Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing

NYU Series in Social and Cultural Analysis

by Harvey Molotch (Editor), Laura Noren (Editor)

So much happens in the public toilet that we never talk about. Finding the right door, waiting in line, and using the facilities are often undertaken with trepidation. Don't touch anything. Try not to smell. Avoid eye contact. And for men, don't look down or let your eyes stray. Even washing one's hands are tied to anxieties of disgust and humiliation. And yet other things also happen in these spaces: babies are changed, conversations are had, make-up is applied, and notes are scrawled for posterity.
Beyond these private issues, there are also real public concerns: problems of public access, ecological waste, and--in many parts of the world--sanitation crises. At public events, why are women constantly waiting in long lines but not men? Where do the homeless go when cities decide to close public sites? Should bathrooms become standardized to accommodate the disabled? Is it possible to create a unisex bathroom for transgendered people?
In Toilet, noted sociologist Harvey Molotch and Laura Nor�n bring together twelve essays by urbanists, historians and cultural analysts (among others) to shed light on the public restroom. These noted scholars offer an assessment of our historical and contemporary practices, showing us the intricate mechanisms through which even the physical design of restrooms--the configurations of stalls, the number of urinals, the placement of sinks, and the continuing segregation of women's and men's bathrooms--reflect and sustain our cultural attitudes towards gender, class, and disability. Based on a broad range of conceptual, political, and down-to-earth viewpoints, the original essays in this volume show how the bathroom--as a practical matter--reveals competing visions of pollution, danger and distinction.
Although what happens in the toilet usually stays in the toilet, this brilliant, revelatory, and often funny book aims to bring it all out into the open, proving that profound and meaningful history can be made even in the can.
Contributors: Ruth Barcan, Irus Braverman, Mary Ann Case, Olga Gershenson, Clara Greed, Zena Kamash, Terry Kogan, Harvey Molotch, Laura Nor�n, Barbara Penner, Brian Reynolds, and David Serlin.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Sociology

328 pages, Paperback

First published November 17, 2010

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's my own fault I read this. I picked Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing up vaguely hoping for something like Katherine Ashenburg's The Dirt on Clean or Mary Roach's Stiff, something unexpected, a bit whimsical, irreverent, and insightful. It wasn't until I got home that I realized I had a book of academic essays, a genre not generally known for whimsy.

I read Toilet anyway. There actually is a certain amount of whimsy in some of the pictures, so hurray? That didn't stop me from wanting to read a different book than the one I was holding. I kept wishing the authors had talked to one another. For example, it would have been so much more interesting if Terry S. Kogan, author of (takes a deep breath) "Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety," an essay insisting that separate gender toilets had helped keep Victorian women in their place, in a separate sphere, had talked Clara Greed, whose essay "Creating a Non-Sexist Restroom" argues (among other things) that women generally needed larger stall space than men; the combination of essays led me to conclude that those Victorian women might have been extremely glad the authorities had an attack of prudery, and I would have enjoyed some back and forth between them. Almost any two authors could have had a lively back-and-forth, something which would have made the book both livelier and more complex(1).

I mildly enjoyed Laura Noren's essay, "Only Dogs are Free to Pee: New York Cabbies' Search for Civility" on the New York taxi drivers. She actually went and talked to the people who were using (or in the case of the taxi drivers, not being able to use), the toilets(2). Irus Braverman's essay, "Potty Training: Non-Human Inspection in Public Washrooms" on the way toilet design affects--actually directs--our behavior in the stalls was quite interesting and is probably the only essay I'd actually recommend to the casually interested reader. I had hopes for Kamash's essay on Roman latrines, but it turned out to mostly say "We really don't know what their restroom etiquette was." Turns out there aren't many surviving writings or murals on the topic. I wonder why?

The rest of the essays? Very, very earnest. Very academic. Very focused. Very thoroughly titled. Probably worthy, but a little earnestness goes a long way.

Recommended? Not particularly.
__
(1) I know, I know: These essays are all written by harried academics who are squeezing research time in and around teaching, administrating, and trying to catch some sleep. They'd probably like the chance to chat, too. They just don't have the time. Like I said, it's my own fault for reading the book. I did know what I was letting myself in for.

(2) I also vaguely remember reading an article about this somewhere--The New Yorker?--so there was an odd, pre-existing tag to hang some of that on.

Note: Originally written for my blog, Bookwyrme's Lair. Stop by for lots more book reviews, photographs, TV reviews, link lists, and random interesting stuff.

[Mike]

I started this book about 2 years ago, and thanks to a leisurely vacation, I've finally finished it. I've been interested in the subject for a long time. When I was in architecture school, I picked up a different book on the subject which had time-elapsed photos showing how much of a man's urine gets splashed out of the toilet when using it in the standard position. Also, when I was younger, I did a lot more traveling to foreign countries, and found them all about 100 times more sane than the U.S. on the subject of toilets. For one thing, the signs usually say, "Toilet", not "Restroom". Most foreign cities seem to understand that people need toilets, but not those in the U.S. Along the way, I've picked up cultural tics, like a sign in a store window in Bar Harbor that said, "Of course you can use our restrooms." And who can forget in "About Schmitt" when his wife requires him to sit on the toilet to pee, or Larry Craig's "wide stance"?

So, if you're interested in this kind of stuff, this book contains a series of essays on the subject, ranging from whimsical to very scholarly to provacative. Many of the essays go beyond my own thinking. For example, some examine how our sexually segregated bathrooms are hard on people who do not necessarily identify themselves as clearly one sex or the other (the transgendered). OK, maybe that doesn't impress you, but there are actually a lot more people who have problemswith seex-segregated bathrooms, for example, caregivers for the opposite sex. Why didn't Ali McBeal's unisex catch on? Read this book to find out why.

Ultimately, here is a whole book on a subject that most people can't even talk about, and for which our society definitely cannot have a sane discussion. What more could you ask for?

[Chance Lee]

I seem to be the first person on Goodreads to read this.

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sex-politics of the public toilet - a microcosm of the country as a whole.

[Annika Dyck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything that was discussed is still relevant today. Better and more public toilets are very needed!

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

More interesting and engaging than I was expecting with only a few flights into rarefied academic heights.

[Jennifer Heise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clearly the conference that inspired this collection was lively and offered many different points of view. The editor certainly has an entertaining worldview-- I rather liked the "Rest Stop" sections that increased the scope of the volume. On the other hand, the volume was somewhat uneven.

The authors all agreed that public toilets are 'a problem' in that there aren't enough of them, people are wierded out about them, and they don't get enough attention-- and that their construction is far from optimal. (Most women, especially those with children and/or IBS, are pretty clear on all those points.) It wasn't just the professional analysis vocabulary of the authors (semiotics of pee?), it seemed to be a consequence of grouping together these different viewpoints.

One author lost me when she lamented the creation of separate women's restrooms and women's train cars in 19th century America as a way of keeping women in their place, without acknowledging that 19th century America, like certain parts of modern India now, had some way to go before women could feel safe in the public sphere; but another author pointed out that studies have shown women tend to use public spaces, and thus restrooms, in different and often more diverse ways than men. I did especially enjoy the highlights of restroom design offered by Braverman and Moloch, and intend to follow up with The Bathroom by Kira and 26 Bathrooms as recommended by Penner. I personally would have liked "Pissing without Pity" on disability and the public toilet to be a little more grounded rather than theoretical, but I was touched by the dilemmas of the cabbies in "Only dogs are free to pee." I had originally picked it up for "Which Way to Look" on roman latrines, but admit that in most cases I already knew rather more about Roman latrines than I would have learnt from the author. Still, nice photos of a latrine I hadn't seen before.

Pair with The Big Necessity: The unmentionable world of Human Waste by Rose George.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I just discovered one of my favorite academic essay collections on a subject few ponder. Aside from the transgender question, this collection also explains the injustice of separate but equal (square footage) that causes the long ladies' room lines we have all experienced. As other reviewers have noted, most of these essays are in the academic language of the social sciences, so if you're not accustomed to reading journal articles they can be challenging to understand. Each essay is followed by an appropriate "Rest Stop" piece that is a few pages in length and features interesting restrooms, art, interpretations, etc. Some previous reviewers found the collection jumbled but I disagree. Many of the essays reference others in the collection but each is written in its own style. Like many of the previous reviewers, I especially enjoyed Noren's essay comparing New York City cabdrivers' lack of urinary freedom with dogs' relative urinary freedom and consider this the most layperson friendly essay of the collection. Kamash's piece on latrine use and uptake in the Roman world is compelling for the historically inclined as is Kogan's essay on the creation of the sex segregated bathroom as a Victorian reaction to the factory girl. Serlin and Greed make useful critiques of the current status of public facilities in their essays both for handicapable access and for unanticipated uses (at least by male designers) of the restroom for elder and child care. Finally, the collection ends with essays on attempts to create unisex toilets in both current and new buildings featuring sketches of Molotch's amazing multipurpose unisex bathroom that sorts users by function instead of gender. This is definitely one of those books that makes you question the status quo of urinary segregation.

[Paul Goble · Rating 3 out of 5]

Toilet addresses a very important topic that touches all of us: the design and use of public toilets. Lack of public toilets explains why there are so few female cab drivers in New York. Roman latrines used shared sponges on sticks. Non-sex-segregated bathrooms are needed not just by those who are gender-variant, but by children and the disabled who need the help of an opposite-sex caregiver. Discrimination which makes toilets inaccessible or unusable is reinforced by local and national law, and by the unwillingness of building owners to even discuss the topic.

These fascinating perspectives come from diverse authors who wrote each of the 12 chapters. Unfortunately, as with many such compilations, many of the chapters are written in almost unreadable academic prose. For example, here's a randomly-chosen sentence from p.232:
"As Beatriz Colomina remarks, for instance, it would be a mistake to interpret Le Corbusier's reproduction of an image of a bidet in L'Esprit Nouveau as being a Duchampian gesture."

Here's a much better quote to end with: "We see how fear of others can put in jeopardy the capacity for achieving collective benefit--in this case, places to go for each according to her needs." p.272

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never thought I'd read such an interesting book about the cultural significance of toilets and how their construction and location contribute to our understanding of gender and civility. I was wrong. It was hard for me to take this totally seriously at times because it reminded me very much of the overwrought graduate school readings I had to endure. When you're using Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida to discuss the toilet as Panopticon, you're getting into some ivy tower territory. But it was interesting nonetheless, and I can use some of the arguments herein in my AP class when we discuss gender construction and Norbert Elias's arguments about civility. I particularly enjoyed the articles about the plight of cab drivers finding "appropriate" places to urinate and defecate so as not to be continually marked as "lower" and "other."

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays about public toilets and the role they play in our societies. The articles are interesting but repetitive in some of their points and too much space is devoted to ideas about the perfect toilet in design and execution. The book needed more historical and cross-cultural context looking at toilets across time and space. While one article discussed how toilets relate to class looking at cab drivers in NYC more discussion of how they are class based spaces needed to be explored.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

A critical anthology on the oft-ignored topic of the bathroom. I particularly liked Laura Norén's piece on cab drivers and the consequences of poorly planned bathrooms, as well as Laura Norén and Harvey Molotch's radical plan for co-ed bathrooms. While I did enjoy the practical applications of bathrooms in society and the imagination, some of these pieces were a bit too academic and inaccessible.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting perspectives on how toilets can be used to look at politics, history, gender, architecture, culture, etc. It was written for academics, but there are funny parts in the book. It was very interesting, and I definitely recommend if you want to learn more about a subject that is so taboo.

[Jake Gleiser · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although a couple of the articles compiled within this book raise some interesting thoughts that we do not normally think about (e.g. bathrooms in the ancient world, rest rooms for cab drivers, etc...), many of the articles in this compilation however are rooted in postmodern presuppositions. Many assertions are made without actually providing deep interaction with their opposition.

[Eric_W]

Bought this for my Kindle. Price: $9.99. Price for the Nook is $60. WTF?

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure that this is a themed, parodic collection of theory-laden essays.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sociological look at the inequalities of who gets to go when. Some of the essays were kind of dry, but they were all fascinating. Why isn't there more activism around this issue in this country?

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little dry but informative, much like the subject.