Unisex Bathrooms: a False Consensus

During the 1990s, the idea of unisex bathrooms caught on at various college campuses. The concept catapulted to national notoriety in 1995 when Wendy Shalit published a humorous article in Commentary magazine ("A Ladies' Room of One's Own," August 1995).

Ms. Shalit, who had recently graduated from Williams College, reported that male and female freshmen in a dormitory at Williams had felt a consensus against separate men's and women's bathrooms in the dorm.

So, the bathrooms were designated men's and women's joint facilities.

In practice, it soon became clear that both men and women were feeling awkward and embarrassed with the arrangement. So they voted to go back to traditional separate bathrooms for men and women.

It seems that almost all of the women, and many of the men, had been opposed to joint facilities from the beginning. But they did not immediately speak up against the "consensus," because they were afraid of looking uncool.

If people can lie like this, face to face with their fellow students, imagine how much more easily they can lie to a stranger at the other end of a telephone line, who may not even be who he says he is.

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