Friday, December 11, 1998

We don't have to go together to get together

By Ellen Goodman

BOSTON — It’s been 20-odd years since I first barged in on the unisex toilet issue — without even knocking.

Back then, the redoubtable Phyllis Schlafly was racing about the country warning the good women of America that if we ever passed the Equal Rights Amendment, we would lose the right to separate bathrooms.

The message was that no decent, self-respecting woman would want the corner office if it meant giving up the ladies room. We were, after all, such sensitive souls.

This was, of course, a bizarre argument, since privacy and equality can coexist quite nicely, thank you. But the two-toilet issue, as it came to be known, cast a comic shadow over the ERA debate until the amendment was flushed down the drain.

Fast forward now to the mid-1990s. It turns out that anatomy was destiny after all, though not quite in the way Ms. Schlafly imagined. During a San Diego rock concert, when the line to the ladies room grew to bladder-challenging lengths, a group of desperate women liberated the men’s room.

This was not, mind you, a Helen Reddy concert or a girl power event. It was a Billy Joel and Elton John concert and when the women invaded, the horrified man at the urinal must have had Billy Joel lyrics of “Shameless” ringing in his ears: “And I’m standing here for all the world to see.”

In any case, Bob Glaser decided to sue the city, saying his civil rights and right to privacy were violated when he was unable to relieve himself in front of the women. The experience left him “angered, upset, embarrassed, distraught and feeling violated.”

He sued the city — for $5.4 million — for not protecting him from this traumatic event, and he sued the beer vendor providing the beer that forced him to the men’s room that produced the humiliation that ... you get the idea.

This case, dubbed “pottygate,” was eventually thrown out of court as “frivolous.” Moreover, one court ruled Glaser would have to pay the legal costs of the folks he sued. He appealed this all the way to the Supreme Court.

On Monday, blessedly without comment, that coed law/rock group known as the Supremes let the lower court decision stand. Frivolous it is. But in agreeing that toilet-invasion is un-suitworthy, the Supremes have moved us even closer to acceptance of the unisex toilet.

As someone who owns a unisex, duo-sex, whatever, bathroom, it never occurred to me to sue for humiliation. Having encountered a raised seat in the middle of the night, I have considered suing for bodily injury. It’s hard to sue a husband.

Nevertheless, for reasons that escape me, the cutting edge of social change now seems to be the gender-neutral john. It is not only rampant in coed dorms, it is the signature feature of the Ally McBeal law firm where the post-feminist generation of TV women has won the right to wear very short skirts and check out the shoes — cordovans — in the next stall.

Moreover, in real life, the Connecticut CEO of Yarde Metals has become famous lately for his plan to install a unisex toilet with six stalls (no urinals) and a shared sink area in his new office. “I really believe that everyone who works here is equal and should be treated that way,” explains Craig Yarde. “It started off as a little bit of a joke, but we think it sends a message that we’re all in this together.” In what together?

The notion is that somehow or other, important corporate bonding and information are taking place around (hopefully) the sink. The bathroom is the locker room, the golf course, the water cooler and the club of the late 1990s. Even the john is corporate space.

This is what we have come to. We didn’t get the ERA, but we got the unisex toilet. We didn’t break the glass ceiling, we broke down the bathroom walls. In Ally McBeal’s office, the senior partners are men, but the women get a gender-neutral john. At Yarde, the door to equal opportunity has many stalls.

I am all in favor of unisex bathrooms built for one. I applaud anything that will shorten the line at the ladies room. But I remain unalterably opposed to the idea that we have to go together to get there together.

Bob Glaser may be a frivolous man. But just wait till the next Billy Joel concert.

Remember the lyrics from “An Innocent Man”? “Some people stay far away from the door/

“If there’s a chance of it opening up.”

You bet they do.

Ellen Goodman’s column regularly runs on Tuesdays and Fridays.

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