Last week, I went to a bar where men and women had only one toilet each, and no urinals for the boys. A small corridor leads to both, so that everyone has to wait in the same line, until their respective facility is available.
It seemed to me that the crowd was pretty evenly split, gender-wise; it certainly wasn’t any more male-dominated than any other bar in the city on a Friday night. So imagine the looks of surprise on everyone’s faces when the unisex line was dominated by blokes. Throughout the evening, men outnumbered the women in line.
Perhaps the smaller proportion of women is because we are more used to waiting in line. I know I’m prone to hurrying out of respect for those behind me in line, whereas men probably don’t experience the pressure to hurry up as often. Perhaps there were slightly fewer women in the bar. I doubt this suggests that men, in fact, take longer in the bathroom.
But I think it certainly says something about the myth of “those women and their queues”. Put the genders on an equal footing, and watch old stereotypes disintegrate. I’m sure most women already understand it, but I’ve heard many men using the fact that the line for the ladies room is almost always longer to hint at support for their wider theories of women as less organised, less reliable, less efficient (of course, it’s always just humour, not to be taken seriously or anything). Like the Catch-22 situation we often find ourselves in with dressing: it’s expected that we take more care in our appearance, but it’s considered proof that we’re less sensible and organised when that care translates into time (especially men’s time).
It’s just unfortunate that this important discovery - made in a tiny bar in Perth - likely comes too late to convince the US that it’s safe for them to have a woman running the country.
It’s long been clear to me that wymyn don’t take longer, but simply have less avenues for urination. Also the mirrors in the men’s tend to have been smashed by some self-loathing drunk, so less incentive to stay at the sink and preen.
Tiny bar in Perth? Does Perth have tiny bars these days, Melbourne styles?
Could also be because men drink more? Amazing how you can hold in 4 beers, but the 5th one tips you over the edge, and then it’s one trip to the urinal for each subsequent lager.
It does, Andos. My how we’ve grown!
The one I’m referring to isn’t even on that list.
Drink more than in every other pub where women’s lines are longer, Andrew?
I suspect that women (especially after they’ve had kids) don’t have quite as good sphincter control as blokes (feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken), added to which I’d guess the female toilets would have only the same amount of stalls as the gents, but with no trough. So they’ve got fewer facilities and a greater need for them. It really is unfair.
It’s only a sample size of 1, I acknowledge, but when I’m at the pub with Dr Mrs Faustus and we’re drinking exactly the same amount of the same type of alcohol, I end up going to the loo many more times over the course of the evening than she does. I’m not aware of any research, however, into the relative capacities of men’s and women’s bladders, so I’m not sure if that’s normal or not.
Then again, I take about four times as long as her to get ready in the morning, so maybe we’re just weird.
Did you know it is possible to get so p*ssed it is possible to suffer from a burst bladder?
I only found that out recently and was quite astounded. I would have thought you would pee your pants well before that.
I have the same problem as Dr Faustus and quit the booze because of it. Some nights I’d have to get up 10 times to go to the bathroom after a drinking session! In the end it just wasn’t worth it. My doctor said there is a medication for the problem but I’d prefer not to take tablets unless absolute necessary.
As to Anna’s post, I think there would be a sexual element to men’s habits in a unisex toilet. In fact I’d bet on it.
Anna, the point being being that in other pubs where the womens lines are larger have a urinal in the mensroom. You said that this pub didn’t have a urinal for the men. Hence at this pub the mens queue would be longer if men go to the bathroom more often. Men perhaps go to the bathroom more often because they drink more beer than women drink cocktails or wine?
Shite. Mens’ habits I meant. Sorry pedants.
By the way Anna - I’ve never heard of a ‘myth’ that long queues for women at bathrooms implies they are disorganised…. nearly very man I know realises that it’s becuase they need to sit down to wee.
Now - the getting ready in the morning routine…. that’s another matter altogether!
“Shite. Mens’ habits I meant. Sorry pedants.”
You were correct the first time. Men is already a plural so it is men’s habits.
Sorry Andrew, I misunderstood you.
J of A, the line was unisex, the toilets were not.
I remember a New Scientist article a couple of years ago that said that because males on average take one third of the time to urinate (unzip, doit, shake, zip), then it is reasonable for bars (and outdoor events) to have up to three times as many toilets available for women.
And, as one used to unisex toilets and showers (my college had only recently started to accept males), we males would zoom out as quickly as possible to minimize conversation. (The real etiquette bit tho was avoiding the cubicle with the incinerator so it was left for someone who needed it - or being prepared to “pass the parcel” from another cubicle when necessary. What proportion of women of drinking age need toilets for other than defecation and micturition? Have we taken THAT time into account?).
ESTRAGON: Let’s go.
VLADIMIR: We can’t.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for… the other blokes ahead of us in line to be finished in the loo, before we get a chance to go.
ESTRAGON: AAAAHHH!!!
“I remember a New Scientist article a couple of years ago that said that because males on average take one third of the time to urinate (unzip, doit, shake, zip), then it is reasonable for bars (and outdoor events) to have up to three times as many toilets available for women.”
Sounds like pretty dubious science to me, Dave. Women have that, Elvis style, water bombing capacity and if wearing a dress, they would piss it in.
Wot tiny bar? Where? I don’t believe the city has such a thing. Please detail location.
The Worst of Perth
When did we start saying “bathroom”? I must have been in Sleepy Hollow a long time, its ubiquity in this thread astonishes me.
It might be too late for toilets I’m afraid amphibious.
I feel like a sad tiny voice saying, “we’re australian, we have shops. they’re american, they have stores”.
“where’s the bathroom?” - it’s back at your bloody house, this is a restaurant, not a spa. if however, you have need to urinate, i may have a toilet to suit.
Think its a prolapsed bladder, not a burst bladder.Also, men over 45 can suffer from prostate problems and not be aware of it. This can result in mild urinary retention so they have to go to the loo more often.
As the night wears on in (mixed) gay pubs (in my experience) the queue for the ladies becomes unisex. The men’s remains men-only. The ‘queue pressure’ applies equally to any man or woman in the queue for the Ladies, but apparently not for any men using the facilities in the Men’s.
The Waiting is the hardest part.
We didn’t.
*Grinds teeth*
“When did we start saying “bathroom”?
We didn’t.”
Agree. The word is sh!thouse. In more ways than one.
I say loo myself.
On topic, I was shocked once to see an enterprising woman emerge out of the cubicle in the boy’s loo @ Rics while I was at the urinal. I was told later it was an easy way to avoid queues. I suspect that’s why unisex loos don’t have urinals.
Conversely, I’ve heard a report of a sole male attending a lesbian film night as part of a film festival (it wasn’t women’s only) and he breezed in and out of the male loo while a multitude of women waited in line. Licenced venue.
Draw your own sociological conclusions!
Then there’s the logistics of emptying bladders at private parties, where the number of available toilets - regardless of gender - is often singular.
And where all too often said toilet is also favoured for ingesting controlled substances, or for catching up on the previous evening’s foregone slumber…
‘crapper’ ain’t pretty, but unlike ‘bathroom’ it has the virtue of a brutal honesty.
I say “place to relieve my pent-up feelings” which I pinched from Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals forty years ago.
I wonder how many men have had the experience of meeting a Catholic nun in the men’s toilets?
I did. I met two of them in the men’s loo in a residential college at James Cook in 1969. We were attending a seminar there. The women were on the first floor, the men on the ground floor. But one of the Sisters had a sore leg and was given a room on the ground floor.
There has been nothing like listening to a yank bang on about how they “speak plainly, unlike you ozzis - too brit & oh-so-polite”….
… & then obliquely refer to the dunny as a “restroom” or “bathroom”.
What is coming next? “take-out”, “hi guys” & “stepping up to the plate”?
SATP, you gotta problem wi’that?
‘We’ don’t use the word ‘bathroom’ either, but ‘they’ certainly do.
My mother told me not to call the dunny a ‘toilet’ because it was common. Loo or lavatory was acceptable. However the pronunciation of the latter I had initial difficulty with mixing it up with that of ‘laboratory’.
Putting a sign on the door of the dunny at the caff–’THIS LAVATORY IS FOR THE CONVENIENCE OF CUSTOMERS’ had the effect of ‘raising the tone’. An unintended consequence as the aim had been merely to conserve water and avoid writing ‘TOILET’, in thick black ink, for all the world to see offending my own sensibilities, via that of my mother’s. It would never have occurred to me to call it a ‘bathroom’ for the simple fact that it wasn’t.
All customers and especially those who weren’t, (who I let slip by out of the kindness of my heart), made a point of coming back into the cafe to thank me. I attributed this politeness, in an age where it is deemed neither necessary or expedient, to the sign on the door.
People, usually young women, who asked to use the ‘bathroom’ were met with a blank look.
I used to live in a city in the UK, where my regular pub had all-day musical events every Public Holiday. By late in the evening, it was the Gents’ that became unisex, while the Ladies’ stayed firmly Ladies-only. There was only one cubicle in each, and eventually, enough alcohol facilitated this spontaneous remedy for the queuing-to-sit problem.
I’ll never forget the trio of girls who barged in to the Gents’, one night. The first in grabbed the cubicle, and her two mates, waiting behind my back, then attempted to engage me in a pissed “so where does it all go from there?” discussion about the plumbing of the trough. While I was still at it. Disconcerting, albeit not the strangest thing that ever happened there.
On the farm it was always “dunny” I think, though “thunder box” was not unknown.
A friend who’d lived in New York for some years took a while to work out that if, here in Adelaide, she asked a waitperson for the ‘washroom’ she would get nothing but a puzzled stare.
I say loo or ladies’ or ladies’ loo. I’ve always resisted ‘lavatory’ precisely because it was supposed to be genteel. The etymology of ‘lavatory’, of course, is more or less ‘place to wash’. But this isn’t about etymology.
I say ‘loo’ if we are doing a poll. Never bathroom, though we used to call ours the ‘throne room’.
This thread has everything: Tom Petty and Gerald Durrell - I am back in my childhood! The old house I lived in had a magnificant loo. You had to ascend a concrete dais and the chain was miles above my head. The peeling paint on the opposite wall made interesting shapes to muse over; there was a cat and the fish- headed messenger from Tenniel’s Alice.
Why do chaps throw cigarette butts into urinals, is this a thing of the past? I used to clean when I was at uni and those butts were horrible to deal with.
Su @ 36
Because they finish their smoke while they’re having a piss?
If I wos their mothers I’d peg ‘em out to dry and make them smoke them down to the filter!
Never used to do it myself. Smoke gets up your nose while you’re smoking and then you sneeze and then - disaster! Quite embarrasing walking up the street afterwards.
Anna
This a fabulous piece of anthropological research!
I have always been fascinated by the mechanics of gendered loo queues. You know if you actually put together a small team and submitted this hypothesis to scholarly standards of data collection and analysis it would make a cracker of a paper and win you instant fame and notoriety. It would not be very difficult to do. Perhaps I could be your co-researcher! 
Please. The correct pro-noun-ciation is “torlet”.
“I’m not aware of any research, however, into the relative capacities of men’s and women’s bladders”
Men’s are actually larger, though the amount of daily urine is roughly equivalent. Because of this, women go to the toilet more often, but pee less. Research (that probably shouldn’t have been funded) controlling for types of drinks, etc, backs this up.
Someone in the rent-a-loo industry told me best practice is a 3:2 ratio for women’s and men’s facilities, because women take longer. Women take longer because they favour a seated position and use of toilet paper, clothing design, and tendency to wash their hands more often.
Of course, someone could just invent a female urinal
Oh, but someone has!
Yes, fatfingers, it is a mistake to imagine that inventors have not been banging away at exciting new female urinal devices in her or his shed, both portable or fixed, for ages.
[link]
[link]
“I was shocked once to see an enterprising woman emerge out of the cubicle in the boy’s loo @ Rics while I was at the urinal”
Oh Mark,it was probably me.I have a habit of walking into the wrong toilets after a few reds.
After closing the door of my cubicle and settling in, the first thing that alerts me Im in the wrong place is the smell. Men’s toilets SMELL. The second thing that alerts me is the sound of a steady stream pinging off metal. Generally, when in such situations, I slowly raise my high heels and wait until the noise stops. When I hear the tap running I charge out. All the guy generally sees is a blur on heels.
I get back to my seat in time to see the unhappy dude rush out of the loo,looking left and right, and shivering like someone just walked over his grave.
Its always funny. Im always pissed my girlfriends dont come in and let me know either.
But its true - no lines! Guys dont use the cubicles very much.
Yep, Casey, that’s the loos @ Rics!
SATP -sadly I hear “step up to the plate” constantly from politicians, also “whole new ball game” and “ballpark figure”.
I found “loo” in the 60s to be a Sloane Ranger word that the sarf London dolly birds took up instead of the cumbersome “spend a penny”. Presumably enough Oz gels on the Grand Tour adopted it in preference to ‘dunny’ but why Oz men use it I don’t know.
Brian - I think “thuderbox” originally referred to the fold & carry commodes used by Raj officers on campaigns, with the decibel level varying according to region, vindaloo, kedgeree, garum masala or the dreaded chapatti & dahl, probably now classified as a WMD.
Pavlov and Joe2, I’m actually kind of pleased I didn’t know about the current state of the art in female upright peeing technology. But thanks anyway!
Yeah, but WHERE is this small bar in Perth?
At music festivals like the Big Day Out females use the male toilets all the time. I think it’s pretty poor if you consider the fact what would happen if a guy did the reverse at such festivals, with the heavy security he’d probably be arrested or at the least accused of something.
Anyway, cute photo of the little kitties!
“At music festivals like the Big Day Out females use the male toilets all the time.”
The ultimate toilet festivals are Meredith/Golden Plains (same venue). Either side of the stage, heading back towards the camping areas, they’ve got open-air urinals about 15 metres long that just leach into the groundwater, then about 30 unisex cubicles in a C-shaped design, on decking. Each toilet just drops straight into a wheelie bin, and each time you use it you chuck a scoop of sawdust down after your business. They use no water or chemicals, they don’t smell bad (even on day 3!), the bins are emptied into a truck that leaves 3 or 4 times over the festival to a nearby farm where the whole lot is composted. And over 3 days of festival I’ve never seen a queue for the urinals at all, and only ever waited 2 or 3 minutes for a sit-down.
They also do pretty good music, but it’s worth the price of admission just to piss and shit there.
It’s a regular occurance at the races during Spring Carnival…. plenty of well lubricated gals ducking into the gents bathroom. (or “loo”, “crapper”, “dunny” “insert word of choice’).
I also had a vaguely uncomfortable wee in a bathroom at a petrol station just outside Amsterdam. Very relaxed attitude to nudity the Dutch. The men’s urinals were actually against a wall in a communal bathroom with the mens and womens ’sit down’ dunnys in cubicles at one end. So I was standing up having a wee when two women walked in and waited to sue the cubicle standing right behind me and having a chatter.
That would be ‘use’ the cubicle, not ’sue’ it….. although I’ve seen plenty of cubicles in my time that were very offensive and should have been charged with some offence or other….