![\"\"](\"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/bathrooms-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHere in North Carolina, home of the infamous “bathroom law,” civilized people are fighting back against the medieval minds of the Republican Party. Many businesses — especially those that cater to liberals — are rethinking and changing how they manage and label their public restrooms so that no one is conflicted about which restroom to use.<\/p>\n
For example, the Whole Foods in Winston-Salem has relabeled its two public restrooms. They’re now both unisex restrooms instead of one for men and one for women. Some businesses are experimenting with making a political statement on their restroom signs.<\/p>\n
Public bathrooms have a long history<\/a>, as the essay I’ve linked to here shows. I’m hoping that the fuss that right-wing fearmongers have made about bathrooms will lead to a great step forward in the evolution of public restrooms.<\/p>\n A few years ago, on business trips to Denmark, I noticed a fantastic new trend. I saw this trend not only in airports in Denmark and the Netherlands, but also in hotels and newly built corporate headquarters for Danish companies. The new public restrooms are simply a row of single private restrooms, unisex, each with a toilet and a sink. Now that’s civilized.<\/p>\n The Danes are some of the friendliest and most convivial people you’ll ever meet. But clearly the Danes don’t see public restrooms as places for exercising their conviviality. Privacy is more appropriate there. Personally I have always hated big public restrooms with rows of toilets, rows of urinals, and rows of sinks. Such places treat human beings like cattle. In junior high school, they were a haven for bullies and a place of terror for kids who weren’t cut out to be cattle. May our medieval bathrooms — and the lords of cattle that legislate “safety” in them — go the way of Rome and never come back.<\/p>\n Here in North Carolina, home of the infamous “bathroom law,” civilized people are fighting back against the medieval minds of the Republican Party. Many businesses — especially those that cater to liberals — are rethinking and changing how they manage and label their public restrooms so that no one is conflicted about which restroom to … Continue reading “Low-privacy bathrooms: Let’s get rid of them”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-political-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9844"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9858,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9844\/revisions\/9858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>
\nA row of private unisex restrooms in Denmark. Let’s hope this is our future.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"