Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/25/tanya-heath-hero.html
…
9 Likes
It’s a delightful article about one of America’s unsung heroes. I hope she gets her chance to sing on-stage soon.
Also, if we’re going to start making unisex restrooms the standard (as we should), theatres like this are the place to start. Women always have to line up to use public facilities, but old theatres are particularly bad.
17 Likes
Or at least allocate more space for women’s washrooms than men’s. The same square-footage isn’t equal at all. It should be based of equal throughput.
There have to be all kinds of time-and-motion studies done to base that calculation on.
14 Likes
Why can’t they just use the men’s stalls if they feel comfortable? General etiquette is use the urinal unless doing #2 at a large event and frankly I wouldn’t mind if folks needed to use the stalks to ensure they see the show on time.
On my end I’ve been repeatedly chastised in coffee shops by terfs for not using the “correct” bathroom since sometimes the “men”’s room is occupied but the “women’s” room isn’t. (If both are single occupancy gendering them makes no sense, and regardless I don’t think random people should police who goes into what bathroom if everyone is being respectful)
8 Likes
One good thing that comes with age is that you care less and less what people you’ll never meet again are going to think about you. So after years and years of suffering through endless lines for the women’s bathroom, nowadays I just take a quick glance if waiting for the ladies’ room is worth it, and if not, I just go to the men’s bathroom (where there’s usually no line at all), stride in, do my business in a stall, wash hands, stride out. Sometimes I get weird looks, but nobody has tried to stop me yet. And I’m a cis woman who is fairly obviously female (although I guess I’m not very feminine so maybe at a quick glance I pass for a feminine guy?).
7 Likes
Moving some walls and plumbing is much easier than changing humans. 
In university, they had some unisex washrooms. (In old buildings that probably predated any thought of female students.) I don’t recall any problems. Go in, don’t look, don’t talk, do your business, wash your hands, get out, be respectful. How hard is that?
5 Likes
The restrooms should be set up as gender neutral- so the wait is evenly distributed.
10 Likes
Agreed on gender neutral bathrooms.
Also, I get that’s it’s a historic building with limited renovation possibilities, but surely with the kind of money Hamilton pulls down they could do something to increase bathroom capacity.
7 Likes
It doesn’t take Hamilton money in historic buildings, either. Pull the urinals in the men’s rooms, replace them with toilet stalls, make all the restrooms gender neutral.
[then watch men suddenly demand an expansion of the restroom facilities once we’re affected, too]
4 Likes
They could, I dunno… make the intermission a little longer, maybe?
11 Likes
It’s a pretty long show to begin with, but I don’t think i would mind a slightly longer intermission. It would be terrible to not be able to go and spend a big portion of the show trying to keep it together. Also if the ushers saw that the men’s bathroom wasn’t being used as much they could always use the last 5-10 minutes to temporarily allow women to use it too.
2 Likes
Or maybe don’t down a gallon of mineral water before the show?
I’ll never understand small bladders…
Then again, after a lifetime of not needing to pee for 8 or so hours at a time, I learned I had pathological urinary retention and was perpetually under hydrated… le Sigh
1 Like
Architects have astonishing power to perpetrate cruelty, without meaning to. I saw someone’s job downgraded from administrative assistant to receptionist, because the architect made a sexist assumption.
There should be yelp reviews for buildings, and those should be part of a design firm’s portfolio.
4 Likes
I see what you did there.
4 Likes
A massive space with lots of cubicles that anyone can use, plus a smaller space with urinals that anyone comfortable weeing standing up can use to maximise throughput (so to speak).
Job done.^
Next “problem”?
Edit: plus a culture of orderly queueing
^ no pun intended(?)
4 Likes
At birth, you are given a fixed number of f*cks to give. At our age, we have run out, or have so few left that we spend them very carefully.
8 Likes
I saw Hamilton on Broadway last month and a male usher was similarly skilled in line management and directing scores of nervous women in a VERY small lobby using a simultaneously commanding and soothing voice. Before curtain, I asked him if he did voiceover work, because I sincerely thinks has a bright future in that line of work.
4 Likes
With the purchase of any ticket, a free Stadium Pal!
4 Likes
Except that the vast majority of restroom use is peeing, and male urinals are way more efficient than stalls in that regard. Yes, I realize that politically we may be moving towards unisex bathrooms, but that will mean eliminating urinals (which involve indecent exposure) , so reducing the total efficiency .
2 Likes
I’m a bloke and have witnessed women put themselves through the indignity of having to use the gents at rock concerts because of the lack of facilities for women. I imagine it’s a humiliating relief to squat in a trough amongst blokes just because you can’t hold it in.
Women should have a 2:1 ratio.
4 Likes
