Sunday, June 06, 2010

Potty discrimination

There aren't enough toilets at public venues for women. Oh the horror!

File a human rights complaint.

(Wait...don't... that might actually be ruled on.)

I'm tired of every gender-based inconvenience being labelled "discrimination".

Just because the people who designed public venues didn't think of women's bathroom habits during the blueprint stage, it doesn't mean they were deliberately trying to exclude women from going pee.

Bad design? I think so. It doesn't make sense to design your venue so that when the next period, quarter or act starts, women are still lined up in the bathroom.

But it's not a human rights violation.

Just because people aren't sometimes mindful of a group, it doesn't mean they are deliberately trying to make their lives hard and it doesn't make them "oppressors".

I wish we would save words like "discrimination" for scenarios where the gravity of the situation demanded it. There's a big difference between not being hired because of your gender, and having to wait an extra ten minutes to go pee.



PS: I'm still feeling sick.