Poll: Mixed Gender Showers

[Helmholtz Watson]

I've lived in dorms for six years of my life, and every bathroom has had some degree of separation between showerheads. I don't envision co-ed bathrooms being a gym locker room-style open floorplan. With some modicum of privacy, I don't see why co-ed bathrooms wouldn't work.

My feelings exactly. If there are shower curtains and its similar to a bathroom stall, then I'm fine with it. However the open-floor, gym-style isn't something that I am crazy about.

 

[Lightknight]

Since my showers have curtains that don't do a great job of closing and you can see from the sinks into the shower area, I have to say no. I think there should be small unisex bathrooms for the sake of extremely private people and LGBT, but I want boys to stay out of my bathroom please.

The private bathroom for LGBT would be extremely offensive. It would have to be available only as a courtesy rather than actually intended to segregate gays and lesbians (this would be awful, a throwback to racially divided bathrooms).

I don't see why segregating by race or transgender is immoral but segregating by sex is not only okay but preferred. I understand why people say they would find it uncomfortable, as I couldn't imagine showering nude in front of anyone at all, but a large number of people seem to think that shared bathrooms will result in more rapes, as if the only thing preventing men from raping a woman is the inconvenience of having to take their clothes off first. (Rapists are lawbreakers by definition, so they have no problem walking into the women's shower as it stands)

Race discrimination is considered immoral because the color of one's skin changes very little by way of anything else. It is an arbitrary line to discriminate on in the same way it'd be silly to keep the blonde haired people seperate from the brown haired people (even though everyone knows it's the red heads you really have to watch out for). The purpose of racial segregation was to create a distinction of classes. For awhile there, the US was no better than India where untouchables are concerned.

A private bathroom, while "good" on paper with the concept of seperating people who may be attracted to one another, would only serve the purpose to isolate the LGBT community from everyone. It's the hotel room dilema applied to all bathrooms everywhere (e.g. if you want to seperate based on attraction and gender, then each homosexual would inevitably have to have their own private room because they cannot be in a room with members of the same or different sex and cannot be in the room with members of the same sexual identity). Just like schools on overnight field trips have to conclude to make the trip cost effective and to not single out/embarrass individuals, it is not our job to make public choices based on internal differences. You can't account for everything. We just make choices based on what we can (usually, but not always) readily identify. I'll point out that females in general are significantly less likely to commit any sort of sexual assault so removing lesbians is pretty unnecessary and gay males don't have the same advantage over other males that males have over females. So it isn't equivalent to seperating out sexes. This step would just be assuming that the LGBT community is criminal whereas seperation of sexes responds to an actual disparity of strength between two groups of people.

Some organizations fail to do this at all on the lines of sex. Did you hear about the UFC fighter in the women's league who won but turned out to be a man? In the UFC's eyes, they are legitimately female and completely won because they followed all the rules (hormonal supplementation taken over a specified amount of time). But they fail to account for males having stronger bones, easier muscle production, and pelvises that are more efficient for most competitions in ways that hormones cannot change. The opponent who lost (and who was injured) got ostracized for saying that she would have liked to know that her competitor was a male before they fought so she'd at least have had the chance to reconsider. Hilariously naive of the organisation and posing a real threat to the female fighters in the league (like putting a dog in a ring with a wolf just because the wolf has been given drugs that make it seem like a dog. At the end of the day, the wolf still has the jaws of its species).

Differences in sex bear measureable and significant differences. There is a reason why most sports distinguish based on sex. It isn't that they want to keep men and women seperate, it's that it is unfair to make women compete with men physically. As for in daily life, when there is a significant disparity in the power of one group over another, the group with power will take advantage of the group without. This is lesson of history that we learn over and over and over again. The problem here is, barring genetic augmentation, women as a sex cannot take the power from males except in divising social constructs (such as sex-distinct bathrooms) and carrying equalizers (tazers, pepper spray, guns, etc) for just such an event.

While rapists may be willing to invade women-only areas, it is a higher risk of being caught for them. It is known they're not supposed to be there and so women may have a bit more warning of impending danger. If people see a man going in or coming out of a lady's room then they will take more notice of the individual. If a woman opens the door to the lady's room and sees a six-foot tall man standing there, she may be given the choice to leave because that man is breaking social convention and so may be willing to do worse. So there is a legitimate layer of safety in a distinct room for which the physically stronger sex is kept away from the physically weaker sex when they're at their most vulnerable. Again, with an increase in opportunity/availability you will see an increase in crime. This step lessens the opportunity. In a future where bathrooms can correctly identify the sex of the person in front of them, we could also see technology that actually bars entry of potential threats.

It isn't just "old-fashioned" thinking as long as there are real differences between sexes: Take a look at the wiki entitled "Sex Differences in human physiology" and go to the Power and muscle mass section. I am not posting the link here because it includes a posterier and anterior pictures of nude a nude male and female. I do not know how the site admins would address that even though it is an encyclopedia. Please let me know if linking it would have been ok.

Quick facts from the link I mentioned:
1. 40-50% difference in upper body strength between the sexes, and a 20-30% difference in lower body strength. (the 40-60% difference I mentioned earlier was probably a memory lapse on my part. Not too far off for something I studied years ago in pre med. Anyways, keep in mind that for a woman to get anywhere close to the strength of the average man, she'd have to work her tail off to achieve 40-50% more stength than the average woman, and that's just to break even at average)
2. One study of muscle strength in the elbows and knees?in 45 and older males and females?found the strength of females to range from 42 to 63% of male strength.
3. Another study found men to have significantly higher hand-grip strength than women, even when comparing untrained men with female athletes.
4. Differences in width of arm, thighs and calves also increase during puberty.
5. Males have denser, stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments.
6. Male skulls and head bones have a different shape than female skulls. The male mandible is generally wider, larger, and squarer than females. They also have more prominent eyebrows, rectangular orbital with rounded border, longer and larger nasal bone and more projecting cheekbone. (makes a difference in a fight)
7. The female pelvis is larger and broader than the male pelvis which is taller, narrower, and more compact. (again, this changes speed and weight distribution)
8. Males typically have larger tracheae and branching bronchi, with about 56% greater lung volume per body mass. They also have larger hearts, 10% higher red blood cell count, higher haemoglobin, hence greater oxygen-carrying capacity.

Now, let's do the difference between LGBT and heterosexuals:
1. Sexual identity.
2... hmm... trying to find a second one. Superior personal grooming? No... that hasn't been proven by a randomized sample study either...

 

[Saladfork]

snip

Well said. I'm not entirely sure why some people feel the need to equate women with men as if to try to make sexual dimorphism fair (like the 'men are stronger but women have a higher tolerance for pain thing', which I don't think was ever actually proven, or the 'but women are smarter' thing which I'm not even getting into). It really isn't. Women make a lot of physical tradeoffs in order to incorperate the babymaking apparatus.

OT: I'd have no problem with it if it were a stall sort of affair but I wouldn't be cool with co-ed open showers. I generally try to avoid them as it is, I don't need the added uncomfortable...ness.

 

[SeanSeanston]

My gut feeling is that it sounds a pretty strange thing unless you're into some kind of nudism or whatever, but then of course that would be my first impression anyway, so I dunno... I guess the idea of such a thing in the first place is to make people uncomfortable so that they can change their long-held ideas or whatever.

*Shrug*

Still don't like it much though >_>.

Oh, and it's nice from that article how as usual... only the women could possibly feel uncomfortable. Nice.

Rather, they felt that coed nudity was inherently unequal, that being seen naked would always be different for a woman than for a man.

Bahahahaha.

Typical gynocentric self-centred ****e.

Being women and having never been men, they of course have a very unbiased view of this matter.

Women are disproportionately the victims of sexual violence

W-w-w-wait... are we ignoring male victims of rape entirely now or wut?

Pretty sure people have suggested that in the US at least, it's reasonable to think that men may be raped more than women, mostly due to prison.
Except... there aren't really proper statistics, because nobody cares... hence the same old attitudes of women = victims, men = invulnerable.

the male gaze is much more frequently threatening to women than the female gaze is to men.

I still have no idea what this kind of intentionally obfuscating crap is even meant to mean.

Is "women know what it's like to be a man but men don't know what it's like to be a woman" close enough? ¬_¬

"Male gaze"... oh my God, it's like a cult. Because women never look at men, and whenever men look at women... they're dreaming about raping them.

The whole thing shows a complete lack of understanding, or caring, about what it's like to be a man. I suppose it never occurred to her that MAYBE... just MAYBE, some men could actually be afraid in such a situation that women could falsely accuse them of rape?
No, because men are a threat to women and not the other way around. False rape allegations aren't a threat to her, so she can completely disregard their existence.

And boners can be consciously controlled so there's no risk of embarrassment there.

It seems she's one of these women who complete miss the whole "Oh ****! What do I do? I don't want to come off as a [rapist/murderer/pervert/thief/etc.]" aspect of being male, probably because the idea of putting herself in a man's shoes and wondering honestly for a moment how life would be if she'd been born male has never occurred to her.

 

[SeanSeanston]

Oh, also it reminds me of one uncomfortable aspect of being a man... using urinals!

You know what I mean... that moment when you walk in and the only free ones are between 2 ones being used o_o.

It's too late to back out now... but what happens is somewhat complex:

- You feel less than comfortable because you'd like some personal space and you're awfully close to the other 2.
- You don't want to make them uncomfortable either.
- HOWEVER!!!!... It's not SUPPOSED to make anyone feel uncomfortable. There's nothing wrong with it. You're not doing anything weird.
- For God's sake man, as uncomfortable as it may feel to actually go between them, you certainly can't reveal that you DO feel uncomfortable! Then you and everyone else feels even more uncomfortable because you've just drawn attention to the fact that everyone probably does feel a little uncomfortable and now it's all obvious and out in the open and you just made a faux pas by even acknowledging the situation! D:

Mirite? ^_^

EDIT:

wtf is up with urinals anyways? its like peeing in public almost. some of then dont even have dividers so you stand next to other guys peeing.

Yeah, I think it's like a test of manliness or something, ya know. As in, everyone is made a little uncomfortable by it... but you're just supposed to pretend you're not and go about your business like you didn't even notice the other men pissing mere feet away!

 

[SeanSeanston]

Man, I don't want to shower with anybody else unless I'm comfortable with them seeing the jewels, regardless of gender.

This as well. At least with men though, you wouldn't feel like you were an implicit sexual predator just for existing.

 

[Gameguy20100]

I don't want to share a shower with anyone! plus males would go crazy with lust I mean I'm Asexual so I wouldn't but... no no bad bad Idea awful don't do it.

 

[SeanSeanston]

Yeah, because we all know that the military isn't known for raping women [/lie]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/rape-armed-forces-brave-soldiers-share-horror-stories-nation-shame-article-1.1143974

There are any number of articles on the subject. The military is one of the worst offenders. If a shower is particularly close to other people then it won't usually be the place that predators use to assault the victim for fear of being found out immediately.

The rape of men is, and probably always has been, common in war.

Rape of soldiers is nothing new. Nothing new at all. What is new is talking about it and caring when it happens, except even then it's only really when women get raped. Even women rape men in war.

 

[uhaveachoice81]

it depends, open stall showers like at a gym or jail? definatly divide it, you know how many people would get sexually assulted? doing something like that is just asking for it. with the bathroom thing its the urinals, i would never want to walk into a bathroom with a guys dick out while he's taking a piss. thats just disgusting. if there were proper closed stalls with urinals then i would be totally fine with it if both sexes used the same bathroom.

wtf is up with urinals anyways? its like peeing in public almost. some of then dont even have dividers so you stand next to other guys peeing.

I don't know if anyone explained this to you yet, but it's common bathroom courtesy among men to get very close to the wall and use your body and the sides of the urinal itself to block your penis from view. You're also supposed to look directly at the wall in front of you. Looking anywhere else for longer than a fraction of a second is a heinous violation of the rules of the urinal.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

Hell No! Look I like women, I like getting a shower, but put the two together and you get wet, soapy ladies running their hands all over there glisten- *ahem*, umm i think i need to go take a cold shower now...See! That's why it just wouldn't work.

P.S. Ashadowpie

Urinal Etiquette 101

- Do if possible leave a gap of one urinal between you and the next bloke.
- Don't make conversation while using a urinal.
- The only permissible directions to look while using a urinal are straight up, straight down, or dead ahead. Never left or right
- Do make sure your aim is true, nobody appreciates splash back.
- Do make sure to dry your hands properly after washing them, the 'Was it water or was it pee on that door handle' game is not a fun one.

 

[Grach]

No thanks. I'm already uncomfortable when in a public shower, nevermind one with women. It would make me extremely nervous. Also, there's the ever present boner problem.

EDIT: Also, no offense intended, but I really don't want to see every woman naked, I assume maybe for the same reasons that women don't want to see every man naked.

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