You probably don't want to read this

(DISCLOSURE: if you don’t feel like reading about mens bathrooms out here, I suggest that you find the latest cute-Calvin blog instead, sorry.)

I think I mentioned it before, but the bathroom situation here in Sweden is kind of odd. Instead of having one “Mens” and one “Womens” bathroom with different stalls, sinks and urinals inside, they just have individual rooms with toilets and sinks – sometimes identified by sex, sometimes not.  I rarely run into a urinal – but have actually seen Fenway style “troughs”
a few places, which is the complete opposite side of the spectrum. 

I have gotten used to this, but it really jumped out at me when we were on the cruise/ferry boat back from Götland the other week.  When we got close to port, I saw a lot of guys heading to the bathroom before departure.  I figured this was a good idea, so went to go find the bathroom.  On the way over to the island I had been pleasantly surprised to find that it was a “traditional” mens room, so I had immediate flashbacks to my last stadium visit when I found a line outside the door this time.

Once I got a view into the bathroom, I realized that everyone was in line for the STALLS – the bank of urinals was wide open.  The line was moving pretty quickly, so it was obvious that the boat passengers had not come down with a bout of sea-sickness or bad shrimp sandwiches – they just preferred to use stalls.  WEIRD

I had kind of forgotten about this until I saw this article in the English newspaper out here.  Evidently the Left Party for the City Council somewhere south of Stockholm is putting a rule in that will make it illegal for men to pee standing up.    They are concerned about any sex-based delineation for bathrooms, and want to just have gender-agnostic single-person restrooms.  (Evidently they also found medical research saying that this is better for men, but whatever) Once you decide that you HAVE to have this, the logic easily follows.

1)      When man stand up to pee, they do not have 100% aim for traditional toilets (no urinals, remember)

2)      When women use the bathroom, they are not able to stand up and pee

3)      Women do not like utilizing pee stained toilets

4)      THEREFORE – men should not be standing up

Again, the two major assumptions here are that you NEED to have gender-agnostic restrooms, and that you will be able to adjust bathroom behavior of dudes.  If you just decide to keep gender-specific restrooms, then this problem (mostly) alleviates itself, if you decide to install urinals, you are 100% good to go, and you can restrict your legislation a bit.  But NO!  That is way too easy.

Luckily I don’t see this one passing, but if it does, I will let you know, don’t worry.

Not to make this blog even MORE distasteful by turning to politics, but my favorite part of this is the councilman saying with a straight face – “this is not a nanny-state rule trying to dictate bathroom behaviors – this is a public health/hygiene issue”.  It just goes to show how far politicians will go to rationalize their rules, and makes me realize that while this is a glaring example, there are countless smaller examples of politicians convincing people to give up their individual rights for the “public good”.    

Sorry about that – now back to your regularly scheduled toilet humor….