural taboo, I think, but part of it is just...the urinals.

Urinals are weird. We don't have them in bathrooms at home. Women's rooms don't have them, and generally they don't have extra stalls to compensate. I would think that standing with your genitals exposed in a public area would be really odd. So, why?

I have to know.

[Poll #448516]

Comments

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Goodluckfox is right: The urinal protocol is that you stare straight ahead at the tiles, with a stone face. If you're the nervous type like me, you also have your body as close to the urinal as hygiene will allow, to minimize that whole genital-exposure issue. No glancing here or there to assess other exposed genitalia, even if you Like Guys That Way.
In general, male bathrooms are not a social space. You do what needs doing and leave, in an atmosphere of mild tension. The males who'll strike up a conversation in the lavvy, particularly with a stranger, are few and far between, though they do exist.
Of course, this is the perspective of someone who's dissatisfied with their socially constructed gender and uneasy in male-only spaces -- actually, I suspect Bard and I probably feel about the same about male bathrooms.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's this elaborate and unspoken protocol of the urinal. Don't forget the rule that you must always try to maximize the space between yourself and any other man. Never take the one right next to someone else unless the place is packed. I wouldn't be surprised to find that rule in force even in the bathroom of a gay bar.

I was really kinda weirded out the first time I had a conversation in the women's room, once I was secure enough in my new gender to use them. (For a while, I'd just do my damndest to hold it until I could get home, rather than face that choice.) It is, as you pointed out, just Not Done in the men's room, and the men's room has been my public bathroom experience for, um, all but the last few years of my life.