Potty Parity Promoting Gender Equality in Concert Halls
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my name is joji hattori i’m a violinist
a musical conductor but also
the owner of this restaurant in vienna
you just heard a piece called marsh
miniature
viennoise by the viennese composer fritz
chrysler
and on the piano you have the wonderful
sasquia giorgini thank you very much
and now i’m going to take you to the
ladies room of my restaurant
because today i’m going to talk about
potty parody potty parity is a movement
which is trying to equalize the waiting
time for men and women
when using public toilets and why on
earth
would i want to talk about it today
there are actually three reasons
first of all throughout my entire life
as a performing musician
i’ve been listening to the constant
complaints of my
female fans about the longest cues
in front of their toilets during the
intermission of my concerts
secondly i’m japanese by origin
and generally for japanese people
toilets are very important
that is why they even produce luxury
toilets for private households
these things apparently can wash most
parts of your
body automatically flush by itself warm
your butt
and even over sound any
noises with beautiful music by mozart
and the third reason why i want to talk
about this today is because i am an
idealist
idealists fight for a just cause without
any self-interest
and that is in fact the exact opposite
of lobbyism
when people are fighting only for their
own interests
let me give you some historical
background on this theme
here you can see the floor plan of one
of the very first
grand scale public toilets in europe
when you look at the distribution
between men and women
you can see about 80 percent
being assigned to men and i’m sure this
was
designed by a man well today
things have improved slightly but it is
most surprising to me
that in our age of political correctness
there are still so many buildings all
over the world which disadvantage
women because not enough flow space has
been assigned
to them let me mention one positive
example from the united states
when in 1989 the very first restroom
equity bill was passed in california
it was initiated by then senator arthur
torres
a wonderful man after his wife was stuck
at the theater in front of the ladies
room for
apparently over half an hour but
even this bill from over 30 years ago
has not led to many changes
as regard to building regulations now
let’s get to the bottom of this problem
what do we need to change to improve the
lives of women
to get rid of the terribly long queues
in front of their toilets
now here we can see a design with an
equal amount of space assigned to men
and women
but is that what we need would
an equal amount of space assigned to
both genders
serve the public toilet needs of women
well if i may use an analogy
this could potentially be as unjust as
giving the same size
dog house to a little chihuahua and a
big
saint barnard in other words i have to
say absolutely no to 50
50 as regard to floor space because
women just need and use
public toilets more often than men my
conclusion
after many years of deep research is
that at public performance venues
the correct ratio needs to be four
to one or eighty percent to twenty
percent in favor of women
now let me explain to you how i got to
this result
even if we assume that 50 of toilet
users are men and 50
women we would need to assign more floor
space
for women because a cubicle needs much
more space than the neurano
for this discussion i’ve actually
invented an expression
called bladder emptying device or
in short bed a bed can either be
an urinal or a cubicle to be fair to
architects
i must admit that most of them nowadays
have thought of assigning
the same number of bds to men and women
like in this example this is a very
typical floor plan
when they have assigned equal numbers of
beds
that’s why the ladies room occupies a
little bit more floor space
but so far almost all architects and
regulators
in the entire human history have failed
to consider
all the many reasons why women
attend public toilets much more often
than men
and stay much longer once they are there
now i will introduce
a new unit for this subject called
public toilet usage minutes or in short
ptums in order to determine
precisely how much floor space one needs
to assign to
women’s toilets we need to calculate how
many pitons
women need in comparison to men first
let’s look at category one
how often do men or women attend public
toilets
1a bladder size
the average woman and i’ve said average
has a smaller bladder than the average
man that means
they need to go to the toilet more often
and that means they need more
more peters 54
for women and 46 for men
then we look at 1b mentality difference
the average woman is a little bit more
cautious than the average man
that means even if they don’t have to
they’re more likely to attend the toilet
before the next long opera act starts
the difference here is not very big 52
for women versus 48 for men
and 1c visits for reasons other than
emptying the bladder
many female friends of mine have
explained to me
that in addition to visits related to
the female psycho
they often go to the toilet just to
refresh their makeup
or in order to accompany their
girlfriends
the difference of petums here is the
greatest
58 for women versus
42 for men now i will proceed
at looking at category two
how long do ladies or gentlemen stay at
public toilets
2a the most obvious difference
is the lack of urinals for women
well when they come to the toilet they
need to approach the cubicle
open the door get into the cubicle close
the door behind them
and lock the door put their hand back
down
some ladies disinfect the seats
then they need to get undressed sit down
after they’re finished
use toilet paper get dressed again
oh grab the handbag don’t forget that
unlock the door open the door exit
the cubicle and close the door
behind them this all takes so much more
time
than men going to the rhino category 2
b this is about the flow speed of urine
well in my entire research i have tried
to be really objective
and that included that i didn’t neglect
the potentially
one reason which might increase the
duration of men’s visits
of course they shouldn’t change your
overall statistics very much
but allegedly some older men have a much
slower flow speed than women then we
have 2c
and 2d extra time for
refreshing the makeup as we discussed
before
and then for the chats well in order to
determine the exact ratio of pitums
about the duration of the stay i once
spent an evening
with my friends male and female
this was a very fun evening because it
became a statistical battle between
the men overestimating the woman’s
chatting times and the women
overestimating the
slowness of the of the flow speed
but in any case we all could agree
that women stay at least 50 percent
longer
per visit than men making the pitum
ratio
60 for women to 40 percent for men
now to the math here you can see all the
detailed calculations
i did please trust me that
i have done all my maths very
conscientiously
by applying the so-called multiplication
rule
of the science of statistics the
staggering result is that
women need 72.47
of the public toilet usage minutes in
comparison to men
just needing 27.53
but remember i said at the beginning
that
cubicles occupy more floor space
please now fasten your seat belts
because
now you’re going to see a floor plan
with the ideal distribution
yes toilets in public buildings such as
concert halls
where visits are concentrated on certain
time frames
you should assign 80 percent of the
floor space to women
and just 20 to men
on this plan there are 26 beds for women
of course all cubicles and 10 beds for
men
six urinals and four cubicles
i truly hope that this presentation will
become one day
obligatory viewing for all architectural
students
and public officers in charge of
building regulations inspiring them to
change
the way they design public toilets in
future
and what do i get out of this not being
a woman
of course as idealists are supposed to
get nothing
but i must admit that i’m very much
looking forward
to the second half of my future concerts
when after the intermission all my
female audience will be back in their
seats
thank you
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