[Heccubus]

School Gives Transvestites Own Restroom
Fri Jun 18, 8:27 PM ET

BANGKOK, Thailand - Snubbed by both men and women, transvestite students at the Chiang Mai Technology School just wanted a restroom to call their own — and were granted their wish.

 

Dubbed the Pink Lotus Bathroom, the facility is exclusively for the school's 15 transvestite students and features four stalls, but no urinals. On the door hangs a sign with intertwined male and female symbols.

"They would come in the morning and use the women's bathrooms, but the women were annoyed, didn't like it or played pranks on them," said Posaporn Promprakai, registrar of the school in Chiang Mai province, about 360 miles north of Bangkok.

The transvestites — who must wear male attire at school but are allowed to sport girlie hairdos — switched to the men's bathrooms, only to run into more trouble.

"The men teased them, chased them, and they came screaming and in tears again," Posaporn told The Associated Press.

So Posaporn designated a lavatory just for them, telling the vocational school's 1,500 students to just use their own restrooms.

The transvestite bathroom opened last fall, but this week attracted the notice of local media. Gays, cross-dressers and transsexuals are generally accepted in easygoing Thai society.

"We don't support their decision to be transvestites. We are just trying to solve the problems of one group that is unhappy at school," said Posaporn. "They don't get teased in the bathroom anymore. They're much happier."

http://news.yahoo.co...tite_bathroom_1

This one gets the award for Best Bathroom Name Ever.

[Chefelf]

That is a cool name for a bathroom.

I still don't get why there is a separate bathroom for men and women. If there are stalls then why should it matter?

[jyd]

urinals....i think its more that the girls would be uncomfortable, im not one to care if someone wants to sneak a peek

[J m HofMarN]

At first I had transvestite confused with hermaphrodite but now I'm really confused. So men who dress up as women and women who dress as men now have their own communal bathroom?

[Heccubus]

No, just men who like to dress as women, but aren't allowed to because of their school's policies.

[Jane Sherwood]

I think it's a brilliant idea, more places should do something like this.

Chefelf, I think a couple of the reasons for separate bathrooms are to protect people's modesty and avoid...sexual problems...

That, and from what I've heard men's bathrooms are too filthy for words.

[Laura]

It actually doesn't matter at all. It's only tradition keeping bathrooms separate.

- Urinals are not necessary. A bathroom with just stalls would be fine, or a couple of one-room bathrooms like you have at home. Men know how to use stalls! And I'm sure not many would miss them.

- Modesty: I don't know about you, but I'm sure if I'm in a situation that I would find uncomfortable in a bathroom with men standing nearby, I would still feel uncomfortable with women standing by. Anyway, doing away with urinals would get rid of the brunt of modesty problems, I think.

- Sexual problems? What are you talking about, people having sex in bathrooms? I think people who want to have sex in public bathrooms, they're going to pick either the men's or women's room and just go with it. I seriously doubt that unisex bathrooms would increase the incidence of sex in bathrooms.

Rory says that his college has unisex bathrooms already and y'all know it worked out fine in Ally McBeal (right?) Sex is a rather arbitrary way of dividing up the bathrooms, and enough people fall between the categories that it just creates problems without real reason.

[Just your average movie goer]

Personally, I dislike unisex bathrooms. It may be because we don't use them in Australia, I don't know. As for urinals, I wouldn't miss them if they went. There is something really, really strange about a line of men looking perfectly presentable, out in a shared public facility... ah, no need to elaborate on that.

While we're on that subject, I don't know about other Asian countries, but Japan and Korea have no concept of privacy when it comes to Men's toilets. Their bathroom doors open directly onto the urinal, so everything that happens inside is completely on show for anyone to see. And the ones in the Japanese parks are so open that it makes me wonder why they bothered making men's bathrooms in the first place.

Many Japanese men urinate in the middle of the street, actually - and nobody seemed to stop them. Bit of a paradox - they worry so much about appearances, being polite and avoiding confrontations (to the point that nobody ever says 'no' to anything) and yet the men have no problem with just urinating in the street.

Thankfully, Korean men are a lot more modest and I've never seen anyone urinate in the street over here.

However, all of it makes me believe that people from this part of the world don't have the same level of modesty when it comes to bathrooms that we have back in Australia.

[Heccubus]

- Sexual problems? What are you talking about, people having sex in bathrooms? I think people who want to have sex in public bathrooms, they're going to pick either the men's or women's room and just go with it. I seriously doubt that unisex bathrooms would increase the incidence of sex in bathrooms.

She's right, they will (and do).

[Mist]

At first I had transvestite confused with hermaphrodite but now I'm really confused. So men who dress up as women and women who dress as men now have their own communal bathroom?

Maybe they were confusing transvestite with transsexual?
You're right, that makes no sense since transvestites don't want to be women, they simply enjoy dressing like them (from my understanding).


Referring to this post in itself without taking it in the context of the thread:

No, just men who like to dress as women, but aren't allowed to because of their school's policies.

Right because, for some reason, women are accepted if they dress like men, and some men even find it to be a turn-on. *shrugs* I suppose it could have something to do with the whole, "men are in power, so everyone tries to emulate them" thing, but I'm not really sure why.

That is definitely a spiffy title for a bathroom, though.

This post has been edited by Mist: 20 June 2004 - 01:31 AM

[Despondent]

Great name for a bathroom indeed.

bathroom humor:

was at a football game a few years ago and "Ladies in the room!" someone shouted. Yep, girls got tired of waiting for the ladies' room and came to use the men's stalls. (I didn't mind.)

this was not the OTHER stadium that I frequent, where the men's urinal is in actuallity, a big trough that runs the length of the room. (I hate that. reminds me of something Selma once said on the Simpsons)

btw, In Sandestin FL, at a hotel they freshen the urinals (the ones that protrude from the wall, say 20" off the floor) with ICE. Nothing like peeing in a fresh pile of ice. (except snow.)

(what was that joke? the dna showed it was so and so's urine in the snow. Yeah, but it was another so and so's handwriting.)

One More: in the restored FOX movie palace in St. Louis, above the urinals are framed prints of Old days Hollywood starlets. To get the juices flowing I suppose.

[Jordan]

Maybe they should pay for their counciling rather than seperate bathrooms.

[J m HofMarN]

They need to have a bathroom for girls who want to dress as boys.

[SimeSublime]

I hate it when people call it a bathroom. It's not a bathroom. Generally, a bathroom is a room with a bath, shower, sink and mirror. Calling a toilet(or crapper, not that thats used anymore)a bathroom is just a stupid way of trying to make something not so pleasent sound good. But what annoyed me even more was a line from Sam and Max Hit the Road, that went something along the line of "Screw the facilities, I need a bathroom!" Have people became so squemish about their own language that they have to create a nicer alternative to their nice alternative?

[Jordan]

I call it a washroom or a bathroom.

I would not excuse myself from company just after proclaiming "i gotta use the crapper"