At some public restrooms: No debate, no signs, no worries
Just before sunset on a recent Sunday, a family friend and I finished drinks and tacos at an open-air Heights lounge called Eight Row Flint. After we said our goodbyes, I ducked into the restroom before heading home. Inside, a man and a woman stood next to each other at the sinks. Three white doors, none of them marked, led to the toilets.
Then a waitress popped her head in to hand me a $20 bill my friend had forgotten to give me for Girl Scout cookies. He assumed he couldn’t deliver it himself. The novelty of the situation required discussion. I rushed out to fetch John.
“Come back,” I called. “I want to show you something.”
He complied with some hesitancy, and seconds later, we stood there, side by side, male and female, and the world did not end.
“You could have given me the cookie money yourself,” I smirked.
We were not just standing in a trendy unisex restroom at a chill establishment. We were, without fanfare or controversy, breaking a barrier that some Texas legislators are fighting a death battle to keep.
“No men in women’s restrooms!” became the refrain from ultimately triumphant opponents of Houston’s proposed anti-discrimination ordinance, which would have, among other things, protected the rights of transgender people to use the public restroom of their choice.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican from Houston, is now leading the charge in Austin for a bill that would require Texans to use bathrooms that correlate with the gender on their birth certificates. The proposal has passed the Senate but faces a tough go in the House, where pragmatic Republican Speaker Joe Straus has higher priorities.
Urban bars and restaurants have been progressive on this issue for a while. But unisex restrooms are still novel for some of us. I’m not saying they belong in every setting, and no one is calling for a massive-scale unisex
makeover of all public restrooms. But still, they have something to teach.
“I always think in the back of my mind, if everybody could just do this, then there wouldn’t be a huge issue,” Christina Ramey, a manager at Eight Row Flint, told me when I stopped in Monday night.
When the place first opened, she said, the biggest issue was men trying to be chivalrous and letting the women in line go first.
“I thought, ‘you’re going to end up waiting a long time,’ ” she said.
The unisex layout was simply the best way to comply with city and federal bathroom requirements in the limited space of a converted gas station, said general manager Bryan Davis. The only complaints Ramey says she gets involve cleanliness on busy nights. As the only female manager, she’s considering suggesting toilet liners, and maybe hand sanitizer in the stalls. Doesn’t feel threatened
On Thursday night, I returned for some anthropological observation. A lively crowd downed creative cocktails and killer tacos — who would have dreamed Brussels sprouts would be so at home in a corn tortilla? Big screens showed college basketball and hockey. I set up shop at the bar, an olive’s throw from the bathroom door — itself a conversation piece for the jarring transparency of its wired-glass window.
Sensitive to the potential creepiness of watching people in a restroom, I tracked activity intermittently while chatting with the bartender. Over and over, the reaction of firsttimers in the bathroom was the same.
Women and men turned their heads and craned their necks for some kind of labeling or hieroglyphic depiction of human forms denoting gender. A small sign in the center is easily missed.
“Oh, this is unisex,” a woman with a Brazilian accent said after a few seconds. “Linda! Beautiful!”
She was part of a group from different states and countries attending a sales meeting for a Londonbased travel company. As they filed in, I asked if they felt threatened by the setup.
“I don’t feel threatened. I feel exposed. And the main reason is that damn glass door. I don’t care if you’re in here,” Mary from Colorado said, addressing a male colleague from Florida. “For heaven’s sake, we all have to pee.” ‘Who gives a who?’
The glass door, which allows everyone sitting around the horseshoe bar to monitor people leaving stalls and washing hands, feels like a fish bowl. To be sure, the window also provides security. It’s probably a deterrent to hanky-panky, but also to lipstick application and girl talk. No powdering in this powder room.
“OK, I have a question,” a woman said. “Do you suppose this is going to make the men be neater? Because who wants to go in and see a firehose all over the restroom?”
A few other women nod. On this night, the most offensive condition I observed was a toilet seat left up.
We were still talking when a man, the group’s London-based trainer, Patrick, cracked the door open and peaked his head in, as if politely asking permission to enter.
“I’m confused,” he said, prompting the ladies to laugh.
“The poor man just came to the loo!” said one of his trainees.
Cheeks flushed, Patrick entered but conceded: “I’m very self-conscious. I’m not going to be able to go with you guys standing there.”
“Who gives a who?” said Mary, who earlier had noted with amusement, “I’m the head of HR, in a transgender bathroom!”
“Are we in line here?” a woman with a Texas accent asked a short time later as I interviewed her Mexico-based male colleague. “Oh, it’s just like home,” said the woman, Debby Estill, a 63-year-old business development manager who lives in Fort Worth. “I grew up with a family of five with one bathroom. It doesn’t bother me.”
A stall opened up, and she turned to her Mexican colleague: “You first. You were here. Equality,” she said.
“I travel all the time, so I’m just happy to find a clean bathroom,” she told me.
She doesn’t understand why the lavatory habits of transgender people are an issue.
“I’m sorry, sexual predators will find you anywhere,” Debby said. “They are found more online than anyplace else. People need to be responsible for their kids. If they’re worried about it, take them to the bathroom yourself.” Don’t leave the seat up
This nonchalant attitude was the prevailing response, both that night and during an earlier visit to a Fourth Ward-area establishment, The Pass and Provisions. When I asked a waiter if it was true that the restaurant had a unisex restroom, he took on a fatherly tone.
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “Julia Child is playing over the speaker.”
Indeed, Child’s highpitched schoolmarm voice was narrating a recipe in the polished space, where the biggest obstacle to normal bathroom functioning was sinks that required the use of foot pedals to run water.
I asked a young woman what she thought of the setup. People should pee where they want, said Katherine Smaniotto, a bartending student.
“And you know what? If a nice lady-man walked in, I’d be like, ‘Baby girl, you walk wherever you want to walk!’ ” she said.
“Absolutely,” a lawyer named Kevin agreed after washing his hands. “Do you know about the pedals, though?”
“No!” Katherine exclaimed as he demonstrated. “Thank God you showed me!”
If we can wash our hands with our feet, we can coexist in the restroom. It’ll be fine.
Just don’t leave the seat up.