--and there was much rejoicing in the land! Tonight some of us went out to the Cubbyhole to celebrate the end of a rough week for everyone. I love that bar--lots of great memories there, and it's such a relaxed place. And I love a place where no one bats an eye if I use the men's room (relax, guys--it's a one-seater).
So--no drama today, and thank goodness for that! Tomorrow the work begins again, but for tonight, I'm off the hook.
The Book I'm Not Reading: George Yudice's The Expediency of Culture
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So, Tes, how come we never saw you heading into the gents at Nanny O'Brien's? You gender-boundary pushers can be remarkably selective when it comes to serving your own interests, can't you?
And for the record, the gents at Nanny's is a one-seater, too, in a separate little enclosed stall from the two non-flushing urinals. The only thing is, though, no man in his right mind would ever sit there...
But of course--it's all about my own interests when it comes to toilet use, isn't it? :-)
But you have the answer--or one of them--right there. If no man in his right mind would sit on the toilet seat in Nanny's, why would I want to? There are two perfectly serviceable (and usually clean) ladies' rooms in Nanny's, and surely you can't imagine that I haven't ever noticed the fearful STENCH coming from the gents'!
But perhaps the most relevant piece of information here is that the Cubbyhole is a lesbian bar in the West Village. So while the toilets are marked M & W, there often are very few (if any) men in there at all. It would be an entirely different proposition if I were to walk into the gents' in an Irish pub, for example, than in the door marked "M" at the Cubbyhole.
Which is not to say that I haven't used mens' rooms in a number of regular establishments--just that I don't have to think twice about it at the Cubbyhole. (Actually, it puzzles me that they have sex indicators on the doors there in the first place, but perhaps they mean it as a joke, or to give people like me that little thrill about using the gents'.)
The whole issue is more serious when one considers how transgender folk have to think every time they need to pee. It's an issue that the transgender group here at NYU has been dealing with for ages--non-gender-specific bathrooms on campus. Of course, I suppose that's not much of an issue at, say, Jerry Falwell's Liberty U.!
I bet you have too been in the men's rooms of some pubs in Ireland - because entering them involves merely walking out the back door of the pub into the great outdoors.
And actually I have observed the lovely ladies' loos in Nanny's myself from the inside, since that's where we got relegated to when they closed the gents the night Rob got puked on. (Given how bad the gents is there when it's open, I can only imagine what it must have been like for them to actually close it...)
Regarding transgender, at a job I had about 10 years ago I worked for a guy who was a retired Navy officer, about 60, with a wife and kids. He semi-retired and moved to Seattle while continuing to support the Navy client part-time from there. He also became a woman after he moved there, surgery and all. Then he came back east once for some conference (the Navy client had no problem with the gender thing, apparently) and was making the rounds at the office quite openly while he was there. They did "sensitivity training" for all the female staff before he came, because he would be using their facilities and all. Apparently quite a few of the women still got very freaked out by the whole thing. (I only heard about it second-hand because I was in Ireland at the time he was there. So I never got the chance to actually see him/her.)
I think it's funny in this context you (t) remark about the door marked "m" in the Cubbyhole and move straight onto Irish pub toilets. I mean, have a care for the poor frustrated gender-boundery pusher on holiday going into the door marked "mna".
Ha! I didn't even think of that! As I think of it now, I can't remember whether the doors were marked with M & W or the symbols--I vaguely remember writing that post and trying to figure out which gender markings were on the doors, since the main thing that registered is that there were markings in the first place.
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