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Toilet

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Boeing 747 toilet

A toilet is a plumbing fixture and a disposal system primarily intended for the disposal of the bodily wastes; urine, fecal matter, vomit and menses. Toilets additionally accept a paper product known as toilet paper.

The word toilet can be used to refer to the fixture itself or the room containing it; the latter predominates mainly in British and Commonwealth usage. In North American English the word toilet refers solely to the fixture itself and not to the room that contains it, thus asking for the "toilet" would seem indecent. Instead, the terms bathroom, rest room, washroom or men's room/ladies room are preferred.


Types of toilets

Squat toilet as seen in some parts of France

There are many different types of toilets around the world. There are also many different ways to clean oneself after using the toilet. A lot depends on national mores and local resources. The most common choice in the Western world is toilet paper, sometimes used in conjunction with the bidet; see toilet paper for a discussion of the many alternatives used through history and in different cultures. In some countries of Asia, such as India, the custom is to use water rather than paper, traditionally the left hand is used for this for which reason that hand is considered impolite or polluted in many eastern countries.

Some toilet areas are specially adapted for people with disabilities. These are wide enough to allow the entry by a person in a wheelchair and often feature hand-holds bolted to the wall, enabling the person to maneuver onto the toilet if necessary.

The most common type of toilet in the West is the flush toilet, although the squat toilet is still somewhat common in public restrooms in southern and eastern Europe (including parts of France, Greece, Italy, and the Balkans) as well as East Asia (China and Japan) and other places. However, there are many different types of toilets:

Toilets in private residences

Flush toilet.

In the developed world almost all residences have at least one toilet. In the home, a toilet may or may not be in the same room as a shower, bathtub, and/or wash basin. Recent suggestions in India would make the ownership of a toilet compulsory for all politicians. [2]. Some toilets are still outside. One type of toilet is the tippler toilet or 'long drop'. These are based around Lancashire, England. They are flushed from a scullery and water goes down a narrow channel or gutter and flushes the toilet, which is in an out-building.

Public toilets

A portable urinal in the Netherlands.

A public toilet may or may not cost money to use; for those that do, see pay toilet. Between the categories of outright free and outright pay toilets there is a grey area of toilets where a fee is expected, but not enforced.

Public facilities often have many toilets partitioned by stalls (US) or "cubicles" (UK), with the washing facilities in a separate area where other people of the same sex are present. The washing area may be common to both sexes. Facilities for men often also have separate urinals, either wall-mounted fixtures designed for a single user, or a constantly-draining basin or trough for collective use. Wall-mounted urinals are sometimes separated by small partitions or other obstructions for privacy, i.e., to keep the user's genitals hidden from public view.

An automated Sanisette outdoor toilet

Outdoor public toilets (in the street, around parks, etc.) are a form of street furniture. For mixed sex arrangements, there are cubicles varying from simple devices with little or no plumbing to more luxurious versions that automatically clean themselves after every use (for the latter, see Sanisette). Facilities without walls all around are typically for urination only, and for men only; although passers-by can see the urinating men from the back, they cannot see the genitals. These street urinals are known as "pissoirs" after the French term (see Urinal).

Some facilities are mobile and can thus be put in place where and when needed, e.g., for a weekend at an entertainment venue. Additionally, some can be sunk into the ground (and thereby made inoperable) for the periods that they are less needed. The idea behind this is that some people do not like the sight of a public toilet in the street, and they are more easily hidden than repeatedly moved. This type is typically installed in entertainment areas and made operational during weekend evenings and nights. Even people who are too shy to use it at daytime, tend to overcome that shyness after drinking some alcohol.

A Port-a-john is an outdoor public toilet with walls which can either be connected to the local sewage system or store the waste and be emptied from time to time. Many toilets can be cleaned on the spot, or at a central location in the case of a mobile toilet or urinal. In Europe public toilets are also set up for cities as a compensation for advertising permits. They are part of a street furniture contract between the out-of-home advertising company and the city council. The reason for this combination is the shortage in city budgets.

File:Wiki publictoilet.JPG
Directions of use in a public toilet

Gender and public toilets

A version of door pictograms by Manfred Wolff-Plottegg. The images represent the male and female sexual organs.

Separation by sex is characteristic of public toilets to the extent that pictograms of a man or a woman are used to indicate where the respective toilets are. These pictograms are sometimes (e.g., in California) enclosed within standard geometric forms to reinforce this information, with a circle representing a women's toilet and a triangle representing a men's facility. Pictograms depicting men and women in traditional dress (men in pants, women in skirts) have been criticized for perpetuating gender stereotypes; however, there may be no practical alternatives.

Many European toilet doors used to be (and still sometimes are) only marked "WC" (Water Closet), which can cause confusion to non-Europeans. Similarly, in the Philippines the label "CR" (comfort room) is common, which is equally unintuitive to overseas visitors.

Sex-separated public toilets are a source of difficulty for some people. For example, people with children of the opposite sex must choose between bringing the child into a toilet not designated for the child's gender, or entering a toilet not designated for one's own. Men caring for babies often find that only the women's washroom has been fitted with a change table. Disabled persons who need assistance to use the restroom have an additional problem if their helper is the opposite sex.

Sex-separated public toilets are often difficult to negotiate for transgendered or androgynous people, who are often subject to embarrassment, harassment, or even assault or arrest by others offended by the presence of a person they interpret as being of the other gender (whether due to their outward presentation or their genital status). Transgendered people have been arrested for using not only bathrooms that correspond to their gender of identification, but also ones that correspond to the gender they were born with.

Many existing public toilets are gender-neutral. Additionally, some public places (such as facilities targeted to the transgendered or LGBT communities, and a few universities and offices) provide individual washrooms that are not gender-specified, specifically in order to respond to the concerns of gender-variant people; but this remains very rare and often controversial. [3] Various courts have ruled on whether transgendered people have the right to use the washroom of their gender of identification. [4]

A significant number of facilities have additional gender-neutral public toilets for a different reason — they are marked not for being for females or males, but as being accessible to persons with disabilities, and are adequately equipped to allow a person using a wheelchair and/or with mobility concerns to use them.

Another recent development in public toilets is the "family restroom". Family restrooms are unisex but unlike other unisex bathrooms that allow only one user at a time, the family restroom contains multiple stalls designed for maximum privacy and communal washing area for use by both genders. The family restroom is designed so that a parent with a young child of the opposite gender can bring the child into the restroom with them without the concerns associated with single-gender restrooms. Family restrooms have started appearing in newly-built sports stadiums, amusement parks, shopping malls, and major museums.

Toilets in private homes are almost never separated by sex. However, the size of a home or facility bears on the availability of options. Small establishments are limited by their space to the toilet options they can offer; it is more common to find a higher number of choices in a large facility. The same is true for homes; in more affluent households in the USA, where the homes are usually larger, bathrooms are also often more spacious than average, and more numerous. In such homes, bathrooms (especially master bathrooms) are increasingly being designed with a small adjoining room exclusively for the toilet, as well as separate washing basins. This makes it easier for couples who share a bathroom to maintain their desired level of privacy and personal space. In Australia, it has long been the case that the toilet is in a separate room from the bathroom. However, a refinement not seen often enough in Australia is to provide a small washbasin in the same room so that users need not emerge with dirty hands.

Toilets in public transport

There are usually toilets in airliners, regional rail trains, and often in long-distance buses and ferries, but not in metros, school buses, trams, and other buses. In trains they may have a reservoir, or in much older trains, the contents may simply fall on the tracks, hence the notice which appears in many train toilets: "Please do not flush while the train is standing at a station".

See also: Passenger train human waste disposal

"High-tech" toilets

Advanced technology is being integrated into toilets with more functions, especially in Japan - see Japanese toilet. The biggest maker of these toilets is TOTO. Such toilets can cost from US$2,000 to $4,000. The features are operated by control pads (sometimes with bilingual labels), and even hand-held remote control devices. Some of these features are:

  • Water jets, or "bottom washers" like a bidet, as an alternative to toilet paper
  • The "Washlet," Toto's portable hand-held bottom washer
  • Blow dryers, to dry the body after use of water jets
  • Artificial flush sounds, to mask noises such as body functions
  • Urine and stool analysis, for medical monitoring. Matsushita's "Smart Toilet" checks blood pressure, temperature, and blood sugar.
  • Digital clock, to monitor time spent in the bathroom
  • Automatic lid operation, to open and close the lid
  • Heated seats
  • Deodorizing fans

Culture

Disposal

The connection made between toilets and dirt, or distasteful items, has led to them being also used to dispose of wedding rings, letters or critical reviews with which one disagrees (cf. Goethe's example). In this case the use is partly (and in many cultures very strongly) symbolic, as in most human cultures the places used to dispose of feces and urine have some connotation related to dirtiness or rejection.

Graffiti

For thousands of years, public toilets have been associated with graffiti, often of a transgressive, gossipy, or lowbrow humorous nature (cf. toilet humour).

Furtive sexual relations

Similarly, toilets have long been associated with furtive sexual relations. These include assignations ("for a good time call..." messages, note-passing between stalls) as well as the acts themselves, for which dalliances toilets provide a convenient (though not necessarily sanitary or romantic) venue.

For many years gay men have used them for "cruising" (anonymous sexual contact). When used for such purposes, public toilets are often referred to as "Roman tea rooms", often just shortened to "T-rooms". In the United Kingdom the act of picking up a sexual partner for a same-sex 'quickie' is better known as cottaging, a cottage in the general sense being a small, cosy, countryside home. The playwright Joe Orton made reference to this practice in his plays.

Particularly associated with toilets is the use of glory holes for peeping, or anonymous fellatio. Another example, equally open to heterosexual participation, would be sex in airplane lavatories, which is reflected in the phrase "Mile High Club".

Social bonding

Additionally, toilets are important arenas of male as well as female social bonding. Boys may use the facilities to smoke, gamble, deal drugs, give one another "swirlies," or experiment with low-grade fireworks, or to urinate. Girls and women may share gossip and make-up advice. Often, children will sneak into the restroom designated to the opposite sex as an intentional act of boundary-transgression.

In many cultures, each gender has its own distinct "toilet etiquette." American women may invite one another to go to the toilet together, and once inside, chat with abandon. Men tend to be more reticent and may even experience pee shyness; yet they too may feel a certain camaraderie. This is often more easily felt during outdoor, toilet-less urination i.e. on a tree, a wall, etc.

Unusual uses

American President Lyndon Johnson would occasionally want to receive staff members while he sat on the toilet. [citation needed]

In the wake of the 2003 cartoon film Finding Nemo, a number of children sought to help their tropical fish "escape" captivity by means of the toilet. Many sewage treatment plants responded by announcing that live animals in the sewer are almost certainly killed by the treatment process.

Several movies include comic scenes involving eruptions of water and/or sewage while a character is sitting on the toilet. (e.g., Goonies, Not Another Teen Movie). See also: Toilet humour.

The "Great Equalizer"

The toilet is noted as one of the unifiers of humanity, as people of all social classes must use it. Simply put, everyone poops, and this factor of biology is seen by some to be unifying.

In Poland it is reflected by calling the toilet euphemistically as the place, "gdzie nawet król chodzi piechotą" (where even the king walks by himself). A similar saying was used in imperial Germany, and a similar saying is still known in Hungary "ahová a király is gyalog jár" (where to even the king goes by foot).

Toilets as Refuge

Because of the privacy associated with restrooms, they are perceived by some as places of solace. For example, one might go to the restroom at work simply to escape from the pressures of coworkers, or a school restroom to escape harassment by peers, or the restroom at home to escape domestic troubles. Because of the solace of restrooms, many people also bring books into them to read while or after defecating.

Bibliography

  • Temples of Convenience - And Chambers of Delight by Lucinda Lambton
  • Thunder, Flush and Thomas Crapper by Adam Hart-Davis
  • Bernard Share Slanguage - a dictionary of Irish slang (Dublin,1997) ISBN 0717126838
Early 20th Century outhouse, preserved at a ghost town in Arizona.

See also

  • New Scientist magazine has had over the years articles on non-smelling, fly-less pit toilets.

External links

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