During 1943 and 1944 on
the Pennsylvania Railroad, women inspectors were sent to check on women’s
conditions. Most inspectors only looked for general well being, while
inspectors such as Davis and Bagwell looked for deeper issues, as demonstrated
here, “Although Davis paid attention to women's cleanliness and
moral character, especially in the context of their bathrooms, Bagwell, in
keeping with the Women's Bureau's reform tradition, focused on workplace conditions
and women's welfare” (Cooper and Oldenziel 8). Due to most inspectors only
looking for general well being, women’s bathrooms were not considered an issue.
The issue that was not being considered was whether there were equal numbers of
men’s and women’s bathrooms and how they compared in cleanliness.
During
World War II, most women could only get jobs that were not considered labor
intensive. On the Pennsylvania Railroad, out of the 150,000 workers, only
2,400 were women (Cooper and Oldenziel 9). The fraction of female workers did
not constitute as large of a need for women’s bathrooms as the need for men’s.
However, in old buildings, more men’s bathrooms were most likely built in
expectation of more men at these establishments. As time went on, these
buildings caused problems because more women were starting to attend these
establishments. In this time, men also looked down on women because, “… the PRR
did not hire women for skilled positions such as brakemen, trainmen, and
conductors, despite the acute labor shortage. The jobs women could
get-including coach cleaner, station caller, loader, trucker, janitor, oiler,
common laborer…” (Cooper and Oldenziel 10). This particular railroad did
not even want women there and did not create clean nor plentiful bathrooms for
them to use. This may have been a tactic to push them out of their “man’s
world”. Also, during this time, races were segregated which caused more issues in regards to bathrooms. When the bathrooms were segregated it made
it even more inconvenient for women. Some stops on the railroad had combined
bathrooms but the ones that did not had reported, “The colored women’s
toilet-room was filthy dirty” (Cooper and Oldenziel 13).
Transgendered
people have a constant battle of being judged by which restroom they use.
Chris Angel Murphy writes about how his life was constantly being judged
by cisgendered individuals. In “Life As A Spork,” Murphy describes the
troubles of growing up being a man in a woman’s body. Exclaims of “I knew
it!” or “Excuse me, you’re in the wrong bathroom,” as Murphy pushes open the
door of a gendered restroom or the fear of being beaten. Eventually
Murphy went into the men’s restroom for the first time and realized that he
could do his business in peace. Murphy was lucky that he did not
experience any violence (Murphy). He advocates for unisex, single user
restrooms. It prevents any confusion and ensures privacy.
In a McDonald’s restroom in Maryland, a
22 year old woman was violently beaten
by two teenagers. The teenagers knew that she was transgendered.
The beatings continued until another customer heard them. To add to the
humility, the whole event was being recorded and the person holding the camera
was laughing! Thankfully she survived this cruel act of violence (Preventinghate.org). Horrific
events like this are happening all over the world! Something as simple as
changing the sign on a single user restroom can significantly reduce these
attacks.
