When you’re talking about the ways people are treated differently in society, sometimes you stumble onto interesting tangents.
Usually, people don’t discuss public toilets. But the subject comes up now because some people are trying to restrict transgender folk to using restrooms for the sex into which they were born.
Over the long run, it’s not really a big problem, it’ll soon be forgotten. But that’s why the subject of urinals came up at a party I was at.
It turned out, that out of four guys at that party, three of them, including me all had a preference for the old school, floor to rib height urinals. The ones that are nowadays generally found in older buildings. For women who’ve probably never seen one, most of them look like the one pictured above.
And the guy who didn’t have a strong preference did think the tall urinals were cool. Three out of four is a pretty strong endorsement.
I don’t think about the issue unless I go into a restroom that’s equipped with the tall urinals, so it just never come up because guys don’t chitchat in public restrooms. It’s hard to imagine a stranger saying, “Damn I miss these old style tall urinals!”
Who knew? May those older style urinals are iconic in some way, remind men of a different time, or are a bit easier to use.
If I ever need to build a public restroom, I know what I’m putting in the men’s room.