Public restrooms are problematic, and that’s not just because they may be dirty, inconveniently located, or lacking toilet paper. As co-editor Harvey Molotch points out, these places are inherently sites of ambiguity and unease because they provide a public setting for “intensely private acts.’’ Its very purpose makes the public bathroom into a theater in which issues of cleanliness, privacy, and gender play off questions of access, history, and culture. In “Toilet,’’ academics from the fields of sociology, law, urban planning, gender studies, archaeology, and architecture ponder the meaning of a room some people can’t even call by name (and whose polite name shifts by region, country, and social class).
Toilet talk, from the scholars
The history and politics of public restrooms
Without a doubt, our discomfort with public toilets stems from ingrained taboos about waste and elimination. Using the facilities anywhere but home can open one up to embarrassment or disgust. One contributor asks, “Who has not sat silently on the toilet seat in the workplace, waiting for a colleague to leave the room before risking the shaming sounds of defecation?’’
If our squeamishness keeps us from talking about public bathrooms, the book argues, then we miss the opportunity to better meet everyone’s legitimate biological (and sometimes social) needs. Since bathroom access is distributed so unevenly — with women, children, the poor, and those with disabilities most frequently finding themselves shut out — the subject is hardly academic. Why, for instance, do women face longer lines for fewer facilities than men despite laws mandating “potty parity’’? Why are unisex toilets common in some places, fiercely resisted in others? What effect does the lack of public restrooms have on the ability of women to work as New York City cabdrivers? And are the “rules’’ we currently follow when using a public bathroom timeless and universal, or an evolving set of socially derived expectations?
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