Refuge Restrooms

March 7, 2015 5:41 AM

Refuge Restrooms is a crowdsourced website that works to help trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people find safe restrooms. They've recently launched an iPhone app, with an unofficial (and with-ads) android app already out.

More coverage on feministing. Coded and run by Teagan Widmer.

posted by Lemurrhea (13 comments total)

I really wish we could as a society realize that non-gendered, single-person, accessible restrooms are better in literally every way. Or at least that people wouldn't lose it over where someone decides to pee.

Until then… I happen to be in Manhattan at the moment, so I downloaded the app. There are quite a few pins around my location, but I'd have to walk a couple of blocks to get to the closest. I tried to add the restaurant I ate at last night, and it was a smooth process. Almost too smooth, considering I didn't have to provide any credentials, but I guess the rating system is supposed to filter out abuse. I had to close the app and restart to get the new pin to show up on the map, but otherwise it looks near instantaneous.

For me, I pretty much pass, but messing with a gaff while someone could see me through the crack the stall walls is a bit nerve-racking. I appreciate when I can use a "refuge" bathroom, even though I wouldn't go very far out of my way for it. For others, this sounds fantastic, and I'm glad it exists and is so easy to use.
posted by WCWedin at 7:31 AM on March 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's good that this exists, but it's really sad that it's necessary. I hope one day it'll become obsolete, like the Green Book.

I really wish we could as a society realize that non-gendered, single-person, accessible restrooms are better in literally every way.

This x10000. What really confuses me is when shops and restaurants have two single-occupant restrooms, but they're still labeled "men" and "women." What's even the point of that?
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 7:41 AM on March 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

I really wish we could as a society realize that non-gendered, single-person, accessible restrooms are better in literally every way

The thing is, they're better in some ways, but worse in other ways. First, they take up more space so there are less of them, which means longer lines to pee. Secondly, I know this doesn't work for men's rooms, but for women's bathrooms I really actually enjoy the company sometimes and kind of the casual talking as you fix your shit or whatever, or comforting someone who's in there crying or what have you.
posted by corb at 9:18 AM on March 7, 2015

First, they take up more space so there are less of them, which means longer lines to pee.

The space thing is kind of a red herring. Almost all single-user restrooms you encounter are attempting to be somewhere in the ballpark of accessible, which is not the case for multi-user restrooms. Occasionally you encounter restrooms with gendered rooms, but a common sink area. It would not be hard to imagine moving to a model of non-gendered, properly enclosed stalls (e.g. the stalls common in all sorts of countries except the US), a handful of which are accessible, much like the single accessible stall in your standard multi-user restroom. (You can stick urinals in cubicles, too, if you want urinals. Japan has pictographs for "toilet", "squat toilet" and "urinal" already worked out--they label squat and non-squat toilets in places that have both and trains have a urinal, er, room.*)

*Awkward things to convey to the other person waiting for the bathroom on a train when you don't know Japanese include "I think I'll sit down to pee on a moving train, thanks."
posted by hoyland at 10:04 AM on March 7, 2015

Actually I would very much support moving to kind of like they have it in Germany, with the floor-to-ceiling stalls...I really have no idea why they don't do that here. Some stalls even - like in Seattle - are so low you can casually peer over them, which, wtf? But as I recall in Germany the bathrooms were gendered, though that might just be the train stations I'm remembering.

Squat toilets are also great but they are a learned skill and it would take a lot of effort to get those going.
posted by corb at 10:22 AM on March 7, 2015

They don't do the floor to ceiling stall dividers here because it's much easier to mop the floors if the dividers don't go all the way down. My workplace bathrooms have drains in the floor so they just literally hose everything down at the end of the day.

Anyway, no matter how I'm perceived on a given day, I'm almost always going to use the women's room* because I feel there's less risk to me. I might be wrong, guys may not notice me or care. I get weird looks from women all the time, but I do my thing and get out. I'm not even interested in women, so trust me, I'm not looking at you.

*queer spaces being the exception
posted by desjardins at 10:51 AM on March 7, 2015

Squat toilets are also great

Strikes corb off the Christmas card list.
posted by taz at 10:55 AM on March 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

This x10000. What really confuses me is when shops and restaurants have two single-occupant restrooms, but they're still labeled "men" and "women." What's even the point of that?

Most of the places I see these, people just ignore than anyway and just use whichever one is available, so yeah, it seems totally pointless.
posted by holborne at 3:34 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

The best explanation I can come up with (note: this is not something I believe, just an attempt at understanding "what's the thought process behind it?") for gendering single-occupancy restrooms is that the people doing it believe the stereotype that "men are disgusting pigs who will piss all over everything without caring, while women are delicate hothouse flowers and inherently clean and sweet-scented".
posted by Lexica at 7:32 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

To be fair, it doesn't require "women are delicate hothouse flowers" to think that women's bathrooms will be nicer, the fact that they are generally sitting down to urinate and not trying to practice target shooting helps a lot. I don't think that's the reason for separating them though - over in the PF thread, someone mentioned that in the early days of railway stations and such they did that to protect the women passengers.
posted by corb at 8:12 PM on March 7, 2015

A friend who cleaned the bathrooms at our local dance club was emphatic that the women's rooms were far, far filthier than the men's.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:54 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

This x10000. What really confuses me is when shops and restaurants have two single-occupant restrooms, but they're still labeled "men" and "women." What's even the point of that?

In many places it's required by law — which originally had a valid purpose.

The earliest efforts to legislate gender segregation in the United States were due to a lack of women’s facilities in workplaces.

In 1887, Massachusetts was the first state to pass a law mandating women's restrooms in workplaces with female employees. As far as I can tell, this was a pretty good idea; factories and other places that had begun to employ women were refusing to install restrooms for them. Perhaps the job market would have corrected itself eventually, but in the mean time working ladies had to pee...

Still, the current result of those laws is that....

In many places, businesses are legally prohibited from offering only gender-neutral restrooms. A small restaurant, coffee shop, or bar with only two (separate, enclosed) toilets must designate one for women and one for men. New York City only made it permissible in 2012 for restaurants and coffee shops with just two water closets to make these unisex, and only then for places with a total occupancy of 30 or fewer. (Washington, D.C., is one of the few places where it's actually illegal to designate single-occupancy restrooms as male- or female-use only.)

As I understand it, this came up here when Austin was trying to pass a city law requiring single occupancy restrooms to be unisex. They eventually succeeded, but the building code thing was an issue at one point.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:49 PM on March 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

But so yeah, the laws were established to ensure women's access to public spaces back when that was contested. They're less useful now that we take that access for granted.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:51 PM on March 10, 2015 [1 favorite]