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Unisexing the women’s restrooms

August 22, 2010 by John

One of the things that struck me about this year’s ASA conference was the bizarre attempt to demonstrate how progressive sociologists are by designating some of the restrooms in the Marriott as unisex.  On the surface, this seems like a case of sociologists walking the walk, and a friend of mine even remarked how cool this was when he saw them for the first time, but the execution of this idea was severely lacking.  The main problem was that the restrooms designated as unisex were the women’s restrooms.  On some level this makes sense because the Marriott restrooms featured fully enclosed rooms with toilets rather than the partial walls of a typical bathroom stall.  The men’s rooms, however, featured urinals (as men’s rooms typically do), which would have opened up anybody using them to exposure to the opposite sex.  I assume this is the reason that only women’s rooms were designated as unisex, but by doing this the ASA created a situation in which men could use the men’s restrooms, check themselves out in the mirror, etc. without the potential for this backstage behavior to be seen by women, but women who wanted to use a restroom in the same area could not.  Despite his initial excitement, my friend later admitted that he had not used the unisex restrooms, opting for the nearby men’s rooms instead.  Whether or not many men used the unisex restrooms, the ASA denied women some measure of privacy that it did not deny men.  I guess this is another example of the ASA’s good work.

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Posted in Conference Attendance, Gender | Tagged ASA, Discrimination, Gender, Marriott, Restrooms, Unisex Restrooms | 6 Comments

6 Responses

  1. on August 24, 2010 at 10:10 pm Presentation provisions « Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] 24, 2010 by John While I’m criticizing the ASA, I may as well state that it is time for the ASA to ensure that a laptop will be available for […]


  2. on August 26, 2010 at 9:23 pm ASA successes « Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] 26, 2010 by John I’ve spent some time criticizing the ASA (and a few of its members) lately, but I actually did accomplish things in Atlanta that made the […]


  3. on September 2, 2010 at 9:41 pm More about restrooms « Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] 2, 2010 by John Continuing the theme of restrooms that I started in reaction to this year’s ASAs, I can’t resist highlighting this recent […]


  4. on August 30, 2011 at 9:12 pm Another year, another attempt at unisex restrooms « Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] the ASA attempted to provide unisex restrooms.  The only problem that I saw with this was that all of the unisex restrooms I saw had originally been women’s restrooms.  In Las Vegas, the ASA tried unisex restrooms again, as seen […]


  5. on August 5, 2013 at 7:41 pm Finding the ropes at my first conference | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] submission types, tag-checking, dealing with the status of my institution, and the ASA’s continuing efforts to provide unisex restrooms, but Medley-Rath’s post, along with Eric Grollman’s advice […]


  6. on August 15, 2013 at 9:01 pm The Sheraton out unisexes the Hilton | Memoirs of a SLACer

    […] the ASA’s attempts to provide unisex restrooms since 2010 when I noticed the women’s unisex restrooms in Atlanta. With two conference hotels this year, the ASA saw two implementations of unisex […]



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