Talk:Sex segregation in public restrooms

Improvements needed
This article needs revamping to comply with WP:NPOV. Moira98 (talk) 03:36, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree, this article is far from neutral, and needs much better references. Reify-tech (talk) 11:30, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * This article is still in need of improvement, I've done a couple minor edits but it's not enough to bring the article up to standards. 68.147.96.150 (talk) 21:40, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

This is the worst wiki article I've ever read in its current state. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.81.91.120 (talk) 04:04, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Overhaul for neutrality, reliable sources
I started a bit of an overhaul, beginning with the lede. Now much more neutral, has more reliable sources (previous lede was using tabloids). I also started fixing up the formatting of some of the cites, they're very messy. Jhugh95 (talk) 02:16, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Trans activist agenda meaning sex and gender are conflated. Edit 3/4/16 is biased and unwarranted.
This is wholly dismissive of women and relies upon the transactivist agenda of pretending biological sex is meaningless. It is also misogynistic and dismissive of women, especially regarding the oppression of women due to their biology. The studies that were well researched peer reviewed and respected about trans inmates and crime rates not altering with transition were erased and called into question.

MsXXParker (talk) 16:30, 7 April 2016 (UTC)MrsXXParker


 * Hi MsXXParker, you seem confused about the purpose of Wikipedia articles. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia exists to document the topics on which is has articles from the perspective of collating secondary sources. On political topics, this creates a lot of room for articles to discuss controversy - since many secondary sources will discuss the arguments of their political camp, and WP can thus collate their arguments into a cohesive summary of the information. What WP doesn't do, however, is attempt to "get to the bottom of" political issues - such things are either WP:AGENDA pushing, or WP:ORIGINAL research, or both, and neither are allowed.
 * If you have information from sources you'd like to have added, I would encourage you to add a section and use it to summarize the sources in a well-cited manner. You can in turn add some information to the lede, which is intended to summarize the article contents. Right now the article isn't quite following that format, which is something I and other editors will probably work on fixing.
 * The three sources that I removed in my edit, by the way, were all tabloids, and none of them were on the topic you speak of anyway. Jhugh95 (talk) 03:06, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I think it's necessary that the opposition to the use of bathrooms based on people's gender identity rather than sex at birth is presented too. Currently the article views the issue almost exclusively from the position of trans people suffering from the segregation, but makes little mention of real concerns by others (especially women?) about sharing their bathroom with someone they do not see as having the same gender. KeithWM (talk) 09:11, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It's currently already included. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is a tertiary source, and its job is to "report the reporting" (to use a bit of an oversimplification.) There could certainly be more documentation of transmisogynist backlash, since it exists in the world and is documented by many publications, but such coverage still has to conform to MOS:Identity, which guides pronoun usage (and in doing so affirms gender identity), and also to WP:VALID, which establishes that keeping NPOV does not necessarily mean giving equal weight to every perspective. Looking at coverage of the bathroom segregation issue, there really is a clear divide in the verifiability of claims, and that is something Wikipedia is very much keen on taking into account. For example, currently the article discusses the allegations that giving proper bathroom access to trans people is a risk factor for sexual assault. However, the secondary sources making these claims have generally been debunked by other secondary sources with more verifiable information. So it's pretty standard to not give those claims equal footing, even though they should be included in some fashion.
 * All of that said, there are gaps in this article's coverage. I don't have a ton of time to edit wikipedia, but if somebody adds decent verifiable sources about additional aspects of the opposition, I'll gladly help edit it in. Jhugh95 (talk) 08:56, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Extremely biased
When pushing their bias on the reader they refer to the bathrooms as 'gender-based' segregation, but when speaking of historical fact it's 'sex-segregation'. Because gender is a social construct, but our bathrooms have always been segregated by sex. Entire article is biased. Jsaint515 (talk) 16:54, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Still a mess
Among much else, the reliance on the Reason.com article for history from 100+ years ago is highly problematic. And why is it "urinary" segregation? What about defecation? Why isn't it "excretory segregation"?  E Eng  05:10, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the reason for the article title is that it seems to be the most used word to describe what the topic of the article. --MorbidEntree - (Talk to me! (っ◕‿◕)っ♥) (please reply using &#x7B;&#x7B;ping&#x7D;&#x7D;) 06:51, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

"Urinary segregation" is a joke term. The people who coined it could not know that their grandchildren would come to unironically view this as a problem of discrimination. This appears to be the main article on gender-separated public toilets, so I would expect it to treat the history of the topic since the 1880s. The transgender identity politics thing appears to first arise c. 2010, and it appears to be mostly limited to US identity politics (perhaps even more recently spilling to other developed countries). Of course it should be discussed, but under WP:RECENTISM it cannot be allowed to dominate the topic.

"Urinary segregation" is a joke term for the de facto standard for public toilets, so I would suggest this (short) page should be merged into Public_toilet. The main page for the identify politics recentism appears to be unisex public toilet (unisex public toilets would have been unthinkable, for reasons of decency/modesty, until recently; they could conceivably be on the rise for merely practical reasons, but de facto the article appears to be entirely about the identity politics angle, which does not need to be duplicated here) --dab (𒁳) 10:03, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://time.com/4337761/history-sex-segregated-bathrooms/. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

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Essentialist view of gender?
The article contains the following part: "Others, especially those with an essentialist view of gender, have proposed laws which require transgender individuals to use restrooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth." But I haven't been able to find a mention of essentialism in any of the cited sources in that paragraph. Am I missing something? If not, that part of the sentence should be removed, or a suitable citation added. TaylanUB (talk) 15:13, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Plans for this article/unisex public toilets
As part of an edit-a-thon at Rice University, today I will be attempting to make major improvements to this article. In particular, I will be addressing concerns about NPOV by incorporating more neutral language, news and scholarly sources. In addition, I have done some thinking about the purpose of this page versus the page "Unisex public toilet." I am thinking the latter page could include more details about efforts to desegregate restrooms whereas this page could provide summaries and link to the latter. Since "Unisex public toilet" links to this page as the "main article" for the history of sex segregation in restrooms, I am hoping to add more information about that topic to this page. Please feel free to hold me accountable as I try to bring this article up to Wikipedia standards! Magenstat (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE: I tried to overhaul the 'history' section to include more appropriate citations and improve NPOV.

I also put existing info about legal regulation under its own section (although I'm not in love with that section title), however, I have yet to overhaul that section (which currently has almost no citations). If anyone is interested in working on it, this link seems like a good place to start: http://www.americanrestroom.org/wto/wts04_paper.pdf

Created a new "social movements" section to include more historical info about activism related to sex-segregated toilets outside of transgender activism. Again, I'm not in love with the section title, so feel free to change. I added info about pay toilets and "potty parity," but the section on transgender activism still needs to be overhauled to include more appropriate sources. I might try to work on that this week and will also be passing this page along to another edit-a-thon happening in my area on Tuesday. Let me know if you have any thoughts about my plans or the changes I have made so far. Magenstat (talk) 20:34, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Merging into unisex public toilet article
I suggest to merge this article and the one on unisex public toilet as there is so much overlap.EMsmile (talk) 13:59, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi User:BurritoBazooka, I saw your edits on unisex public toilet, what do you think of my merger proposal? Do you also find that the two articles have a heap of overlap and should be merged? EMsmile (talk) 14:30, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, strongly. But I wonder if there could be a better general title for the new article, to describe both sex-segregated and gender-neutral toilets simultaneously. --BurritoBazooka Talk Contribs  14:32, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Good point. It should be a commonly known word though that people use in searches on Wikipedia. Perhaps something on social inclusion or toilet rights, human rights etc. Perhaps this website can give us inspiration: http://www.phlush.org/2016/08/31/social-inclusion-toilet-rights-and-legal-protection-for-transgender-americans/ User:Cryacrem, any suggestions from your end? EMsmile (talk) 14:40, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. Frankly both articles are a mess, and merging them will force a re-write and a re-think. I know the care that EMsmile takes with sanitation-related articles, so I believe that a new merged article will be much stronger than either is now. Suggestion: if you want more eyes on this merger proposal, post a note on project talkpages such as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies or of course the sanitation equivalent. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:01, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've carried out the merger now. EMsmile (talk) 11:19, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Woefully US-centred
I believe the article had one sentence about Paris. Now I have added another non-American one, sourced to Amnesty International. Is there any hope of wider global perspective? The article Public toilet has a section on "Separation by sex and transgender issues", which ought to summarise this article. But it appears to have been written separately, and is more world-wide. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:12, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. What do you think of my merger proposal, just above, User:Carbon Caryatid? EMsmile (talk) 14:02, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Support, above. One caveat: any future article (suggested title: Sex segregation of public toilets) needs to make clear that it's talking predominantly about shared facilities, not the single-person varieties. "Unisex toilet" can sound like the single-user (plus assistant if necessary) Sanisette/Superloo or the Radar key scheme (for which WHAAOE apparently fails). Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:11, 7 March 2018 (UTC)