Gendered toilets.

The urinal, the male domain. [A male member of the Orkney College staff, who wishes to remain anonymous, was kind enough to take this necessary photograph for me]




Female/unisex toilet.




Disabled/unisex toilet.

Are toilets gender-specific? The urinal is most definitely an item made specifically with the male in mind. The purpose of which is presumably ease and speed of usage, because private households do not have urinals in them, in fact they are only to be found within public toilet facilities. Again, as with the signs on toilet doors, this is a process of socialisation which a male child must be introduced to in order to understand exactly what the purpose of the object is. This is the only toilet facility which is gender-specific, and yet there is no reason to have a gender-specific toilet because males are capable of using the ‘unisex’ toilet which they do for the majority of the day. The female/unisex toilet in the second and third photograph, found within both male and female toilet facilities can be used by both genders. The last photograph shows a toilet facility which is not only aimed at both genders but also at the disabled. The blue container which is used for the disposal of sanitary towels is very gender-specific, and once again something which is learnt through the process of intergenerational transmission. Each toilet facility shown indicates that at some level toilets can be used by both genders even if they are found within areas that have been specifically set aside for the use of a sole gender, however, the urinal is not a unisex item, and is therefore aimed solely at the male gender. Authorities and establishments ensure that the genders remain separate and make use of the facilities that have been set in place specifically for their own gender, by the use of door signs which direct the separate genders to a specific location, and further, by the installation of the urinal which can by default not be used by the female gender. The disabled are further controlled, in that they can only make use of a limited number of toilet facilities that they will not necessarily find at the same location as toilets for the able-bodied, which means that they have to go looking for a toilet that has been adapted specifically with them in mind; in a way, it could be considered that the disabled are being segregated to a greater degree, in this sense, than the segregation found between the male and female in this instance.