Gender & Bathrooms Blog Post

While reading the article "Go where?: Sex, Gender and Toilets" I was amazed and even in shock by all of the crazy symbols used to describe a man or a woman for men and women restrooms and the underlying meanings of those symbols. I have yet to read something as interesting and intriguing as this article or post because of some of the crazy and flat out ridiculous symbols and generalizations made about men and women. My jaw literally dropped as I scrolled down the page with my eyes glued to the screen. As Americans, or really anyone in the world, people assume that if you are a man, you have male genitals and if you are a woman then you have female genitals. What is sometimes confused is gender and sexuality. Gender refers to someones body but sexuality refers to whom or what sex the person is attracted to. Whether you are heterosexual or homosexual, you may use the restroom that signifies your gender as male or female. What isn't fair about this is that some people are born with birth deformities, or may have had a sex change due to the fact that they felt they didn't fit in with the gender they were born as. Also, in these symbols women are shown as wearing dresses or skirts and in society today, many woman do not dress this way. Some women may look more like a man than they do a woman due to their dress and style choices. Some men also dress like women, even though it isn't seen very often, it does happen and it may offend those men that the symbols are dressed masculinely. A bathroom sign, something simple and used merely as direction for the general public says so much more than just which door to walk into. When you see a bathroom sign for a women's restroom, you could assume by the sign which displays a girl in a skirt, a sign with female features or a sign with a woman sitting down to use the restroom, that the people who enter that room must dress like a woman, act like a woman, have features like a woman, and even use the bathroom like a woman. Which in society, excludes many people who are actually women. Just as well in men's restrooms, where the sign on the door is a male figure tall and strong, a figure with male features, or a man standing to use the bathroom, you could assume that the people who enter this restroom must be tall and strong, have male features, or stand to use the bathroom. This also excludes many people in society. There are often problematic signs used to symbolize men and women restrooms and this may in fact be solved by just using the words "men" and "women" on the restroom doors instead of symbols of genders. Even though, separating the restrooms by gender may always be confusing or discriminating due to people not considering themselves either or considering themselves both, there is no better way to separate public restrooms in my opinion.