I've never been so proud of this city (Houston, Austin: university, legal)

[PedroMartinez]

Originally Posted by Mr. Krinkle

Yep, that's comparing apples to apples. They are probably using your bathrooms right now and you just don't know it.

Nope, it clearly illustrates that people will not vote for any ordinance if it contains something they feel is outrageous.

BLACKS and HISPANICS voted against HERO due to the bathroom issue. Trying to pretend this didn't happen won't make it so.

[PedroMartinez]

Originally Posted by elnina

Not sure why is that such a problems for Americans. In other countries men and women use the same restrooms without any issues. Sex-segregated public restrooms are an outdated relic of Victorian Paternalism.
We are still so backwards and behind the rest of modern world...

Actually, it's only been in the last few hundred years that bathrooms segregated by gender became common; therefore, it seems that is the modern world. If you want to argue that a unisex latrine pit in a Somalian village is more modern.....

[Mr. Krinkle]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

Nope, it clearly illustrates that people will not vote for any ordinance if it contains something they feel is outrageous.

BLACKS and HISPANICS voted against HERO due to the bathroom issue. Trying to pretend this didn't happen won't make it so.

Oh I agree that's why it was voted down. I'm just saying the bathroom issue is just stupid.

[Houston321]

Not sure why is that such a problems for Americans. In other countries men and women use the same restrooms without any issues. Sex-segregated public restrooms are an outdated relic of Victorian Paternalism.
We are still so backwards and behind the rest of modern world


Yes, we are so backwards.....be sure to spread the word to your foreign buddies....maybe they will stop coming here in droves.

[PedroMartinez]

Originally Posted by Mr. Krinkle

I'm just saying the bathroom issue is just stupid.

Then Parker should have put bathrooms in the exemption clause.

You can't blame the citizens for her screw-up.

[cBach]

Originally Posted by elnina

Not sure why is that such a problems for Americans. In other countries men and women use the same restrooms without any issues. Sex-segregated public restrooms are an outdated relic of Victorian Paternalism.
We are still so backwards and behind the rest of modern world...

I know, I mean they used to segregate boys an girls at recess. An old school from where I lived had the "boys entrance" and "girls entrance".

The only requirement for unisex bathrooms needs to be that there are no urinals, only stalls. The stalls need to have more privacy than we have in the US. In the UK the stalls are floor to ceiling with a door with a dead bolt. If they did that there would be no need for men and women's restrooms.

However.... because our restrooms are poorly designed and that bill was poorly written, I see why it failed.

What I'm wondering is if the bill passed if that would have resulted in a wide scale redesign of bathrooms in Houston. That would have been interesting and I think would have brought about the changes necessary.

If I had a small business I would have unisex single cell bathrooms with bolts. That way if there's two women or two men or a man and a woman, they can each be in their own bathroom.

If I had a large business I would have a large men only, large women only, one room family, and unisex one room only bathrooms.

[nana053]

I agree that the bathroom issue is why the ordinance was voted down, but frankly it is very silly.
Segregated bathrooms originated in a time when there were also segregated reading rooms in libraries and separate entrances for men and women at banks and post offices.

Sex-segregated public restrooms: an outdated relic of Victorian paternalism.

These laws arose due to a confluence of several disparate contemporary movements, Kogan explains in Toilet. The centralization of labor in factories led to the centralization of human waste at work sites, which was carried away by recently developed plumbing technology that had itself been invented in response the newly realized germ theory of disease and the consequent sudden push to improve sanitation. Women's growing presence in the factory workforce, and in public life more generally, triggered a paternalistic impulse to "protect" women from the full force of the world outside their homes, which manifested itself architecturally in a bizarro parallel world of spaces for women adjacent to but separate from men's—ladies' reading rooms at libraries, parlors at department stores, separate entrances at post offices and banks, and their own car on trains, intentionally placed at the very end so that male passengers could chivalrously bear the brunt in the event of a collision. The leap from parlors and reading rooms to ladies-only restrooms was not hard to make, although Kogan admits that "it is not at all obvious what led regulators to conclude that separating factory toilet facilities by sex would protect working women." His research suggests that sex segregation was seen by regulators at the time as "a kind of cure-all" for the era's social anxiety about working women.

[gsmj]

I just returned from a week long trip in Chicago. Not once was I asked about the HERO ordinance. No one cares what we do here. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to get over themselves.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by nana053

I agree that the bathroom issue is why the ordinance was voted down, but frankly it is very silly.
Segregated bathrooms originated in a time when there were also segregated reading rooms in libraries and separate entrances for men and women at banks and post offices.

Sex-segregated public restrooms: an outdated relic of Victorian paternalism.

There's a difference between a sexually segregated bathroom and a segregated library.

Maybe you would feel comfortable on a nude beach. That doesn't mean most people would.

[NickelsTX]

Originally Posted by Mr. Krinkle

Yep, that's comparing apples to apples. They are probably using your bathrooms right now and you just don't know it.

Good. If they hide it while in the bathroom than we wont have any issues. Us opponents aren't really concerned about that. What we are concerned about is any pervert being able to claim another sex and having legal justification to be in the opposite sex's restroom.

But just keep sticking your fingers in your ears while calling every opponent a bigot. See how that works out for you.