patrick.net

bob2356 says

Still waiting to hear which schools wasted money rearranging. The OP was new construction.

UC Berkeley just spent $2.7 million dollars on a non-binary locker room at the RSF. Total area for the facility, which provides a non-gendered access point to the pool, is 4,500 sq.ft. (partially carved out from the existing men's and women's locker rooms). From drawings, it looks like there will be seven private shower stalls, with 16 changing rooms and five toilets. It was (partially) paid for using the Campus Fee which is charged to every student. About 1/3 of the Campus Fee ($727 per year) goes to various equity initiatives (Ethnic Studies, Recruitment and Retention Centers, Educational Opportunity & Equity, Campus Climate & Equity, and the Wellness Fund). .
That said, there is also a generational trend toward more privacy in locker room facilities. From the New York Times:
“Old-timers, guys that are 60-plus, have no problem with a gang shower and whatever,” Mr. Dunkelberger said. “The Gen X-ers are a little bit more sensitive... And the millennials, these are the special children. ... They expect certain things. Privacy, they expect.”

EBGuy says

there is also a generational trend toward more privacy in locker room facilities.

That is true of related facilities as well, and overdue IMO. Apart from Larry Craig types, I never understood the geriatric insistence on gang toilets.

curious2 says

IDK who disliked that comment (and I have never disliked any of your comments), but I wonder about the space efficiency. For example, in airplanes, where space is at a premium, all toilets are unisex.

Thx, I also tend to avoid disliking comments - if I dislike something, it is better to argue.

Urinals are the most space-efficient, and I doubt they will be used in unisex bathrooms. Welcome to long lines in men's bathrooms...

IDK about that, as long as there are plenty of stalls.

HOWEVER, at sporting events, Men's bathrooms are absolutely necessary, otherwise people will piss their beer all over themselves waiting an hour for gals to finish putting on make up and waiting 10 minutes after shitting to flush a second time so "Nobody Knows" they dropped a big bomb.

socal2 says

bob2356 says

Which school was that? Care to post some articles about where and why?

Not hard to find.


http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sdut-gender-neutral-restrooms-carlsbad-dearie-2015may31-htmlstory.html

Since I'm overseas right now and the web site doesn't allow overseas access yes it is hard to find. Why don't you qoute the part where they tore out a bathroom and remodeled it just to make it unisex with money that would have been used to keep the library open.

EBGuy says

UC Berkeley just spent $2.7 million dollars on a non-binary locker room at the RSF

Socal said grade school not university and I don't see the part where UC berkely can't keep the library open or run buses because of lack of funds. Did I miss it?

Men's bathrooms tend to be more puke and stagger-proof, but not completely puke and stagger-proof, just as the Founding Fathers and Distilleries intended.

This is just the first salvo in moving to unisex showers and changing rooms. Maybe those will move to single-person stall style as well?

Gay plague was in late 70s, early 80s.

But I was metaphorically referring to his “just because it was” doesn’t mean it was good. Black Plague was btw caused by poor sanitation.

Liberal hippie stupidity lately in LA brought lots of Hepatitis with it... another win for unsanitary crowd.

SilversSurfer says

FortWayne says

Bob and his 1960’s had nothing and it was fine comments.

Society progressed, less people die due to better sanitary conditions. There isn’t a need to go through Black Plague twice just because liberals object to it.

Lol. We had a black plague since the 1960's? Care to enlighten us when that was?

Well, the stalls are completely enclosed and lockable, so it's really only by the sinks that the students will see each other.

OTOH, it does feel like creeping denialism of the very significant and inherent biological and psychological differences between the two (exactly two) genders. Blurring that distinction is a very bad thing for our long-term survival. We evolved the two distinct gender identities for good reasons. As Jordan Peterson points out, gender is so incredibly old that even lobsters have very clear binary genders, male and female.

The funny/ironic thing about this is, conservatives are probably the main driver for this transition to unisex bathrooms. Years and years of kicking and screaming over which bathroom a person in a dress uses because they're concerned the "wrong" set of genitalia are underneath. Response then becomes, "Fine, we just won't have mens' and ladies' rooms then!"

Certain Republicans have made this a big deal, while claiming it's the liberals driving this.

WHY are you paying so DAMN MUCH ATTENTION to the other people inside a RESTROOM?

mmmarvel says

"I think it is great,” said Melanie Austin, whose daughter will be a first-grader at the district’s Crestview Elementary and in gifted classes once a week at the innovation center. “You just don’t know what gender a kid might identify as.

Why did you leave SF, Melanie?

Are Republicans going to protest the closure of their favorite tea rooms? How are they going to get off with their stodgy, withholding, frigid Christian wives?

Hey cool, the poop character is visible. Took me a while to get those things to display right.

FortWayne says

Gay plague was in late 70s, early 80s.

But I was metaphorically referring to his “just because it was” doesn’t mean it was good. Black Plague was btw caused by poor sanitation.

Liberal hippie stupidity lately in LA brought lots of Hepatitis with it... another win for unsanitary crowd.

This is great stuff.

So letting girls use the same bathroom as boys results in boys having more anal sex with other boys and getting aids. I's really like to see the research on that one.

Black Plague was carried by fleas not from poor sanitation. There are very few people today in the US with fleas. Not an epidemic threat even if boys and girls use the same bathroom. It's true.

The whole 12 homeless people out of 10 million in LA county that got hep A is from liberal stupidity of letting grade school boys and girls use the same bathroom. You learn something new on patnet every day. I never knew liberal stupidity made people homeless. I always thought it had more to do with mental illness, drug, and alcohol abuse. Silly me.

ROFLOL.

Patrick says

the two (exactly two) genders

Gender is a grammatical or social construct, i.e. masculine or feminine, although you can create intersex pronouns, e.g. (s)he, s/he, etc. Biological sex is a fact of nature, subject to the enormous diversity of life:

"How Many Sexes Are There?
***
For biologically speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male; along that spectrum lie at least five sexes -- perhaps even more.

Medical investigators recognize the concept of the intersexual body. But medicine uses the term "intersex" as a catch-all for three major subgroups with some mixture of male and female characteristics: the so-called true hermaphrodites, whom I call herms, who possess one testis and one ovary (the sperm- and egg- producing vessels, or gonads); male pseudo-hermaphrodites ("merms"), who have testes and some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries; and female pseudo-hermaphrodites ("ferms"), who have ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but lack testes.

It is difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality; it's not the sort of information one volunteers on a job application. John Money of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in the study of congenital sexual-organ defects, suggests that intersexuals may constitute as many as four percent of births.

However, few intersexuals maintain their natural sexuality. Medical advances enable physicians to catch most at birth. Such infants are entered into a program of hormonal and surgical management so that they can slip quietly into society as "normal" heterosexual males or females.
***
In some true hermaphrodites, the testis and the ovary grow separately but bilaterally; in others, they grow together within the same organ, forming an ovo-testis. Not infrequently, at least one of the gonads functions well, producing either sperm cells or eggs, as well as functional levels of the sex hormones: androgens or estrogens.

In contrast with true hermaphrodites, pseudo-hermaphrodites possess two gonads of the same kind along with the usual male (XY) or female (XX) chromosomal makeup. But their external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics do not match their chromosomes. Thus, merms have testes and XY chromosomes, yet they also have a vagina and a clitoris, and at puberty they often develop breasts. They do not menstruate, however. Ferms have ovaries, XX chromosomes and sometimes a uterus, but they also have at least partly masculine external genitalia.

No classification scheme could more than suggest the variety of sexual anatomy encountered in clinical practice.
***
The most frequent form of true hermaphrodite encountered by the French doctors -- 55 percent -- appeared to have a more masculine physique. In such people the urethra runs either through or near the phallus, which looks more like a penis than a clitoris. Any menstrual blood exits during urination. But in spite of the relatively male appearance of the genitalia, breasts appear at puberty.

Intersexuality itself is old news... The Talmud lists regulations for people of mixed sex.

In Europe, a pattern emerged by the end of the Middle Ages that, in a sense, has lasted to the present day: hermaphrodites were compelled to choose an established gender role and stick with it... Society mandates the control of intersexual bodies because they blur and bridge the great divide; they challenge traditional beliefs about sexual difference. Hermaphrodites have unruly bodies. They do not fall into a binary classification: only a surgical shoehorn can put them there."

Does this first-grader have a father in her life? My guess is no.

On a somewhat related story, when I was working in the UK many years ago, we would have female cleaning personnel clean the men's bathroom while it was in use. It kind of startled me at first, but I got use to it. But then we were all adults in the office building where I worked.

http://www.edinahigh70.org/woking/

Good times. It was like being paid to have a vacation.

www.youtube.com/embed/zM1P0oc2-es

curious2 says

It is difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality

No, it's not very hard. The frequency is near zero in essentially all species, including humans.

This is necessarily so, since it's generally fatal to reproduction to mess with gender. Every one of us has exactly two parents, one male and one female.

curious2 says

Society mandates the control of intersexual bodies because they blur and bridge the great divide; they challenge traditional beliefs about sexual difference. Hermaphrodites have unruly bodies. They do not fall into a binary classification: only a surgical shoehorn can put them there."

No, the traditional beliefs remain obviously correct and essential to our survival. Birth defects do not change the norm. If someone is born without one arm, they are not normal, and less likely to have descendants.

I know the desire to contradict reality comes from a place of pain, and don't want to make light of anyone's pain. It's not about society "mandating" anything. It's about it being the end of the line for individuals who are at war with biology itself, and the end of entire societies which fail to reproduce.

Cultural memes vs. biology and its variations. The war will never end.

Patrick says

I know the desire to contradict reality comes from a place of pain, and don't want to make light of anyone's pain.

I am sorry to have caused you pain. I had thought that you were simply misinformed. I did not realize you had such an intense fear of this issue:

Patrick says

the end of entire societies which fail to reproduce.

That sounds very similar to this comment:

FortWayne says

epidemics that can wipe out populations.

Neither of you has presented any evidence to justify your stated fear.

Evidently, you missed the part of the article that said, "Medical advances enable physicians to catch most at birth. Such infants are entered into a program of hormonal and surgical management so that they can slip quietly into society as "normal" heterosexual males or females." Many intersex persons do reproduce. You choose not to see the data drawn from physicians' clinical observation, and instead to assert your "theory" (doctrine, really) contrary to data. I could cite additional data from marine species, e.g. intersex fish that have evolved the ability to change sex, but I don't want to cause you any more pain. I don't know who can have originally hurt you in this way, nor even how, but you aren't really helping the situation by denying the existence of millions of people. Perhaps it might help to remind you of something you know already, as I have already pointed out: the "celibate" Catholic clergy have never caused the end of Catholics, much less "the end of entire societies." In fact, in Catholic schools, "celibate" priests and nuns are actually in charge of children all day, as role models, and yet we observe no shortage of Catholics, nor "the end of entire societies." I have already cited the existence of transgendered persons documented over 1,000 years in Hindu tradition, and native American berdaches, and the article above cites the Talmud; most of those societies have not ended. In land species that don't change sex, 100% reproduction is not the norm at all, especially for males, and yet the species continue. So, please take heart, the existence of people who disprove your doctrine has never caused the end of society, just as males and females using the same toilet facilities has never wiped out entire populations.